"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... render it necessary to be used not more than once in four days or a week. The food should be stirred for two hours, then transferred to flat coolers, until sufficiently gelatinous to be cut with a kind of spade. By the admixture of some portion of soups it may be brought to any thickness requisite. The flesh to be mixed with it should be cut very small, that the greedy hounds may not be able to obtain more than their share. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Redmayne tangle, Mark. If you had, the clue to this labyrinth might be in your hands to-day. The more I hear and the more I think, the more firmly am I convinced that the truth we are out to find can only be discovered by a deal of hard digging in past times. There is a lot of spade work demanded and you, or I, may have to return to England to do it—unless we can get the information without the labour. But I've no reason to count on any ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... be almost part of his flesh. But his real favorite was an oak tree, nearly twenty years of age and already sturdy, which stood in the centre of the lawn, where he had planted it with Marianne, who had held the slender sapling in position while he plied his spade on the day when they had founded their domain of Chantebled. And near this oak, which thus belonged to their robust family, there was a basin of living water, fed by the captured springs of the plateau—water whose crystalline song made the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... in this town? Well, they founded the University, named the streets, planted the elms and built the Capitol. Since then they've been snowed under by the Germans and the Norwegians, a lot of beer drinkers and fish eaters. Nobody calls a spade a spade, these days. They rant and spout socialism. The old blood's gone. The old, stern, puritanical crowd can't ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... strength, varying from merely ten or a dozen men to three or four thousand, and indeed each band varied continually. The men, when not required, would scatter to their homes, cultivate their little patches of ground, and throw down the spade and take up the rifle again when they heard of a convoy to cut off, or an invading column to beat back. The bands, too, would vary in proportion to the renown of their chiefs. An energetic man, who, at the head of a handful, had performed some ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... could do it, child, if you want a bit o' garden: these long evenings, I could work at taking in a little bit o' the waste, just enough for a root or two o' flowers for you; and again, i' the morning, I could have a turn wi' the spade before I sat down to the loom. Why didn't you tell me before as you wanted a ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... real excitement of the day was when the workmen had departed, and Mr. Ranny came out with his machine laden with priceless treasures from the ten-cent store, or later when Quin Graham dashed up the lane with anything from a garden-spade to a bird-house in his hands, and with an enthusiasm and energy in his soul that communicated themselves to all concerned. Then everybody would talk at once, and everybody insist upon showing everybody else what had been done since morning, and there ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... applied for harrow-work, and the surgeon seconded his application. This change of occupation, which was destined in some respects to be beneficial, proved at the outset most unfortunate. The outdoor toil was mostly spade and barrow labor on the moor, on which the convicts worked in gangs—each gang under supervision of two warders, armed with sword and musket. The first face that Richard's eyes lit on, when he found himself in the open, with the free air of heaven blowing on him, and already, as it seemed, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... my return journey. I was walking back along the shore, when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade. The girl wasn't with him. In fact, there didn't seem to be any one in sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought the whole thing out in a flash, don't you know. From what I had seen of the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... chisel, which, most probably, the carpenters had used in the construction of the house, and forgotten. We put it carefully by, in order that we might fasten it to a pole, and use it in the moment of our flight as a spear. We found, also, a spade in the court, which we hid, that it too might serve as a weapon. Besides this, the sailors, on the night when we made the attempt, were to arm themselves with some long poles, which had been used in drying ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... their own fruit to buy a pair of shoes or gloves, a scarf or a hat, but even this tiny income was beginning to be menaced. The Deacon positively suffered as he looked at that odd corner of earth, not any bigger than his barn floor, and saw what his girls had done with no tools but a spade and a hoe and no help but their own hands. He had no leisure (so he growled) to cultivate and fertilize ground for small fruits, and no money to pay a man to do it, yet here was food grown under his very eye, and it did not belong to him! The girls worked in their garden ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thing!" Altamont raged. "'Wielding a gold-plated spade handled with oak from an original rafter of the Congressional Library, at three-fifteen one afternoon last week—' One afternoon last week!" He cursed luridly. "Why couldn't that blasted magazine say what afternoon? I've gone over a lot of twentieth century copies ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... least expected, to pillage and burn the houses and then massacre the inhabitants. In those days it was impossible to labor singly in the fields. The tillers of the soil were obliged to work in groups, with a gun in one hand, and a scythe or spade in the other, often at the peril of their lives. These intrepid French Catholics had left peaceful, happy