"Spadeful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Another spadeful out and they could be plainly seen. How many it was impossible to tell, but three pairs of glowing bloodshot eyes in the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... long sluices, the bottom of which is made uneven by blocks of wood placed across. The bits of gold lodge on the uneven surface. In some places they cut down the gravel with pickaxes, and wash it in pans. One man washed out a spadeful of gravel for us, and we brought home a few specks of gold dust. We returned to Sacramento to dine, and after dinner I rode out to the Fair grounds, where the great State agricultural fairs are held. This is the fashionable drive in Sacramento in the afternoon. ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... laboriously, especially as he had made light of the matter when they began; but now he really had to confess to being beaten. "I declare," he panted out, half-breathlessly—"my back feels broken, and I couldn't dig another spadeful to save ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to ear in a guffaw that made the glasses ring. His humour was perverse. He was wit-proof and fun-proof; but at a feeble jest would sometimes roar like a lion inflated with laughing-gas. Laughed he ever so loud and long, he always ended abruptly and without gradation—his laugh was a clean spadeful dug out of Merriment. He resumed his gravity and his theme all in an instant. "White arsenic she won't look at for I've tried her; but they tell me there's another sweetmeat come up, which they ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... blunder committed was to accord the chief contract to a bubble company, who sold it, to be again resold; so that it is said something like fifteen changes of proprietary occurred before the first spadeful of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... settlers who have taken up residence it is a pure gain, for the best lands are given to them, and at a low valuation they will be worth two hundred thousand at the end of the four years when the period of residence is ended, without their digging a spadeful in them. I would not speak thus if the settlers were married, but there are not six among them all who are not on the lookout to gather what they can and depart speedily. It would be a good thing if people should go from Castile, and also if it were known ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... for the work, and at last Greece allowed them to begin. In October they started their digging. Workmen up-rooted shrubs and dug away dirt. Excavators watched every spadeful. They were always measuring, making maps, taking notes. They found a few vases, terra cotta figures, pieces of bronze statues, swords and armor. They cleared off temple floors and were able to make out the plans ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... plashing on my sill, But all the winds of Heaven are still; And so, it falls with that dull sound Which thrills us in the churchyard ground, When the first spadeful drops like lead Upon the coffin of the dead. Beyond my streaming window-pane, I cannot see the neighboring vane, Yet from its old familiar tower The bell comes, muffled, through the shower. What strange and unsuspected ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... thousands of feet, lay as a memorial to the prowess of the defenders of the coast and the audacity of those who sought to invade it. But during the long weeks of this extended reconnaissance hardly a spadeful of dirt could be moved, a square yard of concrete placed in position, or a submarine or torpedo boat manoeuvred without its record being entered upon the detailed charts the British were so painstakingly preparing against ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... spade or fork should be pushed into the soil with the foot the full length of the blade and nearly straight down. The handle is then pulled back and the spadeful of earth is pried loose, lifted slightly, thrown a little forward, and at the same time turned. The lumps are then broken by striking them with the blade or teeth of the tool. All weeds and trash should be covered during the operation. A common fault of beginners ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich |
