"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I am a gardener. I dig the ground, and plant things that are to live and grow. My works don't all moulder away, and rot in the earth. You see that spade in ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... we will go, Take the rake, the spade, the hoe, Dig the border nice and clean, And rake till not ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous
... left us— Left the battle line? Idling, straggling, wand'ring, Heedless of the sign? Hark! the trumpet calls thee! With us heart and hand Raise the Spade and Anchor! Strike for Sea ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... Pittsburgh Mission at Atoka was closed, Mrs. O. D. Spade, one of the teachers, took Lucretia C. Brown, a pupil of eight years, to her home at Bellefontaine, Ohio, and enabled her to graduate from the Grammar and High schools of that city in 1910. In 1912, after rendering one year of earnest and faithful service as assistant matron at Oak ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... place there. Had architects and landscape-gardeners prowling 'round for the last two weeks, and old man Fay won't allow one of them on the grounds. You'd die laughing to see him chasing them off with a spade or a rake or whatever he has in his hand. His property till July ninth, he says, and he wouldn't let so much as a crow fly over it if it belonged to Hadley B. Hobson. You'd ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... designs against my life, however calmed or baffled for the moment. Within a few days of the above events, when Natives in large numbers were assembled at my house, a man furiously rushed on me with his ax; but a Kaserumini Chief snatched a spade with which I had been working, and dexterously defended me from instant death. Life in such circumstances led me to cling very near to the Lord Jesus; I knew not, for one brief hour, when or how attack might be made; and yet, with my ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... much, Martin Pinzon?" Danny's companion at the long board-table asked. He was an evil-looking old man with a patch over one eye and a small white spade-shaped beard and ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... was dotted with pegs of wood and little unhewn slabs of slate, like an abandoned quoit ground. At the farthest corner of this space he stopped before a mound near to the wall. It was the new-made grave. The scars of the turf were still unhealed, and the glist of the spade was on the grass. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... surveys, erection of sea- walls in the Atlantic states—"everything on the margin of the ocean, but nothing for domestic trade; nothing for the great interior of the country." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1035.] "Not one stone," he said, "had yet been broken, not one spade of earth removed, in any Western State." He boldly claimed that the right to regulate commerce granted as fully the power to construct roads and canals for the benefit of circulation and trade in the interior as it did the power to promote coastwise traffic. His speech was a ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... working in the garden (in the cultivation of which he spent most of his leisure hours), when the general outcry from the poultry reached his ears; and, too well acquainted with the cause of their disquiet, he threw down his spade, and ran to the scene of action; and arrived just time enough to save the plumage of a hapless peacock from being entirely ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... Brussels, both in French and Austrian Flanders, is admirable. No fallows are any where to be seen, and in their place, green crops, of which beans, peas, carrots, &c. form the principal part. These green crops are kept very clean, and all worked by the spade or hoe, which furnishes employment to the immense population which is diffused over the country. Crops of rye, which, when we passed them in the middle of June, were in full ear, are every where very common; indeed, rye bread seems to be ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... we can exhaust them with our machines or divert them from their course. Here we have not to work at an artesian well, narrow and dark, where all the boring implements have to work in the dark. No; we can work under the open sky, with spade and pickaxe, and, by the help of blasting, our work ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... another twenty-two miles. This first day's march constituted a very strong test of endurance in consequence of our comparative softness and lack of training, especially as, in addition to his heavy rifle, bayonet, ammunition, and spade, each soldier was burdened with a knapsack containing emergency provisions in the form of tinned meats, coffee extract, sugar, salt, rice, and biscuits, together with various tin cooking and eating utensils; furthermore a second pair of shoes, extra blouse, changes of underwear, etc. On ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... the dancer when the latter spoke so that she did not notice that the man had moved stealthily towards her. Before she could struggle or cry out, a hand as big as a spade was clapped over her mouth, she was seized in an iron grip and half-dragged, half-carried out of the taproom through the small door ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... prone to spread and become a nuisance unless watched. Hence such plants should be placed where they will not have their roots cut by tools used close to them. When they seem to be extending, their borders should be trimmed with a sharp spade pushed vertically full depth into the soil and all the earth beyond the clump thus restricted should be shaken out with a garden fork and the cut pieces of mint removed. Further, the forked-over ground should be ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... 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. Jackson came up from the cutting, and we walked back ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... ourselves, we knew not whom we must trust. After this our travelling party broke up. My companions from the ship and I were to work together. We fixed on a spot, and erected our rude hut; then we bought a rocker and shovel, pick-axe and spade, with two tin pans, and set to work. I dug out the earth, another carried it, and a third washed it in the rocker. Our success was tolerable; but it was many days before we got enough to pay for the articles we had purchased, and our provisions. In the meantime, what ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... "since I've been thinking of it, I'm sure Frank meant neither BLAGUE nor irreverence. He is in earnest. I never knew him tell a lie; and since he was six years old he has known how to call a spade a spade." ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a good face to the foe. The language and tone are perhaps rather lower than in some other collections, but it must be remembered that these are the tales of 'hempen homespuns', of Norse yeomen, of Norske Bonder, who call a spade a spade, and who burn tallow, not wax; and yet in no collection of tales is the general tone so chaste, are the great principles of morality better worked out, and right and wrong kept so steadily in sight. The general view of human nature ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... better feast," wished Timon "I wash off the flatteries with which you plastered me and sprinkle you with your villainy." With these words he threw the water into his guests' faces, and then he pelted them with the dishes. Having thus ended the banquet, he went into an outhouse, seized a spade, and quitted ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run out, and went ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when the green gits back in the trees, And the sun comes out and stays, And yer boots pulls on with a good tight squeeze, And you think of yer barefoot days; When you ort to work and you want to not, And you and yer wife agrees It's time to spade up the garden lot, When the green gits back in the trees— Well! work is the least o' my idees When the green, you know, gits back in ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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
... the soil which we turn with our spade, and stamp with our shoes, covers millions upon millions of years. It is the ashes of the mountains, the leavings of untold generations of animal and vegetable life. It came out of the sea, it drifted from the heavens; it flowed ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... solidity to any administration in the present state of affairs. Under him, his grace said, he was "willing to serve in any capacity, not merely as a general officer, but as a pioneer: under him he would take up a spade or a mattock." Such was the situation in which the ministers found themselves at the close of this session, which was prorogued early ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... men drew closer together, and stood staring silently at this ominous dead body. It lay in a clear space among the trees. Near by was a spade after the Chinese pattern, and further off lay a scattered heap of stones, close ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... post!" and there halted on our houses and halls Death from their rifle-bullets, and death from their cannon- balls; Death in our innermost chamber, and death at our slight barricade; Death while we stood with the musket, and death while we stooped to the spade; Death to the dying, and wounds to the wounded, for often there fell, Striking the hospital wall, crashing thro' it, their shot and their shell; Death—for their spies were among us, their marksmen ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... work done, and used his tongue pretty freely; still he was a man who would speak the truth, and treated his men as well as he dared to do under the brutal regime ruling in Chatham. He speedily told me off to a barrow and spade, and I was fully enlisted as barrow-and-spade man to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the 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, ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... be the "Inca city" which Lopez Torres had reported. Among the ruins we picked up several fragments of Inca pottery. There was nothing Incaic about the buildings. One was rectangular and one was spade-shaped, but all the rest were round. The buildings varied in diameter from fifteen to twenty feet. Each had but a single opening. The walls had tumbled down, but gave no evidence of careful construction. Not far away, in woods which had not yet been cleared ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... the part of the people. Theatre crowds demanded encores of the President's March and hissed French airs when played. Merchants of New York and other seaports worked voluntarily on the neglected coast-defences. A song was put to the air of True Hearts of Oak in order to "cheer those unused to spade and barrow, who might tire of working on the several forts." ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... in the achievements of different individuals at first remained very great. The skilful hunter gets a far richer booty than the less skilful one; the strong and nimble agriculturist achieves with the spade a manifold greater result than the weak and the slow. The invention of the plough very materially reduces this difference, and—so far as the difference depends upon physical capacity—the invention of the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... with the dogs racing in front, to choose his bedroom, and came across his host unwillingly busy with hoe and spade in the potato patch. His whole aspect betokened such undisguised sufferance that Graeme could not repress ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... that stood without. But even the reckless courage of maternity was unavailing. Soon the noise of blows and of falling earth was heard, as the passage was gradually opened by brawny farm labourers, working with spade and pick, and assisted in their task by the eager huntsman, who ever and anon thrust a long bramble-spray into the tunnel and thus ascertained the direction ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... in his spade. "It will never be much bigger than a stinging nettle," thought he, "for the roots of the oak have sucked every atom of heart out of this." His black ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... stood Kaeloikamalama with the digging spade called Kapahaelihonua, The Knife-that-cuts-the-earth, twenty fathoms its length, four men to span it. Thought the lizard, "A slaughterer this." There was Kaeloikamalama swinging the digging ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... manner if not with my argument, they yielded to my importunity and allowed me to pass down. The stroke of the spade and the harsh voice of the man directing the work greeted my disquieted ears. With a bound I cleared the last half-dozen steps and, alighting on the cellar bottom, was soon able, in spite of the semi-darkness, to look about me and get ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... forgotten that the civilisation which the new-comers have enriched by virtue of their new found freedom from home conservatism has not been of their making; they may have added thereto but they did not beget it; the spade-work, which is the hardest part, had been done before ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... ancient and honorable spade, which, for small garden plots, borders, beds, etc., must still be relied upon for the initial operation in gardening—breaking up the soil. There are several types, but any will answer the purpose. In buying a spade look out for two things: see ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... employed the natives as labourers in making roads, useful both for war and peace. They found wages better than warfare. As navvies, they were paid half a crown a day, and were reported to do more work as spade-men than an equal number of soldiers would. At no time did the Maoris seem to make such material progress as during the twelve ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... but truth-telling spade, and without consulting the critic, dug up some coins in the island of Cyprus itself, and on the coins were stamped both the image and the ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... to the yett yonder, thinking to meet his man, paidling Jock—but Jock had sleepit in, and wasna there. Weel, to the wast corner ower yonder he gaed, and throwing his coat ower a headstane, and his hat on the tap o't, he dug away with his spade, casting out the mools, and the coffin handles, and the green banes and sic like, till he stoppit a wee to take breath.—What! are ye whistling to yoursell?" quoth Isaac to me, "and no ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... 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 ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... there, like a moving dot, a ploughman turned a belated furrow; or a sweating ditcher leaned upon his reluctant spade and longed for night; or a shepherd, quite as silly as his sheep, gawked up the morning hills. But not a ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... plan, which has 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
... not only perilously exposed myself, but enabled to command some part of the garden walks and (under an evergreen arch) the front lawn and windows of the cottage. For long nothing stirred except my friend with the spade; then I heard the opening of a sash; and presently after saw Miss Flora appear in a morning wrapper and come strolling hitherward between the borders, pausing and visiting her flowers—herself as fair. There was a friend; here, immediately beneath me, an unknown quantity—the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he fancied himself dying, had a vision. He saw a grating in the floor, close by his bed, and through it the torments of the lost. Two souls he remembered specially; one 'like a singed hog,' the other 'all over black like a charcoal spade.' He looked in fear, and heard a voice cry, 'Behold your sins.' He prayed; promised, if he recovered, to try and do better: and felt ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... creatures; that is to say, that the agriculture, the pasturage, the fisheries, and every species of honest industry about the country, cannot employ the one moiety of the population, let them work as lazily as they like, and they do work as if a pleugh or a spade burnt their fingers. Aweel, sir, this moiety of unemployed ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... there was very little, Lady Ker went to bed. But Randal and Jean slipped out into the moonlight. They took a sack with them, and Randal carried a pickaxe and a spade. They walked quickly to the three great stones, and waited for a while to hear if all was quiet. Then Jean threw a white cloak round her, and stole about the edges of the camp and the wood. She knew that if any wandering man came by, he would not stay long ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... brought into existence in only one way—that is, by consuming less than is produced. If one has a dollar one can spend it either for an article of consumption, say confectionery, or for an article of production, say a spade. He who buys a spade becomes a capitalist to the amount of a dollar—that is, he becomes the owner of tools. The process is precisely the same whether the amount in question is a dollar or a million dollars. [Footnote: T.N. Carver, "How to ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... cultivated as in times of terror and mourning; because, during the latter, the lands enjoyed the franchises so long wanted. Hands never failed; for, when the men marched to the armies, women supplied their place; and no one was ashamed to handle the spade or ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... a long table lay the body of Henry Armstrong, the head defiled with blood and clay from a blow with a spade. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... we were about one hundred and ninety miles from Hazleton, and that this must certainly be the divide between the Skeena and the Stikeen. The Manchester boys reported finding some very good pieces of quartz on the hills, and they were all out with spade and pick prospecting, though it seemed to me they showed but very little enthusiasm ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... dogs, cats and birds would die of old age, or from an accident, she would replace them without tears and without regret; with a little spade she would bury the dead animal in a strip of ground, throwing a few shovelfuls of earth over it and stamping it down with her feet in an ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... cheer. The men fell to work with renewed vigor. Presently Gallagher's spade hit something solid. A little scraping showed the top ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... rioting began in the streets. Leaving, he went with his dark-skinned Eastern musicians to the provinces. And the government trembled. Peasants threw aside spade, forgot vodka and rushed to his free concerts, given in canvas-covered booths; and the impetus communicated to this huge, weltering mass of slaving humanity, broke wave-like upon the remotest borders ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... found, among the grass in the court-yard, a large and sharp 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 ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... assent and satisfaction at the close of this brief address, and one of the young men, with grave—almost mysterious—looks, took up a small spade and went towards that part of the wall where Ravonino sat. The latter rose to let the young men get at a particular spot, which was marked on the wall with a small—almost imperceptible— red square. Here, after turning up a few spadefuls of earth, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... men and women who died, they two alone had burying. For I digged a hole with the stable-spade under the front lilac; and I wound them in the sheets, foot and form and head; and, not without throes and qualms, I bore ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... stronger; he could walk with a stick, and was going back to school next half. I felt a very unreasonable vexation because they seemed quite cheerful. But as I was leaving the garden to go over the fields, Baby Cecil came running after me, with his wooden spade in one hand and a plant of chick weed in the other, crying: "Charlie, dear! Come and tell Baby Cecil a story." I kissed him, and tied his hat on, which had come off ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... morning came he said to me, "There are in this room a spade, a sieve, and a leather bag; bring them out." I said to myself, God knows what labour he will make me undergo because he has made me eat of his bread; having no help for it, I took up those articles ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... again. The spring is the best time to do this work, although if the fall be dry, it will answer nearly as well to do it at that time. The dryer the ground in preparing it for the seed, and for the sowing of the same, the better. In preparing a small plot of ground for a lawn, the spade, hand-rake, and small roller may be used in ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... uncle of mine, and after the death of my aunt he became a Carthusian monk. As I write these lines, ill and aged as he is, and bent with pain, I know he is digging his own grave, weak with the weight of the spade, imploring God to take him, and thinking sometimes of me, of his little Bohemian. Ah, the dear, good man, it is to him that I owe all that is best in me. I love him devotedly and have the greatest ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... that to ingenuity, talent, and manliness, the whole world swings open. Carnegie's Thirty Partners, most of whom have come from the working-ranks, demonstrate that a man can rise from the pick, the spade, the foreman's duties, to the control of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... he had made this observation, he exclaimed, "I hae fund something now that stands again' the spade, as if it ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... from which they will never rise! Allons! one is viewing the dark side of the question. It is all the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and seeing no one near him, groan ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... improving his mind by study in his leisure hours. Among the acquaintances he then made was an enthusiastic projector of the name of Hall, who had taken out one patent for making hemp from bean-stalks, and contemplated taking out another for effecting spade tillage by steam. The young engineer was invited to make the requisite model, which he did, and it cost him both time and money, which the out-at-elbows projector was unable to repay; and all that came of the project was the exhibition of the model at the Society of Arts and before ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... issued shares to pay for the rolling plant and the rails. We got together rather a handsome sum in this way from various good-natured friends, and after the expiration of some weeks could show them a rather long embankment. Then we got tired of spade work, and the enterprise languished. Finally the works came to a standstill, and I believe we spent the shareholders' money on something else, for assuredly they never saw it again. After beginning so hopefully in the art of getting up bubble companies, it is perhaps to be regretted ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... crowding forward to look closer. Tom set down the lantern and picked up a broken spade. There was a cavity in the wall of this pocket-like passage. With a flourish Tom dug the broken blade of the spade ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... close of a summer evening, that the ground was broken by the gentlemen of the shamrock, within sight of the shanties decorated with the honorable order of the thistle. A lovely evening in the month of June! Not with spumy cannon and prickly bayonets, but with peaceful spade and mattock, advanced the sons of St. Patrick towards the children of a sister isle. Then did Roderick Dhu step forth from his shanty, and inquire, in choice Gaelic, if a person named Brian Borheime was in the ranks of the approaching forces. Then then did Brian ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... plans, you see," he said, bustling his newspaper aside for me. "It is no discredit to your intelligence, Mr. Blakeley, but you lack the professional eye, the analytical mind. You legal gentlemen call a spade a spade, although it may ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to the house where she lived, who loved him so dearly, and that he showed little return for her love by being so despairing at what had happened. The Prince replied: "I am not grieved at having exchanged the royal palace for this hovel; splendid banquets for a crust of bread; a sceptre for a spade; not at seeing myself, who have terrified armies, now frightened by this hideous scarecrow; for I should deem all my disasters good fortune to be with you and to gaze upon you with these eyes. But what pains me to the heart is that I have to dig till my hands are covered with hard ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... might be hidden beneath the tree, and that the dog had scented it, at last struck the old man. He ran back to the house, fetched his spade and began to dig the ground at that spot. What was his astonishment when, after digging for some time, he came upon a heap of old and valuable coins, and the deeper he dug the more gold coins did he find. So intent was the old man on his work that he never saw the cross face of ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... 1896. The owner of a garden near Queen Street, in the south-eastern part of the town, was digging up an apple tree when he came across a fine bed of gravel. Continuing the digging, in order to find the thickness of this deposit, his spade struck against a hard substance, which proved to be a lead coffin. After this had been examined by others invited to inspect it, without any satisfactory result, the present writer was requested to conduct further ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... tell. A Miller there had dwelt for many a day; As any peacock he was proud and gay. He could pipe well, and fish, mend nets, to boot, Turn cups with a lathe, and wrestle well, and shoot. A Norman dirk, as brown as is a spade, Hung by his belt, and eke a trenchant blade. A jolly dagger bare he in his pouch: There was no man, for peril, durst him touch. A Sheffield clasp-knife lay within his hose. Round was his face, and broad and flat his nose. High ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... were as follows. The bed of the river, which lies nearly east and west, is from fifty to one hundred yards wide and about thirty deep, in soil that lends itself easily to the spade. On both sides, for a mile above and below Wolveskraal Drift, the edges of the banks were trenched, and at either end of these trenches traverses, thrown forward at right angles, served to strengthen against enfilading attack. North of the river, ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... joyous understanding. Here was a fellow-soul, "funny" like herself, Beryl described her; Beryl, for whom black was always and invariably black, and a spade a spade. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... to do that without scamping it; but an Irishman will work as if he'd die the moment he stopped. That man Matthew Haffigan and his brother Andy made a farm out of a patch of stones on the hillside—cleared it and dug it with their own naked hands and bought their first spade out of their first crop of potatoes. Talk of making two blades of wheat grow where one grew before! those two men made a whole field of wheat grow where not even a furze bush had ever got its head ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... which the coins had been found by Sir Arthur and the German, was once more forced aside, and the earth gave easy way to the spade. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... required implement, conducted his visitor a little before sunset to the spot, just outside the village, and left him there armed with his rifle, a revolver, and a long knife or kriss, besides the spade. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... yesterday—going out with him to fish for barbel, and joining him over-night to go in search of bait. I found him crouched by his fire, eating potatoes out of the same plate with his dog. This frugal meal over, he took up a small lantern, a large box, and a long spade, and beckoned ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... that Reuben's opinion was the right one. The seamen dug and dug more frantically and eagerly as the prospect of finding the gold became less and less. Reuben's spade at length ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... off in three boats to round the island and wait for us, and Clyde and I took the fourth boat, and stowed the canvas bags, and went ashore, running up a little reedy inlet to the end. We buried them in the exact middle of a small triangle of three trees. Then we rowed out, and I threw the spade in the water, and when we rounded the island, taking a last look at the Hebe Maitland, she was dipping considerable, as could be seen from the hang of her lanterns. Clyde changed to another boat and put Sadler, Craney, Irish, Abe Dalrimple, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... scholars. The interpretation of the ancient scripts has reached a technical mastery unknown to the pioneers, and the genius of Brugsch unlocked the door to demotic, which Champollion had never thoroughly mastered. But the triumphs of philology have been surpassed by the conquests of the spade. The closest friend of Mariette's later years was Maspero, who succeeded him as Director of Antiquities, and whose most sensational find was the tombs of the Kings near Thebes. Equally eminent as excavator, philologist, and historian, Maspero was the first to popularize ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... old Romans used, admire their well-turned arches, and see the paint and plaster upon the walls of their apartments. The "Old Wall," so long a sphinx by the roadside, suggesting enigmas to passers-by, has found an interpreter in revelations which the spade and pickaxe have made within its shadow. From the time when its walls first fell down, it has furnished plunder to the country round. The old monks, finding it easier to take down its stones than to quarry now ones, built ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... with the air of famished wolves. The violent shock has been communicated, like that of electricity, through the country to a distance of hundreds of miles. Canals, railroads, and all public works, have been discontinued, and the Irish emigrant leans against his shanty, with his spade idle in his hand, and starves, as his thoughts wander back to his ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the Bed of Death have other emblems carved upon them too; there is a double frieze of oak above the pillars, and on it appears the skull and crossbones, the spade and mattock, the fragments of pitiful anatomy that marked the ghastly trade of sexton in the sixteenth century. In the covered galleries, as they were originally, the richer burgesses were buried, though ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... banked the frame, spanking the fertilizer down hard with the back of his spade. He sloped it up some four inches along the ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... all the necessities that were desirable, yet still I found several things wanting. My ink was daily wasting; I wanted needles, pins, and thread to mend or keep my clothes together; and particularly a spade, pickax, or shovel, to remove the earth. It was a year before I finished my little bulwark; and having some intervals of relaxation, after my daily wandering abroad for provision, I drew up this ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... rabble seize 55 In lax luxurious days, like these; THE PEOPLE'S MAJESTY, forsooth, Must fix our rights, define our truth; Weavers{7} become our Lords of Trade, And every clown throw by his spade, 60 T' instruct our ministers of state, And foreign commerce regulate: Ev'n bony Scotland with her dirk, Nay, her starv'd presbyterian kirk{8}, With ignorant effrontery prays 65 Britain to dim the western rays, Which while they on our island fall Give warmth and splendour ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... er day. Ah wuz bred and born right down dar er-round Caledonia. Ah wuz a big gull durin de time uv de centennial snow. Dis snow wuz called dat cause hit wuz de bigges snow dat evah been. Hit wuz ovah yo haid. We had tuh spade our way evah whah we went. Tuh de wood gitting place, tuh de sping, tuh de hoss lot, and evah whah. De anow wuz warm an soft. We piled up so much snow till hit took hit er half er year tuh melt. Dat snow stayed ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... cousins, shall Go sound the ocean and cast your nets; Happily you may catch her in the sea; Yet there's as little justice as at land.— No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it; 'Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade, And pierce the inmost centre of the earth: Then, when you come to Pluto's region, I pray you deliver him this petition; Tell him it is for justice and for aid, And that it comes from old Andronicus, Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome.— Ah, Rome!—Well, well; I made thee miserable What ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Montreal, received constant stimulus from the alarms of attack, and, above all, from a groundless report that ten thousand "Bostonnais" had sailed for Quebec. The sessions of the council were suspended, and the councillors seized pick and spade. The old defences of the place were reconstructed on a new plan, made by the great engineer Vauban. The settlers were mustered together from a distance of twenty leagues, and compelled to labor, with little or no pay, till a line of solid earthworks enclosed Quebec from Cape ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Cornish town was overwhelmed by a terrible uprising of wind and sea. The waves broke angrily over the haunts of man's degradation, followed by driving sands that blotted them out for ever. But perhaps it may not be for ever. Some day the fickle sand may desert that which it once buried, or the spade may lay bare relics that shall prove the tradition's truth. The lost church of St. Piran has been found; it may be so with the lost Langarrow. Already many human remains have been found among the sand-heaps that extend intermittently from here to Perranporth, and traces of "kitchen-middens" which ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... treble voice, and a little curly-headed apparition came running out of the bedroom, flourishing a wooden spade. ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... spade And said he'd dig himself a well; And then Charles took a piece of tin, And I was digging with ...
— Under the Tree • Elizabeth Madox Roberts
... another. I was walking by the river, after breakfast. And I saw, under a willow, a fisherman asleep. It was noon. A spade, as if expressly put there for me, was standing ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... tall sedges and "cat-tails" of the marshes, make the most insensate traveler exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach them one must don rubber boots and risk sudden seats in the slippery ooze; nevertheless, with spade in hand to give one support, it is well worthwhile to seek them out and dig up some roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to say, without salt soil or more water than the average garden receives from showers and hose, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... impulse, takes a decorative or applied form. All the beginnings of art grew up in this way. In primitive peoples it is the first expression of emotional life, which comes after the material need is satisfied. The savage makes his spade or fish spear from the necessity of physical preservation. Thus from the joy of living he applies to it his feeling ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... earnestly I went to work With spade and rake and hoe; I planted every seed I had, And wondered if ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... course you may think not, and you may not be content to call things by their common names; you may be ambitious to show superiority over others and display your learning or, rather, your pedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it. It has stood the test of time, and old friends ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... beguile: The upper part thereof was whey; 245 The nether, orange mix'd with grey. This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of scepters and of crowns; With grisly type did represent Declining age of government; 250 And tell with hieroglyphick spade, Its own grave and the state's were made. Like SAMPSON'S heart-breakers, it grew In time to make a nation rue; Tho' it contributed its own fall, 255 To wait upon the publick downfal, It was monastick, and did grow In holy orders by strict ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... had had a shovel or a spade, he could have worked to better advantage, but as it was he was forced to content himself with a large shell which he picked ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... considering its length, was unremarkable. One, indeed, whom I found plying his spade in the red evening, high above Allan Water and in the shadow of Dunblane Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with the birds that still attended on his labours; how some would even perch about him, waiting for their prey; and ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to—themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance—even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Salinas was viceroy of Mexico; and the operations were commenced with great pomp, the viceroy assisting in person, mass being said on a portable altar, and fifteen hundred workmen assembled, while the marquis himself began the excavation by giving the first stroke with a spade. From 1607 to 1830, eight millions of dollars were expended, and yet this great work was not brought to a conclusion. However, the limits of the two lakes of Zumpango and San Cristobal, to the north of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... heights which commanded the top of the Gaeta hill. But to profit by this, the Piedmontese were obliged to make fourteen miles of roads by which to bring up their artillery. For a month, 10,000 out of the 20,000 besiegers were at work with the spade. The defending force amounted to 11,000 men, and was commanded by General Ritucci. From the first, it was certain that the obstinate stand made at Gaeta could only result in what Lord John Russell called ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond Mine the walnut slopes ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... fall to work at once, and when we get back to the palace, I will tell you my story and how I became an eunuch.' So they set down the lantern and dug a hole between four tombs, the length and breadth of the chest, Kafour plying the spade and Sewab clearing away the earth by basketsful, till they had reached a depth of half a fathom, when they laid the chest in the hole and threw back the earth over it: then went out and shutting the door, disappeared from Ghanim's sight. When he was sure that ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... launched a long yellow ray directly at the crack in the nursery shutter. The ray was sharp: it smote full on Archie's eyelids, as he lay asleep, surrounded by "Robinson Crusoe," two red apples, a piece of gingerbread, and a spade, all of which he had taken to bed with him. When he felt the prick of the sun-ray he opened his eyes wide. "Why, morning's come!" he said, and without more ado raised himself ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... their time in having their black hair crimped; they gave ridiculous sums to have it anointed with the most delicate perfumes; and it was difficult to imagine how effectively their carefully kept hands could draw a sword, and, if necessary, handle the hatchet or spade. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... leap and leap in air, Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly And roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs To look again, and still your spade kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why, But I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave And talk about your everyday concerns. You ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... of English poetry"; his "high, astounding terms" took the world of his day by storm, his gift to English literature was the gift of sublime beauty, of imagination, and passion. Lyly could lay claim to none of these, but his contribution was perhaps of more importance still. He did the spade-work, and did it once and for all. With his knowledge of the Classics and of previous English experiments he wrote plays that, compared with what had gone before, were models of plot construction, of the development of action, and even of characterization. Moreover ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in the amber of the truth. Last and chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and may call a spade a spade. It cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... it should be, a peaceful spot. It was not always so. There was a time when its inhabitants had to toil, so to speak, with the spade in one hand, and the musket in the other. It lies in a hollow of the great rolling plains, and was founded, like many of the eastern towns, in the memorable "1820," when the "British settlers" came out, and a new era ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... animal, and quite different from any on the mainland. There are very few canoes about here, and those are of miserable construction, and only fitted for the purpose they turn them to—catching fish close to the shore. The paddle the fishermen use is a sort of mongrel between a spade and a shovel. The fact of there being no boats of any size here, must be attributed to the want of material for constructing them. On the route from Kaze there are no trees of any girth, save the calabash, the wood of which is too soft for boat-building. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... little but his white clerical choker and a sort of undivided skirt. A few white families have gone to the same place, and I helped some of them to construct their new homes in the rocks amidst great merriment. The boys were as delighted as children with a spade and bucket by the sea, and many an impregnable redoubt was thrown up with a dozen stones. What those homes will be like at the end of a week I don't know. A picnic where love is may be endurable for one afternoon, ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... schivar non parar, non ritirarsi, Voglion costor, ne qui destrezza ha parte; Non danno i colpi or finti, or pieni, or scarsi! Toglie l'ira a il furor l'uso de l'arte. Odi le spade orribilmente utarsi A mezzo il ferro; il pie d'orma non parte, Sempre a il pie fermo, a la man sempre in moto; Ne scende taglio in ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... 'crops, gardens, and every green herb in the settlement had perished, with the exception of a few ears of barley gleaned in the women's aprons.' In the following year the plague reappeared; the insects came again, covering the ground so thickly that they 'might be shovelled with a spade.' The stock of seed-grain was now almost exhausted, and the colonists resolved to send an expedition to the Mississippi for a fresh supply. Two hundred {140} and fifty bushels of grain were secured at Lord Selkirk's expense, and brought back on flatboats to ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... 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
... o'clock and go at six? why, about this much, ma'am," said the gardener, marking off a piece of the border with his spade. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... the portrait hung. There was nothing very startling about the picture. It showed just a very ordinary face with straight closed lips, of a man seated in an embossed chair, with the familiar white cap, cassock, and embroidered stole with spade-ends. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... handicraft trade; but he now 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, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... 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
... traffic of a whole city! Hello there, Molly! Got my coat and mittens ready? Well, you don't look as if the storm had kept you awake much. Give the father a kiss, lass, to sort of sweeten his breakfast. Are the Jays awake? Hunt them up a spade or a shovel and set them digging their neighbors out. And, Mary wife, if I were you I'd keep a pot of coffee on the range all day. There's maybe a poor teamster or huckster passing who'll be the better for a warm cup of drink, and the coffee'll keep ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... species. It could boast of a temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty gambols, delighted in offering ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... a South American fresh from the Republic of Moccador, with a spade designed to dig up a long-buried treasure could have robbed Mawkum of his habitual caution of always guarding plans and estimates from outsiders—a custom which was really one of the fundamental laws of the office. ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... St. Gregoire. That is not its real name; because the one thing you must not do in war-time is to call a thing by its real name. To take a hackneyed example, you do not call a spade a spade: you refer to it, officially, as Shovels, General Service, One. This helps to deceive, and ultimately to surprise, the enemy; and as we all know by this time, surprise is the essence of successful warfare. On the same principle, if your ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... needn't have been so ready. Have you told the sexton to get a new spade? But you may let him in. And ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... up the Dead Is himself laid in the same bed Time with his crooked scythe hath made Him lay his mattock down and spade May he and we all rise again To everlasting ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... society. We have managed to keep this society alive for fifteen years and, though I don't say it in any spirit of boasting, it has not been an easy thing to do. It has required a good deal of pretty hard spade work by the committee. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I suppose you didn't come here to listen to me and perhaps I have said enough about our difficulties and troubles. So without more ado (this is always a favourite ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... his fears to no one. Two or three hours before day, he became so sore and weary from work with the spade that he crawled into one of the half-wrecked wagons, and tried to go to sleep. But his nerves were drawn to too high a pitch. After a quarter of an hour's vain effort he got out of the wagon and stood by the wheel. The sky was still black, and the heavy clouds of fog and ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cried Swankie, who was gradually getting into better humour, "haud the light, and gie me the spade." ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... eyes below, and through the transparent medium of the clear water, which was almost as pure as air, he saw what Hetty was accustomed to call "mother's grave." It was a low, straggling mound of earth, fashioned by no spade, out of a corner of which gleamed a bit of the white cloth that formed the shroud of the dead. The body had been lowered to the bottom, and Hutter brought earth from the shore and let it fall upon it, until all was concealed. In this state the place had remained until the movement of the waters ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the night of Eva Wilkinson's disappearance, and afterwards Sir Michael journeyed down with us to Whiteladies. The local police were already scouring the country, and under intelligent supervision had accomplished a great deal of the spade work. I may just state the facts as far as ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... in another lungful of midnight fog and broke into the stretch. "Heah's de answeh, graved on de gol' tablets an' dug up in de midnight moon wid a luck spade. Gran' oaks f'm li'l acorns grow. Heah in San F'mcisco wid de aid of you all we starts de new movement towards de Canaan land. Fust off, us o'ganizes de Temple o' Luck. Den de fust annex is de Swamick ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... ordered a gardener to be ready to attend her, and the next morning early led him to the tree which the bird had told her of, and bade him dig at its foot. When the gardener came to a certain depth, he found some resistance to the spade, and presently discovered a gold box about a foot square, which he shewed the princess. "This," said she, "is what I brought you for; take care not to injure ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... will have a difficulty in understanding that the trouble was all about affairs purely literary. "Hernani" was fought because it violated the unities of place and time; because its hero was a Spanish bandit; because in the dialogue a spade was called a spade, and in the verse the lines overlap. The French are often charged with frivolity in matters of conduct, but to the discussion of matters of art they bring a most serious conscience. The scene in "Hernani" shifts from Saragossa to the castle of Don Ruy Gomez de Silva in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... speaking, to call a spade a spade is to give a man his real character. The phrase is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... backward flight than to lounge on a sunny day over the railing which guards the great central researches. It "says" more things to you than you can repeat to see the past, the ancient world, as you stand there, bodily turned up with the spade and transformed from an immaterial, inaccessible fact of time into a matter of soils and surfaces. The pleasure is the same—in kind—as what you enjoy of Pompeii, and the pain the same. It wasn't here, however, that I found my compensation for forfeiting the spectacle on the Corso, but in a little ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... had gathered a few sheaves of prime ones, when we discovered a broad stone that showed good indications, but we couldn't raise it. The whole upper part of the mountain seemed to be built mostly upon this one stone. There was nothing to be done but mole it—dig under, you know; so taking the spade I soon widened the hole the creatures had got in at, until it would admit my body. Crawling in, I found a kind of cell in the solid rock, stowed nearly full of beautiful serpents, some of them as long as a man. You would have revelled in those worms! They were neatly disposed ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... just thrown up on the bank the last spade full of earth that had been dug out, when we heard a loud shout. We got up on the top of the cave, and saw that Jack had brought back a tribe at his heels. The large cart, drawn by the cow and the ass, came on at a slow pace, led by Jack ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... along the trench to have word with Captain Fellowes, who was wounded rather badly. I made busy with the men about me, making them stand where they could see best with least risk of exposure and ordering spade work here and there. It is a strange thing, sahib, but I have never seen it otherwise, that spade work—which is surely the most important thing—is the last thing troopers will attend to unless compelled. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... bait," said Mary, "I wonder if the two of you could make it convanient to spade an onion bed. If I had it spaded I ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... or the spade or the shuttle, that plies Its own honest task in its own honest way, Serves heaven not less than a star in the skies— What more could ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... mind that I wanted many things notwithstanding all that I had amassed together; and of these, ink was one; as also a spade, pickaxe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth; needles, pins, and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to want that without ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... conceal'd. The rebel Knave, who dares his prince engage, Proves the just victim of his royal rage. 60 Ev'n mighty Pam, that Kings and Queens o'erthrew And mow'd down armies in the fights of Lu, Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid, Falls undistinguish'd by the victor spade! ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... needn't wait another minute," cried the old sailor, who was nearly as excited as the boys. "Get your spade an' we'll start ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... disposed of the horses and cows and hay and machinery, waiting until he came to the household objects upon which they had set their eye. So they would invest in some stove-pipe, and a couple of ghastly chromos (for the sake of the frames), and some odds and ends of crockery, and a spade, and some old rope to make a swing for the baby. They would get these things for five or ten cents each, and get in addition all ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... labor. The last bit of bread serves the man himself in a less important way than does the first, inasmuch as it gratifies a want that is less intense; and the last implement of a given kind—the last hatchet or spade or arrow—helps him less in his productive operations than did the first one. On the one hand, we have the law of the diminishing utility of successive units of consumers' goods, and on the other hand, we have a parallel law of the diminishing productivity of successive increments ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... 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 ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and furnished comfortably, and the surroundings were fast being improved under the guiding hand of the "boss," who worked with his men as one of themselves, and easy-going fox-hunting squire as he was in the old country a couple of years since, he could handle an axe, spade, or shovel with the best ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... Oswego should be strengthened, more vessels built, and preparation made to renew the attempt as soon as spring opened.[326] All thoughts of active operations were now suspended, and during what was left of the season the troops exchanged the musket for the spade, saw, and axe. At the end of October, leaving seven hundred men at Oswego, Shirley returned to Albany, and narrowly escaped drowning on the way, while passing a rapid in a whale-boat, to try the fitness of that species of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman |
