"Digger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very lonesome if he quitted her. Mr. Stowel was, like Mr. Lawrence, obliged to return without any remuneration, and with less money than he came. I mention these two freaks of Joe Smith, as they explain the money-digger's system ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... considered to be finally settled. Powers speaks of the language as "hopelessly consonantal, harsh, and sesquipedalian," * * * "utterly unlike the sweet and simple languages of the Sacramento." He adds that the personal pronouns show it to be a true Digger Indian tongue. Recent investigations by Mr. Gatschet lead him, however, to believe that ultimately it will be found to be linguistically related to ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time i have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals, and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the earlier geological strata there are found ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... bimeby ole mars say, 'Well, a bahgin's a bahgin, but you en me is good fren's, en I doan wan' ter see you lose all de money you paid fer dat digger [sic]; en ef w'at you say is so, en I ain't 'sputin' it, he ain't wuf much now. I spec's you wukked him too ha'd dis summer, er e'se de swamps down here don't agree wid de san'-hill nigger. So you des lemme know, en ef he ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... ants, they are very fastidious about removing their dead companions. I buried one about half an inch beneath the soil. Very soon several congregated about the spot and commenced digging with their fore feet, after the manner of digger-wasps, throwing the earth backward. They soon unearthed and pulled the body out, when one seized and tried to remove it, climbing up the side of the jar, and falling back until I relieved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in the act of driving his digger into the ground and looked carefully at his visitor, who, sitting his big buckskin with easy assurance, looked steadily back. For several seconds they appraised one another. Roger grew warm with the anger natural to a man who has been faced on his own land; the stranger ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... the floating debris of popular literature,—scraps and tags and broken ends of songs and ballads and romances and proverbs. In this respect he is notable even among his contemporaries. . . . Edgar and Iago, Petruchio and Benedick, Sir Toby and Pistol, the Fool in Lear and the Grave-digger in Hamlet, even Ophelia and Desdemona, are all alike singers of old songs. . . . " {65a} He is rich in rural proverbs NOT ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Avoca River the lizard's future master had, as was the digger's custom, come out of his hole, or shaft, at eleven o'clock for a short half-hour's rest between breakfast and the midday meal. He threw himself down in a half-sitting posture, and was dreamily smoking his pipe when from beneath a neighboring rock, popped out a little lizard ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... to Gustavus his friendship, and in this pleasing hope of the future he saw much to redeem what he regretted of the past. Still, however, the wild flare of the pine-torch over the lone grave of his adversary, and the horrid answer of the grave-digger, that he was but "finishing his work," would recur to his memory and ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... hands. "If Gotzkowsky knew this, he would kill her, or die himself of grief. Die of grief!" continued he, after a pause, completely buried in his sad and bitter thoughts—"it is not so easy to die of grief. The sad heart is tenacious of life, and sorrow is but a slow grave-digger. I have heard that one could die of joy, and it seemed to me just now, when Elise rewarded me with a kiss, that I could understand this. If she only loved me, it were a blessing of God to die, conscious ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... "Ah! a 'Stralian digger, by the beard of him, and his red jersey," whispered Jan, as he bent tenderly over the poor fellow, and put his head on one side to listen to his breathing. "Beautiful he sleeps, to be sure!" said Jan: "and a tidy-looking chap, too. 'Tis a pity to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... placed with the grave-digger's wife, and from thence she went to the count's splendid country-seat, where she lived in handsome rooms, and was dressed in silks and fineries; not a breath of wind was to blow on her; no one dared to say a rough word to her, nothing was to be done to annoy ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... the following be true, though in ever so limited a manner, it deserves investigation. Notwithstanding his twenty-three years' experience, the worthy grave-digger must have been mistaken, unless there is something peculiar in the bodies of Bath people! But if the face turns down in any instance, as asserted, it would be right to ascertain the cause, and why this change is not general. It is now above twenty years since ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... one who replies with invective, when sinking under the weight of argument; I am not a man who denies the necessity of parliamentary reform, at the time that he approves of its expediency, by reviling his own constituents, the parish clerk, the sexton, and the grave-digger; and if there be any man who can apply what I am not, to himself, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and contemplate upon it ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... came and Craig ate like a ditch-digger—his own breakfast and most of Grant's. Grant barely touched the food, lit a cigarette, sat regarding the full-mouthed Westerner gloomily. "What DID Margaret see in this man?" thought Grant. "True, she doesn't know him as well as I do; but she knows him well ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... to the Dooleys because of the vast Calvin pretense—"Jim, Laura has inherited that common Indiana streak of yours. I can't make her a Satterthwaite—she's Indiana to the bone. Why, when I go to town with her, every drayman and ditch digger and stableman calls to her, and the yard is always full of their towheaded children. I'll give ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... fellow there? His name is McKean. He comes from my part of Ireland. He is a lawyer; the last time I saw him he was in a court defending a prisoner, and now the whole six feet seven of him is nothing but a dirty digger." ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Pennsylvania, and set him with other men, digging for a silver mine which he thought he could find. After working at it for some time, Joseph persuaded his employer to give it up. It was from this incident that Joseph's enemies sometimes called him a "money digger." ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... in his bright motley and his cap and bells, against the green background of the forest and the rude forms of the shepherds, is a strong example of the purely picturesque. There is excellent tragic irony in the confrontation of the melancholy philosopher among the tombs with the cheerful digger of the graves. It sums up the essential point, that dead bodies can be comic; it is only dead souls that can be tragic. But quite apart from such irony, the mere picture of the grotesque gravedigger, the black-clad prince, and the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... with the doctor to the chamber of death, while I remained in the study, turning the whole matter over and over in my head, and feeling as sombre as ever I had done in my life. What was the past of this Trevor: pugilist, traveller, and gold-digger; and how had he placed himself in the power of this acid-faced seaman? Why, too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingbridge? ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... fast dig in here will think she's a patient—unless the digger knows that this room is supposed to be occupied by one Steve Cornell, obviously male. Now, ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... out in strong contrast against these recollections. It was only natural that one of the young chorus ladies with whom I had to practise daily should know how to attract my attentions. Therese Ringelmann, the daughter of a grave-digger, thanks to her beautiful soprano voice, led me to believe that I could make a great singer of her. After I told her of this ambitious scheme, she paid much attention to her appearance, and dressed elegantly for the rehearsals, and a row of white pearls which she wound through her ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... hulking ruffian, with an Australian digger's beard, had turned up of late to disturb the tranquillity of the partners. He had been asking what they regarded as an exorbitant price for his silence in respect to the construction of that adit which has just been mentioned, and had been fobbed off from time to time ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... policy of increasing unanimity at home, by equalizing rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and wicked system which has been pursued? Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a grave-digger—the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every effort which they make.... Every Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his country; the character of the country is lost for ever. It is of the utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with the greatest ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... miles of denationalized, high-cheeked, red, or black-headed Highlandmen, with illustrious names, in breeches and round hats, without pistols or feathers, is a sorry sight. Not one of these McGregors can earn more than five shillings a day, currency, as a laborer. Not a digger upon our canals but can do better than that; and with the chance of rising. But here there seems be no such opportunity. The colonial system provides that every settler shall have a grant of about one hundred and twenty acres, in fee, and free. What then? the Government fosters ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... to his work. In the west the sun dropped slowly beneath the horizon, leaving a wonderful golden light behind. The waiting horses, too well trained to move from their places, shifted uneasily amid much creaking of harness. Within the grave the digger's head sunk lower and lower, while the mound by the side grew higher and higher. The cold increased. Across the prairie, a multitude of black specks advanced, grew large, whizzed overhead, then retreated, their wings cutting the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Christendom shuddered with horror at the savage slaughter at Magdeburg, the triumphant Tilly marched upon and captured the city of Leipsic. Here he fixed his headquarters in the house of a grave-digger, where he grew pale at seeing the death's-head and cross-bones with which the owner had decorated his walls. These significant emblems may have had something to do with the unusual mildness with which he treated the citizens ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... he was on the hill beyond the upper end of the camp kneeling beside an open grave; and in his clasped hands, uplifted high above his head, he held a naked bowie-knife. Some light still lingered here among the stiff-branched digger-pines, a faint reflection of the sunset far beyond the flat lands of the San Joaquin valley. It shone upon his face revealing a multitude of lines, so deeply scored, so terrible in their proclamation of deadly hate, that ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... be carried up in winter, when the steep wood-paths are covered with ice, and the steps slippery and covered with snow. The coffin creaked; the bearers panted; the old clergyman leaned heavily on the sexton and the grave-digger. Now no one has to be buried up there who does ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... consists of "rusks," a kind of bread baked until it becomes crisp and hard, and plenty of steaming hot coffee. I never saw any people so fond of this beverage as the Boers are. The Australian bushman and digger loves tea, and can almost exist upon it; but these Boers cling to coffee. They live, when out in laager, like Spartans, they dress anyhow, sleep anyhow, and eat just rusks and precious little else. Talk about "Tommy" and his hard times, why a private ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... occasion for that," Frank went on. "You can tell him that you have come across that nugget in the claim," and Frank tossed into the hole a nugget for which he had half an hour before given a digger ten dollars from his ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... post our bald somnambulist as missing from his flat We take soundings for the digger with a prop. By the day the board is gratis, by the week it's half of that; For the season ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... country churchyards may be remarked here—the reluctance to bury on the north side of the church (though strangely enough this has been reversed at near-by Ferring). In many churchyards, where the ground is as extensive on the north side as on the others, the grave digger's spade has left it either quite untouched or the graves are few in number and mostly of ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling and him ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... his head, "Ah! I could guess you were a Scotchman—brute force and blind ignorance!" He then proceeded to show me how to do twice the amount of work at half the expenditure of labour. I never remember a real digger who was not ready to help one, both with advice and in practice, and I never experienced that "greening" of new chums which is a prominent feature of most novels that deal ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... was the "tipple," where the coal that came out of the mine was weighed and recorded. Every digger, as he came from the cage, made for this spot. There was a bulletin-board, and on it his number, and the record of the weights of the cars he had sent out that day. And every man, no matter how ignorant, had learned enough ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... their sweet human voices, appears to be more common and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to some extent, at least in life's fresh morning, attracted by them as instinctively as humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians have sufficient love for the brightest of those found growing on the mountains to gather them and braid them, as decorations for the hair. And I was glad to discover, through the few Indians that could be induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for the wild rose and the lily, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the North American continent (concerning whose civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine myths) occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial condition in which some of the Digger Indians at present exist, living on insects and unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to the civilisation which the Spaniards destroyed among ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the morning to you, old dirt-digger," Farrel replied. "Please deal me a hand of your ham and eggs, sunny side ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... a plan!" suddenly cried the bush. "You are a very good digger, so why can't you dig a tunnel right under me? Start it inside here and curve it up so that it comes outside of my prickly branches, and ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... different modes of working are advisable, the ordinary plough of a multifurrow pattern, with stump-jumping springs or weights, being used for land which is not too heavy or clayey; a disc plough or harrow being applicable to light, well-worked ground; and the mechanical spade or fork-digger—reciprocating in its motion very much like the rock-drill—having its special sphere of usefulness in wet and heavy land. In any case a wide, gripping wheel is required in front to carry the machine forward and to turn it on reaching the end of the furrow. The wire-wound drum is actuated by ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... O Gargantuan, overgrown! O huge! O gross! O squat! Whose one redeeming virtue—one alone— Is that you weigh a lot; Who will not thrive upon the common soil, So that the patient digger e'en must toil To raise a special mound Above the level ground That you may sun yourself upon the sloping earth And, like the wicked, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... along the way, beside losing many which died of cold and starvation; and after thus having lost much of his substance, he eventually worked his way back to Bloemhof with the remainder, sold them for anything they could fetch, and went to work for a digger. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute—possibly it is Digger. I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers—those degraded savages who roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones with tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a grave-digger," says Abba Shaul, as the Rabbis relate, "chased a roe which had entered the shinbone of a dead man; and though I ran three miles after it, I could not overtake it, nor reach the end of the bone. When I returned, I was told that it was a bone of Og, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Phil was a digger of pits, as he knew by experience, and he was in no humor for trifling. His own balance at the bank was negligible, and his wife had warned him that no more money would be forthcoming for the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... call the shoemaker a mediator between the production and consumption of leather; or the cloth merchant, who cuts the material from the piece, an assistant preparatory to the tailor. The labor of commerce is especially like that of the fisherman or the turf digger, because they produce only in so far as they transfer goods from inaccessible to accessible places. See, however, Rau, Lehrbuch, I, 103. See the demonstration of the productive power of commerce in general, as well as of what is, by way of preference, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... head and pricked up her ears, and listened; and, in an instant, the girl sprang up and took a Smith and Wesson revolver from her saddle. The blacks about Repulse Bay and Whitsunday Passage had an evil reputation, and many an unfortunate stockman or digger had been slaughtered by them when camped in apparent security; even within a few score miles of such towns as ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... about patriotism, or about anything whatever that he, the navvy, wants to talk about. It means taking literature seriously, a very amateurish thing to do. It means pardoning indecency only when it is gloomy indecency. Its disciples will call a spade a spade; but only when it is a grave-digger's spade. The higher culture is sad, cheap, impudent, unkind, without honesty and without ease. In short, it is "high." That abominable word (also applied to ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... like the dear Old Briar-patch where he could always be safe. Every minute of every day Danny had to keep his eyes wide open and his wits working their very quickest, for any minute he was likely to be in danger. Old Man Coyote or Reddy Fox or Granny Fox or Digger the Badger or Mr. Blacksnake was likely to come creeping through the grass any time, and they are always hungry for a fat Meadow Mouse. And as if that weren't worry enough, Danny had to watch the sky, too, for Old Whitetail ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... economic conditions, however, I am willing to undertake these intricate and responsible duties for a seven day week at less wages than are given the street-digger, for $1.50 ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... herself in Wurtemburg, where, much to her annoyance, she discovered that a certain Amalia Stubenrauch, a prepossessing damsel, who would now be called a gold-digger, had conquered the spare affections of King William, on whom Lola herself had designs. But that large-hearted monarch had, as it happened, few affections to spare for anybody just then, for, when she encountered him at Stuttgart, he was on the point ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... theatrical company cracking jokes among themselves, drinking brandy and soda at extortionate prices, and staring hard at Lady Bridget. Colin pointed out to her a lucky digger and his family—two daughters in blue serge trimmed with gold braid, and a fat red-faced Mamma, very fine in a feathered hat, black brocade, a diamond brooch, and with many rings and jangling bangles. There were ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the first and last time. 'You think you're going to be carried to hospital,—you're wrong. Put him down, Digger!' And that ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... domine was the voorleezer or chorister, who was also generally the bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, funeral inviter, schoolmaster, and sometimes town clerk. He "tuned the psalm"; turned the hour-glass; gave out the psalms on a hanging board to the congregation; read the Bible; gave up notices to the domine by sticking the ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... deserted fire. The figure on which he gazed was not the terrible Shawanoe, but the bow and the arm which slowly drew back the string and arrow were more than enough. He whirled like a flash and was off, bounding from right to left, as do the Digger Indians of the west when seeking to disconcert the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... people. Longing, but patient, I will await thee in Hades. Thou wilt often come to the spot in which they will bury me, to throw a plume from thy helmet, a ring from thy coat of mail upon the grassy mound. And the old grave-digger will say: 'He was here to-night; she is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the sun was setting, woke in perfect peace. My proposition had been accepted, and wonderful grace, which had given what I had not dared to ask, assurance of present acceptance. I should have all the work and privation for which I had bargained—should be a thistle-digger in the vineyard; should be set to tasks from which other laborers shrank, but in no trial could I ever be alone, and should at last ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... trench around their claim. Their sorting table was set up and they went to work with a will that was backed with enthusiasm and hope. The result of their digging was turned into the sieve, which was suspended by a rope from a cross bar, with handles on one side. The digger would swing it backwards and forwards until all the loose fragments of earth were broken off and nothing remained but the small stones like line gravel. These were then carried over and dumped on the sorter's table, who examined them carefully and placed anything promising ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... abbey town, down in this part of the country, a long, long while ago—so long, that the story must be a true one, because our great-grandfathers implicitly believed it—there officiated as sexton and grave-digger in the churchyard, one Gabriel Grub. It by no means follows that because a man is a sexton, and constantly surrounded by the emblems of mortality, therefore he should be a morose and melancholy man; your undertakers are the merriest fellows in the world; and I once had the honour ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... intellectualists, and men who live by their brains, than among artisans and subduers of the soil. This is an error. Tobacco is less a fosterer of thought than a solace of mental vacuity. The thinker smokes in the intervals of work, impatient of ennui as well as of lassitude, and the ploughman, the digger, the blacksmith or the teamster, lights his cutty for the same reason. No true worker, be he digger, or divine, blends real work with either smoking or drinking. Whenever you see a fellow drink or smoke during work, spot him for a gone coon; he will come to grief, and that right soon. Sleep stimulates ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... arrived at the diggings where his uncle was engaged in mining. In those early days of California mine digging the miners were generally a very rough class of men. So it happened that soon after Ned's arrival a great gruff "digger" offered to treat Ned to a drink of liquor, and became very angry because he ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... passions in life—love of Jefferson Doman, who had once been of some service to him, and love of whisky, which certainly had not. He had been among the first in the rush to Hurdy-Gurdy, but had not prospered, and had sunk by degrees to the position of grave digger. This was not a vocation, but Barney in a desultory way turned his trembling hand to it whenever some local misunderstanding at the card table and his own partial recovery from a prolonged debauch occurred coincidently ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... able to shake off former associations: this was not the case with Rhodes, who, on the contrary, as he advanced in power and in influence, found himself every day more embarrassed by the men who had clung to him when he was a diamond digger, and who, through his financial acumen, had built up their fortunes. They surrounded him day and night, eliminating every person likely to interfere; slandering, ridiculing and calumniating them in turns, they at last left him nothing in place of his shattered ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... out of sight, a tiny creature flew down into the hole. She, too, had her egg to lay, and here was just the opportunity. Inside of the digger-wasp's egg the little ichneumon fly placed another and a very much smaller one, after which she darted away, just in time to escape meeting the returning mother, who, coming back laden with a second grasshopper, placed it close to the first, and set about closing the door. But all her careful ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... peculiarly sceptical. He and another rustic functionary, of whom we shall speak anon, the grave-digger, are always the strong-minded men of the neighborhood. They have talked so much about ghosts, and are so familiar with all the tricks of which those mischievous spirits are capable, that they fear ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... informs us that he is making (April 1866,) some modifications of his machinery. He employs a revolving digger to take up the peat from the bed, and carry it to the machine. At the time of going to press, we do not learn whether he regards his experiments as leading to a satisfactory conclusion, ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... from that time there was not a single gold-digger left in the neighbourhood, for the news of fresh discoveries further north had drawn them all away, and Nature soon hid the untidy spots they had made in Golden Valley with their camps. Gunson had no hesitation in selecting the black ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... east and to the west rose hills, whose ruggedness was softened by distance to outlines of harmonious grandeur. Scattered over the valley between them, the stately "digger," or nut-pines, grew at near intervals, singly or in groups of three or five, harmonizing by their pale gray-green with the other half-tints of earth, air, and sky. Following the course of the dried up river was a line, more or less continuous, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... are those of the Digger pine, Pinus Sabiniana and the Big-cone pine, Pinus Coulteri. Both trees are hardy in this latitude, but I have not been able to locate any which are of bearing age as yet. The nuts have a rich dark brown or nearly black and tan shading. The nut of the Digger ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... stained-glass window and that it gave you distorted values, didn't I? That was temper, pure and simple. You were perfectly right to wail like one of your own Banshees because the likes of me—once content when the pale shadow of Pegasus passed her by—is become an ink-spattered, carbon-grimed gold digger! Ten months ago, shivering and quivering over "ONE CROWDED HOUR," I cowered back in my semi-occasional taxicab and watched the meter with a creeping scalp.... Now I can ride from Yonkers to the Square and admire the scenery ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... seems I had made it too large) a great quantity of earth fell down from the top and one side: so much, that, in short, it frightened me, and not without reason too; for if I had been under it, I should never have wanted a grave-digger. Upon this disaster, I had a great deal of work to do over again, for I had the loose earth to carry out; and, which was of more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure no more would ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... was uncovered the inspector said to the grave-digger: "Open it." They obeyed, as if it were the most ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... find hiaqua and he went on digging. At every thirteenth stroke the leader of the otters tapped the stone elk with his tail, and the eleven followers tapped the snow with their tails. Once they all gathered closer and whacked the digger good and hard with their tails, but, though astonished and badly bruised, he went on working. Presently he broke his elkhorn pick, but the biggest otter seized another in his teeth ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... at?"—with a hoarse, unnatural laugh. "That's Nature. You cannot make fat pastures out of sea-sand, any more than a thorough-blood gentilhomme out of a clam-digger. The shark's teeth will show, do what you will." He pulled at his whiskers nervously, went to the window, motioning Doctor Bowdler roughly aside. "Let me see what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... a returned gold-digger of his 'luggage'! Mine consists of a hand portmanteau, and that is at the Golden Fleece. I can order it up here if you'd like me to stay with you a few days. I should ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Ah! yes, the grave-digger is waiting until the cords are fastened round the bier. But see, a woman has just entered the cemetery at the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded me of the grave-digger in Hamlet. He has a collection of capuchins' skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of them, said, 'This was Brother Desiderio Berro, who died at forty—one of my best friends. I begged his head of his brethren after his decease, and they gave it me. I put it in lime, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... was burying one of my dead selves, the grave-digger came by and said to me, "Of all those who come here to bury, you ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... Oh! there are many Christians who find the best time of the day is the time when they can get with their Bibles, and who love nothing so much as to get a new thought; and as a diamond digger rejoices when he has found a diamond, or a gold digger when he has found a nugget, they delight when they get from the Bible some new thought, and they feed upon it. Yet with all that interest in God's word, and with all that ...
— 'Jesus Himself' • Andrew Murray
... said. "I am Fray Juan de la Cruz, at your service; from the convent of N. S. de la Pena near by. I have to be my own grave-digger; but will you be so obliging as to commit the body ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... a great success, but I could not bear Hamlet. And the grave-digger in Italian was a mere buffoon. The whole scene was farcical to me because of the Italian, 'Questo cranio, Signore—'And Enrico, dainty fellow, took the skull in a corner of his black cloak. As an Italian, he would not willingly touch it. It was unclean. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... the bed and holds the stage till he smells the red fire for the vision; then he staggers down stage, strikes an attitude; the others do likewise; picture of 'Little Eva,' curtain. Talk about doubling 'Marcellus,' 'Polonius,' 'Osric,' and the 'First Grave Digger'! Why, that's nothing to these 'Uncle Tom' productions. But hold on, where did I get ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... five each, which gave the men one night on duty and two off, Rose assigning each man to the branch of work in which experiments proved him the most proficient. He was himself, by long odds, the best digger of the party; while Hamilton had no equal for ingenious mechanical skill in contriving helpful, little devices to overcome or lessen the difficulties that beset almost every ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... and asked, "What is this?" Gustavo, suspecting nothing, went on with his sketch, and answered in a natural tone, "This is Ophelia, plucking the leaves from her garland. That old codger is a grave-digger. Over there..." At this, noticing that every one had risen, and that universal silence reigned, Becquer slowly turned his head. "Here is one too many," said the Director, and the artist was dismissed ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... of canes and rushes for the purpose of catching fish. They were very much startled at our appearance, but we soon established an acquaintance; and finding that they had some roots, I promised to send some men with goods to trade with them. They had the usual very large heads, remarkable among the Digger tribe, with matted hair, and were almost entirely naked: looking very poor and miserable, as if their lives had been spent in the rushes where they were, beyond which they seemed to have very little knowledge of any thing. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... digger named Jack L'Estrange, a great friend of the Bensons, was reading an article from the Bulletin to her father, and Kitty, as she was then called, was whiling away the time by pulling his moustache, an occupation which interfered somewhat ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... No, on my soul, A grave digger, an assassin! Who would kill my daughter after my wife. I hear the jingle of his golden vials, From me let ...
— The Tales of Hoffmann - Les contes d'Hoffmann • Book By Jules Barbier; Music By J. Offenbach
... matter; your Marconi employs the mysterious properties of the "jellied ether," but let a man seek to experiment with the laws of that singular electricity which connects you and me (though you be a millionaire and I a ditch-digger), and we think him a wild visionary, an academic person. I think sometimes that the science of humanity to-day is in about the state of darkness that the natural sciences were when Linneus and Cuvier and Lamarck began groping for the great laws of natural unity. Most ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... they can propitiate the Deity through them. In illustration of their ideas, it may be mentioned that, when we were among the tribes west of Semalembue, several of the people came forward and introduced themselves—one as a hunter of elephants, another as a hunter of hippopotami, a third as a digger of pitfalls—apparently wishing me to give them medicine for success in their avocations, as well as to cure the diseases of those to whom I was administering the drugs. I thought they attributed supernatural power to them, for, like all Africans, they have unbounded faith in the efficacy ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... scalpel nor probe, than be the founder of the subtlest school, or the framer of the loftiest verse, that robbed my fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that eludes the dissecting-knife,—in a being that escapes the grave-digger. Burn your book! Accept This Book ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pioneer works, they undergo, as traffic progresses, many improvements. Ballast is laid down. Iron or steel bridges are substituted for timber. The gorges spanned by trestles are, one by one, filled up, by the use of the steam digger to fill, and the ballast plough to push out, the stuff from the flat bottomed wagons on each side and through the interstices of, the trestles. Sometimes the timber is left in; sometimes it is drawn out and used elsewhere. This trestle bridge plan of expediting the completion, and cheapening ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... The "Digger" movement was a shorter and much more obscure protest on behalf of the people than Lilburne's agitation for democracy; but it is ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... interesting of Hawthorne's works, containing much of his finest thought and most characteristic description. The portrait of the grouty old Doctor himself has a solidity of impast like Shakespeare's Falstaff, and the grave-digger, who has survived from colonial times, carries us back involuntarily to the burial scene in "Hamlet." Alcott, whose name is changed to Colcord, is not treated realistically, but rather idealized in such kindly sympathetic manner as might prevent all possibility of offence at the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... from old nests of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles, from the galleries dug in a roadside bank by the Colletes (A short-tongued Burrowing-bee known also as the Melitta.—Translator's Note.) and lastly from the cavities made by some digger or other in the decayed trunk ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Lonsdale light twinkled out of the darkness, and a low murmur ran round the decks—a murmur without words, since it came from men whose only fashion of meeting any emotion is with a joke; and even for a "digger" there is no joke ready on the lips, but only a catch at the heart, at the first ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... but perhaps, like Diogenes, I am a cynic philosopher. After all, when a thing cannot be escaped, why seek for reasons not to escape it? Let us, rather, be brave if we cannot be gay; cheerful if we cannot talk; ornamental if we cannot move. As the grave-digger in Elsinore churchyard might say: 'Here lies the afternoon tea; good: here stands the gentleman; good: If the gentleman go to this afternoon tea and bore himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,—mark you that? But if the afternoon tea come to him and bore him, he bores not himself; argal, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... home, by equalising rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and wicked system which has been pursued? Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a grave- digger—the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every effort which they make. There is nothing which it is worth while either to take or to retain, and a constant train of ruinous expeditions have been kept up. Every Englishman ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... was overjoyed at her unexpected good luck in meeting with this returned digger, whom she had known very well at Bendigo under another name, and where he passed himself off as the husband of another woman. She perceived that now he had found his wife in Adelaide, doing very well ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... needn't have been frightened at the diggers. As far as we saw they were the sensiblest lot of working men we ever laid eyes on; not at all inclined to make a row for nothing—quite the other way. But the shutting off of public-houses led to sly grog tents, where they made the digger pay a pound a bottle for his grog, and didn't keep ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... an education may be the wider and the richer for a large experience of the world; Raphael Pumpelly and Clarence King, at about the same time, were enriching their education by a picturesque intimacy with the manners of the Apaches and Digger Indians. All experience is an arch, to build upon. Yet Adams admitted himself unable to guess what use his second winter in Germany was to him, or what he expected it to be. Even the doctrine of accidental education ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the middle of the enclosure is a stone pedestal supporting a great wooden cross. Storms have bent the strip of tin on which were the I. N. R. I., and the rain has washed off the letters. At the foot of the cross is a confused heap of bones and skulls thrown out by the grave-digger. Everywhere grow in all their vigor the bitter-sweet and rose-bay. Some tiny flowerets, too, tint the ground—blossoms which, like the mounded bones, are known to their Creator only. They are like little pale smiles, and their odor scents ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... furrow. For the first few years the work was particularly hard on account of the tree-stumps that had to be dodged. Later the stumps were all dug and chopped out to make way for the McCormick reaper, and because I proved to be the best chopper and stump-digger I had nearly all of it to myself. It was dull, hard work leaning over on my knees all day, chopping out those tough oak and hickory stumps, deep down below the crowns of the big roots. Some, though fortunately not many, were two feet or more ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... little hole like worm hole dere is de clam. He breathe up tru dat, and suck in his drink like sherry-cobbler through a straw. Whar dere is no little air holes, dere is no clam, dat are a fac. Now, Massa, can you tell who is de most knowin' clam-digger in de worl? De gull is, Massa; and he eat his clam raw, as some folks who don't know nuffin' bout cookin' eat oysters. He take up de clam ebber so far in de air, and let him fall right on de rock, which break shell for him, and down he goes and pounces on him like a duck on a June ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton |
