"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after all. I have never been actually to Southfields, but I suppose a scheme of lemons and olives represent their austral instincts. I have never visited Parson's Green, or seen either the Green or the Parson, but surely the pale-green shovel-hats I have designed must be more or less in the spirit. I must work in the dark and let my instincts guide me. The great love I bear to my people will certainly save me from distressing their noble spirit or violating ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... hull is damaged at all. One door is smashed in and things are pretty well soaked up. If you will permit it, we fellows will clean up. There's a ton or more of sand and gravel in the after cockpit. Have you a shovel?" ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... compartmentless steamer, and in half an hour had followed, leaving her crew afloat in boats and on life-rafts. Scotty found himself in the boat with the captain, and wisely anticipating rebuke, had brought his shovel. The captain glared unspeakable ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... man 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 weight, for the greater part ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... begging-dish,' Vinakarna looked at the shelf and remarked, 'However can a mouse jump as high as this? There must be a reason, though there seems none. I guess the cause—the fellow is well off and fat,' With these words Vinakarna snatched up a shovel, discovered my retreat, and took away all my hoard of provisions. After that I lost strength daily, had scarcely energy enough to get my dinner, and, in fact, crept about so wretchedly, that when Chudakarna saw me he ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... older than the mole," he said, "yet from him I take my name. In dry ground I make poor progress; where it is muddy and swampy, I can run through it, like a fish through water. When the mole came into being, he borrowed the pattern of my fore feet—shovel and pick and spade in one. Like me, he learnt to run backwards or forwards, and that is why his hair has no set in it. Whichever way he goes, the clinging dust is swept from off its surface. He comes from grubby depths ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... and deeper beneath the mysterious rocks, ever seeking to make their own the secret hoards of the world's great storehouse. Countless centuries were being rudely unlocked through the ceaseless toil of pick and shovel, the green hillsides torn asunder and disfigured by ever-increasing piles of debris, while eager-eyed men struggled frantically to obtain the hidden riches of the rocks. Here and there a rudely constructed log hut, perched with apparent ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... heaving up the ground clear across its front, and, on the side where we stood, had evidently found a softer stratum under a forest-covered hill, and inserted its shovel point under the hill, heaved it upon the ice, cracking the rocks into a thousand fragments; and was carrying the whole hill upon its back towards the sea. The large trees were leaning at all angles, some of them submerged, splintered and ground by ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... describe, for I have been much amused with the curious names of the islands printed on the map in these waters. A little group not far from 'Tchusan' is called 'the Bear and Cubs;' another 'Lowang,' or 'Buffalo's Nose;' another 'Chutta-than,' or 'Shovel-nosed Shark.' Near the Japan Isles there is a little cluster called 'Asses' Ears.' This sea is called by the Chinese Tong-hai; and in it are the large islands Formosa and Loo-choo; but ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... gripped baby-fashion in his fist, but much as a pencil is held in writing; only the fingers are placed nearer the "top" than the "point," the thumb and two first fingers are closed around the handle two-thirds of the way up the shank, and the food is taken up shovel-wise on the turned-up prongs. At first his little fingers will hold his fork stiffly, but as he grows older his fingers will become more flexible just as they will in holding his pencil. If he finds it hard ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... to shovel in the earth, and the children cried anew. All except Tess. Her face was dry and pale, as though she regarded herself in the light ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... halted; even the great snow-ploughs roared impotent amid the snowy wastes; waggons floundered into cross-streets and stuck until dug out; and everywhere, in the thickening obscurity, battalions of emergency men with pick and shovel struggled with the drifts in Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Then the storm ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... vessels sail along the embankments higher than the chimney tops of the houses along the shore! Watchmen are stationed along these embankments and when the ocean breaks a leak, they will ring the alarm bells and every body will arm himself with a spade or shovel and run to the sea-shore to battle with the water. Thus have these people defended their property against the encroachments of ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... Porson, a great statesman in Sir Robert Walpole, a great lawyer in Sir Edward Coke, great ecclesiastics in Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Parker, great artists in Gainsborough, Constable and Crome, and perhaps above all great sailors in Sir Cloudesley Shovel and the ever memorable Lord Nelson. Personally I admire a certain rebel, Kett the Tanner, as much as any ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... operations. 'I don't suppose we shall do any good,' said Caldigate to Dick, 'but we must make a beginning, if only for the sake of hardening our hands. We shall be learning something at the time even though we only shovel up so much mud.' ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... 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 all ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... strong arm and willing hand of the loyal Blacks. Dutch Gap was dug by Negroes, and miles of earthworks, fortifications, and corduroy-roads were made by Negroes. They did fatigue duty in every department of the Union army. Wherever a Negro appeared with a shovel in his hand, a white soldier took his gun and returned to the ranks. There were 200,000 Negroes in the camps and employ of the Union armies, as servants, teamsters, cooks, and laborers. What a mighty host! Suppose the sentiment that early met the Negro on the picket ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... The amalgam is then heated, to drive off the mercury. This may be done either in an open pan or in a close retort. In the former, the quicksilver is lost; in the latter, it is saved. The pan is generally preferred. Often a shovel or plate of iron is used. Three pounds of amalgam, from which the liquid metal has been carefully pressed out, will yield one pound of gold. The gold remaining after the quicksilver has been driven off by heat from the amalgam, is a porous mass, ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... days before, and his last request was to be buried in the yard, and, loving him so well, had complied. This explanation seemed to satisfy them, and they were about to leave, when one became skeptical and said, "Hold on boys, I think I would like to see Daniel before we go;" and, procuring a shovel, set in to raise him. Soon the dirt was cleaned off the box, then a plank was raised. He remarked, "Daniel looks natural; seems like I've seen him before somewhere. Well, boys, I guess we will take Daniel with us. Come out of ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... he, "remains the property of our friend and neighbor, Miss Letty Lamson. Now, ladies an' gentlemen, here's a fire-set—tongs, shovel, an' andirons. That fire-set has been in this very settin'-room as long as I can remember. Summer-times the andirons have been trimmed up with sparrergrass an' the like o' that, an' winter-times they've been shined up complete an' the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... except when making public donations to institutions already bursting with wealth, when they know that their names and sums given will go the rounds of the public prints under the head of "munificent donations." How delicious is flattery, even when thrown down one's throat with a shovel! ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... are likely to be affected. Has labour reached its maximum efficiency? It has been shown by the application of what is called "scientific management," that the output of labour can be increased to a remarkable extent. For instance, instead of shovelling 16 tons a day, a man can shovel 59 tons; a man loading pig-iron increased his total load per day from 12-1/2 to 47-1/2 tons; the day's tale of bricks laid has been raised from 1000 to 2700. The list could be extended to cover operatives working at machines. In the endeavour ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... picked up his shovel and started off looking like a gnome in the moonlight under ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the moon, low down on the horizon, he hurried along the cloister to a room back of the church, which had been deserted and left to itself for many years, and was now almost in ruins. Going into one corner, Father Zalvidea, by the light of his lantern, found a small pick and shovel which, that afternoon, he had left there for this very purpose, and set to work to dig a hole in which to bury his treasure. Although the ground was hard, it required only a few minutes, after the cement floor was broken through, to accomplish this, for the box was small, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... working with the stick and hand alternately, and a hole as deep as the arm is easily made. In digging a large hole or well, the earth Must be loosened in precisely the same manner, handed up to the surface and carried off by means of a bucket or bag, in default of a shovel ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... shore; some of them known to the great lady, many of them unknown to her. The groups are forever shifting as their members rise and run down to the sea, or come back shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again upon the warm sand, roll in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort while their friends shovel it over them with their hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop to the sand, and idly watch women ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... meaning, that I was not quite up to the nine per week standard. I'll be honest with you and admit that I didn't lean against the pay-shed and weep. I still wanted to work, but I decided that I didn't want to start life at its pick-and-shovel end—if I could help it. So here I am, mother, asking you to give me a little real education—say as a mining engineer, ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... melancholy glee To think where once my fancy strayed, I muse on what the years may be Whose coming tales are all unsaid, Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid Within their shadowed niches, grow By grim degrees to pick and spade, As one ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... half an ounce of dry humus on an iron plate or fire-shovel and heat strongly in a stove. Note that it begins to smoke and a large part smoulders away to ashes; the mineral portion remains. Weigh the part left and find what fraction of the humus consisted ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... 