homes, and the blessings of a Christian government, for no other purpose than to convert wild Indians, who were absolutely under the dominion of the devil, and to spread abroad ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... however, he saw his mistake, for, while Thialfi attacked Mokerkialfi with a spade, Thor came with a rush upon the scene and flung his hammer full at his opponent's head. Hrungnir, to ward off the blow, interposed his stone club, which was shivered into pieces that flew all over the earth, supplying all the flint stones thereafter to be found, and one ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... but is the recognition of evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor is it reassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted deep in his Spanish soul along with the harsh irony and a cruel spirit of mockery. He refuses to follow the ideals of other men, and he paints a spade a spade; at least the orchestration, if brutal, is not lascivious. A cold, impartial eye observes and registers the corruption of cities small and great and the infinitely worse immoralities of the open country. Sometimes Zuloaga's ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... knapsacks were on, Ready took the axe and gun, and asked William if he thought he could carry a small spade on his shoulder, which they had brought on shore along with the shovels. William replied that he could; and the dogs, who appeared to know they were going, were all ready standing by them. Then, just as the sun rose, they turned into the cocoa-nut grove, and were soon out ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... loudly and with much gesticulation, apostrophising himself, scolding himself, uttering little cries of triumph or self-encouragement. He did not allow Lecoq to have a moment's rest. He wanted this or that or the other thing. He demanded paper and a pencil. Then he wanted a spade; and finally he cried out for plaster of Paris, some water and a ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... with political agitators, and with miserable traitors to the land of their birth and breeding, the poor emigrant starts from the interior, where his ideas have never expanded beyond the weaver's loom or factory labour, the plough or the spade, the hod, the plane, or the trowel, and hastens with his wife and children ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... a wider, better feeding area for growing roots, permits greater water storage, forwards growth of trees and brings them into bearing earlier than trees set in spade-dug holes. Write for FREE BOOKLET about how to blast tree holes with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... the old man, carrying a basket in one hand and a spade in the other, was trudging steadily by. His blue overalls and jumper were threadbare under the soft brown they had achieved through his strenuous kneeling and the general intimacy of weeds and sod. He had a curious neutrality of expression—perhaps an ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... buried word By the delving spade is found, Sleeping in the quiet ground. Now the call of life is heard: Rise again, and like a bird, Fly abroad on wings of gladness Through the darkness and the sadness, Of the toiling age, and sing Sweeter than the voice of Spring, Till the hearts of men are stirred ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... said. I am a plain-spoken man, and to me a spade is a spade and not an instrument for upturning ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... I will make an honest woman of you, when all is done. Nay, none of your airs; no tricks upon travellers! I have you here as safe AS a horse in a pound; there is not a house nor a shed within a mile of us; and, if I miss the opportunity, call me spade. Faith, you are a delicate morsel, and there is no ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... willow crown'd, Sheathed in their silken bowers:— E'en so the promise of her life appears Through those white childhood-years; —Whether in seaside happiness, and air Rosing the fair cheek,—sand, and spade, and shell,— Or race with sister-feet, that flash'd and fell Printing the beach, while the gay comrade-wind Play'd in the soft light hair:— Or if with sunbeam-smile and kind Small hand at cottage-door Her simple alms she tender'd to the poor: Love's healthy happy heart in all her steps was seen, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... mean the intrinsic and the true) She nor in camps or courts resides, Nor in the humble cottage hides; Yet found alike in every sphere; Who finds content, will find her there. O'erspent with toil, beneath the shade, A peasant rested on his spade. 60 'Good gods!' he cries, ''tis hard to bear This load of life from year to year. Soon as the morning streaks the skies, Industrious labour bids me rise; With sweat I earn my homely fare, And every day renews my ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Hamlet and Horatio. Clowne A picke-axe and a spade, A spade for and a winding sheete, Most fit it is, for t'will be made, he throwes vp a shouel. For such a ghest most meete. Ham. Hath this fellow any feeling of himselfe, That is thus merry in making of a graue? See how the slaue joles their heads against the earth. Hor. My lord, Custome ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... from the mounds under which they were buried to the light of day and the heart of a great modern city. I never thought that I should live to see the Birs Nimroud laid open, and the tablets in which the history of Nebuchadnezzar was recorded spread before me. The Empire of the Spade in the world of history was founded at Nineveh by Layard, a great province added to it by Schliemann, and its boundary extended by numerous explorers, some of whom are diligently at work at the present day. I feel very grateful that many of its revelations have been made since I have ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... those foreign countries with which such a minister would have to deal, that his name would be, and has been, a sort of pantomime proverb like Panama or the South Sea Bubble. Foreigners were not threatened with fine and imprisonment for calling a spade a spade and a speculation a speculation; foreigners were not punished with a perfectly lawless law of libel for saying about public men what those very men had afterwards to admit in public. Foreigners were lookers-on who were really allowed to see most of the game, when ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... again directly." He then went down into the cutting to speak to some of his men, whilst I walked about the edge of the bank. From a distant part of the moor, the bray of a jackass came faint upon the sleepy wind. "Yer tho', Jone," said one of the men, resting upon his spade; "another cally-weighver gone!" " Ay," replied Jone, "th' owd lad's deawn't his cut. He'll want no more tickets, yon mon!" The country folk of Lancashire say that a weaver dies every time a jackass brays. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... and Bulgarian Generals in the war of 1913, namely, that "two months in the field are necessary in order to get at the full value of reserves." Our infantry is now accustomed to the rapid and thorough "organization" of the defensive. In August it neither liked nor had the habit of using the spade. Today those who see our trenches are astounded. They are veritable improvised fortresses, proof against the 77-millimeter gun and often against artillery of higher calibre. During the last five months not a single ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... mare was taking me to the station one heavy, cloud-smeared day, I passed a dull-looking villa that the groom, or instinct, told me was Judkin's home. From beyond a hedge of ragged elder-bushes could be heard the thud, thud of a spade, with an occasional clink and pause, as if some one had picked out a stone and thrown it to a distance, and I knew that HE was doing nameless things to the roots of a pear tree. Near by him, I felt sure, would be lying a large and late vegetable marrow, and its largeness and lateness ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Northmour. "And the bargain? D-n it, you're not a fool, young woman; I may call a spade a spade with you. How about the bargain? You know as well as I do what your father's life depends upon. I have only to put my hands under my coat-tails and walk away, and his throat would he cut before ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was never less clouded. In spite of two glasses of ginger beer, my hand is like a spade—I mean a rock. Insert a fly in your eye, and ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of seed in each bed; but the children have named them all, and labeled the various plats with pieces of paper, fastened in cleft sticks. A gardener's house, made of blocks, ornaments one corner, and near it are his tools,—watering-pot, hoe, rake, spade, etc., all made in ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the island and needed no urging to begin work on the project. With true outing instinct they had come prepared for just such an emergency as this. They had brought with them a tent large enough for four and a complete set of camp tools, including spade, shovel, axe, pickaxe, hatchet, ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... was not listening; he had fallen into a brown study, turning the piece of metal in his skilful, wonted, knotty fingers, with their spade tips. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... lined up in a row about ten feet from the wall. Then by a refinement of cruelty, spades were brought forward, and the condemned men were bidden to dig their own graves. The guards passed along the line, placing a spade in the hand of each and telling them roughly what they were to do. They came to Tom and saw that his hands were bound. There was hesitation and a moment's colloquy between two of the guards, and then one of them drew his knife ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... his army from the vicinity of the city, and leaving behind him only certain corps of observation, Cyrus marched away up the course of the Euphrates for a certain distance, and there proceeded to make a vigorous use of the spade. His soldiers could now appreciate the value of the experience which they had gained by dispersing the Gyndes, and perceive that the summer and autumn of the preceding year had not been wasted. They ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... Germans. He dreamt of swift armoured aeroplanes swooping down upon the flying airship, and sending it reeling earthward, the men screaming. He imagined a shattered Zeppelin staggering earthward in the fields behind the Dower House, and how he would himself run out with a spade and smite the Germans down. "Quarter indeed! Kamerad! Take ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... this way, and nothing had happened to disturb or change their mode of life, when, one summer's night in June, they were in their little garden, resting from the labours of the day. The widow's work was yet upon her knee, and strewn upon the ground about her; and Barnaby stood leaning on his spade, gazing at the brightness in the west, and singing softly ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... some wicked wag should pass his jest, 'Tis sheer ill-nature—don't the world know best? Genius must guide when wits admire the rhyme, And CAPEL LOFFT [122] declares 'tis quite sublime. Hear, then, ye happy sons of needless trade! Swains! quit the plough, resign the useless spade! Lo! BURNS and BLOOMFIELD, nay, a greater far, GIFFORD was born beneath an adverse star, Forsook the labours of a servile state, Stemmed the rude storm, and triumphed over Fate: 780 Then why no more? if Phoebus smiled on you, BLOOMFIELD! why not on brother Nathan too? [123] ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... grass land about to be brought into cultivation; and tholluff breagh, or red land, land which has been recently turned. To redden land is still used to express either to plough land, or, more generally, to turn land with the spade. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... grounds, the splendor and richness of the museums and conservatories with which the people will finally crown their own self-respect and decorate their own majesty. But we did not expect to see this sure prophecy turning itself into history in our day. We thought the people were too busy with the spade and the quill to care for any other sceptres at present. But it is now plain that they have been dreaming princely dreams and thinking royal thoughts all the while, and are now ready to put them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... rose up from the trench, casting down his spade and dashing the soil from his hands, rejoicing that his task was over for that day; but his eyes fell upon the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... hard bread on other people's floors. And why? Because the Vulture's profligate son couldn't succeed in ruinin' one of my daughters; and because her brother 'Tom tould him that if ever he catched him comin' about the place again, or annoyin' his sisther, he'd split him with a spade. Afther that, they were both very friendly—father and son—and when I brought my half-year's rent—'never mind now,' said they, 'bring it home, Andy; maybe you may want it for something else that 'ud be useful to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... out of it the rector of Middleton called a spade a spade with purely British bluntness, and though his parish was only a small one he was the most popular man in it—a fact which surely spoke volumes ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... seen the thin streams that silently, but steadily and in ever-increasing volume, were working their way through the embankment near its base. In the inky blackness of the night they were unheeded; and while spade and pick were plied with unflagging zeal to strengthen the higher portions, these insidious foes were equally busy ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... had to go down to the marsh and dig a ditch, to drain a piece of the land. Johannes got a spade and went with him. He worked with such a will that Lars Peter had some difficulty in keeping up with him. "'Tis easy to see you're young," said he, "the way you ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the heart of the earth has thus come rushing up among her children, bringing with it gifts of all that she possesses, then straightway into it rush her children to see what they can find there. With pickaxe and spade and crowbar, with boring chisel and blasting powder, they force their way back: is it to search for what toys they may have left in their long-forgotten nurseries? Hence the mountains that lift their ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... we've finished tea, I think, grandfather,' I answered. 'I wonder what sort of a spade ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton
... was dug on a slant, for greater ease in removing the material. Here the two beavers toiled side by side, working independently. With their teeth they cut the tough sod as cleanly as a digger's spade could do it. With their fore paws they scraped up the soil—which was soft and easily worked—into sticky lumps, which they could hug under their chins and carry up the slope to be dumped upon the grass at the side. Every minute one or the other would stop, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... attention of our readers to the subject of ploughing, but we feel we have not pressed upon them with the force it deserves, the necessity of what the Bible calls "breaking up the fallow ground." What the plough and spade do for the land we must have done for the minds of those who sit in Methodist pews. Unsaved men and women must be compelled to look the truth in the face. Farmers know that so long as the land is hard and cloddy, the seed has no chance to get the nourishment ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... noticed. In fact, his father and he, now without a shilling, took refuge in a distant cabin, where, by the sweat of his parent's brow, as a labourer in the fields, the ill-fated hero of this story was scantily fed and clothed, until maturer years enabled him to relieve the old man's hand of the spade and sickle, and in turn labour for their ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... division line between them. Mulberries were occupying the ground before the freshly cut trenches we saw were dug, and all the surface between the rows had been evenly overlaid with the fresh earth removed with the spade, the soil lying in blocks essentially unbroken. In Fig. 43 may be seen the mulberry crop on a similarly treated surface, between Canton and Samshui, with the earth removed from the trenches laid evenly over the entire surface between and around the plants, as it came ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... and fluctuating nature of ghosts by drawing his spectre in shaky lines, as if the model had given the artist the horrors. This simulacrum rises out of the earth like an exhalation, and groups itself into shape above the spade with which all that is corporeal of its late owner has been interred. Please remark the uncomforted and dismal expression of the simulacrum. We must remember that the ghost or "Ka" is not the "soul," which has other ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... them both away, and was never so happy as when mamma (as she called Mrs. Riccabocca) was admiring the picture-book, and Riccabocca with austere gravity dandled the doll. Then Riccabocca assured her that she could be of great use to him in the garden; and Violante instantly put into movement her spade, hoe, and wheelbarrow. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... I resumed my country occupations, as far as my strength would permit, and conceived a real grief at not being able to manage our garden without help; for I could not take five or six strokes with the spade without being out of breath and overcome with perspiration; when I stooped the beating redoubled, and the blood flew with such violence to my head, that I was instantly obliged to stand upright. Being therefore confined to less fatiguing employments, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... French, valets or varlets) are four valiant captains—Ogier and Lancelot, the companions of Charlemagne, Hector de Gallard, and Lahire, the generals of Charles VII. The remainder of the pack equally presents a sort of martial allegory; the heart is bravery; the spade (espad, 'sword') and the diamond (carreau, that is, a square or shield) are the arms of war; the club (in French trefle, 'trefoil') is the emblem of provisions; and the ace (in French as, from the Latin aes, 'coin') is the emblem of money—the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... harvest is over, and the streams and torrents have greatly subsided, the Mansa, or chief man of the town, appoints a day to begin sanoo koo, "gold washing;" and the women are sure to have themselves in readiness by the time appointed. A hoe, or spade, for digging up the sand, two or three calabashes for washing it in, and a few quills for containing the gold dust, are all the implements necessary for the purpose. On the morning of their departure, a bullock is killed for the first day's entertainment, and a number of prayers ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... found that the guardians had so wasted their goods, that their inheritance lay desolate. The brother was in despair, but young Richard comforted him, bade him trust in God, and himself laying aside the studies he delighted in, look up the spade and axe, and worked unceasingly till the affairs of the homestead were in a flourishing state. Then, when prosperity dawned on the elder brother, the younger obtained his wish, and went to study at Oxford, where he was so poor that he and two other scholars had but one gown between ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... auld high road- Yet the Deil hae General Wade For learnin's the shauchle instead o' the step Wi' the weary wark o' his spade, Till the Jew an' the Sassenach lord it noo Owre the hills ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... John Moylan, James Sheridan, and Constable Cox were shot dead; when James Miller, Michael Ball, Peter Greany, and Bridget McCullagh were murdered—the last a poor widow, who was beaten to death with a spade; when Ryan Foley was brutally murdered; when Michael Baylan was murdered; when Viscount Mountmorres was murdered, and the dead body left on the road, the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse the shelter of a barn; when a car-driver ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... us every where," said an old man, with a spade in his hand, and dressed like a lay-brother, of whose presence, in the vehemence of his exclamation, the Abbot had not been aware—"Gaze not on me with such wonder!—I am he who was the Abbot Boniface at Kennaquhair, who was the gardener Blinkhoolie at Lochleven, hunted ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... existences, a day and a night one—a day and a night population—the clown and his tillage in the light, the smuggler and his trade in the dark; yet the same peasant frequently exhibiting a versatility for which John Bull seldom gets credit.—The man of the plough-tail and the spade, drudging and dull through one half of his being; the same man, after an hour or two of sleep, springing from his bed at midnight, handling the sail and helm, baffling his Majesty's cruisers at sea, and making a melee with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... the church of the Capuchins. There he found Philippe and his seconds, with Benjamin, waiting for him. Potel and Mignonnet paced off twenty-four feet; at each extremity, the two attendants drew a line on the earth with a spade: the combatants were not allowed to retreat beyond that line, on pain of being thought cowardly. Each was to stand at his own line, and advance as he pleased when the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the work was done for a long time to come; every family had its great portraits, and would want him no more yet awhile; and Conrad saw, that if he could not turn his hand to something else, and in place of pencils and brushes, work with last, spade, needle, or quill, make shoes, coats, till the ground, or cast up accounts, he should shortly be hardly put to it to keep himself going. He had made and saved a pretty tolerable little purse during his short season of patronage, and determined to turn that to account ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... river lurking under greene, Eftsoones* he gins to fashion forth a place, 650 And, squaring it in compasse well beseene**, There plotteth out a tombe by measured space: His yron-headed spade tho making cleene, To dig up sods out of the flowrie grasse, His worke he shortly to good purpose brought, 655 Like as he had conceiv'd it in his thought. [* Eftsoones, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... which the Spaniards had to pass could be laid under water. Believing it yet possible to enlist the ocean in his defence, Louis, having partially reduced his soldiers to obedience, ordered a strong detachment upon this important service. Seizing a spade, he commenced the work himself, and then returned to set his army in battle array. Two or three tide gates had been opened, two or three bridges had been demolished, when Alva, riding in advance of his army, appeared within a mile or two of Jemmingen. It was then eight o'clock in the morning. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gouges, of sweeps varying from one almost flat (No. 1) to a distinct hollow in No. 3. These tools are made in two forms, straight-sided and "spade"-shaped; an illustration of the spade form is given on the second page of tools. In purchasing his set of tools the student should order Nos. 1, 2, 3, 10, 11 in this form. They will be found to have many advantages, as they conceal less of the wood behind ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... shed she secured an ax and a spade, as well as a basket. In spite of her condition of mind she knew exactly what she wanted to do—and she did it. Had she thought out her intention for months she could have gone about the matter no more directly and practically. Yet, had ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... who wear left in the cannoes and Launch which was 2 in the cannoes, and 3 in the launch) marched for the towne of Quoquembo. 35 of our party as they wear Marching mett about 150 Spaniards, most on horseback; thay had not all gunns, some launces, other Spade's; more of our Party comeing upp, seeing the foloorne so much Ingaged, thay wounded one or 2 of their horses, with some of the Spaniards, which made them to retreat to a greate hill, about 5 mile from the towne. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... men had been ploughmen, others shepherds, but every one of them was an artisan more or less, and it is just such men that do well—men who know a good deal about country life, and can deftly use the spade, the hoe, the rake, the fork, as well as the hammer, the axe, the saw, and the plane. Thanks to the way dear father had brought us up, my brothers and I were handy with all sorts of tools, and we were rather proud than ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... not used to that; I cannot stoop to try it— To take the spade in hand, and ply it. The narrow being suits ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was ready to aid in this way, after vainly trying to handle a spade, a task rendered impossible by his wound. He was hard at work over his work, carrying basketful after basketful with one hand, when Captain Smithers came up, saw how he was striving, and stood looking on ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Ratsey said; 'I have dug too often in this graveyard for any to wonder if they see me with a spade.' ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... their "curtlaxes" (cutlasses) to dig the frozen ground to get at the Indians' corn, "having forgotten to bring spade or mattock." "Daggers" are mentioned as used in their celebrated duel by Dotey and Leister, servants of Stephen Hopkins. Bradford narrates that on one of their exploring tours on the Cape the length of guard duty performed at night ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... spade we left over there this morning. Are you the man to get it?" Sharp Grover said to me just after dusk. "We've got to have water or die, and Burke here can't dig a well with his toe nails, though he can come about as near to it as ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... cheerfully when the gun was finally assembled on the carriage, "get a sizeable timber an' spike it to the centre o' the deck. I'll run the trail spade up against that cleat an' that'll keep the recoil from lettin' the gun go backward, clean through the opposite rail and overboard. Gimme a coupler gallons o' distillate and some waste, somebody. This cosmoline's got to come out o' the tube an' out o' the breech mechanism ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... mantle of white. It was like an Eastern city now under an Eastern moonlight, and he was listening to the shouts and laughter of people snowballing in the streets when he heard a laboured step on the stair behind him. It was Brother Paul coming up with a spade to shovel away the snow. His features were pinched and contracted, and his young face was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... we think deserves a much greater degree of attention than we believe it has yet received, in that it shows to what a considerable extent waste lands may, without any very heavy expenditure of money, be brought into profitable cultivation, and at the same time, under a well-regulated system of spade husbandry, yield abundant employment to agricultural labourers and their families. The following is the substance of the document referred to:—His lordship, who has large estates in Dorsetshire, found that a tract of land, called Shepherd's Corner, about 200 acres in ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... hill-preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. Their images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling-piece, a spade, a pipe, a dunghill, a crowing cock, the shining and the withdrawal of the sun. An occasional pathos of simple humanity, and frequent patches of big Biblical words, relieved the homely tissue. It was a poetry apart; bleak, austere, but genuine, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boyish garb for boyish task, Eager she wields her spade: yet loves as well Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask The tale ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... dig up the beds and get rid of the weeds, and then perhaps for this summer only we might take refuge in geraniums and begonias. Just for one summer, till something else will grow." She sighed, and set to work with her spade, giving it a push into the ground with her foot in professional style, and pausing to gasp and straighten her back between every second or third attempt. Astonishing what hard work it was, and how ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... mode of speech which he had used in his early years. There was, consequently, a great daub painted up on sundry walls, on which a navvy, with a pimply, bloated face, was to be seen standing on a railway bank, leaning on a spade holding a bottle in one hand, while he invited a comrade to drink. "Come, Jack, shall us have a drop of some'at short?" were the words coming out of the navvy's mouth; and under this ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... by, stirred to sudden fury by this disdain, raised the spade with which he had been working, and struck Remus a blow that laid him dead upon the ground. Then, fearing vengeance for his hasty act, he rushed away with such speed that his name has since been a synonyme for ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... many-coloured flowers on the surface of the grave move like a fluttering garment. She sank, and the figure threw his dark cloak round her. It became night—the night of death. She sank deeper than the sexton's spade could reach. The churchyard lay like a ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... it down with a spade next the box, and add more litter upon the top, which should be done every other day, observing that when you increase one lining to have the dung in readiness for the next; each lining not being calculated ...
— The art of promoting the growth of the cucumber and melon • Thomas Watkins
... shall read these lines, who knows in his conscience that his churchyard-walks are grown up with weeds, and the graves covered with nettles, upon sight hereof let him summon his man-servant, or get a labourer if he have no man-servant. Let him provide a reaping-hook and a large new spade. These implements will suffice in the meantime. Proceed to the churchyard: do not get disheartened at its neglected look, and turn away. Begin at the entrance-gate. Let all the nettles and long grass for six feet on. either side of the path be carefully cut down ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... might have been undertaken but, unfortunately, I had little leisure at the time, and was without the assistance of any educated person who might have helped me in the work. As, however, the "spade-work" in this particular field of experiment seems now to have been accomplished, many additional and interesting details might result—given ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... swear That none but Cuckolds in the Nation were; Especially if those who are not known, For Cuckolds too the Title wou'd but own, And such as are not summon'd would appear, In those Accoutrements we ought to wear, Which are our Horns, a Pick Axe and a Spade, That Paths may for our Wives be ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... shoulders down and between your legs; or, with your heels together, swinging your hands down till the fingers touch the ground; or by the different exercises that either bend your back, or hold it stiff and erect. Swinging from a bar, rowing, digging with a spade, chopping or sawing wood, dancing, rope-skipping, ball-playing, hop-scotch, and wrestling, all develop these muscles finely and are good for both ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... not now make a well of your thimble, nor a spade of your scissors," answered her brother; "she has become tiresome; she no longer frisks around me when I return home; she has no longer any droll fancies which once amused me so much; she is now a genuine doll; I really believe that this minikin ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... oriflamme. Nor the red tear nor the reflected tower Abides; but yet these eloquent grooves remain, Worn in the sandstone parapet hour by hour By labouring bargemen where they shifted ropes. E'en so shall man turn back from violent hopes To Adam's cheer, and toil with spade again. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... were last heard of in the tenth century, when they were burnt at Rome and Byzantium. We shall have to go back to the fifteenth century, to the Fall of Constantinople, to the Revival of Learning, ere we can find a fitting parallel to match the importance of this recent find. Not since the spade of the excavator uncovered from its shroud of earth the flawless beauty of the Olympian Hermes has such a delightful acquisition been made to our knowledge of Greek literature. The name of Professor Lachsyrma has long been one to conjure with, and all ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... your home an' your own contree! Strike for your native lan'! Kip workin' away wit' de spade an' hoe, Den jump w'en you hear de bugle blow, For danger 's aroun', above, below, But de bugle will tell if it ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... producing scions who will uphold for them future generations of selfishness and arrogance. One sees the same sort of procreative tendency in certain of our hardiest and coarsest weeds. Sometimes a gardener comes along, with hoe, spade, and a strong uprooting animus. In human life that kind of gardener goes by the ugly name of Revolution. But we are dealing with neither parables nor allegories. Those are for the modish clergymen of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... seeth might if any home were brought. The rest the wood doth seeke, eke euery bush and tree For berries and such baggage like, which should seeme meate to bee. Our fingers serue in steed, both of pickaxe and spade, To dig and pull vp euery weed, that grew within the shade. Eke diged for rootes the ground, and searcht on euery brier For berries, which if we had found, then streight way to the fire: Where we rost ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... enough to see that you had better act on my assurance for a time, and test it? In my opinion, so far from agreeing with you that you should be free to turn yourself into a colonist and work in your shirt-sleeves with spade and hatchet—in my opinion you have no right whatever to expatriate yourself until you have honestly endeavored to turn to account the education you have received here. I say nothing of the grief to your mother ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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
... affection due to his friendly nature, and to the kindness afterwards to pass between us for many years, the whole aspect of the publisher when I first saw him. His abundant hair, and his full "beard as broad as ony spade," that flowed from his throat in Homeric curls, were touched with the first frost. He had a fine color, and his eyes, as keen as they were kind, twinkled restlessly above the wholesome russet-red of his cheeks. His portly frame was clad in those Scotch tweeds which had not yet displaced the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sign and symbol of freedom. She lay upon her starboard beam half full of sand, and it now became my object to turn her that I might come at this under side, wherefore I fell to work with mattock and spade to free her of the sand wherein (as I say) she lay half-buried. This done I hove and strained until the sweat poured from me yet found it impossible to move her, strive how I would. Hereupon, and after some painful thought, I took to digging away the sand, undermining ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... sometimes given most excellent results, is to cut back spring set plants which have ripened some fruit but which are not completely exhausted, to mere stubs, and spade up the ground about them so as to cut most of the roots, water thoroughly and cover the ground with a mulch of straw. Most of the plants so treated will start a new and vigorous growth and give ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... as to snakes and snake bites may not be out of place here. To distinguish the only venomous snake found in the British Isles is an easy matter, if you have the opportunity of examination. In the first place, the viper appears to have a more spade-like and flatter head than the common snake, and has a black cross from near the neck running up to the centre of the head, where it terminates in a black, oval-shaped spot. But the greatest distinction, perhaps, is that a decided pattern runs down the centre ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... data and facts for 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 times ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... bravado, but of daring skill. Perhaps the most wonderful regular feat of all was 'spading,' which meant slewing the boat close in, as the whale was about to sound, and cutting the tendons of its tremendous death-dealing tail by a slicing blow from the two-handed razor-edged 'spade.' Perhaps the most wonderful of all exceptional escapes was that of a boat which was towed by one whale right over the back of another. And perhaps the most exciting finish to any international race was the one in which the Yankee, who came up second, got 'first iron' by 'pitchpoling' ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... world, the same enlivening sounds also awoke the spirit of childhood. Early associations had merely lain dormant for a season, but those connected with the bright musket and sabre were stronger than those of the spade and figure-maker's mould. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... dress and wondering what a sailor could want with post-chaises at that hour, they demurred, but the money quickly persuaded them. They told me also that a gentleman had changed horses there about half an hour before and gone towards the Lizard, after borrowing a pickaxe and spade. Half an hour: should I ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and goot Mr. Oldenbuck, and young Mr. Lofel, who is a very goot young gentleman also, I will show you dat it is possible, a vary possible, to discover de spring, of water, and de little fountain hidden in de ground, without any mattock, or spade, or dig ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... employed a man of whom I knew something,—that he was industrious, temperate, and that he had a wife and children to support,—a worthy man, a native New Englander. I engaged him, I say, to dig some post-holes. My employee bought a new spade and scoop on purpose, and came to my place at the appointed time, and began digging. While he was at work, two men came over from a drinking-saloon, to which my residence is nearer than I could desire. One of them I had known as Mike Fagan, the other as Hans Schleimer. They looked ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you ever see the devil, With his little spade and shovel, Digging praties in the garden With his ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... it seemed impossible to sit still long enough to reach the city, you are twisting about and shuffling your feet, looking far oftener at the river woods than at your letters, and as for myself, it seems as if I must go over yonder and seize Bertel's spade and show him how to dig those seed beds more rapidly, so that I can begin to plant and kneel down and get close to the ground. Yesterday when the boys came in with very earthy faces, and I questioned them, I found that they ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... thou deemed by housewife fat A comely, careful, mousing cat, Whose dish is, for the public good, Replenished oft with savory food, Nor, when thy span of life is past, Be thou to pond or dung-hill cast, But, gently borne on goodman's spade, Beneath the decent sod be laid; And children show with glistening eyes The place where poor old ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... her, as if to embrace her, when we both shrieked aloud, and turned to fly; and Matthew Standfast, coming suddenly between us with a spade uplifted in his hand, bade the miserable man keep his distance, and asked what he wanted. ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... manifold, and we must not allow the difference to breed a spirit of suspicion. Because my brother's gift is not mine I must not suspect his calling. To one man is given a trumpet, to another a lamp, and to another a spade. And they are all ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... dew on her sandal shoes and the lap of her morning gown appropriately heaped with flowers—with tulips, scarlet, yellow, and striped. And confronting her, with his back towards me and a remembered patch between the armholes of his stable-waistcoat, Robie the gardener rested both hands on his spade and expostulated. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "What are the processes?" He eyed Herzog as though the man had been an ox, a dog or even some inanimate object, coldly and with narrow-lidded condescension. To him, in truth, men were no more than Shelley's "plow or sword or spade" for his own purpose—things to serve him and to be ruled—or broken—as best served his ends. "Go on! Tell me what you know; and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... men were talking at the gate, one of them carrying a spade in hands still crusted with the soil of graves. Their very aspect was delightful to me; and I crept nearer to them, thinking to pick up some snatch of sexton gossip, some "talk fit for a charnel,"[35] ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shimmering ghosts that flit around, While spade and mattock death-fields glean, Open with words from the unseen The mysteries ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... must be willing to do any task that is assigned to him, without complaint. It does not matter if he has never handled a spade in his life, he must dig if required to, and dig to the best of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various |
