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The road lay untouched until ten o'clock, when a selectman gave notice that it was an occasion for "breakin' out," by starting with his team, and gathering oxen by the way until a conquering procession ground through the drifts, the men shoveling at intervals where the snow lay deepest, the oxen walking swayingly, head to the earth, and the faint wreath of their breath ascending and cooling on the air.
One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the battery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock to powder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it to a creamy paste.
The following step was an exact determination of the most favorable rapidity and the most perfect movement of shoveling, the best distribution of pauses, and so on, and the final outcome was that only 140 men were needed where on the basis of the old plan about 500 laborers had been engaged.
He was thinking how many times he would ring the bell on the bob when he came to a street crossing. When the Bobbsey twins, little and big, came out of school the snow was coming down more thickly. The flakes were not so large, but there were more of them, and they blew here and there in the wind, drifting into piles that would make the shoveling off of walks hard the next day.
"I don't think I ever enjoyed a glass of wine so much, or," turning to Aunt Polly, "ever enjoyed a dinner so much," which statement completely mollified her feelings, which had been the least bit in the world "set edgeways." "Mebbe your app'tite's got somethin' to do with it," said David, shoveling a knife-load of good things into his mouth.
When he went downstairs Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth Avenue toward the Park. The snow had somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen's wagons were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter twilight; boys in woolen mufflers were shoveling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of color against the white street.
I shall never forget the Reverend Pubby's pained but fascinated expression as he sat at breakfast the next morning and watched thirty hungry savages shoveling plain, unvarnished grub into their faces. The breakfast couldn't have gone better if we had had a dress rehearsal. Our guest couldn't eat. He was afraid to talk.
He tried to frame some excuse to get the men away. His brain whirled; his mind was confused; his thoughts refused to be collected. And now, in the midst of this, the attention of all was attracted by a loud stern voice, which sounded from some one near. The priest looked around. The men stopped shoveling, and turned to see the cause of the noise.
Hundreds of agile, swarthy figures were busily boring, blasting, shoveling and digging for the new railway, which is to convey next season shoals of passengers and civilization, rightly or wrongly so called, into this great yet primitive artery of Southern Tyrol, the Pusterthal already forming, by means of the Ampezzo, a highway between Venice and the Brenner Pass.
Gangs of men, standing shoulder to shoulder, were at work along the chief streets, picking, shoveling, and disposing of the dirty blocks. Even then the snow seemed to be nearly a foot thick; but it was dirty, rough, half melted in some places, though hard as stone in others. The labor and cost of cleansing the city in this way must be very great.
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