"Pickaxe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I shall thus give to the English reader: "You provide the noblest materials for building, when a pickaxe and a spade are only necessary: and build houses of five hundred by a hundred feet, forgetting that ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the choruses, of course, we can sing at the sides; and in the market-scene we can walk about in cloaks and things. When the revolt takes place, Tom must keep rushing in on one side and out on the other, with a pickaxe, as fast as he can. The effect will be electrical; it will look exactly as if there were an immense number of 'em. And in the eruption-scene we must burn the red fire, and upset the tea-trays, and make all sorts of noises—and it's ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Mrs. Austen, who was not then in strong health, performed the short journey on a feather-bed, placed upon some soft articles of furniture in the waggon which held their household goods. In those days it was not unusual to set men to work with shovel and pickaxe to fill up ruts and holes in roads seldom used by carriages, on such special occasions as a funeral or a wedding. Ignorance and coarseness of language also were still lingering even upon higher levels of society than might ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... began to make some preparations as if for departure, bundling up the various articles which each had appropriated. Still, however, there remained something to be done. Two of them, after some rummaging, which not a little alarmed Brown, produced a mattock and shovel, another took a pickaxe from behind the straw on which the dead body was extended. With these implements two of them left the hut, and the remaining three, two of whom were the seamen, very strong men, still remained ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the full moon, when everybody else was asleep, Hans crept quietly out of the house with a pickaxe, wrenched out the stone with much difficulty, and actually found the hole with the money, just as the dwarf had described it to him. Next Sunday he divided the third part among the poor of the parish, and gave notice to the parson that he was about to ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... down with a pickaxe," said Beale later, "so help me three men and a boy you might. It's a rum go. My lord 'e says there's some woman been writing letters to 'im this long time saying she'd got 'old of 'is long-lost nephew or cousin or something, and a-wanting to get money out of him—though what for, goodness ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... answered the youth.—"Martin and Dan, take pickaxe and mattock, and follow me if you ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... shattered, ragged, dirty looking quartz rock. In front of this a deep hole had been dug by somebody, and near it were traces of old camp-fires, bones of deer and buffalo, some rusty tin cans, and a worn-out pickaxe. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... word then, and only give me a handful; but I was too smart for him, and swore I would tell his wife about the girl unless he gave me half. When we were leaving the cellar, of course, he wanted me to go first, so that he could follow with the pickaxe, but here again I was too sharp for him—and I got safely out of the place with my pockets bulging. I went right away to Prescott's in Clay Street, and let the lot go for three thousand dollars. I wonder ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... manuscripts, Arni Magnusson. The great eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann." Sturlunga Saga, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... and sacrifice a multitude of victims for the sake of their religion and pecuniary gain. The Thug bands would assemble at fixed places of rendezvous, and before commencing their expeditions much strange ceremony had to be gone through. A sacred pickaxe was the emblem of their faith: its fashioning was wrought with quaint rites and its custody was a matter of great moment. Its point was supposed to indicate the line of route propitious to the disciples of the goddess, and it was credited with other ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... in spite of this general aspect of severity, betrayed the weakness and timidity which indigence imparts to all unfortunates. These two emotions seemed to have made crevices in that solidly constructed face which the pickaxe of poverty was daily enlarging. The mouth was eloquent and grave; in that feature Don Quixote was complicated with ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... too, showed something more, for about a couple of hundred yards from the outworks, a horse, saddled and bridled, lay upon its side, quite dead; for the terrible stroke the miller's man had delivered with his pickaxe had struck into the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... horn, a shovel, a pickaxe, his armor, and a dark lantern, and one winter's evening he went to the mount. There he dug a pit twenty-two feet deep and twenty broad. He covered the top over so as to make it look like solid ground. He then blew his horn so loudly that the giant awoke and came out of his den crying out: "You ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... original thought arises, there is no independent thought, and even the learned keep to themselves the conclusions they draw from their studies. As long as this goes on the task of the revolutionary is useless in this country; they may change the apparent nature of the soil, but when the pickaxe strikes they come at once on the stones of ages, solid and compact. The national character though it has lost its religious faith is unchanged. Faith is dead, but the corpse still remains with the appearance of life, occupying the same place and obstructing the pathway. The Church is poor ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... get their breakfast from Nancy: none but himself should do the last offices for Ruadh! With skilful hand he separated and laid aside the head—in sacrifice to the living God. Then the hard earth rang with mighty blows of the pickaxe. The labour was severe, and long ere the grave was deep enough, Hector and Rob had returned; but the chief would not get out of it to give them any share in the work. When he laid hold of the body, they did not offer to help him; they understood the heart of their chief. Not without ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of coral that extended its long arms that one might have thought were made of petrified blood. Upon a sign from Captain Nemo one of the men advanced; and at some feet from the cross he began to dig a hole with a pickaxe that he took from his belt. I understood all! This glade was a cemetery, this hole a tomb, this oblong object the body of the man who had died in the night! The Captain and his men had come to bury their companion in ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... do anything till we found the body. Dutful, the murderer, would have slid off to some place where there's no extradition, but for the fact that I had him arrested on a charge of being in the unlawful possession of a pickaxe handle. This affair is the converse of that. We can't afford to have ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... to his own abode. The giant had done this for many years, and the coast of Cornwall was greatly hurt by his thefts, when Jack boldly resolved to destroy him. He therefore took a horn, a shovel, a pickaxe, and a dark lantern, and, early in a long winter's evening, he swam to the Mount. There he fell to work at once, and before morning he had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and almost as many broad. He covered ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... that the expert workman had come across this staircase, they had suspended work until "Effendi" had been sent for and found. Under his eye and partly by his own pickaxe, the little flight of embryo steps, with a very steep gradient, had been laid bare. In the vast expanse which the work covered, it seemed a very small thing, but the greatest underground temples—for the tombs are veritable temples—of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... remains." The workmen were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed. In setting to work upon this—little more than the removal of a few stones—the pickaxe of one of the workmen struck against wood, and presently a wooden box appeared which partly fell to pieces, revealing a human skeleton. Within the ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... and the army was now a professional service, with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were thenceforward to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as much as with sword and javelin, and the soldiers learnt the use of tools ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... hour was arrived at which the friar had promised that she should awake; and he, having learned that his letters which he had sent to Mantua, by some unlucky detention of the messenger, had never reached Romeo, came himself, provided with the pickaxe and lantern, to deliver the lady from her confinement; but he was surprised to find a light already burning in the Capulets' monument, and to see swords and blood near it, and Romeo and Paris ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in numbers, but stronger still in our fidelity to our vows. When once we have sworn on the sacred pickaxe, it is impossible to ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... sweep with his pick, and delivered a horizontal blow at the clay on that side of the shaft Bartley had told him to attack. His pickaxe stuck in it, and he extricated it ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Alan's plans was to find a treasure; and, as they had neither spade nor pickaxe with them to dig for gold, he thought the best way would be for them to find a bag of money. Amy said, if they found a bag of money, she should like to take Dolly some. This being generously agreed to by Alan and Owen, they proceeded ...
— The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various
... some preparations as if for departure, bundling up the various articles which each had appropriated. Still, however, there remained something to be done. Two of them, after some rummaging which not a little alarmed Brown, produced a mattock and shovel; another took a pickaxe from behind the straw on which the dead body was extended. With these implements two of them left the hut, and the remaining three, two of whom were the seamen, very strong men, still ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and, helping himself with his hands, holding on to the branches of a tree, he climbed up the first layers of rock that formed the grotto on the right. Here he knelt down. There was a small pickaxe lying beside him. He took it and gave three blows to the nearest heap of stones. They came tumbling down in front of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... angle of the grey tower, she emerged again into the clear, unbroken moonlight—the little hillocks and upright gravestones alone disturbing the broad and level beam. She was startled from her reverie by dull and heavy sounds near her, as though a pickaxe were employed by invisible hands in disturbing the ground close to where she stood. She paused a moment and listened; the blows were still falling, and she felt the ground vibrating beneath her feet. A sudden thought crossed her—it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... a pleasure to see, of a Sunday morning, the gaitered Tarasconese, pickaxe in hand, knapsack and tent on their backs, starting off, bugles in advance, for ascensions, of which the Forum, the local journal, gives full account with a descriptive luxury and wealth of epithets—abysses, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... roots and things 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... upon the desperation of Steptoe over the failure of this last hope. For there sprang up in the outlaw's brain the same hideous idea that he voiced to his companions at the Divide. With a hoarse cry to his followers, he crashed his pickaxe into the brain of Marshall, who stood near him, and sprang forward. Three or four shots were exchanged. Two of his men fell, a bullet from Stacy's rifle pierced Steptoe's leg, and he dropped forward on one knee. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... can imagine the grief of heart the soldiers felt to see their officers yoked in the harness, dragging up cannon from the Lower Town; to see gentlemen, who were set over them by His Majesty to command and keep them to their duty, working at the batteries with the barrow, pickaxe, and spade." The effect, however, was admirable. The spirit of the men rose to the crisis. Murray, no less than his officers, had all their confidence; for if he had fallen into a fatal error, he atoned for ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... proceed. Manco had provided torches, one of which we each of us bore; but he told us not to light them till we should reach the spot to which he was about to conduct us. As we were setting out, he also distributed among us two spades and crowbars, and a pickaxe. He led the way along the ledge and across the bridge; we following in silence. He then descended the mountain, and proceeded down the valley for some distance, when he once more began to ascend. The ground was rugged and difficult in the extreme, and path there ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the hengha, the next thing is to commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low caste men—Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, et hoc genus omne. The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often been described. It however turns up the light soft soil very well considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough. Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the zeraats ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... quite clearly underneath the ground below him the dull shock of a pickaxe. The noise came almost from beneath his feet; so near the mine had been already driven to the walls. The strokes fell with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. But at times the sound changed in character. The muffled thud of the pick upon earth ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Chinese ghost with a white jacket and a pigtail. Presently, giving way to a Chinaman's ruling passion, he could be observed breaking the ground near his hut, between the mighty stumps of felled trees, with a miner's pickaxe. After a time, he discovered a rusty but serviceable spade in one of the empty store-rooms, and it is to be supposed that he got on famously; but nothing of it could be seen, because he went to the trouble of pulling to pieces one of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... hoe! A pickaxe or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail, or what ye will— And here's a ready hand To ply the needful tool, And skill'd enough, by lessons rough, In Labour's rugged ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... buried within the walls of the cathedral, Catherine of Arragon, who died at Kimbolton Castle, in 1536; and Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed at Fotheringhay Castle fifty-one years afterwards. The accompanying engraving is a representation of the old sexton, with his spade, pickaxe, and other emblems ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... their intended fortification were some spots appropriated to superstitious practices; which the negroes no sooner perceived in danger of violation by the spade and pickaxe, than they ran to arms, and began to interrupt the work. The Portuguese persisted in their purpose, and there had soon been tumult and bloodshed, had not the admiral, who was at a distance to superintend the unlading the materials for the edifice, been informed of the danger. He was told, at the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... keeping out of sight, followed astern, along the narrow country roads which led to nowhere special. He saw them pull up before the great tumble-down Talayot which stands opposite the big stone altar, and watched them produce lantern, shovel, and pickaxe, and begin to dig; after which, feeling that his interest had evaporated (so he said), or, more probably, being oppressed with sleepiness, he returned to Alayor, and soon had his head under ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... like your idea. I will dig the grave. I will go and ask the gardener to lend me a spade or a pickaxe, or a hoe or some tool to dig with, and we ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... experiment," said Cortlandt. "I wonder how we may best get below the frozen surface?" "We can explode a small quantity of dynamite," replied Bearwarden, "after which the digging will be comparatively easy." While Cortlandt and Bearwarden prepared the mine, Ayrault brought out a pickaxe, two shovels, and the battery and wires with which to ignite the explosive. They made their preparations within one hundred feet of the Callisto, or much nearer than an equivalent amount of gunpowder could have been discharged. "This recalls an old laboratory ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... didn't do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. That gouger M'Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices. Reserve better. Don't want ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... enemy's infantry. Sergt. Pengelly of the 112th Battery, who was in command of a 15-pounder in an anti-tank position, having had his gun destroyed in the preliminary bombardment, fought for two days with the infantry, in command of a platoon, and did great execution himself with a pickaxe. A forward gun of the 110th Battery was fought until all its ammunition was expended, and the breech-block was then removed with the enemy almost on the top of the gun. For over seven hours the main battery fired on the enemy at ranges from 1,200 to 600 yards, ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... off from year to year, demanding millions of money and thousands of workmen, and which was begun in great pomp a week before the election. His report gave the thing a comic air—the first blow of the pickaxe given by the candidate in the enormous mountain covered by ancient forests, the speech of the Prefect, the benediction of the flags with the cries of "Long live Bernard Jansoulet!" and the two hundred workmen beginning ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the coal strike of 1920 was declared, a pickaxe was seen on several occasions in the cups of two persons, both of whom read their tea-leaves regularly. This symbol, as will be seen in the dictionary which follows, stands for "labour trouble and strikes." A spade was also in evidence at intervals, a further sign of "trouble and unrest." So ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... 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 ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... figures of men in the garb of the laboring class of my time. They were bareheaded, and their coarse-textured shirts, rolled above the elbow and open at the breast, showed the sinewy arms and chest. Before them, on the ground, lay a pair of shovels and a pickaxe. The central figure, with the right hand extended, palm outward, was pointing to the discarded tools. The arms of the other two were folded on their breasts. The faces were coarse and hard in outline and bristled with unkempt beards. Their expression was one of dogged defiance, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the intrepidity of the men could avail without them; and as the scouts are called the eyes, so might the engineers, both regular and volunteer, be termed the hands and feet, of an advancing force. The host sweeps on, and the workers are left with pickaxe and shovel, rifles close at hand, to work at their laborious task loyally and patiently, while deeds of courage and daring are being done and applauded not many miles away from them. This particular Rhenoster bridge was destroyed and rebuilt no less than ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... but he remained true to his resolve. For eleven long years, with snow-shoe and canoe, pickaxe and gold-pan, he wrote out his life on the face of the land. Upper Yukon, Middle Yukon, Lower Yukon—he prospected faithfully and well. His bed was anywhere. Winter or summer he carried neither tent nor stove, and his six-pound sleeping-robe of Arctic hare was the warmest ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... a mine! Countermine! down, down! and creep through the hole, Keep the revolver in hand! You can hear him—the murderous mole. Quiet! ah! quiet—wait till the point of the pickaxe be through! Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer again than before— Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is no more; And ever upon the topmost roof our ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... his party of men, told them to get their chain and pins, put the stakes, pickaxe and shovel on the line animal, and follow me. This they did. When we got to the corner where Biddleman left off work, I set my instrument, gave them an object to run by, and sent them off. They went and returned to me. I then ran another mile north, set my instrument and started ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... a month before the opportunity for his escape occurred. For a month he had been hewing stone in Portland, black despair at his heart. Then, like lightning, he saw his chance and took it. The warders were off guard for a moment. Hastily lifting his pickaxe— ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... clink ghostly glasses amid the punch fumes and tobacco smoke. In short I knew London when it was still Old London—the knowledge of Temple Bar and Cheapside—before the vandal horde of progress and the pickaxe of the builder had ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... lately sold an estate belonging to him to the Black Band.[*] The chateau de Villaines would have been pulled down were it not for the remonstrances which the old uncle made to the representatives of the "Pickaxe company." To increase the old man's wrath, a distant relative (one of those cousins of small means and much astuteness about whom shrewd provincials are wont to remark, "No lawsuits for me with him!") had, as it were by accident, come to visit Monsieur de Bourbonne, and incidentally ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... his blood through his veins, and obeyed. Roldan sprang to his feet. "We are above the tunnel of the Mission," he said. "And we have a pickaxe. All we have ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... that evening frightfully drunk, came near setting fire to the house, killed a horse by hitting it with a pickaxe, and ended up by lying down to sleep in the mud in the midst of the pouring rain, thanks ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to prayer. At that moment might be witnessed an interesting spectacle upon the plain adjoining the dwelling of Don Mariano de Silva. The Indian labourers, who never work a moment beyond the prescribed time, at the first sound of the bell had all suddenly stopped as if struck by paralysis. The pickaxe raised aloft, the spade half buried in the earth, the goad lifted to prick forward the ox, fell simultaneously from their hands; while the oxen themselves, accustomed to imitate their drivers, came at once to a stand, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... gathered round their comrade, and there was reason to apprehend serious mischief would occur; one of them hit the Porter with his spade, and several others were prepared to follow his example; while a second, who seem'd a little more blood-thirsty than the rest, raised his pickaxe in a menacing attitude; upon perceiving which, Dashall jump'd over ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... understanding, Staines and Falcon were equipped with rifles, pickaxe, shovels, waterproofs, and full saddle-bags, and started, with many shakings of the hand, and many tears from ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... men took pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... beautiful as the dead form looked, and guiltless as Septimius must be held in causing his death, still he felt as if he should be eased when it was under the ground. He hastened down to the house, and brought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and began his unwonted task of grave-digging, delving earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in his toil, while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the beautiful clay that was to occupy it. Sometimes ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ruins. With unconscious irony, he selected a charred post from the embers, stuck it in the ground a few feet from the debris of outcrop, and finally affixed his "Notice." Then, with a conscientiousness born possibly of his new religious convictions, he dislodged with his pickaxe enough of the brittle outcrop to constitute that presumption of "actual work" upon the claim which was legally required for its maintenance, and returned to his horse. In replacing his things in his saddle-bags he came ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... Mercy! there came across my way a funeral procession! There, now, you know it. I can tell you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Do you know how I spent that night? I will tell you; I stole a pickaxe from a mason's shed, and, all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens I dug the fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin; I wrenched the lid, I saw her again—again. Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in her life! I ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him that they might have disposed of some of the unburnable articles under the floor, and he lifted a rough board or two. But to pursue the search systematically he would have needed a pickaxe, and reluctantly he gave it up and turned his attention to the lean-to and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with two partners. It was not much; "the country was getting played out with fresh arrivals and greenhorns." All this falling carelessly from the unshaven lips of a dusty, roughly dressed man, with a long-handled shovel and pickaxe strapped on his back, and a frying-pan depending from his saddle. But no panoplied or armed knight ever seemed so heroic or independent a figure to Clarence. What could be finer than the noble scorn conveyed in his critical survey of the train, with its comfortable ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... But they were a little too eager. I excused myself and hunted up a map. Sure enough the lake was there, but it had been dry since a previous geological period. The fish were undoubtedly there too, but they were fossil fish. I borrowed a pickaxe and shovel and announced myself as ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... vein, but cuts across all the strata, and keeps a straight line, till it turns westward, and then in another straight line; and the floors, sides, and roof are all made quite regular and even with a pickaxe or a hammer. There does not appear to have been at any time any other habitation than the shepherd's house, and another cottage a little lower down the stream, in the neighbourhood. The discovery of this cavern recalled to the recollection of myself, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... "Yes; pickaxe, mattocks, and a crowbar; a lantern, and so forth," said the doctor. "You see I am at home in this; the fact is, I have had more than one affair of this kind on my hands before now, and whilst a student I have had more than one adventure of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... became frozen and neither spade nor pickaxe could be used, the prisoners were given straw mats to plait ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Guards; not that the night was cold, they seemed to have lighted it merely for the pleasure of burning furniture and pictures, that had been left behind by the Communal waggoners. They had already begun to pull down the right side of the house; a pickaxe was leaning against a loosened stone; the roof had fallen in, and a rafter was sticking out of one of the windows. The fire rose higher and higher; would it not be better that the flames should reach the house and consume it in an hour or two, than to see it being gradually pulled down, stone by ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... afternoon, instead of going to Hector, whom he had told not to expect him, he got a pickaxe and spade, and proceeded to dig in the trodden heap. At the first blow of the pickaxe he came upon large stones—the job of clearing out which was by no means an easy one—so far from it, indeed, that, after working for half an hour, and only getting out two large and half a dozen smaller ones, ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... in breaking up just the surface of the earth with a sort of wooden instrument, like a little pickaxe, which they make by splitting the end of a thick piece of wood, that serves for a handle, and putting another piece of wood, sharp pointed at one end into the slit. This instrument serves them instead of a hoe or spade, for they have no ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... with the royal titles in the margin; on the reverse, a representation of convicts landing at Botany Bay, received by Industry, who, surrounded by her attributes, a bale of merchandise, a beehive, a pickaxe, and a shovel, is releasing them from their fetters, and pointing to oxen ploughing and a town rising on the summit of a hill, with a fort for its protection. The masts of a ship are seen in the bay. In the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... moment. Those Flying-Fish people started by searching the beach. The Professor, possessing superior knowledge to the others, searched the face of the cliff; and finally, when the precise locality of the mine had been discovered, they went to work with pickaxe and shovel and dug their way down to the level of the 'pocket'. I think our best plan would be to search for that hole, which must still be conspicuous enough to admit of identification. Let us return, by way of ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... shivering little ones watch wistfully the ever-dwindling sack of maize, as day by day two or three handfuls are ground between the stones of the hand-mill and kneaded into a thick unwholesome dough, the only food of the poorer peasants in the winter. But now every man who could handle pickaxe and bore, and sledge-hammer and spade, was out upon the road from dawn to dark, and every Saturday night each man took home a silver scudo in his pocket; and where people are sober and do not drink ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... now was how to secure this immense treasure without it being known. Instead of working regularly in his grounds in the day-time, he now stole from his bed at night, and with spade and pickaxe, went to work to rip up and dig about his paternal acres, from one end to the other. In a little time the whole garden, which had presented such a goodly and regular appearance, with its phalanx of cabbages, like a vegetable ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... connecting link in this middle age between the Pachydermata and the Cetaceae. Each ramus of the under jaw, which in the larger specimens are fully four feet in length, bore at the symphysis a great bent tusk turned downwards, which appears to have been employed as a pickaxe in uprooting the aquatic plants and liliaceous roots on which the creature seems to have lived. The head, which measured about three feet across,—a breadth, sufficient, surely, to satisfy the demands of the most exacting phrenologist,—was ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the animals should lose their hardihood. I do not think antelopes could possibly get at water for several months together, as every drop of water in the country is guarded by the Somali. We were now in "the land of honey," and the Somali nomads constantly came to me to borrow my English pickaxe for digging it out of the ground; for the bees of this country, instead of settling in the boughs of trees, as they do in England, work holes in the ground like wasps, or take advantage more generally of chinks or fissures in ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and cannot be otherwise. No modification of the divine certainty, the entire truth, is possible. The removal of the smallest stone from the edifice could only prove a cause of instability. Is this not evident? You cannot save old houses by attacking them with the pickaxe under pretence of decorating them. You only enlarge the fissures. Even if it were true that Rome were on the eve of falling into dust, the only result of all the repairing and patching would be to hasten the catastrophe. And instead of a noble death, met unflinchingly, we should ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... unlimbered the pickaxe and went deeper; to the extent of two feet or more. It was good hard work, especially as we were all soft for it. The sun poured down on our backs with burning intensity; our hands blistered; and the round rocks and half-cemented rubble that made the bar were not the easiest things in the world ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... played some scurvy trick, and it is about time the Superintendent discharged him. There is entirely too much of this practical joking amongst the boys, and it will lead to trouble yet.—Nugget Hill "Pickaxe of Freedom." ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... hand. Every now and again he would listen attentively, with his ear in the dust, and, rising, place the pan on the spot. At last he has it. Like the beating of a pulse, the still water in the pan vibrates in harmony with the stroke of the pickaxe far underneath, and the old miner rises exultant.' A counter-mine was hurriedly made, and through a tiny opening it was seen that barrels of gunpowder and pitch and piles of faggots were heaped beneath the west gate. Fortunately, this gate stood below the steep slope on which the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... and neck and head of cinnamon. His golden tail droops far below his perch, and, running downward along the tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours with his pickaxe bill. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" was an instigation to murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much as wild-cherries or Indian corn, and is capable of taking any such satire seriously upon things to eat. Not so elfin and devilish as the small ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... convent which then stood on the spot of the present Dyke House. "Sister," said the saint, "I love you well. This night, for the grace of God, keep lights burning at the convent windows from midnight to day-break, and let masses be said by the holy sisterhood." At sundown came the devil with pickaxe and spade, mattock: and shovel, and set to work in right good earnest to dig a dyke which should let the waters of the seas into the downs. "Fire and brim-stone!"—he exclaimed, as a sound of voices rose and fell in sacred song—"Fire ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... this occasion, the aged seemed to have recovered the vigour of youth, and women and children to have acquired the strength of manhood. In a word, men of all trades and professions were confounded, and cheerfully handled the pickaxe and shovel: delicate females, sprucely dressed, were seen here and there wheeling along barrows filled with earth; while long strings of stout fellows dragged heavy loads in carts and waggons. As the electric matter runs along the several links of an extensive chain, so patriotism seemed ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the rest entire Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic Ore, The work of Sulphur. Thither wing'd with speed A numerous Brigad hasten'd. As when bands Of Pioners with Spade and Pickaxe arm'd Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field, Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts 680 Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heav'ns pavement, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Du Bon Dieu, Mother Angenoux, the Devil, Sainte-Genevieve, Daddy Jacques,—here is a well entangled crime which the stroke of a pickaxe in the wall may disentangle for us to-morrow. Let us at least hope that, for the sake of our human reason, as the examining magistrate says. Meanwhile, it is expected that Mademoiselle Stangerson—who has not ceased ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... resolute men might have defended it against an army; [355] nor did any Saxon consider a visit to Killiecrankie as a pleasure, till experience had taught the English Government that the weapons by which the Highlanders could be most effectually subdued were the pickaxe and the spade. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seen, previous to the debut of the Witness, the Church of Scotland converted by Conservatism into a sort of mining tool, half lever, half pickaxe, which it plied hard, with an eye to the prostration and ejection of its political opponents the Whigs, then in office; and not much pleased to see the Church which we loved and respected so transmuted and so wielded, we solemnly determined that, so far at least as our modicum of influence ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... near to Gortnaclough, he came upon one of those gangs of road-destroyers who were now at work everywhere, earning their pittance of "yellow meal" with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow. In some sort or other the labourers had been got to their work. Gangsmen there were with lists, who did see, more or less accurately, that the men, before they received their sixpence or eightpence for their day's work, did ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... postern-door of the kitchen. Here with his own hand he fired several pistol-shots, to make it ignite, but from the state of the weather, which was damp and heavy, and from the constant down-pour of rain on the previous day, this attempt proved quite unsuccessful. With men so expert at the use of the pickaxe, and so large a supply of blasting powder at the collieries, he could have quickly undermined the house, or blown it up; but the circumstance of so many children being shut in with the police, and the certainty that, if they persevered, all would be ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... inside; great rolls of paper were being delivered from a cart at the door; an upholsterer's wagon also stopped the way; nothing was to be seen but workmen, swarming from the kitchens to the garret. Inside and outside alike; bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons; hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, trowel: all at work together, in ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... ftizo. Phthisical ftiza. Physic kuracilo. Physical fizika. Physician fizikisto, kuracisto. Physics naturscienco, fiziko. Physiognomy fizionomio. Physiology fiziologio. Piano fortepiano. Piaster piastro. Pick (choose) elekti. Pick (implement) pikfosilo. Pickaxe pikfosilo. Picket (military) pikedo. Pickle (to salt) pekli. Pickle (liquid) peklakvo. Pickpocket fripono. Picnic kampfesteno. Picquet (cards) pikedo. Pictorial ilustrita. Picture pentrajxo. Picturesque pentrinda. Pie pastecxo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... echoed through the house. The men below had convinced themselves that the door was firmly fastened, and, desperate from the conviction that they were identified, and relying on the loneliness of the place, they were attacking the barrier with a pickaxe. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... found there pots and kettles. Now, I should like to know how they did it; and I mean to borrow a book and read. I think it was done with a pickaxe." ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which they ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... thing,—I said.—It grows out of life,—out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves.—A friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,—a "bull's eye," with a loose silver case ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... of a pickaxe, denotes a relentless enemy is working to overthrow you socially. A broken one, implies disaster to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... saw recently an oviform stone implement which had been found on the granite moors of North Cornwall, and apparently had been used as a pickaxe in mining. The following notice shows that such implements were used by the ancient miners in the Lake ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... kernel of dry corn, he flew with it to a small branch, placed it between his feet (the latter of course being close together), and, holding it thus, drew back his head and delivered a blow with that pickaxe beak of his that would have broken a toe if he had missed by the shadow of an inch the grain for which it was intended. I was always nervous when I saw him do it, for I expected an accident, but none ever happened that I know of. When the babies ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... King's son waited until her father came, and then he told him that the stranger maiden had leapt into the pigeon-house. The old man thought, "Can it be Cinderella?" and they had to bring him an axe and a pickaxe that he might hew the pigeon-house to pieces, but no one was inside it. And when they got home Cinderella lay in her dirty clothes among the ashes, and a dim little oil-lamp was burning on the mantle-piece, for Cinderella had jumped quickly down from the back of the pigeon-house ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... foothold is strengthened by the tail which, being stiff, acts as a third leg. In a surprisingly short time a cavity large enough to conceal the bird completely is formed. The bee-eater utilises the bill as pickaxe and the feet as ejectors. The little clouds of sand that issue at short intervals from each cavity afford evidence of the efficacy of these implements and the industry of ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... out all my store of tools, and gave every man a digging-spade, a shovel, and a rake, for we had no barrows or ploughs; and to every separate place a pickaxe, a crow, a broad axe, and a saw; always appointing, that as often as any were broken or worn out, they should be supplied without grudging out of the general stores that I left behind. Nails, staples, hinges, hammers, chisels, knives, scissors, and all sorts of ironwork, they had ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... living in Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence for about ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... exist as to the noises at that moment, as the yellings, scamperings and scramblings were loud enough in all conscience. The sacristan came out from the body of the church and suggested another exorcism to the reverend father, who answered that he preferred the pickaxe, and, turning to beckon to his workmen, found they had fled. Nowise daunted, the reverend gentleman took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and went to work with a will, making the vault re-echo with his blows. This operation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... with praise and wonder," says Johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... and pounding till it is ruined; the cane seats of chairs, which he selects with equal judgment, and never leaves till he has effected a breach; a delicate work-basket, at which he labors with enthusiasm, driving his pickaxe bill into it and cutting a big hole. It is most curious to see him set himself to pick a hole, for instance, in a close-woven rattan chair, or a firm piece of matting stretched upon the floor. Selecting, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... have made that fellow holding up his hands to receive the bodies. You should have made him digging a hole for them. How awfully grand; with a pickaxe, digging, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... believe it or not, as you please, but along this new road score upon score of young women and mere girls toiled and slaved with pickaxe and shovel. And some fell and were lifted up again, with threats and imprecations, and toiled on. There were some who came from Belgium, whose hands had been cut off, and these were harnessed and drew stones. They lived, if you call it living, ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... another coffin over mine. And I thought that if it was you, papa, I shouldn't mind how long I lay there, for I shouldn't feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word to each other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer, and at last a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through, upon the lid of the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... immediately after to tell me all this, and I, knowing that he had never handled a weapon more warlike than a pickaxe, could not help ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... we immediately mounted our horses, Uncle Denis and the Dominie each carrying a spade, and the two men a pickaxe a-piece, while Boxer and Toby followed at our heels. As we galloped over the ground, we were not long in reaching the scene of the massacre. Dio, who had the sharpest eyes amongst us, was stationed to keep a look-out, while we, securing our horses, at once set about our melancholy ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... was alone, the shadow spread out its arms as in the act of benediction, and vanished. The husband found her extended on the snow; he raised her in his arms; she recovered, and they walked home. He returned in the morning with a pickaxe and spade, cleared away the snow, broke into the ground, and found a pot of gold, which was unquestionably their own. And then, with the usual end of a nurse's tale, 'they lived happily all the rest of ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... we must speak of the one memorial which is usually looked at first, the famous picture of Old Scarlett, on the wall of the western transept. He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle; at his feet is a skull. At the top of the picture are the arms of the cathedral. Beneath the portrait ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... good for something if he could be made to work. I long to give him a pickaxe, and set him on upon the roads. Then he would see the beauty of them! I hate to hear him maunder on about imagination, while he leaves his tenantry to take their chance. HE knows what eyes Percy ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... couldn't see any face, for its head was covered with a hood, but he saw that it held suthin' like a big cross clasped agin its breast. This made him think it was one them priests, until he looks agin and sees that it wasn't no cross it was carryin,' but a PICKAXE! He makes a jump towards it, but it vanished! He traipsed over the hull garden,—went though ev'ry bush,—but it was clean gone. Then the hull thing flashed upon him with a cold shiver. The old man bein' found dead in the well! the goin' away of the half-breed ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a minute more," said the smith, examining a pickaxe, which he was getting up to that delicate point of heat which is requisite to give it ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... the camp was struck, and the entire party proceeded in the direction of the gully, or cleft, upon their arrival at which preparations were at once made for a possible sojourn of a few days; and while those preparations were being made, Earle and Dick, carrying a pickaxe and shovel, as well as their rifles, started to climb the cleft, bent upon examining the spot where the emeralds had been found, and, if possible, settling the question as to whether or not a mine had ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... blame the politician for despising the judgment of the private citizen. Government departments are still less malleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an individual to attack the policy of a Government department is almost as hopeless a proceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel and determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government departments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine in policy. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... horn, shovel, and pickaxe, and went over to the Mount in the beginning of a dark winter's evening, when he fell to work, and before morning had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and nearly as broad, covering it over with long sticks and straw. Then he strewed a little mould over it, so that it ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... some of this while the grabbing's good," announced Seaton, and the few visible lumps were rolled into the car. "If we had a pickaxe we could chop some more off one of those sharp ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... perceptible to you, above our heads, and that opening shielded now by a simple curtain, but which in an instant, without my moving from this place, I can so hermetically seal that no man, save he be armed with crowbar and pickaxe, could enter here, even if man could know of our imprisonment, in a house soon to be closed from top to ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... streets, fascines strengthened the ramparts, the St. Jean and St. Louis gates were closed, the latter being placed under the protection of an outwork. Men and officers alike toiled ceaselessly, harnessing themselves to the guns, and working on the batteries with pickaxe and spade. Even the wounded demanded employment, the convalescent filling sand-bags for the fortifications, while those in the hospitals made wadding for the cannon which night and day belched shot and shell upon the besiegers' trenches. When, however, the enemy's ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... light. We climbed ladders and had to cross narrow ledges on the edge of the abysses, and it was altogether most interesting to learn the different sounds the rock with ore in it made when hammered on, to the earth rock. They broke off some with a pickaxe to give to each of us. "High grade," he called, and even the scraps about as big as my two hands which I have now, they say will produce about sixteen dollars' worth of gold; so is not this wonderful riches, Mamma? What a great and splendid country, and how puny and small seem the ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... 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 ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... system of irrigation. The villagers were at first most obstinate in their opposition to his plans; but he persevered, laid out a canal, and succeeded at last in enlisting a body of workmen, whom he led out, pickaxe in hand, himself taking a foremost part in the work; and at last the waters were let into the canal amidst joy and triumph. At Violens he helped to build and finish the chapel, himself doing mason-work, smith-work, and carpenter-work by turns. At Dormilhouse a school was needed, and he showed the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... his boat-painting, Gregory Wilkinson had gathered a sufficient interest in our money-digging to volunteer to go along with us to the bay. We had a two-seated wagon, and I took with me several things which I thought might be useful in an expedition of this nature—two spades, a pickaxe, a crow-bar, a measuring tape that belonged to Susan, an axe, and a lantern (for, as Susan very truly said, we might have to do some of our digging after dark). I took also a pulley and a coil of rope, in case the box of treasure should prove so heavy that we ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... you split open a tree or a rock, and find a toad inside it, with a cavity which he exactly fills, it is extremely difficult to say whether there was or was not a fissure before you broke the thing to pieces with your hatchet or pickaxe. A very small fissure indeed would be quite sufficient to account for the whole delusion; for if the toad could get a little air to breathe slowly during his torpid period, and could find a few dead flies or worms among the water that trickled scantily into his ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... half-way. She was coming along in the dull glow of the dying fire, the pickaxe over her shoulder. She looked different to him; perhaps his eyes were distorted, perhaps the fire-glow making leaping shadows caused the difference; but she walked heavily, wearily, without the thrilling, young spring of swift movements that made ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... move on. The Germans are almost on top of us. The front line's falling back. They'll stand here." He seized one or two of them and pushed them towards the door. "You," he said, "and you and you, get outside and round the back there. See if you can get a pickaxe, a trenching tool, anything, and break down that grating and knock a bigger hole in the window. We may have to crawl out there presently. The rest o' ye come with me an' ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... but satirical. Tennyson is a man of talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to think how many epic poets have been lost ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... scrutiny showed that we were both 537, and although Laxey held a distinct advantage in position I decided on a strenuous effort to halve the game. I took a firm stance and the hockey stick and let drive for the hole with a tremendous pickaxe stroke. Instantly there was a blinding flash and an explosion, and, when we had finished picking sand out of our ears and eyes and allayed the excitement of the Chinks, we discovered my ball comfortably nestling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... guard, and, collecting all the white men I could, I informed them of what had happened, and asked them if they would assist in destroying the oven and burying the remains of the girl. They consented, and each having provided himself with a shovel or a pickaxe, we repaired in a body to the spot. Atoi and his friends had by some means been informed of our intention, and they came out to prevent it. He used various threats to deter us, and seemed highly indignant; but as none of his followers appeared willing to come ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... gave Henry Plantagenet to the throne of England, and died in 1167. Her rich sepulchre at Bec was pillaged by the English in 1421, and the restored monument was desecrated in 1793, but in 1846 the original casket was discovered by the fortunate stroke of a pickaxe, and now rests in the Cathedral. In 1124 the shrine containing the body of the famous St. Romain was opened in the presence of the King and Queen of England, and fifty-four years afterwards, as the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... was not particularly successful, nor were his researches very extensive, being carried on entirely with his private means; yet his name will always be honorably remembered, for he was the first who went to work with pickaxe and shovel, who hired men to dig, who measured and described some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, thus laying down the groundwork of all later and more fruitful explorations in that region. It was in 1820 and Mr. Rich was then political resident or representative of ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... When the pickaxe was brought, he gave a single blow with it; the stones gaped apart, and betrayed a wide ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... trowsers torn as well as the behind, as soon as I gained my footing I turned round, with my back to the bars of the cage, but I had not been there a minute before I was attacked by something which digged into me like a pickaxe, and as the hyaena had torn my clothes, I had no defence against it. To turn round would have been worse still; so, after having received above a dozen stabs, I contrived by degrees to shift my position until I was opposite to another cage, but not until the pelican, for it was that brute, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Mr. Sawyer to examine the tools and implements in the mill workshop and he found a pickaxe, one point of which had been subjected to rather rough treatment. I naturally connected that pickaxe with the ledge of rock that had been ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... disengaged on one side behind him, to be ready for carrying out in the morning. He heard a good deal of goblin-tapping, but it all sounded far away in the hill, and he paid it little heed. Towards midnight he began to feel rather hungry; so he dropped his pickaxe, got out a lump of bread which in the morning he had laid in a damp hole in the rock, sat down on a heap of ore, and ate his supper. Then he leaned back for five minutes' rest before beginning his work again, and laid his head against the rock. He had not kept the position for one minute before ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... is usual for an ordinary crop. A good open position is imperative, and where the soil is sufficiently deep, trenching is desirable. Shallow soil ought to be thoroughly dug down to the last inch, and it will be an advantage to break up the subsoil by pickaxe and fork. Cover the subsoil with a thick layer of rotten manure before restoring the top soil. For light land farmyard manure is excellent, but stable manure is preferable for stiff cold soil. The usual time for trenching is October or November, leaving the surface rough for disintegration ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... and value of our thoughts determine a man's value to society. No investments bring so high a rate of interest as investments of brain. Hand work earns little, but head work much. In a Western camp one miner put his lower brain into the pickaxe and earned $2.00 a day; another miner put his higher brain into the stamp-mill and soon was receiving a score of dollars daily for his work; a third youth, toiling in the same mine, put his genius into an electric ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... memory of those undispatched telegrams help you. Spend your time amongst the men you represent. Make them see the truth. Make them understand that every burden they lift, every time they wield the pickaxe, every blow they strike in their daily work, helps. I was going to speak about what we owe to the dead. I won't. We must beat Germany to her knees. We can and we will. Then will come ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... further remonstrance; he took off his jacket, and struck his pickaxe into the hard, dry soil near the point where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... magnificence have been continually before the board for the last month; and in such repute have been a smashed door-sill or an old arch, that freshmen have now abandoned conic sections for crowbars, and instead of the "Principia" have taken up the pickaxe. You know, my dear fellow, with what enthusiasm I enter into any scheme for the aggrandizement of our Alma Mater, so I need not tell you how ardently I adventured into the career now opened to me. My time was completely devoted to the matter; neither ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in 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 ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Concurrence. For instance, a man might examine a "spade" in all its parts and might even make one after a model, and not even know what "dig" means. The mention of "dig" is as likely to make us think of pickaxe as of spade. "Spade" does not mean "dig," nor does "dig" mean spade. "Dig" merely means the action of the "spade," or the use to which it is put. Hence this pair of words does not furnish an example of Inclusion. But as "dig" is frequently appropriated to "spade"—as ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... little teeth, which served For pickaxe and for spade, She gnawed right through the gothic door, And thus ...
— The Mouse and the Christmas Cake • Anonymous
... Twelve days they looked for it, and every day they had the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard. 'As for you, Benjamin Gunn,' says they, 'here's a musket,' they says, 'and a spade, and pickaxe. You can stay here and find Flint's money for yourself,' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gunner, pioneer, territorial, Anamite or Senegalese had ever seen. And from the stations, field hospitals, dugouts, depots, parks and cantonments, while the setting sun lingered in the sky on this May evening, whoever handled a shovel, a pickaxe or a rifle, whoever laid down rails, unloaded trucks, piled up cases, or broke stones on the road, whoever dressed wounds, gave medicine or carried dead men, whoever worked, rested, ate or drank—whoever was alive, in a word—stepped out, ran, jostled ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux |
