"Digging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Monday morning, and we fell to digging as before. The old priest came out to look, and asked if we couldn't fix a post for him on the road up to the church. He needed it badly, that post; it had stood there before, but had got blown down; he used it for nailing up notices ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... beat her." Peletiah went over to his brother. "She beat Rachel." He kept repeating it, over and over; meanwhile Ezekiel moved about in confusion, digging the toes of his shoes into the gravel to ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... thing, Aby? For what have I been labouring? Have not we both spent our lives in contriving? How many charming thoughts have we had! What pleasure have we taken in planting and pulling up, digging and scattering, watering and draining, turfing ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... could not endure to be ordered about by any one settled his mind for him on that subject. He would have to get his adventures in other ways. He might emigrate to America. He had a cousin in New York and one in Chicago. He might go to Canada or Australia or South Africa ... digging for gold or diamonds! There was nothing in Ireland that attracted him ... all the desirable things were in distant places. Farming in Canada or Australia had a romantic attraction that was not to be found in farming in Ireland. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... these met with the most favourable reception, because in the novelty of an art, men are never difficult to please, before their taste has been made fastidious by choice and abundance. Must not this situation have had its influence on him before he learned to make higher demands on himself, and by digging deeper in his own mind, discovered the rich veins of noble metal that ran there? It is even highly probable that he must have made several failures before he succeeded in getting into the right path. Genius is in a certain ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... not complete. On a warm autumn day, when the white-coated gospodarz is ploughing on the hill with a pair of horses, you can see his wife and a girl, both in red petticoats, digging ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... estate, no one more servants; and yet you discharge their duties just as diligently as if there were none at all. However early in the morning I go out, and however late in the evening I return home, I see you either digging, or plowing, or doing something, in fact, in the fields. You take respite not an instant, and are quite regardless of yourself. I am very sure that this is not done for your amusement. But really I am vexed how ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... has been well written: "He who thinks that he is raising a mound may only in reality be digging a pit." In his continual search for a celestial portent among the solitudes Wong Ts'in had of late necessarily somewhat neglected his earthly (as it may thus be expressed) interests. In these emergencies certain of the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and more when he awoke, sat up and looked at his watch. Yawning and stretching at ease, he then became aware of a friar, with a brown shaven head and fine black beard, who was digging near by. This man, whose eyes had been upon him, waiting for recognition, immediately stopped his toil, struck his spade into the ground, and came towards him, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... ignorant of the language, and the interpreter who assists him knows nothing of the sea. He is at his wits' end for want of useful help in this strange place; he has no more knowledge of the world than that child who is digging holes with a stick there in the sand; and he carries all his money with him in circular notes. So much for the person. As for the risk, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the last hour of the afternoon session. This afternoon, on his way to the school, Mr. Simeon found that Agatha had indeed spoken truth. Five or six men were busy, digging, probing, sounding, around a large hole close under the northeast corner of the Lady Chapel. The foreman wore a grave face, and in answer to Mr. Simeon's inquiries allowed that the mischief was serious; so serious that the Dean and Chapter had sent for a diver ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Cat resolved to destroy by her arts this chance-made colony. She climbed to the nest of the Eagle, and said: "Destruction is preparing for you, and for me too. The Wild Sow, whom you may see daily digging up the earth, wishes to uproot the oak, that she may, on its fall, seize our families as food." Then she crept down to the cave of the Sow and said: "Your children are in great danger; for as soon as you shall go out with your ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... in May, Rosalie ran in from the kitchen, dish-cloth in hand, screaming out in the familiar fashion of a favorite servant: "Oh, madame, come quick! His reverence the Abbe is digging the ground down in ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... glorious ocean; never had she promenaded to the sounds of such exhilarating music. Her pretty little head was quite bewildered, though in the midst of all her delight she wished for Charles and Cary, and the children; there was such delicious bathing for the tiny ones; such digging with their little spades in the golden ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... fellow. And this Turk related to Messer Marco Polo how he had lived three years in that region on behalf of the Great Kaan, in order to procure those Salamanders for him.[NOTE 5] He said that the way they got them was by digging in that mountain till they found a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and when so treated it divides as it were into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded in a great copper mortar, and then washed, so as to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... recommenced his digging, and presently the hole was sufficiently large to admit the passage of his body, for Artie was of slender build, and advancement in the army had not puffed him up with pride. Undaunted by the rain, which covered the passageway with mud, he crawled ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... built into the wall and unlocked its iron door, "that we have been hunting for you for a year or more. We even sent a man to South Africa, and he tracked you to a spot in some mountains somewhere north of Delagoa Bay, where it was reported that you, with your brother Thomas and two friends, were digging for gold. He reached the spot on the night of the ninth of May ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... feeding the ewes or in doctoring the lambs, Snarley would say, "I don't know what 'the Shepherd' will think o' me. I'll hardly have the face to meet him next time." Once, on the other hand, when there had been a heavy snowfall towards the end of April, and desperate work in digging the flock out of a drift, he described the success of the operations to Mrs. Abel by saying, "It were a job as 'the Shepherd' himself might ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... may have been digging about a bit. And this certainly is a modern shelter trench. There are battles fought here, you know, whenever the generals are too lazy to go as far as the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... inseparable. But even if this last supposition is correct, its approval would not necessarily license the introduction of some of the characters. There is Israel Gow, who suffers from a peculiar mania which drives him to collect gold from places seemly and unseemly, even to the point of digging up a corpse in order to extract the gold filling from its teeth. There is the insane French Chief of Police, who commits a murder and attempts to disguise the body, and the nature of the crime, by substituting the head of a guillotined criminal for that ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... through the trees that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour. In one of the winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation. Mr. Holt rose from his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with a trowel. His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity at dinner the night before, was almost effusive—and a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were building tubby iron boats to go by steam. The train was beating the post-chaise with its satiny horses, the train that went by coal one dug from the ground. And even now de Lesseps and his men were digging night and day that the steamboat might push the proud clipper from the seas. Queer! Would there come a day when no topgallants drew? And the square-rigged ships would be like old crones gathering fagots on an October day. And what would become of the men who built ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Two men were digging a hole in the sand at the foot of the little redoubt. Murat watched them mechanically. When the two men had finished, they went into a neighbouring house and soon came out, bearing a corpse ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... rocks all the way from Rhine, thus far, are jets and spurts of basalt through irony sandstone, with a strip of coal or two northward, by the grace of God not worth digging for; at Frankenberg even a gold mine; also, by Heaven's mercy, poor of its ore; but wood and iron always to be had for the due trouble; and, of softer wealth above ground,—game, corn, fruit, flax, wine, wool, and hemp! Monastic care over all, in Fulda's and Walter's ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... its horrors, laconically described by General Sherman as hell, is not without its comedy. The marching through rain and mud; camping in marshes; digging in trenches, using the bayonet for a pick and the meat-ration can for a shovel; wading rivers by day and sleeping exposed to the elements by night, are all sandwiched with numerous mirthful incidents. Soldiers, above all people, have an eye for the ridiculous, ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... where, then, was he? No signs of any corpse were to be found, though one after another all the gentlemen descended to look, and Mrs. Oakshott was only withheld by her husband's urgent representations, and promise to superintend a diligent digging in the ground, so as to ascertain whether there had been a hasty ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in mineral form is to be found at various points on Luzon, and those engaged in working it, without the necessity of digging; collect the iron-bearing stones that constitute the upper stratum, these, when placed in fusion, generally yield about forty per cent clear metal. This is the case in the mountains of Angat, situated in the Province of Bulacan, and also in the vicinity ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... produce. Miss Carson had undertaken to supply several hotels and restaurants with eggs, fowls and vegetables, and so far had found the demand for her goods exceeded the supply. Labor was at present her greatest difficulty. Her students accomplished the light work, but could not do heavy digging. She managed to secure the occasional services of a farm hand, but with most able-bodied men at the war the problem of trenching or of making an asparagus bed ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... but by digging about him I might have at any rate deprived him of all faith in the religion of his tribe, which would have been half way towards making him a sincere Christian; and now all this was cut off from me, and I could ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... throne were digging the abyss in which the throne was to be swallowed up. Charles X., blinded, was already thinking of calling the Prince de Polignac to power, and regarded the Martignac ministry as a provisional expedient. To the despair of the members of this ministry, he maintained ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... escape. They feed during the night. When they leave the nest they go in procession, following each other with great precision. On the summits of the Maures, and on all the mountains bordering the Riviera, grows the heath Erica arborea, from whose roots pipes are made. The digging up and the preparing of these roots for the Paris manufacturers form now an important industry in the mountain villages. In England they are called briar-root pipes, briar being a corruption of the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... summer putting on the finishing touches, and did some very useful bits of training, including some fairly ambitious schemes of trench digging and planning, which proved invaluable later on, and which was a branch of knowledge in which many Yeomanries were conspicuously lacking. Also, by this time, a few courses of instruction had been started at the larger military centres, and we had several officers and men trained at these courses in ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... the regulation garb of convicts,—pantaloons of heavy mackinaw, one leg of yellow and the other of black,—were carrying long, rough boxes, while others were digging ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... stone door steps are also removed but generally no attempt is made to take along the dressed stone of the foundations. The cost of hauling to the new site is out of proportion to the advantage gained. Native stones uncovered in digging the new cellar are made reasonably square and used instead. Old houses antedating 1800 are not usually over twelve or sixteen inches above the level of the ground and so little new stone ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... for the scheme, and his appeal for funds was responded to well. The work was begun in the Autumn of 1910, and it was hoped that it would be finished before the Summer of 1911, but this was found impossible. The underlying foundation of peat was so deep that all hope of digging it up was abandoned. It was instead decided to heighten the general level of the ground by six feet, and to do so by filling in with earth and stone. The work was very laborious owing to the blasting operations that had to ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... it, and emptied it often upon the sofa, till she had done, when she was very well satisfied to find the number of measures amounted to so many as they did, and went to tell her husband, who had almost finished digging the hole. While Ali Baba was burying the gold, his wife, to show her exactness and diligence to her sister-in-law, carried the measure back again, but without taking notice that a piece of gold had stuck to the bottom. "Sister," said she, giving it to her again, "you see that I have not kept your ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... well-kept walks. Smoking as he strolled Volgin took his favourite path past the summer-house into the fields beyond. It was pleasant in the park, but it was still nicer in the fields. On the right some women who were digging potatoes formed a mass of bright red and white colour; on the left were wheat fields, meadows, and grazing cattle; and in the foreground, slightly to the right, were the dark, dark oaks of Littleports. Volgin took a deep breath, and felt glad that he was alive, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the matter of a woman the substance of a female plant, with many other such doltish dreams. They fable further and affirme that he who would take up a plant thereof must tie a dog thereunto to pull it up, which will give a great shreeke at the digging up, otherwise, if a man should do it, he should surely die in a short space after." This, with the addition that the plant is decidedly narcotic, will sufficiently explain all Shakespeare's references. Gerard, however, omits to ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... try alone since no one else will serve, and then I /know/—how I cannot say—that I shall be exposed to great danger. Yes, I think that I shall lose my mind once more and never find it again this side the grave. You would not have that happen to me, would you, just because you shrink from digging ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... mole, and his general habits are not unlike those of the mole. He is an underground-dweller, with enormous fore-paws, palm-shaped, upon which are five powerful claws. These he uses to great advantage in digging in the earth for insects and for building his home. He has a small snout, reminding one of that of a pig; while his piercing little eyes are deeply hidden in his fur. He is a native of Chile, and because of his shy nature and ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... Ohio, the Tennessee, the Missouri and the upper Mississippi abound in such dangerous places and these should be canalized. It is the improving of rivers in these ways, dredging harbors to make them safer, and digging canals to provide a short passage between two bodies of water, that constitute what is known as the Improvement of ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... riding past a high, steep bank, stopped opposite a hole in it, and said, "John, I saw a brock gang in there."—"Did ye," said John; "wull ye haud my horse, sir?"—"Certainly," said the laird, and away rushed John for a spade. After digging for half an hour, he came back, nigh speechless, to the laird, who had regarded him musingly. "I canna find him, sir," said John. "Deed," said the laird very coolly, "I wad ha' wondered if ye had, for it's ten years sin' I saw him gang ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... And better for him to do something abroad than digging at home; and in the army he might get on,—and ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... childhood. Most of the men supplied their own uniform and rifles and much barter went on in the hours after drill. The men made and sold shoes, clothes, and even arms. They were accustomed to farm life and good at digging and throwing up entrenchments. The colonial mode of waging war was, however, not that of Europe. To the regular soldier of the time even earth entrenchments seemed a sign of cowardice. The brave man would come out on the ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... city! Hello there, Molly! Got my coat and mittens ready? Well, you don't look as if the storm had kept you awake much. Give the father a kiss, lass, to sort of sweeten his breakfast. Are the Jays awake? Hunt them up a spade or a shovel and set them digging their neighbors out. And, Mary wife, if I were you I'd keep a pot of coffee on the range all day. There's maybe a poor teamster or huckster passing who'll be the better for a warm cup of drink, and the coffee'll keep him from thinking of ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... delivery from it, if ye will take it home unto you; but if ye will still continue in the ways of sin, without returning, know this, that ye are but multiplying those curses, platting many cords of your iniquities, to bind you in everlasting chains. Ye are but digging a pit for your souls, ye that sweat in your sins, and travel in them, and will not embrace this ransom offered. The key and lock of that pit is eternal despair. O consider how quickly your pleasures and gains will end, and spare some of your thoughts from present ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... document, the seventy-two exchange offices which surrounded the 'Mercato Nuovo'; the amount of coined money in circulation (two million golden florins); the then new industry of gold spinning; the silk wares; Filippo Brunellesco, then busy in digging classical architecture from its grave; and Leonardo Aretino, secretary of the republic, at work at the revival of ancient literature and eloquence; lastly, it speaks of the general prosperity of the city, then free from political conflicts, and of the good fortune of Italy, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... known when I was well off and they've known when they were well off." Mr. Swan said this in a somewhat pragmatical tone, and continued, "There's nothing but a long course of just dealing and respect o' both sides as can buy such digging as this here family ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... strange adventure in which I found myself the friend and confident agent of the Emperor. When he returned from Elba he refrained from digging up the papers until his position should be secure, and they still remained in the corner of the old pigeon-house after his exile to St Helena. It was at this time that he was desirous of getting them into ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are homologous. The whole subject is included under {434} the general name of Morphology. This is the most interesting department of natural history, and may be said to be its very soul. What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include similar bones, in the same relative positions? Geoffroy St. Hilaire has insisted strongly on the high importance of relative connexion in homologous ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... cried Raynal. "He is prejudiced. He has been digging a thundering long mine here, and now you are going to make his child useless. We none of us like that. But when he gets the colors in his hand, and the storming column at his back, his misgivings will all go to the wind, and the enemy ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... forward in the direction of the road. Mandy was obliged to close the door again and resume her place at the window. How her heart beat! How she watched the dog as he ploughed his way through the drifts? He must be near the place. Yes, he is scratching and digging down into the snow. Now the dark form appears once more. Yes, Hiram is on his feet again and man and dog resume their fight ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... cracked and seamed, and makes a brave imitation of red granite; but the clammy ooze, when the sea goes down, tells its nature only too plainly, and Sidmouth will never be a popular watering place for children, for there is no digging sand castles here, and a fall will stain light dresses and pinafores a ruddy hue, and the young labourers will look as if they had been at ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... again classified according to the manner in which, or the instruments with which they are wrought. There are sluice claims, hydraulic claims, tunnel claims, dry washing, dry digging, and knife claims. In 1849 and 1850, the main classification of the placers was into wet diggings and dry diggings, the former meaning mines in the bars and beds of rivers, and dry diggings were those in gullies and flats where ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... Black Tom was scarcely considered worth thinking about, he being too wild by half for a wild horse, and too faint-hearted for a grizzly bear. At one time, it was so far determined for him to play the part of a prairie-dog, that Austin set about digging a hole for him: before it was finished, however, the plan was abandoned; Brian and Basil both feeling positive that, let Austin dig a hole as deep as he would, Black Tom would never be persuaded to ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... than he I insisted upon using the hoe; but no! He was so pleased that he seemed to want to do all the digging himself. When a supply of Ginseng was obtained we went to the top of the ridge, where we found a considerable quantity of Seneca-Snake-Root, an article very much in demand ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... into a cavern which cavilers say was once a cistern. It is a chapel, now, however—the Chapel of St. Helena. It is fifty-one feet long by forty-three wide. In it is a marble chair which Helena used to sit in while she superintended her workmen when they were digging and delving for the True Cross. In this place is an altar dedicated to St. Dimas, the penitent thief. A new bronze statue is here—a statue of St. Helena. It reminded us of poor Maximilian, so lately shot. He presented it to this chapel when he was about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... absurd to suppose the widows in such cases capable of suffering as our women would under such circumstances. They are quite as callous and cruel as the men. Evidence is given in the Jackman book (149) that, like Indian women, they torture prisoners of war, breaking toes, fingers, and arms, digging out the eyes and filling the sockets with ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Broffin was digging in his pocket for a card. It was not often that he was constrained to introduce himself formally, and for an awkward second or two the search was unrewarded. When he finally found the bit of pasteboard he was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the desire to turn civil engineer just when he has got a magnificent opening in life as a doctor is merely the usual flightiness of young men, who do not see where their true advantages lie—and the conduct of the men in dying, after digging a canal is normal, and modern experiences support it, for men who dig canals down in West Africa die plentifully, be they black, white, or yellow; so you can't help believing in those men, although it is strange a black man should have been ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... but I will manure it without digging, and the grass will grow so rich to what it will outside of the inclosure. that they will suppose it has ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... was not you?" asked Misery, tugging out his hair, and digging his knees into the ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... the coast. Most of these trees stood back a little from the margin of high tide, reluctant to see themselves in the water, for fear of the fate of Narcissus. But where that clandestine boat had glided into gloom and greyness, a fosse of Nature's digging, deeply lined with wood and thicket, offered snug harbourage to craft ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... may be made by digging a trench about two feet long by eight inches in width and depth; the fires are made in the bottom of the trench, and the cooking utensils placed upon the top, where they receive all the heat. This plan is especially recommended for windy ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... family came home. As they drove into the yard, Mother spied her pansy bed and cried, "Somebody has been digging in my garden and has dug all my little ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for talk such as were rarely ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... I expected to find; that they were simply following a false lead, and in reality, going farther and farther from the vein every move they made. There was the original vein to start with, and they had struck a false lead close beside it, and were going down; digging down lower and lower, while the true vein was right over their heads, and those miners and that confounded expert that knew so much more than I did, didn't any of them know enough just to look up there and see it. Why, near the point where they had first ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... and barns were burning, sad to relate, my husband just then came through the woods, and being spied by the barbarians, they gave chase and soon overtook him. Alas! for what a fate was he reserved! Digging a deep pit, they tied his arms to his side and put him into it and then rammed and beat the earth all around his body up to his neck, his head only appearing above ground. They then scalped him and kindled a ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Divine exemption of them from the common troubles and cares of this life was intended as an opportunity of luxury and laziness: for certainly, there is a labour besides digging! and there is a true carefulness without following the plough, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... on another his wife hung a calendar with a picture of a girl in a wide-brimmed hat. The neighbours were helpful to them in building their 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- ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... depth, are usually aground, except at spring-tides, and the seaman thus succeeds in anchoring his vessel in 200 fm. water, without any other trouble than digging a hole in the iceberg, placing an anchor in it called an ice-anchor, which one man can lift, and, with a whale-line, his ship rides out under the lee of this natural breakwater, in severe gales, and often escapes being beset in a ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... the well-known aptitude shown by poodles for digging out truffles, an accomplishment of which I often read in my youth. If truffles, why ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... prayer that was half a petition for O'Neil's success and half an exceedingly full and frank confession of her love for him. Outside, beneath the glare of torches and hastily strung incandescents, a weary army toiled stubbornly, digging, gouging, chopping at the foot of the towering wall of timbers which stretched across the Salmon. In the north the aurora borealis played brilliantly as if to light a council ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... down the Tana to cross to the Ozy, and reach the sea by it, and thus avoid the very dangerous bar that blocks the mouth of the Tana. The canal before us had evidently been dug out by man at some remote period of the world's history, and the results of his digging still remained in the shape of the raised banks that had no doubt once formed towing-paths. Except here and there, where they had been hollowed out by the water or fallen in, these banks of stiff binding clay were at a uniform distance from each other, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Switzerland to the sea, with consequent impossibility of out-flanking, demonstrated by the Germans to their sorrow in repeated repulses of their drives to cut through to Calais, each side felt justified in replying to the artillery of the other by digging deeper and more permanently, with many feet of shelter overhead. This ended the effectiveness of shrapnel except for the repulse of attacks, and again the heavy guns swung into ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... thrasher and the robin chirped in the grove; sweet bluebird and pewee baby cries came from the shrubbery; the golden-wing leaned far out of his oaken walls, and called from morning to night. Hard-working parents rushed hither and thither, snatching, digging, or dragging their prey from every imaginable hiding-place. It was woful times in the insect world, so many new hungry mouths to be filled. All this life seemed to stir the young kings: they grew restless; they were late. Their three little heads, growing darker ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... to his feet he bethought himself of the knife and once more took it from the place where it was hidden. With that knife he began digging at the crack. He was compelled to stand in a cramped, crouching position, but he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... front of him, in the foam at the edge of the surf, was two ducks as dead as Nebuchadnezzar—two of Lonesome Huckleberries' best decoy ducks—ducks he'd tamed and trained, and thought more of than anything else in this world—except rum, maybe—and the rest of the flock was digging up the beach for home as if they'd been telegraped for, and squawking ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sent desolation to the hearts of some of the officers. For it meant that the whole force, every man, horse and gun had to turn out forthwith, in full marching order, and ready for action. After the first feverish digging out of accoutrements and tents, however, the men became hardened to these sudden alarums and excursions. They became a ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... functional origin, Gadaria being from gadar, a sheep, Dhangar from dhan or small-stock, the word signifying a flock of sheep or goats and also wealth; and Kuramwar from kurri, the Telugu word for sheep. Others belonging to this group are the digging and earth-working castes, the Beldars, Murhas, Nunias and so on, practically all derived from the indigenous tribes, who wander about seeking employment from the cultivators in the construction and repair of field embankments and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... continued digging until he had unearthed the chest. This also he dragged to the side of the corpse. Then he filled in the smaller hole below the grave, replaced the body and the earth around and above it, covered it over with underbrush, and returned ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and lying, and stealing. It seems a waste of time to try to justify our instinctive verdict, and the attempt would only be bewildering to most men. It is only when brought face to face with some alien code that we see the need of digging below intuition. A missionary to the South Seas may be confronted with men to whom the killing of other tribesmen and the accumulation of skulls is a glorious and honorable feat, or to whom skillful ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to St. John; with a lofty spire. The present incumbent is the Rev. —— Robinson. Near a mile distant there are still some remains of the monastery, and to the professed antiquary there is probably something deserving of his attention. In digging two holes to fix a gate, a short time since, there was found a considerable quantity of stained glass, in small fragments, some few of which are preserved, as are also some square tiles or quarries, about five ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... of Supplying Water. It was long ago discovered that, by digging pits or holes in the ground, the rain water, in its steady flow toward the streams and lakes, could be caught or trapped, and that if the pit were made deep enough, a sufficient amount would accumulate during the winter or spring to last well on into the summer, unless the season were ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... the morning, when the orderly rode into the little picnic camp, the girls were away. They were down by the waterfall digging ferns and mosses to take home. "We are thinking of breaking up camp this afternoon," Mrs. Walton told him. "The weather looks so threatening that I have sent for the wagonette to come for us, and I was about to send over to your camp to see if Hero had wandered back there. He has not ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Europe he drifted; and instantly and everywhere appeared the awful Yankee—shooting wells in Hungary, shooting craps in Monaco, digging antiques in Greece, digging tunnels in Servia,—everywhere the Yankee, drilling, bridging, constructing, exploring, pushing, arguing, quarrelling, insisting, telegraphing, gambling, touring, over-running older and better ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... they did not seem to be doing anything but holding a council. We made good use of this time by digging up the ground inside the barricade with our knives and throwing the loose earth around and over the mules, and we soon had a very respectable fortification. We were not troubled any more that day, but during the night the cunning rascals tried to burn us out by setting fire to the prairie. ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... determination, he went to bed, to awake in the morning filled with a desire to reach the mine, to claw at its vitals with the sharp-edged drills, to swing the heavy sledge until his shoulders and back ached, to send the roaring charges of dynamite digging deeper and deeper into that thinning vein. And Harry was beside him every step ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... hitherto kindly provided accommodation) and into billets. Training was naturally hurried. As soon as the companies could move correctly a series of battalion drills was carried out upon Port Meadow. This drill did a great deal to weld the Battalion together. The elements of digging were imparted by Colonel Waller behind the Headquarters at St. Cross Road, open order was practised on Denman's Farm, whilst exercises in the neighbourhood of Elsfield gave the officers some instruction in outpost duties and in the principles ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... colours—black, red, roan, piebald—as the ponies came on with what seemed an effect of a tossing sea of waving manes and tails, blending and composing with the deep sweeping feather trails of the grand war bonnets. Hands rose and fell with whips, and digging heels kept up the unison. Above the rushing of the hoofs there came forward now and then a keen ululation. Red-brown bodies, leaning, working up and down, rising and falling with the motion of the ponies, came into view, dozens ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... digging up the soil by hundreds, trotted towards these girls yet breathing heavily from the speed with which they had run, and looking up in their faces, grunted and squeaked without any apparent cause; and some of these swine told their wants, or affection, with ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Jones remembers the luminous grace and splendor of a Matilija poppy, which, rooted between two boulders, swayed gently in the white moonlight above a figure of dread. The figure, naked from the waist up, huddled upon the hard-baked mud, digging madly at the earth. A sharp exclamation broke from Average Jones. The digger half-rose, turned, collapsed to his knees, and pointed with bleeding fingers to his open mouth, in which the tongue ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... factories are not founded on them—in every reading-room hundreds of people (who has not seen them?), looking up inspirations in encyclopaedias, poring over poems for facts, looking in the clouds for seeds, digging in the ground for sunsets; and everywhere through all the world, the whole huddling, crowding mob of those who read, hastening on its endless paper-paved streets, from the pyramids of Egypt and the gates of Greece, to Pater Noster Row and the Old Corner Book Store—nearly all of them trying ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... century there was a general digging up of the bodies of the most celebrated Christians of former ages, to heal the diseases and strengthen the faith of the living; and Constantinople, which as the capital of the empire had been ornamented by the spoils of its subject provinces, had ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... were scarce, and the time came when there were none. Some days he did not eat. Hunger did not make him suffer. He killed a desert bird now and then, and once a wildcat crossing the valley. Eventually he felt his strength diminishing, and then he took to digging out the pack rats and cooking them. But these, too, were scarce. At length starvation faced Slone. But he knew he would not starve. Many times he had been within rifle shot of Wildfire. And the grim, forbidding ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... court because they dared not; that the alien troops left the capital because they were driven out by Chinese patriots; and that the Boxers inflicted crushing defeat upon their foes. During my visit in Tsing- tau, the Germans were digging sewers, broad and deep, with laterals to every house and public building, and many of the Chinese actually believed that these sewers were intended to be underground passageways, down which the foreigners could ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... arrived at Telloh in January, 1903, and one of his first acts was to shift the site of the mission's settlement from the bank of the Shatt el-Hai, where it had always been established in the time of M. de Sarzec, to the mounds where the actual digging took place. The Shatt el-Hai had been previously chosen as the site of the settlement to ensure a constant supply of water, and as it was more easily protected against attack by night. But the fact that it was an hour's ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... kinsfolk, although not quite so large. The iridescence of the plumage is somewhat different in the two species, but in both the golden eye-balls show white at a distance. When I first saw a couple of Brewer's blackbirds stalking featly about on a lawn at Manitou, digging worms and grubs out of the sod, I simply put them down in my note-book as bronzed or purple grackles—an error that had to be corrected afterwards, on more careful examination. The mistake shows how close is the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... nature of her child; not from any confession of Clare's, but from signs a mother can read when, her eyes are not resolutely shut. She saw with alarm and anguish that Clare had fallen into the pit she had been digging for her so laboriously. In vain she entreated the baronet to break the disgraceful, and, as she said, illegal alliance his son had contracted. Sir Austin would not even stop the little pension to poor Berry. "At least you will do that, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was again driven in. Again the plain contact with some hard substance. The digging was now feverish, and when the broken parts were cleared away, a small metallic box, about twelve inches square across the top, and about ten inches ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... be said in favor of athletics. A story is told of a gentleman who visited his nephew in a large private school. He went around the athletic field and asked the trainers about his relative. Then the uncle found the boy in his room, digging. He said, "What are you doing here? None of the trainers see anything of you. What is the trouble?" The student answered, "I have been sick and I have been working hard to catch up." "Get out of this," ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... countenances, the renouncement of all social ties, and all instructive or entertaining literature. In short, he advocated sleeping all together on the bare floor of an ice-cold dormitory, the continual contemplation of death, the dreadful obligation of digging, while alive, one's own grave every day with one's own hands, and thus, in imagination, burying oneself therein before being at rest there ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... mansion was not a mile from the Doctor's; but it never occurred to him to think of walking to see any of his patients' families, if he had any professional object in his visit. Whenever the narrow sulky turned in at a gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing corn, or swishing through the grass with his scythe in wave-like crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheel-barrow, or trudging lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated, short-legged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Better come into the garden. You would be better employed examining the garden than digging around here. I ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... dry; windmills, to raise water for artificial irrigation of small patches, seen all over the landscape, while we travel through square miles of hot dust, where they tell us, and truly that in winter and early spring we should be up to our knees in flowers; a country, too, where surface gold-digging is so common and unnoticed that the large, six-horse stage-coach, in which I travelled from Stockton to Hornitos, turned off in the high road for a Chinaman, who, with his pan and washer, was working up a hole which an American had abandoned, but where the minute and patient industry ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... he was not disposed, at the moment, to dwell on them or on the past. His heart (I soon discovered) was aflame with desire to join the rush of gold-seekers. "I wish you would grubstake me," he timidly suggested. "I'd like to try my hand at digging gold in ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of the nest, excepting on particular occasions, such as the migrations of the ants, and when one of the working columns or nests is attacked, they then come stalking up, and attack the enemy with their strong jaws. Sometimes, when digging into the burrows, one of these giants has unperceived climbed up my dress, and the first intimation of his presence has been the burying of his jaws in my neck, from which he would not fail to draw blood. The ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the doctor, laying his hand kindly upon her shoulder,—"you'll want something fresh again presently. What mine of profundity are you digging ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... it's just occurred to me, Mr. Carve hasn't been digging or gardening or anything, I suppose, and then ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... [Arabic], which comes from the Djebel Haouran. In winter time the Hadjis were often embarrassed by it. Djezzar Pasha ordered a bridge to be built over it. The ground is a fine gravel; even in summer time, when the Wady is dry, water is found every where underground by digging to the depth of two or three ells. At three hours is the village El Remtha [Arabic], inhabited by Fellahs, who have about ten cisterns of rain-water, and a small Birket in the neighbourhood of the village. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... myself inquiring for the New North Cemetery, and after a time I stood looking through the bars of tall iron gates at long lines of gravestones and dreary hillocks before me. Then I went in, walking straight over the grass towards a gravedigger digging in the sunshine. He looked at me, resting his foot ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... wantonness. The baby-boy had varied the monotony of his solitary sports by picking little bits out of it. There was a green door opening into this walled forecourt or garden, but the door was not fastened, so Ida pushed it open and went in. The baby-boy, now a sturdy vagabond of five years old, was digging an empty flower-bed. He caught sight of his sister, and galloped off into the house before she could take him in her arms, shouting, 'Maman, une dame—une dame! lady, lady, lady!' exercising his lungs upon both those languages which were ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the village or town we passed the union workhouse, where the paupers were busy digging up potatoes in the garden, and a short distance farther on we passed a number of boys with an elderly man in charge of them, who informed us they came from the "institute," meaning the workhouse we had just seen, and that he took them out for a walk once every week. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... afford room for the snow which Frank dug from the open doorway and shovelled into the centre of the room. As only one at a time could work in the narrow doorway, the three men wrought with the shovel by turns; and while one was digging the tunnel, the other two piled the debris in a compact mound beside the stove. As no fire had yet been kindled, the snow, of course, did not melt, but remained crisp and dry upon the floor. Meanwhile Edith looked on with deep interest, and ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... subject in his letter to his sister, though he was accustomed to make her his confidant in his ecclesiastical proceedings; he only speaks of his heart having burnt within him in presage of what was to happen. The digging commenced, and in due time two skeletons were discovered, of great size, perfect, and disposed in an orderly way; the head of each, however, separated from the body, and a quantity of blood about. That they were the remains of martyrs, none ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... think of their clothes before playing with the dogs, digging in the sand, helping the stableman, working in the shed, building a bridge, or weeding the garden, never get half their legitimate enjoyment out of life. And unhappy fate, do not many of us have to bring ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... sat looking down at the bright creature who had done her this worst, last wrong which one woman can do to another. This passionate heart, which ached with such cruel pain, was prone to evil, and to-day the scorpion Jealousy was digging his sharp tooth into its very core. It was not possible for Diana Paget to feel kindly disposed towards the girl whose unconscious hand had shattered the airy castle of her dreams. Was it not a hard thing that the bright creature, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... labour, which although, usually speaking, it was neither manufacturing nor trading, was yet necessary in the successful prosecution of some branch of trade or manufactures, such as mining, road-making, canal-digging, inland navigation, &c." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... turned out to have once been the star pianist in some dance-hall on the Bowery. And the scribe remarks, parenthetically and in all seriousness, that the way that lank, pin-headed young man revived the soul of that old, worn-out harpischord, digging into its ribs, kicking at its knees with both feet, hand-massaging every one of the keys up, down, and crossways, until the ancient fossil fairly rattled itself loose with the joy of being alive once more, was altogether the most astounding miracle he has ever had to record. And Pestler with ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... who perseveres is always rewarded, and the fourth play in our volume really repays us for pushing on so far. Here is a piece of wild and ghostly poetry that is well worth digging out of the Duke of ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... flagstaff on which a flag fluttered on Sundays—they built it in about three months, and then all the winter they were planting big trees, and when spring came and everything began to be green there were already avenues to the new house, a gardener and two labourers in white aprons were digging near it, there was a little fountain, and a globe of looking-glass flashed so brilliantly that it was painful to look at. The house had already been named the ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ghost and I,—until we came to a broken field where there was quarrying and digging going on,—our old base-ball ground, hard by the burial-place. There I paused; and if any thoughtful boy who loves to tread in the footsteps that another has sown with memories of the time when he was young shall follow my ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fields of pasture, corn, vines, and vegetables, but by the combinations and contrasts of nature and of art, and the occupations of rural and commercial industry. Factories and furnaces were seen rising amidst barns and sheep-cotes, peasants were digging, and ploughs gliding amidst forges and foundries; verdant slopes and graceful clumps of trees were scattered amidst the black and ugly mouths of exhausted coal-pits; and the gentle murmur of the stream was subdued by the loud rattle of the loom. Sometimes M. —— ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... to dispose of the body secretly and not tell any one of their part in the sad business. But how to do it was the question that troubled them. They dared not bury it, for fresh digging in that small city yard would arouse suspicion at once. Bessie suggested that they should carry it far off in the night and throw it away. This plan seemed the best they could think of, till Helen said they would not be allowed to go out in the city ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... curiosity. He skulked from tree to tree with the light step and prowling sagacity of an Indian bush-fighter; and before any of his men had approached so near as to descry them, he saw, by the lantern which was placed on the ground, two men, who had been engaged in digging what seemed to be an ill-made grave. Near them lay extended something wrapped in a deer's hide, which greatly resembled the dead body of a man. They spoke together in a low voice, yet so that their dangerous auditor could perfectly overhear what ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... says Ameghino, "in the reddish agglomerate of the original. soil lay charcoal cinders, burnt and split bones, and flints. Digging beneath this, a flint implement was found, with some long split llama and stag bones, which had evidently been handled by man, with some toxodon and mylodon teeth." Fig. 49 represents the now extinct mylodon. Some time afterwards, the discovery of another carapace under similar conditions ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... A-bal-ka's underground dwelling. The way he found out was this: Uncle Mark and Sam the hired man were digging stones on the hillside in the edge of the woods for the foundations of a new barn. While at this work, they uncovered the home of one of A-bal-ka's brothers. It was made up of a long, winding passageway, ending in a sleeping ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... All three of these devoted men wish that our people should prepare the way, and thus have the stream of blessing flow to their hearts and homes. The District Missionaries also are needing help. Let us make it easier work for them, by opening the way. We know digging means work, and some Christians are so very respectable, they would feel insulted if God asked them to become one of His navvies. On the other hand, there are thousands of our people who would be glad to help if only some one would ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... of Chile, within the Cordillera, old Indian houses are said to be especially numerous: by digging amongst the ruins, bits of woollen articles, instruments of precious metals, and heads of Indian corn, are not unfrequently discovered: an arrow-head made of agate, and of precisely the same form with those now used in Tierra del Fuego, was given me. I am aware that ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... than to the good the hidden treasures which are discovered present themselves; and this is so evident, that it has no need of proof. I saw the place in the side of a hill, or mountain, in Tuscany, which is called Falterona, where the most vile peasant of all the country, whilst digging, found more than a bushel of the finest Santelena silver, which had awaited him perhaps for more than a thousand years. And in order to see this iniquity, Aristotle said that in proportion as the Man is subject to the Intellect, so much the ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... and the nursery business [Sunny Ridge] I have been down to the nursery for the last month getting rid of trees. A job of digging is one thing and that of packing and shipping is another. The man I had could do one but not both, and competent persons to pick up for either job are not available, so I have been standing in the gap, getting calluses on my hands and getting rid of $16,000 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association |
