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Shovel   Listen
noun
Shovel  n.  An implement consisting of a broad scoop, or more or less hollow blade, with a handle, used for lifting and throwing earth, coal, grain, or other loose substances.
Shovel hat, a broad-brimmed hat, turned up at the sides, and projecting in front like a shovel, worn by some clergy of the English Church. (Colloq.)
Shovelspur (Zool.), a flat, horny process on the tarsus of some toads, used in burrowing.
Steam shovel, a machine with a scoop or scoops, operated by a steam engine, for excavating earth, as in making railway cuttings.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books



... our aid! Flaught and flail, Fire and hail: Winds arise, and tempests brattle, And, if you will, the thunders rattle. Come away, Elfin grey, Much to do ere break of day! Come with spade, and sieve, and shovel; Come with roar, and rout, and revel; Come with crow, and come with crane, Strength of steed, and weight of wain. Crash of rock, and roar of river, And, if you will, with thunders shiver! Come away, Elfin grey; Much to ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... drawing-room. They were having rides on the leopard skin thrown over the sofa back, or they were playing shops with Isabel's desk for a counter, or Pad was sitting on the hearthrug rowing away for dear life with a little brass fire shovel, while Johnny shot at pirates with the tongs. Every evening they each had a pick-a-back up the narrow stairs to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... was floating around a few inches off the floor, steam trailing from its coffee urn and its tray lid up to offer food. He greeted everybody and sat down at his place, and the robot came around to him. His mother had selected all the things he'd been most fond of six years ago: shovel-snout bacon, hotcakes, starberry jam, things he hadn't tasted since he had gone away. He filled his plate and ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... that you don't intend to take a shovel, and lend a hand with this work? Your shoulder's not hurt so all-fired bad as that," said Tarrant, the sailor who ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... as one hundred Negroes could with their hoes! Is not the hoe also continued in earthing up the canes there, when Mr. Botham proved, more than thirty years ago, that two men would do more with the East Indian shovel at that sort of work in a day, than ten Negroes with the former instrument? So much for unprofitable instruments of husbandry; a few words now on unprofitable modes of employment. It seems, first, little less than infatuation, to make Negroes carry baskets of dung ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... and his Diggers set to work with spade and shovel on the barren soil of St. George's Hill, in Surrey, in the spring of 1649, was the attention of the Council of State called to the strange proceedings. The matter was left to the local magistrates and landowners, and the Diggers were suppressed. ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... stick of cinnamon in a pint of cream, four eggs well beat, leaving out two whites, boil the cream and thicken it with the eggs as for a custard; then put it in your dish, and put over it half a pound of loaf sugar beat and searc'd; heat a fire-shovel red-hot, and hold it over the top till the sugar be ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon

... on with their work the next day, and built the causey up high enough with stones. They then levelled them off, and began to wheel on the gravel. Jonas made each of them a little shovel out of a shingle; and, as the gravel was lying loose under a high bank, they could shovel it up easily, and fill their wheelbarrows. The third day they covered the stones entirely with gravel, and smoothed it all over ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott

... his feet. He pulled down the sleeves of his coat, and gave an adjusting shake to its collar and lapels. Then he turned to my wife and said: "Madam, let us two dance a Virginia reel while your husband and that other one take the poker and tongs and beat out the music on the shovel. We might as well be durned fools one way as another, and all go to the lunatic ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... remained, for some minutes, watching the deaf old man as he threw out the earth with his shovel, and, often stopping to cough and fetch his breath, still muttered to himself, with a kind of sober chuckle, that the sexton was wearing fast. At length she turned away, and walking thoughtfully through the churchyard, came unexpectedly upon ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the subject of combustion, let us take the top of the grate-bars as our starting point. When we shovel coal upon the grate bars and ignite it, what happens first? We separate the two constituents of coal, the carbon from the hydrogen. We make a gas works. Carbon by itself will burn no more than a stone; neither will hydrogen. It requires a given ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... done, you fly into a passion and spurn his money; but let an enemy of his come and pay you, and you are only too willing. How many such jobs have you done in this miserable old hole? It is a good thing for you that the police have not run you down, and brought spade and shovel with them. Do you know what is said of you? Do you think you have kept your windows so closely shut that no sound has ever penetrated beyond them? Where do you keep ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... meadow she went, and at last came to a baker's oven full of bread, and the bread cried out, "Oh, take me out! take me out! or I shall burn; I have been baked a long time!" So she went up to it, and took out all the loaves one after another with the bread-shovel. After that she went on till she came to a tree covered with apples, which called out to her, "Oh, shake me! shake me! we apples are all ripe!" So she shook the tree till the apples fell like rain, and went on shaking till they were all down, and when she had ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... she. 'That's not the way to treat him at all. Let's heat the shovel and put him on it and throw ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost

... glowing promises which decorated the woods (and which he could not fulfill) had brought the party to a state of distraction. It was a big Crackerjack touring car overflowing with scouts and driven by a smiling scoutmaster. It seemed as if they ought to have been pressed in and down with a shovel like ice cream in ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... difference,'' Mr. Taylor goes on to say, "exists in all the trades and branches of labor investigated, from pick- and-shovel men all the way up the scale to machinists and other skilled workmen. The multiplied output was not the product of a spurt or a period of overexertion; it was simply what a good man could keep up for a long term of years without injury to his ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... little line, and two men came slowly, one with a pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostina sharp-shooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here," said Lean gruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf, became hurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see whence the bullets came. The dull beat of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... to pull chain, cut brush, and shovel snow after the 1st Feb. Our last stage was from Fire Hole Basin to Madison Valley, 45 m. It was hell. Didn't see the sun but once after Feb. 1, and it stormed insessant, making short sights necessary, and with each one we would have to dig a hole ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... was late; the night agent told us that when he came out to shovel in more coal—"she" was delayed ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... how easily some opportunities turn up, and others can't be dug with spade and shovel. One day, aimlessly strolling along a side street, up among the fifties, a card in a milliner's shop chanced to meet my eye. "Girl Wanted," it said, ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty

... through a buckskin bag, all the mercury that comes through the bag being put into the barrel to serve again, and what remains in the bag is placed in a retort, if the miner has one, or if not, on a shovel, and heated until nearly all the mercury is vaporised. The gold then remains in a lump with some mercury still held ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... to show how easily it could be done. They had learned wisdom by that time, and contented themselves by fishing for me with a chain-hook tied to a broom-handle, I believe. I did not offer to go and fetch up my shovel, which was left ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... up the shovel and the hoe Take down the fiddle and the bow— Old master has gone to the slaveholder's rest; He has gone where they all ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... and will try to describe the process. The insect begins describing a small circle on the surface of the sand by jerking himself backwards and flinging the sand away with his flat head and closed forceps, which form a kind of shovel. Each circle is smaller than the last, until the pit is like an inverted cone, and the ant-lion lies buried at the bottom, only his forceps being visible. When an ant has fallen headlong down into the pit it makes frantic efforts to escape, and if the ant-lion ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... half-mile of rock to cross to reach the hut and the sledges would have to be carried over this and the dogs led by hand in couples—a very long job. Having done this we returned to the ice foot with a pick and a shovel to improve the road up for horse party, as they would have to come over the same bad ice we had found difficult with the dogs; but they were nowhere to be seen close at hand as we had expected, for they were miles out, as we soon saw, still trying to reach Hut Point by the sea ice round Cape Armitage ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... the Savages, and at this day other Nations after their Example, chuse out the best Kernels[a], and the most fresh: Of these they put about two Pounds in a great Iron Shovel over a clear Fire, stirring them continually with a large Spatula, so long that they may be roasted enough to have their Skins come off easily, which should be done one by one[b], laying them a-part; and taking great heed that the rotten and mouldy Kernels be thrown away, and ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... way to Millefleur and Rottenbottom, where he moults all his fine feathers. He goes into fertilizers, beginning with crushed cotton-seed and barnyard manure, if possible, before February is over. He follows the shovel-plough with a slick-jack, and plants, and then the labor begins to fail him. He talks about importing Chinese, and writes about it in the local paper. He is sure it will do, as he is positive in all his opinions. He is true pluck, and tries to make new machinery make up ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... with its rich furniture and all his baggage. Before the enemy had been driven from the little town of Aljubarrota, the wife of the village baker made herself famous by killing nine Spaniards with her wooden baking shovel—a shovel which may still be seen on the town arms. When all was over Dom Joao dedicated the spoil he had taken in the Castilian king's tent to Our Lady of the Olive Tree at Guimaraes where may still be seen, with many other treasures, a large silver-gilt ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... weather, or at what hour of the day or night. Methinks I see him now, bustling about the village, with healthy ruddy cheek, a clear, cheerful eye, hair white as snow! with a small stout figure, clothed in a suit of somewhat rusty black, (knee-breeches and gaiters all round the year,) and with a small shovel-hat. No one lives in the vicarage with him but an elderly woman, his housekeeper, and her husband, whose chief business is to look after the doctor's old mare and the little garden; in which I have often seen him and his master, with his coat off, digging for an hour or two together. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... was raised, and the sun smiled as only the sun can smile upon miles and miles of dazzling snow crystals. Ichabod climbed out—by way of the window route—and worked for hours with a shovel before he had a channel from the tiny, submerged shanty to the light of day beyond. Then together he and Camilla stood side by side in the doorway, as they had done so many times before, looking about them at the boundless prairie, drifted in waves of snow ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... the Generals nor 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 three times up to the date of which I write, and ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... conceived the idea of vast erections of earthworks, and the Russians were set to defend the place with pick and mattock more strenuously than by artillery or musketry. The result was a protracted defence. The Russians plied the spade and shovel with astonishing vigour and perseverance, and Todtleben proved himself equal in genius to the exigency. The Russians were reinforced; confidence took the place of despair, and the city was defended with desperate hardihood and energy. Besides the garrison, there was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... she could, and took refuge behind her mask; while a nimble American boy of the party changed places with her, and thenceforward made that particular Englishman his special target, plying such a lively and adroit shovel as to make Katy's assailant rue the hour when he evoked this national reprisal. His powdered head and rather clumsy efforts to retaliate excited shouts of laughter from the adjoining balconies. The young American, fresh from tennis and college athletics, ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... afterthought; where even the blind beggar appeals to the charitable in two languages; where the citizens ride in up-to-date motor-cars and the visitors in the high-slung, swing-shaped horse calache; where the traffic takes the French side of the road; where the shovel hats and cassocks of priests are as commonplace as everyday; where the vivacity of France is fused into the homely good-fellowship of the Colonial in ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... was biting his white mustache, and wiping off, with his left hand, the dust which the passing balls threw up from the ground they plowed near him. They also saw, amid this terrible fire, which filled the air with its hissing whistle, officers handling the shovel, soldiers rolling barrows, and vast fascines, rising by being either carried or dragged by from ten to twenty men, cover the front of the trench, reopened to the center by this extraordinary effort of the general animating ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... replied. "Hiyu skookum me." He leaned on his shovel for a moment, stretching his young, sinewy body, grinning at the Indian. The latter dismounted, and, stooping down, touched the young man's ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... shovel are laboring hard to guide or check the endless undersea coral growth before bay and channel and lagoon shall all be dry land. The wormlike, lazy, fast-multiplying Anthozoa is fighting passively but with terrific power, to set at naught ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... The little people are represented in every attitude of frolic enjoyment. Some escalade the great armchair, and look down from its top as from a domestic Mont Blanc; some climb about the bellows; some scale the shaft of the shovel; while some, forming in magic ring, dance festively on the yet glowing hearth. Tiny troops promenade the writing-table. One perches himself quaintly on the top of the inkstand, and holds colloquy with another who sits cross-legged on a paper weight, while ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... all the camps they were held to be in a class by themselves, on account of their education and literary ability. Although they wore the rough costume of the miners, it was realized that none of them took mining seriously or made any pretense of real work with pick and shovel." Mr. Neal knew James Gillis intimately and admitted he was a great story-teller. In fact, at the bare mention of his name he broke into a hearty laugh. "Oh, Jim Gillis, he was a great fellow!" he exclaimed. He said unquestionably Mark Twain got a good deal of material from ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... down at me and seemed to measure me with his eye as one of my uncles did. "There's a much littler boy than you goes with one of the carts, and I see him cutting about the market with a book under his arm, looking as chuff as a pea on a shovel. He ain't nothing to you. Come along o' me. I'll take an old coat for wrapper, and you'll be as right as the mail. You ask him. He'll let ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... mules, loaded light. The rest of the wagons had gone on to the Snake. But why these two had bought the last shovels and the only pick in all the supplies at old Fort Hall no man could tell. Crazy, of course; for who could pause to work on the trail with pick or shovel, with winter coming on ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... cabin, making ditches, and in other ways. All that summer Torfi stood up to his hips in mud digging ditches, and when the bottom was worn out of his shoes and the soles of his feet began to get sore from the shovel, he hit on a plan: he cut the bottom out of a tin can and stuck his toe into the cylinder. And the first evening when he came home from the ditch- digging. and was struggling to remove from himself that sticky clay which is peculiar ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... admitted by all who know him that the average British soldier has a deep-rooted and emphatic objection to "fatigues," all trench-digging and pick-and-shovel work being included under that title. This applies to the New Armies as well as the Old, and when one remembers the safety conferred by a good deep trench and the fact that few men are anxious to be killed sooner than is strictly necessary, the objection is regrettable ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... putting the seed in the ground (drilling is preferable to sowing broadcast), wheat should be soaked five or six hours—not longer—in strong brine. After this, add a peck or more of recently slaked lime to each bushel, and shovel it over well, that the lime may cover each seed. It is now ready to commit to the earth. Most good farmers roll the earth ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... contour of the ground might show no signs of man's interference. And even as we worked the section commanders stole up and down behind us, urging the men to make as little sound as possible—our safety depended on our silence. But pick and shovel, like the rifle, will sing at their toil, and insistent and continuous, as if in threat, they rasped out the almost ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill

... auger they have dotted their rough habitations all over the country; with a pick and a shovel and a gold pan they have tested the gravels of innumerable creeks. They know the drainage slopes and the practicable mountain passes, the haunts of the moose and the time and direction of the caribou's wanderings. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... could get a few out one at a time on moonlight nights, and fill up the blooming holes again, we shouldn't want any blasted machinery for our gold mine, except a pickaxe and a shovel." ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... yard, make sure that you have on hand now the materials and tools needed to improvise an emergency shelter at home. These would include shielding material (for an inside shelter), and lumber and a shovel (for an outside shelter). ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense

... that your words will come true of my appearing in shovel hat, &c., at Heath's Court some fine day. It is very improbable that I shall ever see the northern hemisphere, unless I see it in the longitude of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for a young heir; Gawtrey for his tutor—a doctor in divinity; Birnie for his valet. The task of maintenance fell on Gawtrey, who hit off his character to a hair; larded his grave jokes with university scraps of Latin; looked big and well-fed; wore knee-breeches and a shovel hat; and played whist with the skill of a veteran vicar. By his science in that game he made, at first, enough; at least, to defray their weekly expenses. But, by degrees, the good people at Tours, who, under pretence of health, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... them alive when he found the pups, and took pleasure in thinking about how he would do it. His attempt to follow Saddleback by trailing was a failure, and all his searching for the den was useless, but he had come prepared for any emergency. In case he found the den he had brought a pick and shovel; in case he did not he had brought a ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... out to shovel snow. The areas were full. The sidewalks all along were being cleared, and it made a curious white wall in the street. Mr. Underhill insisted that the boys should level theirs. Some wagons tried to get through ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... There is one hill which, it is calculated, it takes twenty-five minutes to ascend. In many places the road was in that condition called repaired, having just been whittled into the required semi-cylindrical form with the shovel and scraper, with all the softest inequalities in the middle, like a hog's back with the bristles up, and Jehu was expected to keep astride of the spine. As you looked off each side of the bare sphere into the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... Some were picking away at the surface of the ground, others had dug themselves down waist deep, and stooped and rose like legless bodies. Others had disappeared below ground, and showed occasionally only as shovel blades. From so far above the scene was very lively and animated, for each was working like a beaver, and the red shirts made gay little spots of colour. On the hillside clung a few white tents and log cabins; but the main town ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... servant), professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but only the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation is arrayed: yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... make peace after this memorable dispute by a present to Miss Jenkyns of a wooden fire-shovel (his own making), having heard her say how much the grating of an iron one annoyed her. She received the present with cool gratitude and thanked him formally. When he was gone she bade me put it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour, slowly quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new British line. Now and then in the light of some star-shell their figures were disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded, or wielding pick and shovel. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... let me in again?" I said. "If you promise not to touch me." She looked so pale that I fetched brandy, but put the street-door key in my pocket as I went. "If she don't let me in," I thought, "she shan't have the key,—and what will she tell her sister about that?" It was a key almost as big as a shovel; she never noticed that I had taken it away. She thought by her dodge that she had got rid of me, and told me ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... life that some of us boys had up on the hillside farms in Vermont. Why, when we'd have to get up winter mornings, with the weather so cold that we'd have to be all the while on the lookout that we didn't freeze our ears or noses, and when we'd have to shovel out the paths through three feet of snow and cut the wood and carry water to the stock, it did seem at times to be a trifle strenuous; but really I think the boys in Vermont get more fun out of life than the poor ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... we're from the same village, I've eaten his bread, I'm fond of him, I'm grateful, he gave me his ass-colts, and above all I'm faithful; so it's quite impossible for anything to separate us, except the pickaxe and shovel. And if your highness does not like to give me the government you promised, God made me without it, and maybe your not giving it to me will be all the better for my conscience, for fool as I am I know the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... swinging rhythm. They use the shovels to throw open the furnace doors. Then from these fiery round holes in the black a flood of terrific light and heat pours full upon the men who are outlined in silhouette in the crouching, inhuman attitudes of chained gorillas. The men shovel with a rhythmic motion, swinging as on a pivot from the coal which lies in heaps on the floor behind to hurl it into the flaming mouths before them. There is a tumult of noise—the brazen clang of the furnace doors as they are flung open or slammed shut, the grating, teeth-gritting grind of steel ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill

... eggs and since it requires less than two weeks for the pest to mature, we are soon overrun with flies in the summer where steps are not taken to control them. The maggots are often so abundant in stables that they can be scooped out with a shovel. This ceaseless breeding continues from spring until the first frost in ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman

... in all parts of Peru dress in a very extraordinary, not to say outlandish manner. One of the lower grade wears a very capacious shovel hat, projecting as much in front as behind, and looking very like a double-ended coal-heaver's hat. A loose black serge robe covers him all over, as with a funereal pall, and being fastened together only at the neck, ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... well to be considered with less favorable subsoil formations—the shallow and the artesian. With the former (known to country people as a dug well) a shaft from six to ten feet across is dug with pick and shovel until adequate water is reached. Then the shaft is lined with stone laid without cement or mortar up to a few feet from the top. This allows water from the surrounding area to seep into the well where it is retained until it is ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... were sub-soil plows in the State six years ago. The implement has there, as well as in many other places, ceased to be a curiosity; and the man who now objects to its use, is classed with him who shells his corn on a shovel over a half-bushel, instead of employing an improved machine, which will enable him to do more in a day than he can do in the "good old way" ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... entertain them) by assuring me his conduct is founded on a sage selfishness. This is diverting enough. I suppose the Commissioners of, Police will next send me a letter of condolence, begging my acceptance of a broom, a shovel, and a scavenger's greatcoat, and assuring me that they had appointed me to all the emoluments of a well-frequented crossing. It would be doing more than they have done of late for the cleanliness of the streets, which, witness my shoes, are in a piteous pickle. I thanked the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... shutting his eyes, even now, see his mother as she came running from the garden, see her look of terror as she caught sight of the circling thing upon the floor, and then the look of desperation as the mother instinct rose superior and she dashed into the room, seized the great iron shovel that stood before the fireplace, and began dealing reckless blows at the hissing serpent. A big black-snake is not a pleasant customer, but neither—for a black-snake—is a frenzied mother with an iron fire shovel in her hand, and this particular snake turned tail, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... shovel, he dug out a hollow, throwing up a circular mount to protect him from the wind, should it arise. Searching along the river-bank, he collected wood for a fire, sufficient to last him till morning. He set up his sled on end, like a tombstone, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse and saw, and I very soon found myself a plenty of work. There was no work too hard—none too dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,—all of which I did for nearly three years in New Bedford, before I became ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... while the noise of the shovel ceased for a while. Captain Jack craned his neck eagerly, trying to pierce the darkness of the night. He could make out nothing, though he heard some one still moving ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... ball, patted and flattened it into a biscuit, and dropped it into the oven he had set aside on the hot coals. Swiftly he shaped eight or ten other biscuits and dropped them as the first. Then he put the heavy iron lid on the pot, and with a rude shovel, improvised from a flattened tin can, he shoveled red coals out of the fire, and covered the lid with them. His next move was to pare and slice potatoes, placing these aside in a pan. A small black coffee-pot half full of water, was set on a glowing part of the fire. Then he brought ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... works, (the biggest and most improv'd ones, for the precious metals, in the world,) I saw long rows of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, and fill'd with pure silver, four or five inches thick, many thousand dollars' worth in a pan. The foreman who was showing me shovel'd it carelessly up with a little wooden shovel, as one might toss beans. Then large silver bricks, worth $2000 a brick, dozens of piles, twenty in a pile. In one place in the mountains, at a mining ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... innumerable boys, barmen, a compositor, several dressmakers in all departments, half a dozen drapers' assistants, four grooms, sixty navvies in one advertisement, millers, haymakers, woodcutters, spademen, needlewomen, quarrymen, etc., two wheelwrights, a verger at L120 a year, pick and shovel men. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... the detention quarters had been the right one. Given a pickax and a shovel, and an uninterrupted period of, say, a week, he might be able to tunnel under one of the log walls. But otherwise he could not see any other way of getting free—save to walk out through the cell ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... sullenly, and slowly scratched his head. Pressley, unlashing a mattock and shovel from his pack, did ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... even endure the discipline of ten hours' daily shovelling—it takes education to instil discipline, if only the education of the early pick and shovel. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury from 1689, and historian of his own times. He had the reputation of being an inveterate smoker, and was caricatured with a long clay stuck through the brim of the shovel hat, on the breadth of which King William once made remark. The bishop replied that the hat was of a shape suited to his dignity, whereupon the King caustically said, "I hope that the hat ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... the house, brought a shovel, one of the numerous ship's stores, and buried the body at once high up the beach where the greatest waves could not reach it and wash it away. He did his task to the rumble of thunder and the flash of lightning, but, when he finished ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... been developed," Jeff would say. "There's silver enough in her so you could dig it out with a shovel. She's full of it. But they won't get at her ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, The gate is pass'd, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses, The coffin is pass'd out, lower'd and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel'd in, The mound above is flatted with the spades—silence, A minute—no one moves or speaks—it is done, He is decently put away—is there ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... had taken possession of the dwelling of Seloy, an Indian chief, a huge barn-like structure, strongly framed of entire trunks of trees, and thatched with palmetto-leaves. Around it they were throwing up intrenchments of fascines and sand. Gangs of negroes, with pick, shovel, and spade, were toiling at the work. Such was the birth of St. Augustine, the oldest town of the United States, and such the introduction of slave-labor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... to take with her the wooden utensil used in turning the cakes on the bake stone; so she returned, and failing to discover the lost article bewailed her loss in these words, "Mi gollais fy mhig," "I have lost my shovel." The people got up and searched for the lost implement, and found it, and gave it to the Fairy, who departed with ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... silver sulphate are detached from C by an iron shovel and thrown into D. D is a lead lined tank about 4 ft. by 4 ft. and 3 ft. deep. It is divided into two compartments by means of a horizontal, perforated false bottom made of wood. From the lower compartment a lead pipe discharges into the lead lined reservoir, E. Warm distilled water ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... lines. Shakespeare uses the expression "shove-groat shilling," as does Ben Jonson. These shillings were usually smooth and worn for the convenience of playing. Strutt says ("Sports and Pastimes"), "I have seen a shovel-board table at a low public house in Benjamin Street, near Clerkenwell Green, which is about three feet in breadth and thirty-nine feet two inches in length, and said to be the longest at this ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... The picture of the tree was to show where it was hidden and the object at its base is intended as a shovel to tell that I would have to dig for the treasure, but," and his face fell, "how are we to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... dogs of war, and busy traitors. As time goes on, a new thing opens to the view: a short week ago it seemed but a molehill: now it has risen to the height of a man, and hourly increases in size. Two weeks, and now its summit is far above the reach of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high in order that guns may ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... received from Chief Ranger Wade and D.A. Spencer who saw a muskrat, no doubt a wanderer, on the Knife Edge Road on a cold winter night. These men, both reliable observers, stopped and saw the muskrat at a distance of two feet, where it took shelter under a power shovel parked beside the road. Reports of dens seen along the Mancos River are available for 1944, 1945, ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson

... cottage. The house in which Shakespeare passed his last years does not exist, but there is not a little about Stratford that calls for sixpences more readily than it can justify the receipt of them. All that New Place can offer of true Shakespearian interest is some venerable timbers, a shovel board, from the old Falcon Inn that rose close by soon after Shakespeare's death and still stands in receipt of custom, a circular table inlaid with wood from the mulberry tree that the poet is said to have planted, and a stone mullion from his ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... moved about, doing all that should be done, the bushmen only helping where they dared; then shouldering a pick and shovel, he went to the tattle rise beyond the slip rails, and set doggedly to work at a little distance from two lonely graves already there. Doggedly he worked on; but, as he worked, gradually his burden lost its overwhelming ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... between whose lines I had to pass. They were large, half-naked savages, standing like statues with fierce, movable eyes, each one holding, with its butt end on the ground, a huge spear, with a head the size of a shovel. I purposely sauntered down them coolly with a swagger, with my eyes fixed upon their dangerous-looking faces. I had a six-shooter concealed in my waist-belt, and determined, at the first show of excitement, to run up to the Amir, and put it to his head, if it were necessary, to save ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... would be foolish and wasteful to set a hundred men to digging when one steam shovel will do the work better and quicker than they can. And it's the same way with this water here. If we can put up a pipe in about an hour that will save two or three hours of chasing every day, whenever water is needed, it must be sensible ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart

... understand why he had such an intense longing," said the Yard Dog. "Why, there's a shovel for cleaning out the stove fastened to the pole. The Snow Man had a stove-rake in his body, and that's what moved within him. Now he has got over ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... that horrid Kaffir cottage. The next night found us at Brugspruit, close to a colliery, where we stayed a considerable while, and managed to house ourselves in comparative comfort, that gradually became near akin to luxury. Here the junior officers courteously assisted me to shovel up an earthen shelter, with a sheet of corrugated iron for a roof, and thus protected I envied no millionaire his marble halls, though my blankets were sometimes wet with evening dew, and the ground white ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... inexpressible relief, 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, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... minute, and more coming. Memphis is taken, New Orleans has fallen, the railroads, except those that run south of us, are in Halleck's possession, and if the enemy along the river moves quickly, the troops we have sent to fortify Vicksburg will not have time to lift a shovel full of dirt before the Mississippi clear to the Gulf will be lost to us. I tell you the situation is critical in the extreme, and if we don't look out, and fight as men never fought before, the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... Shovel, axe, no labor sparing, Vainly plied the men by day; Where the fires at night shone flaring, Stood a dam, in morning's ray. Still from human victims bleeding, Wailing sounds were nightly borne; Seaward sped the flames, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... cheerfully with no wages, sooner than with a ten years' gangrene or Chancery lawsuit in my heart. He of the horse-hair wig is a sort of failure; no substance, but a fond imagination of the mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing that he will save my soul. O ye eternities, of him in this place be absolute silence! But he of the red coat, I say, is a success and no failure! He will veritably, if he gets orders, draw out a long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... 'em! What's all this trash? Shovel 'em out! They'll want to get in with us; they'll queer ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... dark, but the stars were shining; and every now and then the wind would make a shovel of itself, and toss up the hot ashes the fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... She has, besides, an inestimable slimy, froggy pond, a perpetual treasure of malodorous water, much pined after by thirsty flowers; and then does she not live in the middle of a farmyard flowing with fertilising properties that only require a bucket and a shovel to transform them into roses? The way in which people miss their ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... The entire population begins to return at once from their labour in the fields; a stalwart and sturdy population; the thew and sinew of some fine regiments. Every one of these half-clad men, armed with pickaxe and shovel, rose two hours before the sun this morning, and went forth to weed a little field, or to dig round a few olive-trees. Many of them have their little domains several miles off, and thither they go daily, accompanied by ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... a cot-bed, half a dozen chairs, a large wooden spittoon filled with saw-dust, a looking-glass, and a table. The floor was covered with strips of rag carpet, very neat and of a pretty, quiet color, loosely laid down. Against the wall, near the stove, hung a dust-pan, shovel, dusting-brush, and small broom. A door opened into an inner room, which contained another bed and conveniences for washing. A closet in the wall held matches, soap, and other articles. Every thing was scrupulously ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... I took up my quarters on the schooner, with the crews of the schooner and the brigantine for body-servants. And I had one good time. There was a basket there—a basket about the size of a good-sized wash-basket—and every mornin' I'd shovel a lot of money into that. Oh, I don' know how much, maybe two or three or four or five or six hundred thousand dollars, and I'd say to the cook, or maybe one of the deck force: "Here you, Fernando, go on up now an' hurry ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... to Lefkosia, which we should intersect about half-way between the two termini. Instead of this, after travelling for a couple of miles along a good hardened track, we arrived at a series of trenches which effectually stopped all progress. Each van had a pickaxe and shovel, therefore we all set to work in rapid relief of each other to level the obstructions, and by this hard exercise the thermometer appeared to rise quickly from the low temperature of the morning. The oxen were good, and by dint of our united exertions in ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... captain was irrevocable, in spite of the persuasive eloquence of a deputation of the crew and engineers. So, after passing the Burlings, orders were given to cut the bales, save the packing, and shovel the tobacco overboard. This very nearly caused open revolt, but the captain made a few tactful statements which had good effect. He presented a case that could not be controverted, and they yielded to the inevitable. The jettisoning ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... who in her early days had carried live coals from neighbors' houses miles away, saw how to dispense with lamp or candle. She took a shovel full of embers—and placed a burning chip on top. The chip would have gone out by itself, but was kept ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... you should look for, here are Sir William Temple, Lord Chatham, Fox and Wilberforce, among statesmen; of soldiers there are Prince Rupert and Monk; of Indian fame, here are Lord Lawrence and Lord Clyde; of sailors, Blake, Cloudesley Shovel, and Lord Dundonald. Of poets, Chaucer, Spenser, Beaumont, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Prior, Addison, Gay, Campbell. Of historians and prose writers, Samuel Johnson, Macaulay, Dickens, Livingston, Isaac Newton. Many others there are to look for, notably the ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... with a hair-spring. The flat, pointed face was turned upon me, so that I could see a patch of white upon the throat. Evidently the snake had just sloughed an old skin, for the sunlight gleamed iridescent on the shining jet scales. It was not a large head; it lacked the shovel-nose and the heavy, horrid jaws of the rattle-snake. But it was clean-cut, with power in every line of jaw and neck; with power and speed and certainty in the pose, so easy, ready, and erect. There was no fear in the creature's eye, something ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... From the same to Sir Cloudesley Shovel, on board the Charles Galley, off Sallee, A.D. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... snow round the wounded foot and leg; I'm sure the cold must be good for it;' and, with the axe for their only shovel, the two girls gathered a pile of frozen snow, as a cushion and covering to the limb—'Oh, if Edith were here! if Edith were here!' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... did so, but when the old woman raised the shovel the boy always fell off. So they went on many times. At last the giantess got angry, and scolded the boy for being so awkward; the lad excused himself, saying that he did not know the way ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... and the same colors glowing at their throats. This I saw by the light of the gas-globes and of those shooting stars that dropped like great jewels through the still air. The sight of that fiery snake frightened me; I jumped like a pea on a hot shovel, and gave a ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... large a part in the defence both of Sebastopol and Richmond, are unknown at Paris. Barricades made of paving stones in the streets, and forts of solid masonry outside, are considered the ne plus ultra of defensive works. For one man who will go to work to shovel earth, you may find a thousand who will shoulder a musket. "Paris may be able to defend itself," the Americans say, "but it is not defending itself after what our generals would consider the most approved method." We have no intelligence of what is passing in France beyond ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... kingdom turned so soon to ashes, blood, and earth? 'Twixt the summer and the snow—seeding-time and frost— Arms and victual, hope and counsel, name and country lost! Singing:—Let down by the foot and the head— Shovel and smooth it all! So do we bury a Nation dead ... And who shall be next to fall, good sirs, With your good ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling

... and I have not had an unpleasant day, and yet I have caught but five Trouts; for indeed we went to a good honest Alehouse, and there we plaid at shovel-board half the day; all the time that it rained we were there, and as merry as they that fish'd, and I am glad we are now with a dry house over our heads, for heark how it rains and blows. Come Hostis, give us more Ale, and our Supper with what ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... said her husband, "when you may have to take in washing for a living, while I shovel brick ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... box dat de dead man was a-lying in. Jest as he did dat, a light jumped out'n dat grave right in front of us and all over Wade's shovel. Our two dogs tuck and run and holler and stick dey tails betwix dey legs like somebody a-whipping dem. Dem dogs never stopped running and howling 'till dey reached home, me and Wade right behind dem. Wade had dat 'possum in his hand. Dat light now and den ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... few hours at a time, to give them a chance to get at the honey. Stocks much below second-rate cannot be wintered successfully in this climate; the only place for them is the warm room. I have known bees thoroughly covered in a snow-drift, and their owner was at considerable trouble to shovel the snow away, fearing it would smother them. This is unnecessary, when protected from the mice and ventilated as just directed; a snow-bank is about as comfortable a place as they can have, except in the house. When examined a short time after being so covered, the snow for a space of ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... was in truth an experienced maid-of-all-work, began with alacrity to discharge the duties of her new station. She carried off the ashes, and returned with the materials for next day's fire in a shovel. Here she gave a slight indication of her so-called carelessness (awkwardness would have been more appropriate) by letting two or three pieces of stick and a bit of coal fall on the carpet, in her passage ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... was," returned Primus, "I guess de old fellow nebber hab much chance to study Latin. He better 'quainted wid de shovel and de hoe. Dat mean in de ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... wanted to be "father and mother both," "located" a claim. The flowers were kept fresh by a little stream of waste water from the ditch that girded the brow of the hill above. Here he set a sluice-box and put his three little miners at work with pick, pan and shovel. There he left them and limped back to his own place ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... to the "things that are unseen and eternal." Wealth and worldliness unspiritualize thousands of professed Christians. The present artificial arrangements of society antagonize devotional meetings and special efforts to promote revivals. On Sabbath mornings many a minister has to shovel out scores of his congregation from under the drifts (not very clean snow either) ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... sir, if God hadn't taught me that when I went down to hell He was there, I don't think I'd want to be religious again; but now I do want it with all my might and main, and I'll never let go of it, just as I know He won't let go of me—no, not if some of these days they have to shovel me into a drunkard's grave; but I believe that God's got the same strength for me just as He had when you converted me." Toyner looked round him despairingly as a man might look for something that is inexplicably lost. "I can't think ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... Poulain I should have been put to bed with a shovel by now, as we shall all be one day. Well, what must be, must, as the old actor said. One must take things philosophically. How did you ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... with contempt or levity. Mr. Snooks could not return that document to Mr. Prigg, so he had to consider. And first he consulted his wife: this consultation led to a domestic brawl and then to his kicking one of his horses in the stomach. Then he threw a shovel at his dog, and next the thought occurred to him that he had better go and see Mr. Locust. This gentleman was a solicitor who practised at petty sessions. He did not practise much, but that was, perhaps, his misfortune rather than his fault. He was a small, fiery haired man, with ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... found the transcontinental telegraph line and had a sure trail to follow until they discovered the grade stakes of the railroad, and soon descried the advance-guard of the graders busy with plough and shovel and scraper. As they rode into camp the very first man to emerge from Casement's tent, with his habitual smile, was ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... when we hoed corn we'd hoe the chain's length, then the one next the block had it to tote the length of the chain, and so on till we did our day's work. Since we've been here we've seen nine of our masters chained to that same block and made to shovel sand on that fortification yonder. There were forty of us that belonged to our plantation standing in this yard ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... that we could give a handful or so to each of the mules. I am glad you have brought some good spirits—we shall need it in the swamps by the rivers. Your tea and coffee will save your having to buy them here, but you will want some sugar. We must take two picks and a shovel, a hammer for breaking up ore, a small furnace, twenty crucibles and bellows, and a few other things for aiding to melt the ore. You would want for the journey five baggage mules, and, of course, three riding mules. I could hardly manage them, even with aid from you, in very bad places, ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... stripped floor, the white walls bare but for some casts like the dismembered fragments of flawless blanched bodies, the inclined plane of the wide skylight, bore an impalpable white dust of dried clay. In a corner, enclosed in low boards, a stooped individual with wood-soled shoes and a shovel was working a mass of clay over which at intervals he sprinkled water, and at intervals halted to make pliable lumps of a uniform size which he added to a pile wrapped in damp cloths. There were a number of modeling stands with twisted wires grotesquely resembling a ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... had not gone out to shovel snow, was observed to be nailing some light broad boards ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope

... sleepers; after the air-hose had been connected and examined; after the engineer had swung out of his cab, filled his cups, and swung in again; after the fireman and his helper had disposed of their slice-bar and shovel and given the tender a final sprinkle, and after the conductor had walked leisurely forward, compared time with the engineer, and cried, "All Abo-o-o-ard!" then, as your coach moved slowly ahead, you might notice, under the receding catalpas, the little ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... Mayor of Scuttleton burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle quill; He went bareheaded, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the leg ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... An ardent admirer who says, "Yes, dearest, I will shovel the snow of the lake so that we can go skating!" and, after marriage remarks, "What! Shovel the snow off the walk for you? Well, I should say not! I'm no ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz

... from the moonlight, which was so bright as to be almost dazzling, and, peering into the darkness, I first dimly, but afterwards gradually, almost with full distinctness, beheld the form of a man engaged in digging what appeared to be a rude hole close under the wall. Some implements, probably a shovel and pickaxe, lay beside him, and to these he every now and then applied himself as the nature of the ground required. He pursued his task rapidly, and with as little noise ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Gamba, others pronounced it a fiddle. I myself hoped it a Liquer case pregnant with Eau de Vie and such odd Nectar. When midwifed into daylight, the gossips were at loss to pronounce upon its species. Most took it for a marrow spoon, an apple scoop, a banker's guinea shovel. At length its true scope appeared, its drift— to save the backbone of my sister stooping to scuttles. A philanthropic intent, borrowed no doubt from some of the Colliers. You save people's backs one way, and break 'em again by loads of obligation. The spectacles are delicate and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... hungry looks and ragged garments, reminding one only too forcibly of the "Seven Dials" on a summer Sunday; French soldiers and beggars, women and children and priests swarm around you. Indeed, there are priests everywhere. There with their long black coats and broad-brimmed shovel hats, come a score of young priests, walking two and two together, with downcast eyes. How, without looking up, they manage to wend their way among the crowd, is a constant miracle; the carriages, however, stop to let them pass, for a Roman driver would sooner run over a dozen children ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... case the fire shovel doesn't burn a hole in the tablecloth and let the sugar run out and catch cold, I'll tell you about the ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis

... gleam of cutlasses in the air; there was one short, plaintive groan, and the body of the young pirate fell into the hole. Instantly all the other goods, furs, rugs, or whatever they were, were tumbled in upon him. Then the men began to shovel in the earth and sand, and in an incredibly short time the hole was filled up even ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... Brinsmead and Jack found close to them, mounted on a tall pack-horse, a personage who by the peculiar cut of his somewhat threadbare garments they took to be a humble student of divinity. He wore a shabby cassock and a shovel hat, sitting the animal on which he journeyed sideways with a book in his hand, making a reading-desk occasionally of a bale of some sort which towered above the horse's neck. Old Will at once entered ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... articles journeyed with us: the brass-headed shovel and tongs, that it had been my especial task to keep bright; the two card-tables (which were as unacquainted as ourselves with ace, face, and trump); the two china mugs, with their eighteenth-century lady and ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... passes up, blue for a nine-cent and red for a seven-cent dinner, the waitress first plunges a huge ladle into the soup pot and empties its contents into the bucket; then passing along the rows of kettles she harpoons a piece of meat with a long two-pronged fork, scoops up a quart of rice with a wooden shovel, and then, adding a portion of potatoes, slams on the cover, and, grabbing a cube of bread, passes it over to the purchaser with a joke ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... vines and creepers he flung ahead of him a miner's pick and shovel and gold-pan. Then he crawled out himself into the open. He was clad in faded overalls and black cotton shirt, with hobnailed brogans on his feet, and on his head a hat whose shapelessness and stains advertised the rough usage of wind and rain and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... poetic Raggles in an erratic and singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that the city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. And, after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the cloth, becoming wet, tightened its knots ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... I'm going to find you in brains. Hurry on and peg away. Shovel it in, and think you are going to be Lord Chancellor some day. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... fruit-growers; Japanese coolies and Mongolian workmen were to be found wherever new buildings were going up as well as on all the railways. The yellow flood was threatening to destroy the very foundations of our domestic economy by forcing down all wage-values. The yellow immigrant who wrested spade and shovel, ax and saw, from the American workman, who pushed his way into the factory and the workshop and acted as a heartless strike breaker, was not only found in the Pacific States but had pushed his way across the Rockies into the very heart of the eastern section. And scarcely had he settled anywhere, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... I'll tell your honor. A tall ould gentleman he was, all in white, with a shovel on the shoulder of him, and a big torch in his fist—though what he wanted with that it's meself can't tell, for his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which wasn't there at all—and ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... Irishman. "I think that av ye offered yersilf chape enough he might give ye a job wid a shovel on the grade. 'Tis mesilf wud be proud to have ye in me gang av rough-necks. Dom' me but I think I cud rejuce yer waist line to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... work his irons were struck off, thanks to the instant entreaties of his compatriots: he was then given a broom and shovel and set to clear rubbish and filth off the roof of a large unfinished building. On one side was a convict of the lowest order, with whom he worked—on the other, the soldier who mounted guard over them. To avoid the indignity of chastisement or reproof—indeed, to escape ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... house, we pass some sheds and yards, with deer and other animals, and then come to another set of buildings like stables, where there are the hippopotami and giraffes. If you thought the rhinoceros ugly, what will you think of the hippopotamus, with his great shovel-like nose and little ears? He looks like a stupid fat pig, only many, many times larger than the largest pig that ever lived. There are two of these animals in the Gardens now—a lady hippo, born at the Zoo, and about thirty years old, and another, quite a boy yet, only ten or eleven years ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... brings any blessing with it," said Edwin Jack, "you ought to revive here, for you have splendid fresh country air—by night as well as by day—a fine laborious occupation with pick and shovel, a healthy appetite, wet feet continually, mud up to the eyes, and gold to your heart's content. What more can ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... occurrences of the last few days. So he helped her to climb the little stair that winds to the top of the texas,—that sanctified roof where the pilot-house squats. The girl clung to her bonnet Will you like her any the less when you know that it was a shovel bonnet, with long red ribbons that tied under her chin? It became her wonderfully. "Captain Lige," she said, almost tearfully, as she took his arm, "how I thank heaven that you came up the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... My dear sir, you won't think me guilty of sticking it up to please Stafford here. I know his taste too well; something like mine, I expect—a cosy room with a clean cloth and a well-cooked chop and potato. I've cooked 'em myself before now—the former on a shovel, the latter in an empty meat-tin. Of course I know that Stafford and you, Mr. Howard, have lived very different lives to mine. Of course. You have been accustomed to every refinement and a great deal of luxury over ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... helping along. The District Attorney has sent up gangster after gangster; but it's like a quicksand, Burke—new rascals seem to slide in as fast as you shovel out ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... much to be watched during the early stages of garden-preparation. Nothing is so satisfying as to lean ruminatingly against a fence and observe the slow, rhythmic swing of the digger's back or hear the repeated scraping of the shovel-edge against some buried rock. It sometimes is a help to the digger to sing a chanty, just to give him the beat. And then sometimes it is not. He will tell you in case ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... there was a general retreat from the bed, round which they had been crowding too close for the carrying on of the joke; and Mrs. Fay ran for a shovel of hot cinders, and poured vinegar over them, to fumigate ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... to his feet. Mr. Saunders sprang up, also, and reached for the coal shovel, evidently expecting trouble. But if he feared a physical assault, his fear was groundless. Captain Eri merely took ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... had been buried in the sand. Far as eye could reach the desert had marvelously changed; it was now a rippling sea of sand dunes. Away to the north rose the peak that was their only guiding mark. They headed toward it, carrying a shovel and part of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... rainbow. "Will you hold the bag open?" he said. I was glad to help (it was perhaps the only useful ten minutes that I passed in Florida); and so, counting quart by quart, he dished them into it. There were thirty odd quarts, but he wanted a bushel and a quarter, and again took up the shovel. The clams themselves were not, canned and shipped, he ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... beneath it, half-cave, half-cellar, open to the light, where Joe Barnicoat kept his gardening tools, with other odds-and-ends, such as bast, peasticks, sieves, shears, and traps for birds and vermin. Hugh and I went directly to this lower chamber to get a shovel for our work. ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... watched McTee's frown grow dark. When he was ordered below to the fireroom, he wrapped his hands in the soft waste again. That helped him for a time, but after the first two hours the waste matted and grew hard with perspiration and blood. He had to throw it away and take the shovel handle against his bare skin. He told himself that it was only a matter of time before calluses would form, but what chance was there for a formation of calluses when the water and suds ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... sad as we looked on them ruins buried so deep by the shovel of time. But I sez to him in ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... was cold as well as hungry. Finally, she tried quite hard, and thought she could be very well content as an oven; for then she would be kept always hot, and bakers would put all manner of good things into her with a long shovel." ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... haven't the heart to do that," said the disappointed man. "You see, when I was digging for treasure I felt sure I was going to find it, and that kept my heart up. 5 But take a shovel and fill all those holes? I'd rather do without ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... to receive the money and we had to give it to him. We paid a man a dollar to take us to the station, and saw the train pull out while we were stuck in a snowdrift ten feet deep, with a dozen men trying to shovel a path for us; so we had to come back. In spite of this terrible weather, people drive eight and ten miles ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... come down with considerable of a thud,' she said, reflectively. 'I hope they're not tough, for I should never hear the last of it. Guess I'll punch one with the handle of this tin shovel, and see how it acts. Goodness! it's sort of—elastic. That's funny. Well, perhaps it's the way they ought to look.' Here she transferred the smoking mysteries to her plate, passed a bit of pork over the griddles, and, after ladling ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of England; R. C., Roman Catholic; W., Wesleyan; P., Presbyterian; but if you happened to be an atheist they left it blank, and just handed you a pick and shovel. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... aright the reason for getting the shovels, for Durland, as soon as the three Scouts reached the stream with their precious burden of shovels, picked out the strongest Scouts and set them to work digging the trench. He took a shovel himself, and set the best of examples by the way ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... were almost alone, to such an extent had one sort of senseless matter been compelled to take charge of another sort of senseless matter. The odyssey of the coal that was lifted high out of ships on the tide beyond, to fall ultimately into the furnaces within, scarcely touched by the hand-wielded shovel, was by itself epical. Fresh air pouring in at the rate of twenty-four million cubic feet per hour cooled the entire palace, and gave to these stoke-holes the uncanny quality of refrigerators. The lowest horror of the steamship had ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... tried everything and nothing 'twixt the shovel and the press, And were more or less successful in their ventures — mostly less. Once they ran a country paper till the plant was seized for debt, And the local sinners ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson



Words linked to "Shovel" :   shovelful, digger, containerful, dig, delve, backhoe, shoveler, coal shovel, steam shovel, spadeful, posthole digger, turn over, scoop shovel, fire iron, shovel hat, hand tool, hand shovel, dredge, excavator, shovel board, shovel in, post-hole digger



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