"Shovelful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concluded, of not going to work at the proper time and with the proper ceremonials. The last attempt had been made by Cobus Quackenbos, who dug for a whole night, and met with incredible difficulty, for as fast as he threw one shovelful of earth out of the hole, two were thrown in by invisible hands. He succeeded so far, however, as to uncover an iron chest, when there was a terrible roaring, ramping, and raging of uncouth figures about the hole, and at ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... exclamation of disgust he threw out a last shovelful of sand. The edge of his spade struck on something that projected. He cleared away a little more sand, and there appeared a rounded ledge which seemed to be a cornice. Calling back the men, he pointed to it, ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... than anything else was to run up and down the gang-plank, carrying buckets of water to water the garden. She delighted in out-door work, and sometimes dug so vigorously in our garden that she brought up pieces of the deck-planking with every shovelful. ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... cross-sectioned both lines as I have, you wouldn't stumble over that," said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things he knew. "We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning to end. On the other hand, the Green Butte narrow gauge runs for seventy miles through the crookedest canyon a Rocky Mountain river ever got lost in. There is more heavy rock work to be done in that canyon than on our ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... But it would be but temporary. What profits a man to gain the world, if he lose his peace of mind? "What! I unhappy among all this kingly paraphernalia, and with a queen wife?" he would ask himself, going down into the basement to replenish the furnace. With every shovelful of coal he would curse himself for ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... for the Central Pacific the next year in Sacramento, and Governor Stanford dug up the first shovelful of earth. Then the work went steadily on, but it was hard to raise money. Stanford and his company carried the line forward as fast as possible. More land-grants were given, which doubled the company's holdings, and in '65 the road was fifty-five miles past Sacramento and had climbed ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... deal if we work long enough. Perhaps most of you have read of the little girl whose mother was presented with a ton of coal by a charitable neighbor. She took her little fire-shovel, and began to take up the coal, a shovelful at a time, and carry it into the cellar. A friend, who was passing by, said to the child, "Do you expect to get all that coal in with that little shovel?" "Yes, sir," said the little girl, dipping her shovel again into the ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Murphy was succinctly expressing just then to Mike, with an upward twinkle of his thick, convex glasses, and a contemptuous fling of his shovelful of dirt up over the rim of ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... and turning over the white sands with eager fingers, they found, to their great delight, other 15 stones even more valuable and beautiful than the first. Then they extended their search, and, so the Oriental story goes, "every shovelful of the old farm, as acre after acre was sifted over, revealed gems with which to decorate the crowns of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the room, reducing it to order with a practised hand. Toys were piled in a large basket, scraps tossed into the fire, sewing materials gathered together and put out of sight, the rugs laid smoothly, the window-shades drawn. Anne "brushed up" the floor, pushed chairs against the wall, put a shovelful of coals on the fire, and finally took her rocker at the hearth, and sat with Virginia in her arms, and Diego beside her, while two silver bowls of bread and milk were finished ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... meant for men like you and me," he said. "Lord, how I would appreciate one, though—anything with a bit of grass in the yard and a shovelful of dirt—enough to grow some damn flower, you know.... Did you smell the posies in the square to-night?... Something of that kind,... anything, Scarlett—anything that can be called a ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... pit of the engine-cab the fireman, a great shovel in his hands, stood ready to feed the ravenous fires. Every minute or two he pulled the chain and yanked the furnace door open to throw in the coal, shutting the door again after each shovelful, to ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... Christmas day. The Dutchmen landed, bringing on shore with them three beautiful wreaths, thus manifesting their sympathy and respect. At the graveside many of them begged to be allowed to throw in the grave a shovelful of earth, a still further proof, I take it, of their kindly feeling toward the 'Emerald's' crew in ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... of a buzz, for every shovelful I threw out I seemed to see your white gal's face staring at me and asking of me to work harder, and I did ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... yet you do not spring at that man's throat and tear him limb from limb and make a meal of him! 'and, gazing at me, it licks its red lips; and I, laughing good-humouredly, rise and give the monster a shovelful of its proper food, which it ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, to give me great confidence in Joe's information. "And now," said Joe, "you ain't that strong yet, old chap, that you can take in more nor one additional shovelful to-day. Old Orlick he's been a bustin' ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... set to work, but every time he threw a shovelful out of the window, two shovelfuls came flying in to take its place. At last, tired and discouraged, he sat down ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... representative shovelful from each barrow-load as it is drawn from the coal pile or other source of supply, and store the samples in a cool place in a covered metal receptacle. When all the coal has thus been sampled, break up the lumps, thoroughly ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... upwards, we wish her a good morning. We say to her some particular words, words we use for her alone. Speaking to her our voices are somehow softer, and our jokes lighter. Everything is different for her. The baker takes out a shovelful of the brownest and reddest biscuits and throws them cleverly into ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... cold, for her clothes were torn, and she was herself so frail and delicate, that poor little Tiny was nearly frozen to death. It began to snow too; and the snow-flakes, as they fell upon her, were like a whole shovelful falling upon one of us, for we are tall, but she was only an inch high. Then she wrapped herself up in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and could not keep her warm, and she shivered with cold. Near the wood in which she had ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... to pick a fight with a little feller like that!" said the man, scooping up another shovelful of snow as he talked. "Why, if you were my boy, bread and water for a week would be too good for you. Take that, you little bully!" And down came another shower of snow on ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... the baker eight shillings for the bread he let us have while you were not working, and there's about twelve shillings owing for groceries. We'll have to pay them something on account. Then we want some more coal; there's only about a shovelful left, and—' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the water, and Briscoe placed a shovelful of gravelly sand in one, balancing it so that it was level on ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... been with him on many a gay excursion; there were those who had experienced his tenderness and loving-kindness. Old man Johnson, from over the river, who had walked eight painful miles, laid the first shovelful of earth into the grave. Patton McRae helped to cover his life-long friend. The negroes from the farm sobbed audibly as they worked. A tramp came into the graveyard from the road and asked whose buryin' it was. They ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... it was Allyn who most gloried in the confusion, and, from the first shovelful of earth to the last nail, he was always to be found in the thick of the fray. No matter how often the workmen picked him up and returned him to his mother, he invariably reappeared under their feet again, five minutes later, to be alternately a target for their profanity and a receptacle ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Saint Rochus They made him stand and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus-pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chanted, Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of churchyard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art dead, So in thy heart be penitent!" And forth from the chapel door he went Into disgrace and banishment, Clothed in a cloak of hodden gray, And hearing a wallet, and a bell, Whose ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... contact with the face of the cut; motion forward is now given to the shovel by the drum B and handle S, and at the same time it is raised by the chains o, o. These two motions can be so adjusted to each other, as to give movement to the shovel to enable it to loosen and scrape up a shovelful of earth. The handle S is now left free, and the shovel D is raised vertically by the chains o, o. The crane is now turned round, till the shovel comes over a rail car on a side track; the bottom of the shovel is ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... was even denied further shelter within its walls. But there were no regrets; his conscience still sustained him; he would live it all over again. In his determination to keep to his standards he had tried to stop a freshet with a shovelful of clay; that was all. It was a foolhardy attempt, no doubt, but he would have been heartily ashamed of himself if he had not made the effort. Wesley, of course, was not a very exciting place in which to spend the winter, but it was better than being under obligations to Talbot Rutter; and then ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... day, as I descended the shaft to the bed-rock, and piled up billets of wood, and kindled them, throwing out the muck, drifting with the streak, sending up nuggets to the surface, and dirt which often averaged ten dollars to the pan, I said to myself, 'Every shovelful you dig out, and every fire you light, and every billet you stack, is helping Spurling ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... mason's yard hard by, while the men were at breakfast, and brought away a shovelful of mortar. I took it into the outhouse, again shifted the cupboard, and plastered over the mouth of the oven behind. Simply pushing the cupboard back into its place, I waited for the next night that ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... at Hang Tree, because the people at the other end didn't know enough to do it, and hadn't any blacksmith. The benefit to our place was indisputable; it constituted the most seductive charm of the scheme. After six months of conscientious lying, the company was incorporated, and the first shovelful of alkali turned up and preserved in a museum, when suddenly the devil put it into the head of one of the Directors to inquire publicly what the road was designed to carry. It is needless to say the question was never satisfactorily answered, and the most daring enterprise ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the sound of sobbing, dominated again by a burst of the Marseillaise, then they stalled us like cattle in the cars. "Good night, Jules! may we meet soon again! Be good! Above all write to me!" They squeezed hands for a last time, the train whistled, we had left the station. We were a regular shovelful of fifty men in that box that rolled away with us. Some were weeping freely, jeered at by the others who, completely lost in drink, were sticking lighted candles into their provisions and bawling at the top of their voices: "Down with Badinguet! ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... and ready for seeding lay in the warm spring sunshine before noon. Jimmy raked the yard, and Dannie trimmed the gooseberries. Then he wheeled a barrel of swamp loam for a flower bed by the cabin wall, and listened intently between each shovelful he threw. He could not hear a sound. What was more, he could not bear it. He ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... pocketin'"—he straightened up his back and spoke reverently—"but pocketin' is the deepest science and the finest art. Delicate to a hair's-breadth, hand and eye true and steady as steel. When you've got to burn your pan blue-black twice a day, and out of a shovelful of gravel wash down to the one wee speck of flour gold,—why, that's washin', that's what it is. Tell you what, I'd sooner follow a ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London |
