"Digging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had put up our tent, Philip went down the gully to study the art of gold digging. He watched the men at work; some were digging holes, some were dissolving clay in tubs of water by stirring it rapidly with spades, and a few were stooping at the edge of water-holes, washing off the sand mixed with the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... lying down flat, but with his back towards us; and he has a dismal habit of groaning aloud, writhing his whole body, and digging his toes into the grass, when he cannot turn a ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... any, the smallest, portion of them without due investigation. This habit, persisted in, led to the discovery of the new planet (Georgium Sidus)." As well might one say that a skilled mining surveyor, digging for coal, came upon the seam by chance, as ascribe to chance the necessary result of such a careful ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... the men went on digging the well. It was so deep that they were hoisting the sand up in buckets. The men who hoisted were exposed, and one of them was wounded in the shoulder. He was Peter Bromley, who drove oxen for the Bloodgood wagon, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... hung several articles of feminine apparel to dry. Women were so scarce in California at that time that this was sufficient to arouse the whole camp. The "Boys" as we were called, were scattered along the Coyote digging for a distance of about four miles, and when anything unusual happened the words, 'Oh, Joe!' would be passed along the ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... madly at them yelling 'Fag!' When somehow something gives and your feet drag. You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain And find ... you're digging tunnels through the hay In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day. Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb! You're back in the old sailor suit again. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... "Ah, that I do: I mind digging out an old vixen up there, when 'er 'ad gone to earth, and the 'ounds with their tails up a-hollering like music. The Badminton was out that day. I were allus very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be squire's keeper there. Many ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... and a real regret passed over his careless face, "and it's a shame, for no one would have thought he owned a penny; he was just digging at the business all the time, like the rest ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... at once set to work digging holes and securely planting the beams already prepared in a semicircle a hundred feet across, behind the wall facing the battery. The beams when fixed projected eight feet above the ground, the spaces between ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... sole occupation it is to collect the tree-earth, and who become skilful in digging and removing the soil from underneath the roots, without in the slightest ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... he. "I saw the exact tree in my dream, but there are so many trees, here that I am confused. There is only one thing to do now. I must begin with the first tree and keep on digging until I come to the one with the treasure ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... move they make, the dead man lays there with his face to the sky, and the boys is so scared they could hardly dig. The master keeps telling them to hurry with the digging. ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... Iceland. Torfi hung the picture of Jon Sigurdsson on one wall, and on another his wife hung a calendar with a picture of a girl in a wide-brimmed hat. The neighbours were helpful to them in building their cabin, making ditches, and in other ways. All that summer Torfi stood up to his hips in mud digging ditches, and when the bottom was worn out of his shoes and the soles of his feet began to get sore from the shovel, he hit on a plan: he cut the bottom out of a tin can and stuck his toe into the cylinder. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... swelled with pride; for commendation from Uncle Andy was a scarce article. He too sat down on the fallen trunk and began digging at the bark with his ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... men, however, do not laugh. They are unwilling that the state should be corrupted by the vicious customs of slaves and foreigners. Therefore they do business at the gates, and sell those whom they have taken in war or keep them for digging ditches and other hard work without the city, and for this reason they always send four bands of soldiers to take care of the fields, and with them there are the labourers. They go out of the four gates from which roads with walls on both sides of them lead to the ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... And better for him to do something abroad than digging at home; and in the army he might get ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... to explore the country forty miles round, and endeavour to meet with somebody who would sell us a couple of horses, and two or three cows. Not a clearing or settlement did we find, however, and at last we returned discouraged, and again began digging. On the very first day after our return, as we were toiling away in the field, a trampling of horses was heard, and four men mounted, and followed by a couple of wolf-hounds, came cantering over the prairie. It struck us that this would be a famous chance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... and exposing a large surface of black mud studded with the stumps of old trees, and the stream from the sulphur spring rippling along merrily in a channel it had cut for itself through the broken portion of the dam. While two men were set to digging a new channel for this stream, so as to lead it through the sluice-way, and leave the place where the work was to be done free from water, the others began to cut down half a dozen tall pines, and hew ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... shaft was pumped out, digging by hand was begun with a diameter of 12 feet. After descending 20 inches an 8x10 inch curb was laid, in order to consolidate the earth and prevent any movement of the tubbing. Then the excavating was continued to a depth of 311/2 inches, and with a diameter of 93/4 feet. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson's dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield's tale went by before his mind in a scroll of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while following up some wild sheep, I came upon two bears very busily engaged in digging up the snow where an avalanche had fallen. Being hid from their sight, I determined to wait some little time to ascertain why they were digging. I accordingly placed myself behind a rock, and allowed them to work away. ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... of some 30,000 people, entirely made and sustained by the gold-digging industry. An immense amount of the precious metal has been taken here, and sufficient is being secured still to make it a paying concern, although the miners have to go to a considerable depth in ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... dismounted, and leading Rakush to a green spot near a limpid fountain or rivulet of spring water, allowed him to graze, and then went to sleep. Akwan Diw seeing from a distance that Rustem had fallen asleep, rushed towards him like a whirlwind, and rapidly digging up the ground on every side of him, took up the plot of ground and the champion together, placed them upon his head, and walked away with them. Rustem being awakened with the motion, he was thus addressed by ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... immediately to an investigation of the matter. Drawing the rammers from their guns they would insert them in the ground at every suspicious place where fresh dirt might be seen, and if they should strike anything hard with them, the process of digging would be the next thing on the programme, and behold! various things of consecutive kinds would appear, probably the whole contents of a smoke-house or dwelling. The soldier, making this discovery, would ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... more began to search through the entire world. Now these heroes saw a rift on the surface of the earth. And having reached this pit, the sons of Sagara began to excavate it. And with spades and pickaxes they went on digging the sea, making the utmost efforts. And that same abode of Varuna (namely the ocean), being thus, excavated by the united sons of Sagara and rent and cut on all sides round, was placed in a condition of the utmost distress. And the demons and snakes and Rakshasas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... cloth on regular looms which were made into dresses for the slaves. For various colors of cloth the thread was dyed. The dye was made by digging up red shank and wild indigo roots which were boiled. The substance obtained being some of the best dye to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... were under way, Colonel Sutter had begun the erection of a mill at Colonna on the American branch of the Sacramento River. In January one Marshall, who was engaged in digging a race-way for the mill for Colonel Sutter, found a metal which he had not seen before, and, on testing it in the fire, found that it was gold. The "finds" were sent to Sacramento and tested, with the result that they were declared to be pure gold. The mint at Philadelphia also declared the metal ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... the island of Sor, near Senegal, have white flesh, and are well tasted, but do not burrow in the earth, so that we may suspect their digging themselves houses in this cold climate is an acquired art, as well as their note of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... have is the one, not who digs out the treasure for us, but who teaches and inspires us with our own hands to open the rocks and find the treasures for ourselves. The digging out of the iron will do us more good than even the iron itself ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... what new misfortune had tracked him down. His teeth were worn and yellow as Indian meal, and his rough, ill-shaven cheeks and pale eyes reminded the priest of the country in which Pat lived, and of the four acres of land at the end of the boreen that Pat was digging ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Parrishioners, a catalogue of fees for burial under various conditions. Then follow The Parrishe's dutyes for the Bells (knells, peals, with small or large bells). Finally, The Clarke his dutyes for Parishioners (Bann-askings, weddings, churchings, grave digging, tolling the bells for funerals in various ways, and on specified occasions, etc.). All the above fees are doubled in case of non-parishioners. See also the Salehurst tariff of 1597, most comprehensive and minute also: Sussex Arch. Coll., xxv, 154-5. Also ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... corner of the inner quadrangle, and made for it, impelled by natural curiosity. He found Drysdale seated on the ground with several silver tankards by his side, employed to the best of his powers in digging a hole with one ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... sluggish figure and haggard face, and waited for him,—with a quick remembrance of long summer days, when he and George, boys together, had looked on this man as the wisest and strongest, sitting at his side digging worms or making yellow flies for him to fish in the Big Cacapon,—how they would have the delicate broiled trout for supper,—how Dode was a chubby little puss then, with white apron and big brown eyes, choosing to sit on his lap when they went to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... come to the end of the Roman time in England. It is but little that is known of those five hundred years; but some remains of them are still found. Often, when labourers are digging up the ground, to make foundations for houses or churches, they light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on which ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... which, with the haste of one who fears that he may be prematurely interrupted, but otherwise, with all the reluctance which we may imagine, and which his streaming tears proclaimed, he addressed himself to the last labor in which he supposed himself to have any interest on this earth—that of digging a grave. Measuring a space adjusted to the proportions of his person, he inquired anxiously for any loose fragments of marble, such as might suffice to line it. He requested also to be furnished with wood and water, as the materials ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... pillow at all. When he lay on the ground with his cheek on the palm of his hand, he heard his child crying. He heard him crying down under the ground, they say. Having assembled all his relations, he spoke of digging into the ground. The relations collected horses to be given as pay; they collected goods and horses. Then came two old men who said they were sacred. They spoke of seeking for the child. An old man went to tell the father. He brought ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... attempt to reinstate the ceremonies of the Jewish Law in the capital of Palestine is known to every reader. The workmen employed in digging the foundation of the new Temple were terrified by flames of fire darting forth from the ground, and accompanied with the most frightful explosions. No inducement could prevail on them to persevere in labours which appeared to excite ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the spring a voice commanded him to halt. It was not an outside voice this time, but one within; and, although trembling, he froze closer to the ground, obeying instantly. Then the sound of a spade thrust into soil, raised and emptied, told of digging. Digging what? Graves? No, the German army, that great Imperial Machine, was being pounded too hard to bother with its dead! The German God could ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... occasionally I detected some of the round and contorted appearances which I have mentioned as being so conspicuous on the outside. I cannot speak with precision as to the length of the tubes, as the clay when examined had been broken up into large rough masses in digging for the foundations of houses. The largest noticed was about three inches long, and the general width one-eighth of an inch. They often run parallel to each other, but at unequal distances. I now have to notice what I consider ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... asset is the well-known aptitude shown by poodles for digging out truffles, an accomplishment of which I often read in my youth. If truffles, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... half-past eight. Mr. Hardy had requested that they should be specially instructed in the raising of vegetables, and in the planting and pruning of fruit-trees. The culture of flowers could be of no utility. The digging made the boys' backs ache at first, and blistered their hands, but they stuck to it manfully, and soon became accustomed to the work, returning to breakfast with glowing cheeks ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... weather as it comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or bad; learning that a meal which is scanty fare for one becomes a banquet for two—provided the other is the right person; learning that there is some skill in everything, even in digging bait, and that what is called luck consists chiefly in having your tackle in good order; learning that a man can be just as happy in a log shanty as in a brownstone mansion, and that the very best pleasures are those ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... fighting for a sect, for a province, for a nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this while, close alongside, your great rival grew with giant's growth, looking far into the future before him, cutting his cloth with perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to in after-time,' digging his canals and grading, his railroads, with one eye on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, spreading himself, monopolizing, annexing, outmanoeuvring and flanking those colonial bodies who sat in solemn state ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... seen all over the landscape, while we travel through square miles of hot dust, where they tell us, and truly, that in winter and early spring we should be up to our knees in flowers; a country, too, where surface gold-digging is so common and unnoticed that the large, six-horse stage-coach, in which I travelled from Stockton to Hornitos, turned off in the high road for a Chinaman, who, with his pan and washer, was working up a hole which an American had abandoned, but where the minute and patient ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... sea being still very smooth, they entered it, though the passage was very dangerous, inasmuch as they had but two feet water, and the bottom full of stones, the coast appearing a flat sand for about a mile. As soon as they got on shore they fell to digging in the sand, but the water that came into their wells was so brackish that they could not drink it, though they were on the very point of choking for thirst. At last, in the hollows of the rocks, they met with considerable quantities of ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... revolutionists having gained the object of their ambition, might have been inclined to halt in their mad career; but, their party driving them onward, they proceeded to still more rigid and cruel measures. It is not too much to say that such men are digging a grave for the House of ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... see the devil, With his little spade and shovel, Digging praties in the garden With ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Abbott caught Mrs. Hunter digging in her private vegetable garden behind the palace, and wearing a garment that her second gardener's wife would have scorned, her unblemished face beaming under a battered straw hat. Both women had the humor to laugh, and their intimacy dated from that moment, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the Vagmati. A large channel, one of the branches of the Raputi, passes Bhimphedi; but in the dry season it contains no water, and the inhabitants receive a scanty supply from a small spring. Water, however, might probably be procured in abundance, by digging wells in the channel ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... however, with which Mrs. Teak regarded the efforts of her husband to put under cultivation land that had lain fallow for twenty years convinced both men that they were on a wrong scent. Mr. Teak, who did the digging, was the first to realize it, but his friend, pointing out the suspicions that might be engendered by a sudden cessation of labour, induced him ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... statue with a complete head as if that were very remarkable—almost the only statue he mentions at all. Ghiberti describes two or three antique statues with such enthusiasm that one concludes he was familiar with very few. In fact, before the great digging movement which enthralled the Renaissance, antique sculpture was rare. But little of Poggio's collection came from Rome: Even Lorenzo de' Medici got most of his from the provinces. A century later Sabba del Castiglione complains of having to buy a Donatello owing to the difficulty of ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... sleep!" she cried, giving him a thump at each word. "You've slept two hours. (Thump.) You sleep till you stupefy yourself (thump), and then you go and dig. What's the use of digging? (Thump.) Why don't you make some money? (Thump.) Talk and sleep! (Thump.) I hate it. (Thump.) You've rubbed the paint off the wainscot with your sleep, sleep, sleep (thump)—there's one of your hairs sticking to the paint where your head goes. (Thump.) Anything more hateful—sleep ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... to the newly-discovered California gold-fields, where he arrived in 1852, being at that time twenty-eight years old. After some experience in the mines, he decided that there were surer ways of getting gold than digging for it, and set up a mercantile business in San Francisco, which grew rapidly in importance and proved the foundation of a vast fortune. He was the first president of the Central Pacific Railroad, and was in charge of its construction over the mountains, driving the ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... realized I could not get the close insight I wished from that bush, as it was seventy-five yards from the garbage-pile. There was none nearer; so I did the only thing left to do: I went to the garbage-pile itself, and, digging a hole big enough to hide in, remained there all day long, with cabbage-stalks, old potato-peelings, tomato-cans, and carrion piled up in odorous heaps around me. Notwithstanding the opinions of countless flies, it was not an attractive place. Indeed, it was so unfragrant that ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... digging. She condescended to take a little interest in this, for the experience was novel. A lucky strike might mean freedom from this life of hardship and misery. Once back in England—— The thought was tantalizing. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... do please write, if only to tell me how you are getting on with Hamilton and Company. I only wish I were there to help you pull those fine old uncles of yours out of the hot water. I know you'll do it, though. And meanwhile I shall be digging away out here and thinking of ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that. And I will tell you why. When I was brought into the villa the first time, and you watched me, bidden behind the door, do you know what I was watching myself, while I appeared to be solely occupied digging out the caviare? The fresh print of boot-nails which left the carpet near the table, where someone had spilled beer (the beer was still running down the cloth). Someone had stepped in the beer. The boot-print was not clearly ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... hardly to be done without some flouting of our contemporaries, who with all their faults must be allowed the merit of keeping the world habitable for the refined eulogists of the blameless past. One wonders whether the remarkable originators who first had the notion of digging wells, or of churning for butter, and who were certainly very useful to their own time as well as ours, were left quite free from invidious comparison with predecessors who let the water and the milk alone, or whether some rhetorical nomad, as he stretched himself on the grass with a ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... however, we see long and well-proven systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life, yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The progress of humanity must be shouted in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a place where the ground appeared to have been lately disturbed, and on digging there discovered a large store of bacon, ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... that Cyprus exhibits an anomaly in the peculiarity of a small rainfall but great subterranean water-power; some stratum that is impervious retains the water at depths varying according to local conditions. The well-sinker commences by boring, or rather digging, a circular hole two feet six inches in diameter. The soil of Cyprus is so tenacious that the walls of the shaft require no artificial support; this much facilitates the work, and the labourer, armed with a very short-handled pick, patiently hacks his vertical way, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... were agreed as to the propriety of inflicting punishment on some unhappy men who were, at that moment, objects of almost universal hatred. Cromwell was no more; and those who had fled before him were forced to content themselves with the miserable satisfaction of digging up, hanging, quartering, and burning the remains of the greatest prince that has ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eight miles an hour and the steepest declivity was yet to come. Further, the dropping of the left-hand shafts jerked the van to the left, and Denry dropped the other pair only just in time to avoid the sudden uprooting of a lamp-post. The four points of the shafts digging and prodding into the surface of the road gave the pantechnicon something to think about for a few seconds. But unfortunately the precipitousness of the street encouraged its head-strong caprices, and a few seconds later all four shafts were broken, ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... ahead in the increasingly thick white fog. All I could hear was the sound of pickaxes on the ground and the thud of falling clods. The enemy had, no doubt, decided not to attack again and were digging new trenches. They no longer uttered their contemptuous guttural cries of "Cavalry! Cavalry!" They had learnt to their cost that these French cavalrymen, at the sight of whom their own are so ready to turn back, could hold ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... charity, would send her to bed again, saying that after all her hard day's work she needed rest; not perceiving that the real rest she required was time for her soul to commune with God. Dominica, therefore, became very unhappy; and one day as she was digging in the garden she heard a mournful voice speak plainly and articulately by her side, saying, "Ah, My spouse! why hast thou left Me thus?" And it seemed to her that it was the voice of her Lord, who tenderly expostulated ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... man from Castle Shields, by name Adam Redpath, was going to his work (digging sheep-drains on the moor), when on the Foul Fords he met Henry Keane lying stone dead and with no mark of violence on his body. His hat, coat, waistcoat, shoes and stockings were lying at about 100 yards ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... Mrs. Linton's, he said—'I shall have that home. Not because I need it, but—' He turned abruptly to the fire, and continued, with what, for lack of a better word, I must call a smile—'I'll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there: when I saw her face again—it is hers yet!—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change if the air blew on it, and so I ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... semi-circle of the Southern Alps stood out, for a hundred miles from north to south, in appalling white distinctness, and no one in the whole Colony had ever seen the splendid range thus free from fleck or flaw. We had done all we could within working distance, but what was, the use of digging in drifts thirty feet deep? Amidst, and almost above, the terrible anxiety about our own individual safety,—for the snow was over the roof of many of the station-houses,—came the pressing question, "Where are the sheep?" A profound ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... society. Jeff went about among them, and danced with the sisters and cousins of several men who seemed superior to the lost condition of their kinswomen; these were nice fellows enough, but doomed by their grinding, or digging, or their want of worldly wisdom, to a place among the jays, when they really had some qualifications for a nobler standing. He had a very good time, and he was enjoying himself in his devotion to a lively young brunette whom he was making laugh with his jokes about some of the others, when ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... swallows him, as I said, if he waits till we are ready for him. Everything depends on that—and on your silence. We must take time. It isn't only the digging of the hole. We need to fix up some counterpoise to make it shut after a body like a mouse-trap; we must do the thing thoroughly if we do it at all; and till it's done, not a word to a soul in the same hemisphere! In the end I suppose I shall have to tell Donkin, my cashier, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... course of digging, he came upon a fine bit of root, quite dry and fit for fuel, which he set aside carefully-for the Rat is an economical creature—in order to take it home with him. So when the shower was over, he set off with the dry root in his mouth. As he went ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... It was good, healthy work, this digging, and hewing, and ploughing. It made the muscles on their arms stand out like whip cords; it bronzed their pale faces, and made their eyes bright, and gave them a good appetite for their bread and milk; and when they went to bed, they didn't stop to see ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... or rather mulberry tree, mania. Young mulberry trees rose to a dollar and a quarter each, though they can be multiplied almost without limit in a single year. As might have been expected, a re-action took place, many parties were ruined, and berry trees may now be had for the trouble of digging them up. ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... himself with some friends and leased for 99 years some of the best oil springs near Titusville, Pa. This lease cost the company $5,000, although only a few years before a cow had been considered a full equivalent in value for the same land. The original prospectors began operations by digging collecting ditches, and then pumping off the oil which gathered upon the surface of the water. But not long after this first crude attempt at oil gathering, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co. was organized, with Prof. B. Silliman of Yale College as its president, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... shriek. She remained a moment rocking on her feet, then wheeled and stumbled toward the quilt-covered four-poster bed in one dark corner of the cabin. Into its feather billows she flung herself and lay with her fingernails digging into her temples and her body racked with the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... gaining the brow of the hill he leapt from the ground with a frantic cry and clasped his hands. I ran towards him—but I remember no more—though at times something crosses my mind, and I have wild visions of roofless walls, and a crowd of weeping women and silent men digging among ashes, and a beautiful body, all dropping wet, brought on a deal from the mill-dam, and of men, as it was carried by, seizing me by the arms and tying my hands,—and then I fancy myself in a house fastened to a chair;—and sometimes I think ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... wicked mortals on earth, this Australian coaching was the worst. They went through Wagga-Wagga and Murrumburra, and other places with similar names, till at last they were told that they had reached Nobble. Nobble they thought was the foulest place which they had ever seen. It was a gold-digging town, as such places are called, and had been built with great rapidity to supply the necessities of adjacent miners. It was constructed altogether of wood, but no two houses had been constructed alike. They generally had gable ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... 'Kiss thy perfumed garments' ... No; I'll hold them up. Oh—oh—" And as she spoke her crazy purpose drove her forward; she held back against it—but, like the pressure of a hand upon her shoulder, it pushed her on down the bank—slowly—slowly—her heels digging into the crumbling clay, her hands clutching now at a tuft of grass, now at a drooping branch; she was drawing quick breaths of terror, and talking, in little gasps, aloud: "He'll forget Edith. He'll have Jacky. He'll ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... have been cut off, like the fold of a Leicestershire grazing-ground, and made into an office in the centre of which was a square or two of glass that commanded a view of the whole warehouse. "Is Mr. Jorrocks in?" inquired the Yorkshireman of a porter, who was busy digging currants with a wooden spade. "Yes, sir, you'll find him in the counting-house," was the answer; but on looking in, though his hat and gloves were there, no Jorrocks was visible. At the farther end of the warehouse a man in his shirt-sleeves, with a white apron round his waist and a brown ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... that. They think of me now as one of themselves, and stay the night with me when they pass through Melihovo. Add to that, that we have bought ourselves a new comfortable covered carriage, have made a new road, so that now we don't drive through the village. We are digging a pond.... Anything else? In fact hitherto everything has been new and interesting, but how it will be later on, I don't know. There is snow already, it is cold, but I don't feel drawn to Moscow. So far I have not had any feeling ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... have any at all." He held out his free hand. "Come on, Geoff." And the boy, who had hesitated, digging one foot into the carpet, suddenly ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... brought to bear on Dead Man's Hill, paving the way for an infantry advance, which was to come a few hours later. It was risky business upon which the lads were bent, for the great shells struck on all sides of them, throwing huge masses of dirt in the air like giant fountains and digging immense excavations in the ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... ant-eater found fat termites so satisfying that it left all other things and devoted its life to the exploiting of anthills, and now it has no rival at that business, but it is fit for nothing else. Its awkward digging tools will not allow it to put the sole of its foot to the ground, so it has to double them under and hobble about like a Chinese lady. It has no teeth, and stupidity is the most prominent feature of its character. It has become that poor thing, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the rocks and ravines and hills and holes they run like rabbits, or they hand their arms to some fleet-footed chap to hide, while they stay—aye, they do, they actually stand their ground till we come, and there they are working at a hedge or digging the ground, and looking as innocent and stupid as possible. They never saw anybody, and never heard any firing—or they thought it was the Colonel shooting a hare. We hardly know what to do in doubtful ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... in search of buffalo and were caught in a great storm of wind and hail. The cold was bitter and the wind cut to the bone. They were saved from freezing to death only by digging a rude shelter through the snow into the side of a hill, and there they crouched for two days with so little food left in their knapsacks, that without game, they would perish, in a week, of hunger, if the cold did not get the first chance. The most experienced hunters went forth, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in digging a well on Hacker's creek, found a piece of timber which had been evidently cut off at one end, twelve or thirteen feet in the ground—marks of the axe were ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... bought a piece of waste land on the north side of this parish," said the farmer. "The ground had never been touched by a spade. Half of it was bog, the other half a mass of stones. It looked pretty bad. On that very land I worked like a slave, digging up stones until my back was ready to break. But I think I laboured even harder with the swamp, before I finally got it ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... ye will take it home unto you; but if ye will still continue in the ways of sin, without returning, know this, that ye are but multiplying those curses, platting many cords of your iniquities, to bind you in everlasting chains. Ye are but digging a pit for your souls, ye that sweat in your sins, and travel in them, and will not embrace this ransom offered. The key and lock of that pit is eternal despair. O consider how quickly your pleasures and gains will end, and spare some of your thoughts from present things, to give ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the New Zealander antiquarian, digging among the buried cities of Natal, will come upon the forgotten town of Ladysmith. And he will find a handful of Rip Van Winkle Boers with white beards down to their knees, behind quaint, antique guns shelling a cactus-grown ruin. Inside, sheltering in holes, ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... moved its head and looked at me, giving evidence that it was still alive. I accordingly returned to the hole and dug out my saddle, when, after great exertion, I managed to reach the horse and put it on. Then, digging round the poor beast's front feet, and patting it on the neck, I induced it to move forward a ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... vessels, belonging to Holland, had been frozen up in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam. Don Frederic on his arrival from Naarden, despatched a body of picked men over the ice to attack the imprisoned vessels. The crews had, however, fortified themselves by digging a wide trench around the whole fleet, which thus became from the moment an almost impregnable fortress. Out of this frozen citadel a strong band of well-armed and skilful musketeers sallied forth upon skates ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wild about, she was an audacious flirt, a girl up to anything; and in the morning, at low tide, she might be seen, with her legs and feet bare, among the children, of whom there were many on the sands, digging ditches, making ramparts, constructing towers and fortifications in wet sand, herself as much amused as if she had been one of the babies themselves. There was screaming and jumping, and rushing out of reach of the waves which came up ready to overthrow ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... she had inherited from that particular ancestor and he had been inordinately vain of his wife's hands. Mademoiselle had been ordered never to let the child "spread her hand by opening door knobs or touching the fire-stones—or—er— any clumsy thing—" and it was droll to see the little girl, digging in her bit of garden with those lovely hands incased in long flopping cotton gloves—not to forget the broad sunbonnet that shaded her earnest little face. In short, he was jealous of her complexion and her manners—But beyond ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... blacks, who understood Arabic, hearing me speak thus, came towards me, and said, "Brother, be not surprised to see us, we are inhabitants of this country, and came hither to-day to water our fields, by digging little canals from this river, which comes out of the neighbouring mountain. We observed something floating upon the water, went to see what it was, and, perceiving your raft, one of us swam into the river, and brought it thither, where we fastened ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... probable object, and increased his curiosity to know what they were doing. So he came forth from his concealment and went toward them. When he reached the spot, the mystery was suddenly dispelled by his finding out that they were digging worms for bait, to ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... as they skirted the Southern line, noticed no signs of further preparations by the Confederates. No men were throwing up earthworks or digging trenches. As well as they could surmise, the garrison, like the besieging army, was seeking shelter and rest, and from this fact the keen mind of Colonel Arthur Winchester divined that the defense ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... spade of specially stout make; the blade is hollow and resembles an exaggerated gouge, and the advantage is that in digging out a rabbit the tool is very apt to catch under a root, when an ordinary spade may bend and become useless. The 'navigator' will stand anything, and being narrow is also more handy. All these implements Little John has prepared by the dim light of a horn lantern ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... steamboats, I ran into a narrow creek, with high, muddy banks, which were so steep and so slippery that my boat slid into the water as fast as I could haul her on to the shore. This difficulty was overcome by digging with my oar a bed for her to rest in, and she soon settled into the damp ooze, where she quietly ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Christian thieves I am content to lose some of my crowns; That I may, walking in my gallery, See 'em go pinion'd along by my door. Being young, I studied physic, and began To practice first upon the Italian; There I enriched the priest with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in use, With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells; And after that was I an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. And after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging myself,' he said. 'It beats elephants to pieces. In this game you're digging up dead things and making them alive. Aren't you ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... The furniture was mean and scanty. There was a large rambling kitchen-garden, but no gardener; and many times verbal incentives were made to me,—generally, I fear, in vain,—to get me to lend a hand at digging and planting. Into the hayfields on holidays I was often compelled to go,—not, I fear, with much profit. My father's health was very bad. During the last ten years of his life, he spent nearly the half of his time in bed, suffering agony from ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... first place there is all the water about. Then, too, it would be easier to take this instrument into the regions where gold is usually discovered on land. You could prospect with it in almost the positive knowledge that you would locate a vein. Digging then would be easy." ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... accommodation of a morning visitor, and he is nothing abashed; he can skirmish by the hour with a stationary coal-scuttle; in the midst of the enchanted pleasance, he can see, without sensible shock, the gardener soberly digging potatoes for the day's dinner. He can make abstraction of whatever does not fit into his fable; and he puts his eyes into his pocket, just as we hold our noses in an unsavoury lane. And so it is, that although the ways of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a trap. It was pent in at one end of a narrow little island. It had been no one's business to foresee that it must some day outgrow this space; now men were digging a score of tunnels to set it free, but they had not begun these until the pressure had become unendurable, and now it had reached its climax. In the financial district, land had been sold for as much as four dollars a square inch. Huge blocks of buildings ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... spoke to them. Willing hands started the wheels. The gallant little blacks, looking like a pair of ponies before the huge van, seemed to lie flat on their bellies as they strained forward, digging their sharp little hoofs into the hillside. The van gave an inch—two! A foot! Then urged by their master's voice, and for very pride of home and race and breed, the gallant blacks pulled for dear life, and in a quarter of an hour the van was at our door, and they ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... denied being anything so inhuman. The skull had rolled into a grave he had been digging by the side of the almost forgotten grave of the poor player; and, as the manager had bespoken one for the play, he had thought it no harm to furnish him this. But he would put it back carefully into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... he murmured. "If that old white-haired brother of mine digging about the roots of Greek and Sanscrit back in Harvard could only see all this, maybe he might understand why I choose to stay here with my college instead of tying up with a university back East. But, maybe not. We are only step-brothers. He is old enough to be my father, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... our Atlantic cities, an attempt was made, partially at least, successful, to form a company for the purpose of digging for money in one of the desolate sand-keys of the West Indies. It appears that some mesmerized "subject," in the course of one of those somnambulic voyages of discovery in which the traveller, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "In digging deep, where monks do sleep, beneath yon cloister shrined, That coffin old, within the mould, it was my chance to find; The costly carvings of the lid I scraped full carefully, In hope to get at name or date, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth |