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, receding; A canal appeared at ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ever see a steam shovel at work? I don't say you're any use to the world or have any right to live in it. But making a hundred men like you substitute for a steam shovel is plain damn silly. It's an ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... his business hours to crave for a further perusal of it during his leisure. He kicked it unceremoniously out of his way the first time he encountered it; and when Reginald saw it next it was in a mangled condition under the stairs in the suspicious company of the servant-girl's cinder-shovel. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... known—ah, if he had only known!—how easily he might repay that debt, and heal the deeper wound in Christie's heart. As it was, she could only say, "You are too kind," and begin to shovel tea into the pot, as Kitty came in, as rosy and fresh as the daisies ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... bang it against the front door. Nearly everybody had built barns to hold their presents, but pretty soon the barns overflowed, and then they used to let them lie out in the rain, or anywhere. Sometimes the police used to come and tell them to shovel their presents off the sidewalk, ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... fooling time away gold prospecting. Rode in and asked yonder eloquent autocrat for a contract, but he didn't see it. Said, and he explained it wasn't flattery, I looked too much of a gentleman, and in consequence if I liked I could shovel ballast at one dollar seventy-five daily. Now shoveling ballast grows monotonous, and one gets a confounded back-ache over it, so if you're agreeable I'll fling in a small sum and my ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... himself between him and the savage, to prevent the mischief. The fellow, being enraged the more at this, struck at the Spaniard with his hatchet, and swore he would serve him as he intended to serve the savage; which the Spaniard perceiving, avoided the blow, and with a shovel, which he had in his hand (for they were all working in the field about their corn land), knocked the brute down. Another of the Englishmen, running up at the same time to help his comrade, knocked the Spaniard down; and then two Spaniards more came in to help ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... iron. It was lighted by kerosene lamps which diffused an unpleasant odor, and fitted with rude tables and benches; but the meal laid out in it was bountiful and varied: pork, hard steak, fish from the lakes, potatoes, desiccated fruits, and tea. The shovel-gang paid six dollars a week for their board and got good value. As usual, most of them were satisfied in fifteen minutes, for in the West the rank and file eat with determined haste, and when they trooped out Prescott went back with his new ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... of your d—d sly ones,' said the first speaker dubiously. 'Means to shovel it in ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain; brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of a pick and shovel. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Circassians, Montenegrins, Afghans, and those Arabs among whom Urquhart finely said that peace could not be purchased by victory. Where destined to appear at all, it is likely to be developed in extreme youth, which explains such instances as the gamins de Paris, and that of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who in boyhood conveyed a dispatch during a naval engagement, swimming through double lines of fire. Indeed, among heroic races, young soldiers are preferable for daring; such, at least, is the testimony of the highest authorities, as Ney and Wellington. "I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... just ready. Lieutenant E.D. Anderson (10th Cavalry) gave me two and one-half hardtacks from his supply, which he carried in his bosom. I was soon down for a little rest; all desultory firing had ceased; the pick and the shovel were the only things to disturb the quietude of that anxious night. Had been down but a short time when aroused by one of the Rough Riders, who had some rice and meat in an ammunition box which he brought from the captured blockhouse. The meat was undoubtedly mule, as ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... 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, were there for ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... which had been christened but a short time before, New Constantinople. Here and there tiny wounds had been gouged into the ribs of the mountain walls, and the miners were pecking away with pick and shovel, deepening the hurts in their quest for the yellow atoms or dark ore which had been the means of bringing every man thousands of miles to ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... ran home, put his spelling-book on the shelf in his little room, took out his shovel from the box where he kept his playthings, and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... themselves in mourning. Authority of old men. Native dogs. Females carrying children. Weapons. Spear. Woomera. Boomerang. Its probable origin. Shield or Hieleman. Skill in approaching the kangaroo. Modes of cooking. Opossum. Singeing. Vegetable food. The shovel. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... 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 Lincoln government will have us in the dust in less than two months. I'll not let a man of you ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... struck pay dirt at Dynamite! Chunks of sylvanite that sweat gold in the fire. Assay thirty thousand dollars a ton. Whole streaks of it. Vein's twelve foot wide. The whole town's stampedin' by way of White Cliff Canyon. I'm goin'. Got a pick an' shovel in the car. Aunt Mirandy, she was bound we'd come this way. Mebbe we can pack you all in. But you got to hurry or they'll swarm over Dynamite like flies on a chunk ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... kitten, like popped corn from a shovel, glared over the desk in the nightcap and black apron, leaped down, and flew, all dripping with ink, down the aisle, out of the door, and bouncing downstairs like an ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... separation that it cannot trust that any associations will be evoked by an unemphasised appeal? Mr Masefield, in his fervour to grasp at that which for all his love is still alien to him, seems almost to shovel English mud into his pages; he cannot (and rightly cannot) persuade himself that the scent of the mud will be there otherwise. For the same reason he must make his heroes like himself. Here, for example, is ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the cottage of the gamekeeper. At that moment the good-wife was about putting her bread in the fire, and Gustavus was standing by the hearth in his peasant's dress, warming himself. The men who entered inquired for the fugitive, but before answering the woman raised her bread shovel and struck Gustavus hastily ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... hollow out a receptacle for the body of the one who falls. When this work is completed, we will take to our swords and fight to the death, and the one who can keep his feet shall finish his fallen adversary, drag his body to the hole, and shovel the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... palaces they were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were figures in it that had made it famous—men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the barbaric caprices of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... a more patient spirit of investigation, amid the drudgery and bustle of common life, than was ever yet employed, or ever needed, in ransacking the earth for gems and gold, or the deep sea for pearls. Would you shovel diamonds and rubies, or turn up "as it were fire," you have but to dig into and sift the rubbish that lies heaped up in your very streets—or to drive the ploughshare through the busiest places ever trodden by the multitude. You need not blast the mountains, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... back and wanted to know what I was doing there, I told him we'd attached his train. 'Don't you try to serve no papers on me,' he sung out, 'or I'll split your head.' 'There's no papers about this job,' said I. 'We've attached it to the track,' At that he dropped the fire shovel and pulled open the throttle. The drivers spun around all right, but the train never ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... woman,' said Knight, as they hurried back, 'and I think we two are enough to extricate her. Do you know of a shovel?' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... and the Solway. No one who loves mountains would lose a step of the approach, from these distances, on either side. But the stupid herds of modern tourists let themselves be emptied, like coals from a sack, at Windermere and Keswick. Having got there, what the new railway has to do is to shovel those who have come to Keswick to Windermere, and to shovel those who have come to Windermere to Keswick. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of men, both rosy skinned and hairy, at work on a gigantic excavation project. Great power shovels scooped load after load of earth. But most of the work was being done by the men who labored with primitive pick and shovel. ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... thy feate interrd is here A native born in Oxfordsheere, First, Life and Learning Oxford gaue; Surry to him his death, his graue. He once a HILL was, fresh and GREENE; Now wither'd is not to bee seene. Earth in Earth shovel'd up is shut, A HILL into a Hole is put. But darkesome earth by powre divine Bright at last as ye ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... out corn ground with a single-shovel plough, and took great pride in marking out a straight furrow across the field. There was one man in the neighborhood who was the champion in this art, and I wondered how he could do it. So I set about watching him to try to learn his art. At either end of the field ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the north wind howls at the mouth of the dark valley and sends the snow awhirl. The rest is occupied by the hearth and its accessories: the three-legged stools; the salt box, hanging against the wall to keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel which it takes two hands to wield; lastly, the bellows similar to those with which I used to blow out my cheeks in grandfather's house. They consist of a mighty branch of pine, hollowed throughout its length with a red-hot iron. By means of this channel, one's breath is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... older trees. It is a good plan to plow the orchard in fall where possible, always turning the furrows toward the trees, leaving the dead furrows as drainage ditches between the rows. At Beechwood Farm we have always banked the trees with earth in the fall, using a shovel. This not only firms the soil about the tree, holding it straight and strong through the winter, but it affords good protection against rodents, especially mice. Where rabbits are prevalent it is well to place a fine mesh wire netting around ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... knew what it meant to get any of that acid on you, or on any of the things about you. I used to work in the chemical plant where they made the stuff—that was after I left the circus. Well, it can't do any harm now," he said as he got a shovel and covered with clean earth the bits of broken glass and the still fuming ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... in the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of the swamp. I walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound, the tools, and glancing continually behind me, lest we should be spied upon and followed. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Dicky's suggestion, they went out and made a search for some rude instrument wherewith to dig a grave. They found a broken shovel and a dull adze-like implement. The grave prepared, and dusk having come, Bob was struck with the idea that they had ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... Tom, in amazement. Then he laughed as he reverted to his father's efforts at correct pronunciation, and continued his story. Suddenly he was startled by seeing his mother snatch a stump of a fire-shovel from the hearth and brandish it over ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... spoon was probably suggested by the ladle, a form of implement employed alike by the baker and the cook; for the early tool which we see in the hands of the operative in the oven more nearly resembles in the bowl a spoon than a shovel. In India nowadays they have ladles, but not spoons. The universality of broths and semi-liquid substances, as well as the commencement of a taste for learned gravies, prompted a recourse to new expedients for communicating between the platter and ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... of a little bundle of birchen twigs, bound together with a small cord, was generally suspended on a nail against the wall in the kitchen, and was as much a part of the necessary furniture as the crane that hung in the fireplace or the shovel and tongs. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... the atmosphere in which she lives and moves and has her being. If it weren't for her father's money, she would be—well, it is rather hard to say just what she would be. But she always makes me think of the bonanza people—the pick and shovel one day and a million the next. I believe she is a frank little savage, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... shovel struck something hard, something which was so much heavier than ordinary stone, and that had a peculiar ring when struck ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... are beginning their activity with plough, shovel, rake, breaking the firm grip of grim winter upon the Earth, so that the mild spring warmth may penetrate her breast and coax into growth and maturity the seeds lying ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... since others have gone before us. All that we have to do is simply to follow the beaten path. Nature has conveniently left narrow shelves, crevices, and less precipitous slopes here and there, which need only the application of the pick and shovel to be made passable even for pack animals. Where the trail winds into shady recesses, we find stunted fir and pine trees clinging to the crevices and stretching their roots down into the waste rock collected ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... fat white chin, a bland bagginess in his unwhiskered cheeks, a reverent roughness about his eyebrows and a fullness in his lower eyelids, which raised him far higher, physiognomically speaking, in the social scale, than my old prison acquaintance. Put a shovel-hat on Gentleman Jones, and the effect would only have been eccentric; put the same covering on the head of Doctor Dulcifer, and the effect ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... his face puckered up, was wandering aimlessly, shovel in hand, in the vicinity of the burned barn, engaged in burying his dead cattle. He had relapsed as to his clothing, and was clad once more in his ancient nether garments. His arms were bare, his brick-red shoulders showed above ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... finishing, by fitting the last block or keystone very nicely in the centre, dropping it into its place from the outside, though it is still done by the man within. The people outside are in the meantime occupied in throwing up snow with the pŏoāllĕrāy, or snow-shovel, and in stuffing in little wedges of snow where ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... of all. He was a little man, all muscles and hands and feet, with a gray-red, stubbly beard. He was too light for the work, which would have glutted the capacity of a steam shovel. ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... shovel and tongs To each other belongs, And the kettle sings songs Full of family glee, While alone with your cup, Like a hermit you sup, Och ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Now you are here," said the patient, "I shall be obliged to you, Sir Richard, if you will tell me how I must live, what I may eat, and what not."—"My directions as to that point," replied Sir Richard, "will be few and simple. You must not eat the poker, shovel, or tongs, for they are hard of digestion; nor the bellows, because they are windy; but any thing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... dry, well-drained upland only. All require thorough preparation of the soil to insure good crops. The work first necessary for this crop is to burn a sufficiency of plant land. To prepare the land for transplanting, put the land in full tilth, then mark off with a shovel, plow furrows three feet to three feet four inches apart, and into these furrows sow the fertilizers; then with turning plows, bed the land on these furrows, and to facilitate the hilling, cross these beds three feet apart with furrows ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the burrowers were using to free it. Intrigued by that, Shann went back to the waterline, secured one of the lengths he had been trying to weave into his failures, and returned to use it as a makeshift shovel. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... He sorted out a shovel and pick, made Texas Pete carry them right along the trail a quarter, and started him to diggin' ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... man got down from his box and made room for Ford. "I'll be pilin' 'em in the ditch somewhere, as sure as my name's Bill Hector," he said. "But we'll go, all the same, if he says so. I've pulled Mr. Colbrith before. Down with you, Jimmy Shovel, and set the switch ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... a pick an' shovel with me an' root up that old blackfellow," mused the shepherd, evidently following up a recent train of thought; "I reckon it'll do now. I'll put ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... discharge their affluence without taste or conduct, through every channel of the most absurd extravagance; and all of them hurry to Bath, because here, without any further qualification, they can mingle with the princes and nobles of the land. Even the wives and daughters of low tradesmen, who, like shovel-nosed sharks, prey upon the blubber of those uncouth whales of fortune, are infected with the same rage of displaying their importance; and the slightest indisposition serves them for a pretext to insist upon being conveyed to Bath, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... countries." The women wore large, flat, straw hats, with a small rose at the bottom of a shallow crown; while their throats were covered, sometimes up to the mouth, with black, silk cravats. Their hair was platted, hanging down in two equal divisions. The face appeared to be flat. The men wore shovel hats, of which the front part projected to a considerable distance; and the perpetually recurring response of "yaw yaw"—left it beyond all doubt that we had taken leave of the language of "the polite nation." At length we reached Saverne, and changed horses. This town is large and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... cross; shrapnel and common shell were fired. It was considered absolutely necessary to cast up a parapet as a protection from the shot and shell fire, and we all threw off our coats, and with pick and shovel worked away until about midnight ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... as he looked 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
... assault upon the Harris pantry) One tent One duffel bag with cooking set Part of a vacuum cleaner One scout belt axe One Thanksgiving horn One automobile siren horn. One lantern Two long clothesline supporters A towel-rack that opened like a fan A skein of clothesline A small kitchen-range shovel Two boxes filled with canned goods One box filled with loose edibles One ice ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... manure from the barn yard and stable, on what I considered about an average quality of the land. On the 12th of the 9th month, (September,) I sowed seven bushels of wheat on this part of the ground and plowed the manure and wheat in together with the double shovel plow—very soon after the balance was sowed with 270 pounds of good African guano per acre, for which I paid $40 per ton, and plowed this in with the wheat, immediately after sowing, in the same manner as the other. During the succeeding winter and spring, the appearance ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... velvet coat with a sable collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... creeks and see the hills denuded of their timber, the stream-beds punched with innumerable holes, filled up or filling up, the cabins and sluice-boxes rotting into the moss, here and there a broken pick and shovel, here and there a rusting boiler, and take notice that this region ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... walked into a vast hall between two long rows of Galla spearmen, 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 ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... interrupted his mother's voice with that muffled effect which is caused by a skirt being slipped over the head, "and I gave it. Wear a white duck sailor suit with blue anchors and carry a red tin pail and a shovel, if you want to look young. Only get into it in a jiffy, Son, because breakfast will be ready in ten minutes. I can tell by the way Annie's crashing the cups. So step lively if you want to pay your ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... at them angrily and the spiteful crack of the rifles could be heard now and then above the din of the cannonade. Two hundred yards from the enemy's positions they flung themselves down upon the ground and began digging furiously. Every man had a shovel in his equipment and he made ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... ever see such frights as poor Mrs. Feathertop has got?" said Dame Scratchard. "I knew what would come of her family—all deformed, and with a dreadful sort of madness, which makes them love to shovel mud with ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... eyes twinkled with triumph as he got slowly up and led the way to his tool-shed, where he reached down the large fumigating bellows, and in the hollow made for the purpose he put in some hot cinders, which Harry fetched in a shovel from the kitchen, and then on them a lump of brimstone, and closed the nozzle over all; but not so quickly but that a puff or two of the penetrating fumes escaped, and made the boys' eyes water, and old Sam cough and choke most terribly ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... although discs of lead are the best because the heaviest. Your pusher should be a little tool made especially, like the illustration, about a foot long, and anybody with a jack-knife can whittle a satisfactory "shovel" as ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... have they to get into my bed, ma'am? So then my man looked nearer, and he said, 'Sir, why, here's your night-cap and here's the pillow!—and here's a great, large lump of leather!' 'Shovel it all out!' says I. 'Sir,' says he, 'It's Madame Schwellenberg's! here's her name on it.' 'Well, then,' says I, 'sell it, to-morrow, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... possessed himself of a grub-hoe, which is a pick with an adz-shaped blade with an ax and shovel; also he returned with the girls to the boulder. For an hour or two he toiled hard, grubbing out hundredweights of soil and gravel from round about the rock. Then cutting a young fir he inserted the butt of it as a lever, and spent another thirty minutes focusing his full strength on the opposite ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... [1475] Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument is thus mentioned by Addison in The Spectator, No. 26:—'It has very often given me great offence; instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... get all his coveted materials and set to work at last with fire and melting pot—what he produces after all the talk of him and the like of him; why, you get pulvis et cinis—a man at the mercy of the tongs and shovel." In later life, however, Browning spoke of Wordsworth in a different tone. In a letter to Mr. Grosart, written Feb. 24, 1875, he said, "I have been asked the question you now address me with, and as duly answered, I can't remember how ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... seemed that he couldn't get up again, but now he had found the papers he must. He, crawled to his knees, and felt around, then turned his light on. This was strange! A heap of coal out in the middle of the floor, almost a foot from the rest! A rusty shovel lay beside it, a chisel and a big stone. Ah! The tapping! He got up forgetting his pain and began to kick away the coal, turning the flash light down. Yes, there was a crack in the cement, a loose piece. He could almost lift it with his foot. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... tranquil happiness, which comforted his daughter with the feeling of duty prosperously fulfilled. To make this dear old man happy, to be his companion and friend, to share in his rides and rambles, and of an evening to play the games he loved on the old shovel-board in the hall, or an old-fashioned game at cards, or backgammon beside the fire in the panelled parlour, reconciled her to the melancholy of an existence from which hope had vanished like a light extinguished. It seemed to her as if she had dropped back into the old life ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... in number,) who, seeing the troops arrive in disorder, thought it was the enemy. Then the corps of incendiaries got to work. They had broad belts with the words "Gott mit uns," and their equipment consisted of a hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver. Fires blazed up in the direction of the Law Courts, St. Martin's Barracks, and later in the Place de la Station. Meanwhile an incessant fusillade was kept up on the windows of the houses. In their efforts to escape ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... nephew of Sir Roderick Newton, a bright young Hebrew of the graver type, and a couple of dissenting ministers in high collars and hats that stopped halfway between the bowler of this world and the shovel-hat of heaven. There was also a young solicitor from Lurky done in the horsey style, and there was a very little nervous man with a high brow and a face contracting below as though the jawbones and teeth had been taken out ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... he crossed over to his abandoned claim, saw him gather his few mining utensils, strap his blanket over his back, lift his hat on his long-handled shovel as a token of farewell, and then stride light-heartedly ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... Sun, that she would rise before him the next morning. And so she did, and had time to shear six lambs before the Sun had left his couch beneath the ocean. And after this she swept up the floor of the stable with a birch broom, and collecting the sweepings on a copper shovel, she carried them to the meadow near the seashore. There she heard the sound of some one weeping, and hastening back she told ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... modern sailor faces death soberly and decently in forms far more terrible than were ever dreamt of by his forefathers. When the Calliope steamed out of Apia Harbour in the hurricane of March, 1889, the youngest grimy coal-trimmer, whose sole duty it was to silently shovel coal, even though his last moment came to him while doing it, never once asked if the ship was making way. All hands in this department were on duty for sixteen hours, and during that time no sound was heard, save the ring of the shovels firing the boilers, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... entertained thoughts of digging pits, and covering them over with small branches of trees, for the purpose of taking hogs or deer; but I wanted a shovel and every substitute for the purpose, and I was soon convinced that my hands were insufficient to make a cavity deep enough to retain what should fall into it. Thus I was forced to rest satisfied with fruit, which was to be esteemed ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... again raised the copper cover from the brasier, and, picking up the shovel, she buried the live charcoal deep with ashes, and taking two bits of incense of Cambodia fragrant wood, she threw them over them. She then re-covered the brasier, and repairing to the back of the screen, she gave the lamp a thorough trimming to make it throw out more light; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "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 more reshpectable an' ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... of life, in transportation, in manufacturing, machinery has come in to replace the heavier and more mechanical portions of labor. The steam-shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... stream), with a space 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 ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... Charlestown road and took up a position on a shoulder of Bunker's Hill, which was known as Breed's Hill, just above the town of Charlestown. They reached this position at midnight. Each man carried a pick and shovel, and all night they worked vigorously in intrenching the position. Not a word was spoken, and the watch on board the men-of-war in the harbor were ignorant of what was going on so near at hand. At daybreak the alarm ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... like since the beginning of the world, what a subject of satisfaction and astonishment for us to see the two armies back again at the point from which they started, and the assailants reduced in self-defence to have recourse to the shovel ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mind, I really don't, Miss Middleton, I can sleep in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not going to be here, I'd just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my living some day. And why not a cabin-boy? Sir Cloudesley Shovel was no better. And I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned an admiral. So I shall go and ask him to take his money back, and if he asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I guessed that from what Dr. Corney said. I'm sure I know you're thinking what's manly. Fancy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and crop into a cab, with a short-handled shovel and a sharp-tongued old hand. It nigh breaks their backs, but they ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... and then round by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded with great nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the lay brother who was the porter, and of him he asked a place in the guest-house. Then the lay brother took a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way to a big and naked outhouse strewn with very dirty rushes; and lighted a rush-candle fixed between two of the stones of the wall, and set the glowing turf upon the hearth and gave him two unlighted sods and a wisp of straw, and showed him a blanket hanging ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... said Mr. Carter, "these red-hot coals have been changed a great deal by the heat. They have given up all their gas and tar, and are themselves no longer coal, but coke. We shovel out this coke and use it as fuel in the furnaces down below to help heat up the next lot. Then new coal is put into the retorts, and they are closed up with iron plates, like that one lying ready on ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no longer. He is Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star Chamber: a pair of bellows is hanging before him for the purse; Colonel Titus is walking with a fire shovel on his shoulder, to represent a mace; the king, himself a capital mimic, is splitting his sides with laughter; the courtiers are fairly in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king with his descriptions! 'Ipswich, for instance,' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton |
