"Digs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the next illustration, it will be remembered by all students of GOLDSMITH'S Animated Nature, that this amiable quadruped invariably exercises his risibles when he is crunching the bones of some other less truculent quadruped. It is "solitary, cruel, and untamable, digs its food out of graves," cachinnating the while like a thousand or fifteen hundred of brick. There are other ravenous beasts in the world; but this one is peculiar in that he laughs over his work, which ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... his jaws together hard, gets a fresh grip on his ox-goad, digs his heels into the ground for a good hold, and mutters to himself, "I guess they are about four hundred short." And he smites, left and right, up and down, hip and thigh, with his strange weapon. And a great victory comes to the nation under its ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... well contrived for warmth, security, or concealment. There is a large spider in South America, who constructs nets of so strong a texture as to entangle small birds, particularly the humming bird. And in Jamaica there is another spider, who digs a hole in the earth obliquely downwards, about three inches in length, and one inch in diameter, this cavity she lines with a tough thick web, which when taken out resembles a leathern purse: but what is most curious, this house has a door with hinges, like the operculum of some ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Cuinin is the diminutive of cu, a dog of any sort; and from the Celtic cu, the Greeks took their word kyon, a dog. I am of opinion that the origin of rabbit is in the Celtic word rap, i. e. a creature that digs and burrows ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... drove from their houses, in the winter, they take straight to their burrows in the bank, where they kin be sure of gittin' their heads above water to breathe. Then, the Injuns jest drive stakes down in front of the holes,—an' there they have 'em, every one. They digs down into the burrows, an' knocks Mr. Beaver an' all the family on ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... nebber starts to break my colt, Till he's ole enough to trabble. I nebber digs my taters up Wen dey's only right to grabble. So w'en you sees me risin' up To structify in meetin', You can know I'se climbed de Knowledge Tree ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... in dirty hole That painful animal a Mole: Above ground never born to go, What mighty stir it keeps below? To make a molehill all this strife! It digs, pukes, undermines for life. How proud a little dirt to spread! Conscious of nothing o'er its head. 'Till lab'ring on, for want of eyes, It ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... all the canyons that run through there till you can't rest. I'll tell you what I'll do: if you will find that nugget, I will give you ten thousand dollars for it. That's a better offer than I made you a while ago. And you may keep the nugget besides. If you are around when anybody else digs it up, I will ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... in height, giving his galleries a slight incline, so that the water may run down them freely, and continuing them till he reaches a point where he wishes to bring the water out upon the surface of the plain. Here and there, at the foot of his shafts, he digs wells, from which the fluid can readily be raised by means of a bucket and a windlass; and he thus brings under cultivation a considerable belt of land along the whole line of the kanat, as well as a large tract at its termination. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... it for a day with tears! And then we robe it for its last long rest, And being women, feeble things at best, We cannot dig the grave ourselves. And so We call strong-limbed New Love to lay it low: Immortal sexton he! whom Venus sends To do this service for her earthly friends, The trusty fellow digs the grave so deep Nothing disturbs the dead laid ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... are always fat and solitary. When a heavy fall of snow sets in the animal seeks some hollow place in which she can lie down, and remains quiet while the snow covers her. Sometimes she will wait until a quantity of snow has fallen and then digs herself a cave; at all events it seems necessary that she should be covered up by the snow. She now goes to sleep and does not wake until the spring sun is pretty high, when she brings forth two cubs. The cave by this time has become much larger by the effect of the animal's warmth and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... The observer digs into the petrol tank as they touch earth, and then runs round the machine. In a second the petrol is ablaze and the fuselage and wings are burning merrily. Germans rush up and make vain attempts to put out the fire. Soon nothing remains but charred debris, a discoloured ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... away. Ranging over the wide tracts of antiquity, the situation of the mind may be likened to that of a traveller[26] in some unpeopled part of America, who is attracted to the burial place of one of the primitive inhabitants. It is conspicuous upon an eminence, 'a mount upon a mount!' He digs into it, and finds that it contains the bones of a man of mighty stature; and he is tempted to give way to a belief, that as there were giants in those days, so all men were giants. But a second ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a-heah, Brudder 'Bijah," said Grandison, his eyes sparkling with righteous indignation, "dat's too much 'to 'spec' ob a man who's got ter work all day to s'port his wife an' chillun. I digs, an' I plows, an' I plants, an' I hoes. But all dem things ain't 'nuf ter make apple-trees grow in my gyardin like as dey ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... came along and dug, and when once he was over the wall we kept him at it, and we worked as well, of course, and the hole got deep. Pincher worked too—he is our dog and he is very good at digging. He digs for rats in the dustbin sometimes, and gets very dirty. But we love our dog, even when his ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... write an anti-Darwinian article; you would do it so confoundedly well. I have sometimes amused myself with thinking how I could best pitch into myself, and I believe I could give two or three good digs; but I will see you — first before I will try. I shall be very impatient to see the Review. (The first number of the new series of the 'Nat. Hist. Review' appeared in 1861.) If it succeeds it may really do much, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Jack Ford's worm-shop. He digs heaps of 'em and keeps 'em here, and when we want any to go afishing with, we buy some of him. It saves lots of trouble, only he charged too much for 'em. Why, last time we traded I had to pay two cents a dozen, and then got little ones. Jack's mean sometimes, and I told him I'd dig for myself ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... and the fickle goddess will perhaps remain faithful to him longer than to many others, for he is busy from early till late, and is his father's right-hand. At least he won't fall into one of the pits Fate digs for mortals." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not loses hope, whose choice is To stick in shallow trash forevermore,— Which digs with eager hand for buried ore, And, when it finds an ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... machine, known as the cradle. This is on rockers, six or eight feet long, open at the foot, and at its head has a coarse grate, or sieve; the bottom is rounded, with small cleets nailed across. Four men are required to work this machine: one digs the ground in the bank close by the stream; another carries it to the cradle and empties it on the grate; a third gives a violent rocking motion to the machine; while a fourth dashes on water from the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... on feeding the semi-serious mood with what seemed almost intentional sly digs. Yet the digs were not intentional, really; it was merely that his listener, already prepared by his experience with the Starlight Express, read into them these searching meanings of his own. Something in him was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... tells him of her home "down east," of how keen she was to come to the wild, wonderful west, of how she thinks that "one crowded hour of glorious life" is worth a whole leaden existence. That reminds her of her graduating essay, which she digs out of the trunk, tied with baby-blue ribbon. "One Crowded Hour" was her burning topic, but her hours and days and years have been crowded only with homely toil ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the prey, as Lintier saw it, of the wish to save our lives and to preserve the good opinion of others. Underneath the transports of patriotism, underneath the sincerity of religious fervour, the Frenchman digs down and finds amour-propre ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... with a will, taking turns with the pickaxe and the two shovels. I must confess that our speed slowed down considerably after the first wild burst, but we kept at it steadily. It was hard work, and there is no denying it, just the sort of plain hard work the day labourer does when he digs sewer trenches in the city streets. Only worse, perhaps, owing to the nature of the soil. It has struck me since that those few years of hard labour in the diggings, from '49 to '53 or '54, saw more actual manual toil accomplished than was ever before performed in the same time by the same ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... undersized, frail man, with a plaintive face. Constant walking, digging, and pumping has broken his health and ruined his nervous system. His joyless life has driven him to drink and smoke more than is good for him, and his hand often shakes as he digs ditches. He has not the strength to work as the others can, in fact, as Hamlin Smith has said, "A can do more work in one hour ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... the water's edge. No more news; any amount of gossip; the Petrovitches were tottering, said some; Prince Mirko had lately fought a duel upon Austrian territory with his brother, Prince Danilo; they would certainly fight for the throne. The Austrian papers were full of "digs" at the Petrovitches. I arrived back at Cetinje on the evening of the 15th to find it beflagged and rows of tallow candles stuck along my bedroom window for the coming illuminations. A telegram had announced the election by the Shkupstina of "our son-in-law" and his accession had already ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... properly an incarnation of the fiend of destruction. Every part of its legitimate work is to destroy. If it constructs bridges and builds roads, erects forts and digs trenches, these are all that it may destroy, or prevent some other incarnation from destroying it. Armies lay waste and destroy. Cornfields, orchards, lawns, life, and treasure are all prey ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... us smile at least. But the Grave-digger scene does not come at a moment of extreme tension; and it is long. Our distress for Ophelia is not so absorbing that we refuse to be interested in the man who digs her grave, or even continue throughout the long conversation to remember always with pain that the grave is hers. It is fitting, therefore, that he should be made decidedly humorous. The passage in Antony ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... their being friends," retorted Zeke. "I'm thinkin' the prairie dog does most of the work any way you fix it. He's the one that digs the hole, then along comes the snake and makes his home in it, and then the owl creeps in and there ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... Prince over him, "O knight, the bravest, best, Thy plumes are dyed in hero's blood— Henceforth they are my crest!" And still they wave o'er England's crown, And teach the young and brave, When all is lost but honor, then Valor digs Honor's grave. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... life, she digs her proper grave to-day; And icy moons, with weary sameness, weave From their own light their fullness and decay: Home to the Poet's land the Gods are flown; Light use in them that later world discerns, Which, the diviner leading-strings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... edge of the little bluff near the water line he digs holes about three feet back into the bank and some nine inches across the front, throwing water about the place to kill the scent of his presence, and a little driftwood in and around the hole, so that it will seem natural to the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... sleep there to-night. But I'm not going to have my breakfast there to-morrow morning. No fear! I'll have it up town. Lucas'll be able to put me up to some new digs. He always knows about that sort of thing. Then I'll drive down and remove all ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of the Melanesian islands there is a variety of the banana-bird which frequents the yam and sweet potato plantation, digs into the hillocks with its power-fill feet, and feeds upon the tubers, as does the ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... or earth road is usually only wide enough for a couple of coolies to pass, and in this province, as it is often necessary (especially in the Yuen-nan-fu district) for one cart to pass another, the farmer, to prevent trespass on his crops, digs around them deep ditches, resembling those which are dug for the reception of gas mains. In the rainy season the fields are drained into the roads, which at times are constantly under water, and beyond Yuen-nan-fu, on my way to Tali-fu, I often found ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... blacksmith is about to set to work, he digs a hole in the ground, in which the fire is placed; and then sinks the earthenware tube in a sloping direction, so that the lower end opens at the bottom of the hole, while the upper end projects above the level ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... magistrate, saying "Your reminder is wise, like that which they give to the suff'rer Who has had his dwelling burnt down, that under the ruins, Gold and silver are lying, though melted and cover'd with ashes. Little, indeed, it may be, and yet that little is precious, And the poor man digs it up, and rejoices at finding the treasure. Gladly, therefore, I turn my thoughts to those few worthy actions Which my memory still is able to dwell on with pleasure. Yes, I will not deny it, I saw late foemen uniting So as to save the town from harm; I saw with devotion Parents, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... is Mrs. Hungerford at gardening. Her dress protected by a pretty holland apron, her hands encased in brown leather gloves, she digs and delves. Followed by many children, each armed with one of 'mother's own' implements—for she has her own little spade and hoe, and rake, and trowel, and fork—she plants her own seeds, and pricks her own seedlings, ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... is to get the soil of the bed entirely worked over. Most people dig but poorly. Digging is hard work; so a boy digs a little here, and a little there, throughout the seed bed and thinks the work is all done. It is really done when the above method is used. And after all we have said about the necessity for airing soil, and the need of stirring things up so that the ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... they carefully fill up after laying their eggs there in a heap. This laying is repeated three or four times over, at intervals of a few days during the same season. For each batch of eggs the female digs a special hole, which she does not fail to fill up afterwards. This takes place in ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... bare declivity has evidently been worked, and the auriferous gravel must now be packed from the heights. A barrow with shafts at only one end may be seen beside one of the rockers, and it is conjectured that not all the gravel is picked in buckets. The miner seen in the background of brushwood digs the pay-gravel. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... flame of his love had taken effect upon her heart, and that he must make an underground passage between his house and her dwelling, so that they might communicate with each other freely by means of the mine. The carpenter digs the passage, and the lady pays him a visit, and says to him, "To-morrow I shall come here, and you must bring the kazi to marry me to you." The next day the kazi goes to his office; the lady goes to the carpenter's house, and send ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... girdle around her waist, and bears her child sitting up, holding on to something above her, like the branch of a tree. After the little stranger has arrived the husband may bring her a jar with warm water from which she occasionally drinks. He also digs a hole, in which, after he has gone, she buries the placenta, placing stones on top of the place on account of the dogs. The umbilical cord is cut with a sharp reed or a sharp-edged piece of obsidian, but never with ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... sand, and in order to devour them at their ease, adroitly turn them on their backs; and as they turn many more than they can devour in one night, the Indians often profit by their cunning. The jaguar pursues the turtle quite into the water, and when not very deep, digs up the eggs; they, with the crocodile, the heron, and the gallinago vulture, are the most formidable enemies the little turtles have. Humboldt justly remarks, "When we reflect on the difficulty that the naturalist finds in getting out the body of the turtle, without separating the upper ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... ocean yields, He scorns the verdant meads and flow'ry fields: Then dances jocund o'er the watery way, While the breeze whispers, and the streamers play: Unbounded prospects in his bosom roll, And future millions lift his rising soul; In blissful dreams he digs the golden mine, And raptur'd sees the new-found ruby shine. Joys insincere! thick clouds invade the skies, Loud roar the billows, high the waves arise; Sick'ning with fear, he longs to view the shore, And vows to trust the faithless deep no more. So the young Authour, panting after ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... shows no sign of improvement. From all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing-planes and digs alike have suffered severely—the former from unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane in a cross wind know what that means), and the latter from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the Northern ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... the village descending on the carriage road to Jbail, or Byblus. In these diggings the shrewd antiquary digs for those precious tear-bottles of my ancestors. And everywhere one turns are tombs in which the archaeologist finds somewhat to noise abroad. His, indeed, is a scholarship which is essentially necrophagous. For consider, what would ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Trees forgives; the knot she tied she looses; the tree she planted she digs up. You are forgiven. Bones, put on strength; mouths, receive food; eyes, forget your blindness, and feet, your wanderings. Grow fat and laugh; increase and multiply; for the curse we give you a blessing, such is the will of ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... I knaw. 'Twill call itself Christian long arter your time an' mine; as to bein' Christian—that's another story. Clem Hicks lightened such matters to me—fule though he was in the ordering of his awn life. But s'pose you digs the post up, for argeyment's sake. What about me, as have to go out 'pon the Moor an' blast another new wan out the virgin granite wi' gunpowder? Do'e think I've nothin' better to do with my time ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... like to see the flowers grow, To see the pansies in a row; I think a well-kept garden's fine, And wish that such a one were mine; But one can't have a stock of flowers Unless he digs and digs for hours. ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... serious element of the State University students (that popularity which meant so little to Sylvia, and which she so ignored) had given him a large acquaintance among the class which it was necessary to reach. He knew the men who at the University had been the digs, and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men in their communities; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted to represent the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Dissenting ministers and their wives did not show up. Naturally. They would not go to such a naughty place—except in a mission van. Mr. Nix has a keen eye for the Methodist business. He has open and sly digs at the Church clergy. One of the tipsters said his father was a clergyman, but "his religion was no good to him." He would give anything for the religion of "the little chap that stood on the stool." ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... own eyes, crossin' de branch, an' dey kin root 'long un'need de yearf mos' ez fas' ez a hoss kin trot on top uv hit. Y'all neenter look dat-a-way, 'kase hit's de trufe; dey's jes' built fer gittin' 'long fas' unner groun'. Der han's is bofe pickaxes an' shovels fer 'em; dey digs an' scoops wid der front ones an' kicks de dirt out de way wid der behime ones. Der strong snouts he'ps 'em, too, ter push der way ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... my friend, John Pyle, rather throwing it in my teeth that I had not worked for nothing; but I told him, 'Mr. Pyle, you do not know what you are talking about. We are all workers. The man who ploughs the field and who digs the hedge is a worker; but there are other workers in other stations of life as well. For myself, I can say that I have been a worker ever since I have been a boy.'... Then I told him that the office of judge was by ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... showing the disintegration of the old faiths and the building up of the new in the life of some representative man or woman. There is much more in such a novel than appears. First, there is the work of the scholar, of the man of research. He is like the miner who works underground and digs out of the hard earth that "gem of purest ray serene," the truth. Then comes the artist, just as cultured as the scholar, and only less learned, who polishes the gem and gives it its setting in pages ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... taking out a stump when the troopers came. His foot is still resting on the spade, which is half driven home. He watches the troopers take the boy up to the house, and then, driving the spade to its full depth, he turns up another sod. The troopers reach the door of the homestead; but still he digs steadily, and does not seem to hear his wife's cry of despair. The troopers search the boy's room and bring out some clothing in two bundles; but still the father digs. They have saddled up one of the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... education. But all these being supposed common, there still remains something which serves as a line of demarcation—namely, the ideal. To have an ideal or to have none, to have this ideal or that—this is what digs gulfs between men, even between those who live in the same family circle, under the same roof or in the same room. You must love with the same love, think with the same thought as some one else, if you are ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stronger than either the Rake or the Shovel, though of course the Rake has a longer handle. But it is a very thin handle, and if Jake struck as hard a blow with the Rake as he strikes with me, the Rake's handle would break. And no matter how hard he digs the Shovel into the hard ground, no earth can be turned over until I first loosen it. ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... and cries, "Go up, thou bald head! go up, thou bald head!" Mankind does not curse him in the name of the Lord, but invites him to play with another small boy, named Obstruction, and whose other names are Vested Interest, Reactionary, and Pedant. This one, whenever Mankind will lead him, digs in his heels or lies down in his tracks; until, pricked and goaded by his playfellow, he at length gets up and scrambles after. And so these two keep ever by the side or at the heels of Mankind, whom they neither lead nor deflect ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... shows no sign of improvement. From all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing planes and digs alike have suffered severely—the former from 'unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane in a cross-wind know what that means), ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... Italian peasant—man, woman, or child—is a strong human being, inured to meager living and hardship, loving the soil from which he digs his living with an intense, fiery love. And poverty has not killed the joy of living in the Italian. Far from it! In spite of the exceedingly laborious lives which the majority lead, the privations in food, clothing, housing, the narrowness,—in the modern ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... country ever done for me. I have had no more voice in makin' the laws than your dog there. Your dog is as well agin off, for it don't have to obey the laws, that it has no part in makin'. If it digs up a good bone it don't have to give it to some dog politician to raise money to buy dog buttons to kill other dogs and mebby its own pups. Not one cent of taxes duz this hell-ridden govermunt git out of me ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Whewell (Philosophy of Discovery, p. 242) questions this statement, and asks, "Are we to say that a mole can not dig the ground, except he has an idea of the ground, and of the snout and paws with which he digs it?" I do not know what passes in a mole's mind, nor what amount of mental apprehension may or may not accompany his instinctive actions. But a human being does not use a spade by instinct; and he certainly could not use it unless he had knowledge of a spade, and of the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... me now. But I find there are no potatoes in the house, and I've been wondering who would get them. Lill says they are to be dug in the field, and that she digs them sometimes; but that ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... yourself, and sways from side to side to peer into the gloomy depths of the jungle; in front, the mahout wriggles on his seat, as if by his motion he could urge the elephant to a quicker advance. He digs his toes savagely into his elephant behind the ear; the line is closing up; every eye is fixed on the moving jungle ahead. The roaring of the flames behind, and the crashing of the dried reeds as the elephants force their ponderous frames through the intertwisted ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... join them again at the next station, where they have stopped at the little garden belonging to the gatekeeper; both are already in deep conversation with him while he digs his garden-borders, and marks out the places for flower-seeds. He informs them that it is the time for hoeing out weeds, for making grafts and layers, for sowing annuals, and for destroying the insects on the rose-trees. Madeleine has on ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not mistake each other in this matter,' I said. 'You have alluded to the word of an Aylwin. With me, as with the best of us, the word of an Aylwin is an oath. Wynne's corpse is now hidden; the cross is now hidden; I give you the word of an Aylwin that the man who digs up that corpse I will kill. I will not consider that he is an irresponsible agent of yours; I will kill him, and his blood shall be upon the head of her who sends him, knowing, to ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of the dead man's bed, The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle! Of hard, unmeaning face, down which ne'er stole A gentle tear; with mattock in his hand, Digs thro' whole rows of kindred and acquaintance By far his juniors! Scarce a skull's cast up But well he knew its owner, and can tell Some passage of his life. 1651 BLAIR: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... resin of the tree and coats it with the same material, so as to render it impervious to the rain. The seeds from the cones form its chief food, and it extracts them with its curious bill, the two parts of which cross each other. It grasps the cone with its foot, after the fashion of a parrot, and digs into it with the upper part of its bill, which is like a hook, and forces out the seed with ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... wretch who digs the mine for bread, Or ploughs so that others may be fed,— Feels less fatigue, than that decreed To him that cannot think ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... various directions in chase of their prey. Presently there was a great commotion in the water ahead, and two huge animals appeared struggling together. "Why, they are fighting," cried Willy. "What tremendous digs they give into each other's necks with their ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... when injured. That should not be sought to be crossed which is really uncrossable. That should not be snatched from the foe which the foe would be able to recover. One should not seek to dig at all if by digging one would not succeed in getting at the root of the thing for which one digs. One should never strike him whose head one would not cut off. A king should not always act in this way. This course of conduct that I have laid down should be pursued only in seasons of distress. Inspired by the motive of doing thee good I have said this for instructing thee as to how thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... him, but failing to see what lies nearly under their feet. They pass on, talking of the night's startling event. Cushing dares not rise again. Yet the swamp must be gained, and speedily. Still flat on his back, he digs his heels into the soft earth, and pushes himself inch by inch through the rushes, until, with a warm heart-throb of hope, he feels the welcome dampness ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... stream a calm reflection and picture of itself. The seventeenth century gave birth to many things that only came to maturity in the nineteenth; if you care for that kind of literary study which searches out origins and digs for hints and models of accented styles, you will find in Browne that which influenced more than any other single thing the early work of Keats. Browne has another claim to immortality; if it be true as is now thought that he was ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... ground most are, for there the crows will be very watchful and follow the plough very close: it is all soft, and full of whitish guts; a worm that is, in Norfolk and some other counties, called a grub; and is bred of the spawn or eggs of a beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the ground under cow or horse dung, and there rests all winter, and in March or April comes to be first a red and then a black beetle. Gather a thousand or two of these, and put them, with a peck or two of their own earth, into some tub or firkin, and cover and keep them so warm that ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... origin; but we can't get away from it. She has to hunt and has to find. And she finds and carries off her prey beforehand and watches over it for the appointed number of days, until the moment when, crazily, through the hole which she digs with a hatchet in the middle of the skull, she absorbs the sleep which stupefies her and grants her oblivion for a given period. And here again we see absurdity and madness. Why does she fix that period at so many days? Why should one victim ensure her a hundred and ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... sleigh, used by all the country people, is so low that the front part sweeps the snow before it, and thus ridges are quickly formed all across the road. Another sleigh following has to surmount the ridges, and of necessity digs down on the opposite side, and scoops out more of the snow. Sometimes, also, they slide off either on one side or the other, and thus a succession of hills or waves, as it were, are made with slides, which send the sleighs nearly off the road on one side or the other, and make ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... blanket, with which they throw up the dirt. The process is very similar to the ancient method of separating grain from chaff. The miner who devotes himself to dry washing must be very particular to take only rich dirt, so he scrapes the bed-rock carefully. He never digs very deep—not more than twenty feet; and when he goes beyond seven or eight feet he "coyotes," or burrows after the pay-dirt. He may coyote into the side of a hill, or sink a shaft and coyote in all directions from it. This ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... had been surprised—by the free-traders—perhaps in the very act of surprising them—brought over to L'Etat in a boat, been dragged through the tunnel, or made to crawl through, perhaps, with vicious knife-digs in the rear, and had been left bound in the darkness till he should be otherwise disposed of. His captors had been captured in turn, or maybe killed, and he had lain there alone and in the dark, waiting, waiting for them to return, shouting ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of dark bushes comes a pop like a firecracker, and John Tom gives a grunt and digs out of his bosom a little bullet that has dented itself against his collar-bone. John Tom makes a dive in the direction of the fireworks, and comes back dragging by the collar a kid about nine or ten years young, in a velveteen suit, with a little nickel-mounted rifle in his hand ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... covey of quail once rested nightly; into the farmyard, where the dog is loose and the chickens are safe under lock and key, instead of roosting in trees; across the highway, and through the swamp, and into the big bare empty woods; till in the sad gray morning light he digs under the wild apple tree and sits down on the snow to eat a frozen apple, lest his stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the day away and tries to forget that he ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... it. We hand-picked the directors, and put it up to you, strictly. You did the same to the managers. Everybody knows that his end is up to him, and him alone—so he digs in." ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... whenever he goes abroad he shall be accompanied everywhere by his clerk. We see that Mrs. Pepys plays with what appears to be triumphant skill and success the part of the jealous and avenging wife, and digs her little French heels remorselessly into her prostrate husband and her rival. Unfortunately, we do not know what the final outcome was, for a little later, owing to trouble with his eyesight, Pepys was compelled to bring his Diary to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... explanation of the action in this case is to be found in the familiar fact that very many animals, including the dog, have the habit or instinct of burying or concealing the thing they wish to leave in safety. Thus, the dog buries the bone it does not want to eat, and when hungry digs it up again. When a dog buries or hides the dead body of the she dog it was attached to, or the she dog buries her dead young, it is with the same motive—namely, to conceal the animal that cannot be roused, and that it would not be ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... that likes to make good, though. He never makes a brag; but he boxes up that old shootin' iron and drops out of sight. 'Way up in the woods somewhere he digs up an old b'gosh artist that was brought up with one of them guns in his hand, and he takes a private course. After he's used up a keg of powder shootin' at tin cans they start out to find where the deers roost. They find 'em, too. Mr. Robert is so rattled that he misses the one ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... up an' sells 'em at fifty cents a bottle. All de niggahs in de worl' craves to buy anti-kink juice. I's seed some remedies what took off de scalp an' some what removes de brain, but it don't make no diff'unce—niggahs keep on buyin', no matteh how deep de remedy digs in." ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... practical Yogi although he may repudiate the assertion vigorously, and may not have familiarized himself with the principles of this science, which he has "dropped into" unconsciously. Those who have reported upon Prof. Gates' methods, say that he fairly "digs out" the inventions and discoveries from his mind, after going into seclusion and practicing concentration, and what is known as the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... I'll carefully pull O'er my knuckles hereafter, to make them, well-bred; To mollify digs in the kidneys with wool, And temper with leather a ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... grasping that revelation, are in a more blessed position, 'God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.' The lowest in a higher order is higher than the highest in a lower order. As the geologist digs down through the strata, and, as he marks the introduction of new types, declares that the lowest specimen of the mammalia is higher than the highest preceding of the reptiles or of the birds, so Christ says, 'He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... burning Bush and the Name of the Lord proclaimed the same great truth of self-derived, self-determined, timeless, undecaying Being. And what better symbol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out, could be found of that God in whose life there is no tendency to death, whose work digs no pit of weariness into which it falls, who gives and is none the poorer, who fears no exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... think of what a dog gets to reward him for his plucky day: one dried salmon or a little meal-soup when he's off on a holiday like this. Works without a let-up, and keeps in good flesh on one fish a day. Doesn't even get anything to drink; eats a little snow after dinner, digs his bed, and sleeps in a ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Smith. "Who's goin' to say what's vicious and what ain't? I says it's vicious to lie like he does about them idjot skulls and ham-bones he digs out and brings home, makin' out that they might be pieces of fellers what could use one of them cotton-woods for a walkin' stick and et animals the size of that ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... With this he easily splits the anvil and cuts in two a flake of wool, floating down the Rhine. He first avenges the death of his father, and then sets off with Regin to attack the dragon Fafnir. At the advice of the former Sigurd digs a ditch across the dragon's peth and pierces him from below with his sword, as the latter comes down to drink. In dying the dragon warns Sigurd against the treasure and its curse, and against Regin, who, he says, ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... this day do not begin until later than usual, probably nine o'clock. Hasche{COMBINING BREVE}lti and Haschebaad dress and go out. The patient disrobes and takes his place. The assisting medicine-man digs a small hole just between the patient's feet, and encircles it with a line of taditin, or pollen, leaving an opening to the east, after which the patient dons a mask. Hasche{COMBINING BREVE}lti enters, followed by Haschebaad, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... column, to which he contributed almost daily for twelve years, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at those of his unhappy fellow citizens who became notorious, through his instrumentality, in their devotion to old book-shelves and auction sales. And all the time none was more assiduous than this same good-natured ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... to justify his suspicions, he digs his beak into the carcass, but scarcely has he done so when the serpent seizes hold of him. The eagle cries for mercy, and promises the serpent a present of whatever he desires. The serpent is relentless. To release the eagle would be to play false ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... Power I have 'joyed, in sooth, but not the name. Thou smilest, Thurlow. Ah, thou little know'st What hole it is Ambition digs i' th' heart What end, most seeming empty, is the mark For which we fret and toil and dare! How hard With an unrounded fortune to sit down! Then, what a lustre from most ancient times Heaven has flung ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Otho Fabricius, in his "Fauna Graenlandica" (p. 24), informs us that the tendons are converted into sewing threads. The female bear has one or two, and sometimes three, cubs at a time. They are born in the winter, and the mother generally digs for them and for herself a snug nestling-place in the snow. The males in the winter time leave the coast, and go out on the ice-fields, to the edge of the open water after seals.—Adam ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Making Megapode, from its big feet, is somewhat like the Brush Turkey, laying many eggs; it digs holes five or six feet deep and deposits the eggs at the bottom. The natives gets these eggs by scratching up the earth with their fingers—a very hard task, since the holes seldom run straight. Some of these mounds are enormously large, one of them being found to measure ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... see why he should pay more for living at home than he'd pay in digs—though, as a matter of fact I don't know anyone who'd take him for as little as that, even for only bed ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... it would apply even to space, for when a man digs the ground he thinks that he has made new space in ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... little Jack who found the bedroom in question, While trotting about at the foot of the cliff, he discovered, behind a turn of the rock, one of those grottoes well polished, well hollowed out, which the sea herself digs, when the waves, enlarged by the tempest, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... Twain is eager to expose the hypocrisy of those who would misrepresent Tom's real attitude toward church and school. While Mark Twain is determined to present life faithfully as he sees it, he dislikes as much as any Puritan to see evil triumph. In his stories, wrongdoing usually digs its own grave. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... beat the Austrians at Palestro! 400 Austrians drowned in a canal! Anti-French feeling in Germany! Allgermine Zeiturg talks of conquest of Allsatia and Loraine and the occupation of Paris! [Vicious digs with a pencil through the above proper names.] Race for the Derby won by Sir Joseph Hawley's Musjid! [That's what England cares for! Hooray for the Darby! Italy be deedeed!] Visit of Prince Alfred to the Holy Land. Letter from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... found a-plenty in every life; and we don't delve for the real gold. We slip along in a don't-care way, neglecting the opportunities that come to us to better humanity; seeking the easiest tasks, satisfied with that kind of existence. The miner who digs in the bowels of the earth for his gold has to work and struggle and strive. So we, too, if we make the most of God's gifts to us, must work ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... spun greatness into your destiny, be sure that it does not matter. The reward of Cecil Rhodes was in the thing he did, and not in the memory which men have of it. The man who digs a well has precisely the same reward. The point is that you must do the deed for the deed's sake. Do not do it because the crowd will clap their hands. When present applause or ultimate fame become your chief purpose in life, what are you, after all? You are a play-actor—that ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the shimmer and sheen that dance on the leaf of the lily, Causing the bud to explode, and gilding the poodle's chinchilla, Gladys cavorts with the rake, and hitches the string to the lattice, While with the trowel she digs, and gladdens the heart of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... necessary for a people to separate—" upon her typewriter, over and over and over again, while she listened to Captain Morton selling young Mr. Van Dorn a patent churn, and from the winks and nods and sly digs and nudges the Captain distributed through his canvass, it was obvious to Miss Mauling that affairs in certain quarters had reached ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... it seems to me absurd to split into the two portions of reason and understanding one and the same spiritual power, according as the object on which it acts is higher or lower; just as if we adopted two names for the same hand that digs up the earth and directs the telescope to heaven, or maintained that the latter was quite a different hand from the former. No. There is but one understanding for man and beasts, as but one common substance for their material forms. The more perfect the form, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... I digs through my steamer trunk and hauls out a four-ounce can of aluminum paint that the intelligent Mr. 'Ankins had mistook for shavin' soap and put in before we left home. Then I picks out a couple of suits of that tin armor in the hall, a medium-sized one, and a ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... catch the force of his illustration, Burt gave him several digs in the ribs. This familiarity would have been annoying under most circumstances, but it was manifest from the manner of the warrior that he rather enjoyed the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis |
