"Digging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Whilst the Russians were digging their cooking trenches somewhat aside from the main camp, and making all necessary arrangements for bivouacking, Heideck had an opportunity of admiring the magnificence with which these Indian Princes ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... he announced gloomily. "My own mamma always cooks potatoes. Josephine's the limit! I been working to-day. I almost dug out a badger, over by the bluff. I got where I could hear him scratching to get away, and then it was all rocks, so I couldn't dig any more. Gee, it was hard digging! And I'm just about starved, if you want to know. And there ain't ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... in the Barwan. The course downwards of the new river, which we even now believed to be called the Maran, from what we had gathered from the natives, was thus almost proved to be towards the southern rivers. I instructed Mr. Kennedy to employ the party in digging, and fencing in, and daily watering, a garden; also, to make a stockyard wherein to lodge the cattle at night, as this would leave more men disposable for the immediate protection, if necessary, of the camp and stores. I also gave him very particular ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... demi-monde alike became scholars. There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates the temper of the times with singular felicity. On April 18, 1485, a report circulated in Rome that some Lombard workmen had discovered a Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, engraved with the inscription "Julia, Daughter of Claudius," and inside the coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, preserved by precious unguents from corruption and the injury of time. The bloom of youth was still ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... girls, with gipsy bonnets falling on their shoulders, and their long hair flying in the wind; wilder boys, with their satchels bobbing at their backs, their hats swung in the air, and their feet remorselessly digging into the sides of the poor little bewildered beasts ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... a new method of excavation was employed. It has now reached a depth of an inch, only the extremity of the insect's body appearing, and the two hindermost legs clinging to surrounding earth for purchase. The deep digging is now accompanied by a continual buzzing noise, resembling that produced by a bluebottle fly held captive between one's fingers. At intervals of about ten or fifteen seconds the wasp would quickly back out of the burrow, bringing a load of sand, which it held ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... the imagination have been frequently commented on, not least by scientists. The patient collection of facts, the digging and measurement and inquiry that characterize so much of scientific investigation are not the whole of it. Inference, the forming of a generalization, is frequently described "as a leap from the known to the unknown," and this discovery of a binding principle that ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... King Henry V.; hence its name. We are told that the good archbishop was much troubled where to locate his college, and there appeared to him in a dream a "right godly personage," who advised him to build it on the High Street, and at a certain spot where he would be sure in digging to find a "mallard, imprisoned but well fattened, in the sewer." He hesitated, but all whom he consulted advised him to make the trial, and accordingly, on a fixed day after mass, with due solemnity the digging began. They had not dug long, the story relates, before they heard "amid the earth ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... vibrating as though waves were passing over it. When we came nearer we saw that the field was covered so thick with gulls that the ground was hidden. The gull was a small white variety about the size of a pigeon, with a black ruff around its neck. The wave-like motion was made by the birds digging away in the newly turned earth for worms and larvae; judging by the way they worked, they must have cleaned up ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... help Dad? So the lad pondered, meanwhile digging the sense piecemeal out of his Ovid for ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... going on I looked about me at the servants. Some were on ladders, digging in the thatch of the house or the farm buildings, from which they brought out guns, swords, and different weapons of war; others carried them away; and by the sound of mattock blows from somewhere farther down the brae, I suppose they buried ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and robbed him of his dust. In remote localities he enclosed his camp by strong stockades: even these were sometimes forced and carried at night by bands of desperadoes. Lastly came the foreign miner's tax-collector, with his demand of four dollars monthly per man for the privilege of digging gold. There were hundreds and thousands of other foreign laborers in the mines—English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese—but they paid little or none of this tax, for they might soon be entitled to a vote, and the tax-collector was appointed by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... delicate and skilful art. They live in the shallows near the beach, digging their holes in the sand under two or three feet of water. When the wind ruffles the surface, it is impossible to see the holes, but on calm days we waded knee-deep in the clear water, stepping carefully and peering intently ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that voyage over the water with Mr. Carlyle; you should have seen her now—misery marks the countenance worse than sickness. Her face was white and worn, her hands were thin, her eyes were sunken and surrounded by a black circle—care was digging caves for them. A stranger might have attributed these signs to the state of her health; she knew better—knew that they were the effects of her wretched mind ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... views, she built her city, which was appointed to pay in annual tribute to the Africans for the ground it stood upon, and called it Carthage—a name that in the Phoenician and Hebrew languages, [which have a great affinity,] signifies the "New City." It is said that in digging the foundation, a horse's head was found, which was thought to be a good omen, and a presage of the future warlike genius of that people. Carthage had the same language and national character as its parent state—Tyre. It became at length, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... occurs in Denmark [The scene is laid?]. Many passages are powerful, especially the grave-digging [Is grave-digging a passage?]. The character of Horatio is a noble fellow [conception], and the same is true of Ophelia [Ophelia a fellow?]. The drama takes place over several weeks. [The action covers ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... the Crow country called the Black Hills, and here their journey became toilsome in the extreme. Rugged steeps and deep ravines incessantly obstructed their progress, so that a great part of the day was spent in the painful toil of digging through banks, filling up ravines, forcing the wagons up the most forbidding ascents, or swinging them with ropes down the face of dangerous precipices. The shoes of their horses were worn out, and their feet injured by the rugged and stony roads. The travellers were annoyed also ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... My dear fellow, we both live in the same quarter of the town, but have you ever known me letting out any man s secret? Of course, that matter of your brother's finding a hidden fortune while digging for a well—well, you know well enough why I had to give it out. You know ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... A-bal-ka's underground dwelling. The way he found out was this: Uncle Mark and Sam the hired man were digging stones on the hillside in the edge of the woods for the foundations of a new barn. While at this work, they uncovered the home of one of A-bal-ka's brothers. It was made up of a long, winding passageway, ending in a sleeping chamber, near which was a storehouse, and in this storehouse ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... explorers went carefully over the surface of this ground, digging to a considerable depth in some parts, and using an ash-sifter for a thorough examination of the debris. "We found spearheads, game and war points in large numbers," says Dr. White, "as well as drills, punches or awls, scrapers, knives, hammer-stones, and sinkers. Deer horn, bones, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... ever see the devil, With his little spade and shovel, Digging praties in the garden With ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... laird, digging the carving fork into a cold turkey, "we are also a hungry lot, if I may judge of others by myself, so let me advise you to fall to. We can't afford to sit long over our supper in present circumstances. Help yourselves, and make the ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... terrific roars, and knew that the charge had come. An instant later the Hon. Morison broke upon his vision, racing like mad for safety. The man lay flat upon his pony's back hugging the animal's neck tightly with both arms and digging the spurs into his sides. An instant later the second ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... few days all went on quietly and satisfactorily. At night we could always obtain water for the camels and other animals by digging, and thus we saved the fresh river-water in our tanks. But the sand became gradually higher and forced us to diverge to the north-east. On April 18 we came to a morass surrounded by wood so thick that we had to clear a way with the axe. Next day we encamped on the shore ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Roman people there was no hope of safety but in one who was cultivating with his own hand a little plot of scarcely three acres of ground. For when the messengers of the people came to him they found him ploughing, or, as some say, digging a ditch. When they had greeted each the other, the messengers said, "May the Gods prosper this thing to the Roman people and to thee. Put on thy robe and hear the words of the people." Then said Cincinnatus, being not a little astonished, "Is all well?" and at the same time ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... as the root disease, which eventually kills the tree by girdling it below the soil. It spreads slowly, but seems to be favored by collections of decaying matter around the base of the tree. Sometimes the digging of ditches around the roots is sufficient to protect it. The other common disease is due to Stilbium flavidum, and is found only in regions of great humidity. It affects both the leaf and the fruit and is known as the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... fences of Armytage's farm, he said he would go down to the post at the 'Corner' for letters, and call in an hour for Linda on his return. She found Edith and Jay working hard as usual. Their employment to-day was the very prosaic one of digging potatoes. 'What horrid occupation for a lady!' exclaims somebody. Yes; Miss Armytage would have much preferred an afternoon spent in painting flowers, for which she had a talent. But there was no help for such manual labour in this case. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... 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 gold in ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... doceri! It is permissible, says the proverb, to receive a lesson from an enemy. Only those who have worked out West on the missions know to what extent unscrupulous and most aggressive proselytizers are always on the ground, ever at work among our people. They are digging broad and deep trenches around the settlements of our Catholic foreigners, particularly Ruthenians, draining to their profit the dormant energies of the new Canadian. The invasion is slow but sure, the leakage, great and continual. This lesson that comes from the tremendous activities ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... will be white men come digging," he said; "white men with engines that blow, making holes under the ground and ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... burial capable of receiving a large number of the dead were wholly wanting. The population of Rome, Naples, Alexandria, and Syracuse was so great, that there was scarcely room enough for the living. To find new receptacles for the dead became an urgent necessity. It is true, that digging into the bowels of the earth for the purpose of entombing the bodies of the dead was no new operation. Egypt and Etruria had in their time set the example. The one idea of immortality, led to similar results in different creeds. The early Christians found their cities of the dead already ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... newspaper for spreading disease. You wake up in the morning, feeling fit to do a day's digging on your allotment; you come down to your breakfast singing a Rhonddalay and eat more than your allowance. Then you open the newspaper, glance at the latest accession to the ranks of the Allied Powers, and suddenly, "Plop!" you find there is a new disease ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... could see from the feet up. German armies had twice been almost at the gates of Paris. The first time they were driven back they dug themselves in. That was in 1915. The second time, in the spring of 1918, they were allowed no time for digging in. From the July days of 1918, when American soldiers at Chateau Thierry beat the best troops that ever were trained in Prussia, they were kept going. How industriously may be inferred from the story of the young ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... are golden, when 'Love takes up the glass of Time, and turns it in his glowing hands,' when 'Love takes up the harp of life, and smites on all the chords with might,' you have to devote your morning to watching the laying of drain-pipes and digging of sewers! I cannot imagine a more ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... me all objects which they found in their digging, with the exception of turquoises, many of which, I have good reason to suspect, they concealed while our backs were turned and, in a few instances, even ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... and Stephanie, equipped with buckskin gloves, a fox terrier, and digging apparatus, joined them just where the slender ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Behring's Straits, in which the remains of elephants occur, consist of ice mixed with mud and stones; and Middendorf describes the occurrence in Siberia of masses of ice, found at various depths from the surface after digging through drift. Whenever the intercalation of snow and ice with drift, whether stratified or unstratified, has taken place, the melting of the ice will cause such a failure of support as may give rise to flexures, and sometimes to the most complicated foldings. But in many ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... cigarettes to the ground, scrambled to their feet. Johnny, sober-faced and round-eyed, was gazing intently up at the man; but Albert, feigning indifference, stood digging his toe into the earth. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... an avoset, appears as if standing on stilts, its legs are so long; and its bill seems bent the wrong way, or upward. It is constantly seen wading in the shallows, digging up little slippery insects, the peculiar form of the bill enabling it to work them easily out of the sand. When feeding, it puts its head under the water to seize the insect at the bottom, then lifts it up quickly, making a rapid gobbling, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding, digging, and, like the Lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... ca!" replied the nun, holding the haunch carefully. "That is the custom. Always they used to dig them near the house, so that the sick person might see the grave, and in its digging the sick had much to say, and enjoyed it. Now, grace a dieu! if Catholics, they are buried in consecrated ground where the body may rest serene until the trumpet sounds the final judgment. Death is ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... particularly Surrey and Kent, now yield their valuable produce of hops in this month. The common hop, humulus lupulus, is propagated either by nursery plants or by cuttings. These are set in hills, formed by digging holes in the spring, which are filled with fine mould, and the number of which varies from 800 to 1,000, or 1,200 per acre. One, two, or three plants are put in each hill; but, if hops are designed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... storing it with food or laying the egg, half finishing hole after hole, and then abandoning them without any apparent reason; sometimes killing their spiders, at other times only paralyzing them; one species digging its burrow before it captures its game, others capturing the game and then digging the hole; some of them hanging the spider up in the fork of a weed to keep it away from the ants while they work ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the bank, he said: "For the birds; I'd as soon count sheets of toilet paper as this stuff we're using for money. Sooner. Toilet paper can be used for something, and this paper money's too stiff. Maybe some of this stuff we're digging here isn't worth much, ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... tenderly on the veranda, he directed a surgeon to attend her, and mounting his horse, rode rapidly in the direction taken by his brothers. Soon he saw them a quarter of a mile ahead. Taking a white handkerchief he held it aloft, and digging the spurs deep into his horse's flanks, he rode with increased speed, all the time hallooing at the top of his strong voice. John heard; but, thinking it a summons to surrender, he urged his horse forward, hoping to gain the ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... go on. You needn't stay any longer on our account." The man who had acted as spokesman turned and sat down on a stone. The other man stood viciously digging his stake ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... up his mind, that as soon as he was big enough to leave home, he would travel to Greece and "find Troy." That he was the son of a poor country parson in a Mecklenburg village did not bother him. He knew that he would need money but he decided to gather a fortune first and do the digging afterwards. As a matter of fact, he managed to get a large fortune within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough money to equip an expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia Minor, where he supposed that Troy had ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... an hour's temporary rally. Every effort of the bull operators, who had ruled the market for the two years past, to stem the tide was futile. Below the surface, in the silent depths of growing suspicion and fear, an army of sappers and miners under the eye of one man were digging at the foundations of the business world—the faith of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... was out in the yard, a few days after the funny trolley ride, digging a hole. Bunny had heard his father talk about a queer country called China, which, Mr. Brown said, was right straight down on the other side of the world, so that if one could possibly dig a hole all the way through the earth, ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... Job Dundy, but were subsequently told of it by Bibb. They first saw him in May, 1838. Mrs. Path remembers this date because it was the month in which she removed from Broadway to Harrison street, and Bibb assisted her to remove. Mrs. Path's garden adjoined Dundy's back yard. While engaged in digging up flowers, she was addressed by Bibb, who was staying with Dundy, and who offered to dig them up for her. She hired him to do it. Mrs. Dundy shortly after called over and told Mrs. Path that he ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... his chair. "Those same old sensations come over me," he announced, digging away vengefully at his grapefruit. "What have I to wear? My only consolation now is that Camellia married a man who cares about as much what he ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... it," said Helen, turning to Rosanna. "She earned the carfare to bring them out here for the afternoon by digging weeds on ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... principle. Of the great power of the Indians in enduring fatigue with no other sustenance than coca, I may here mention an example. A Cholo of Huari, named Hatun Huamang, was employed by me in very laborious digging. During the whole time he was in my service, viz., five days and nights, he never tasted any food, and took only two hours' sleep nightly. But at intervals of two and a half or three hours, he regularly masticated about half an ounce of coca leaves, and he kept an acullico continually ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... done, even on the south coast, where the dews are not so copious as on the north-west. The natives themselves are never at a loss for that indeed precious article, water. They sometimes procure it by digging up the lateral roots of the small gumtree, a dusty and fatiguing operation: they break them off in short bits, and set them up to drain into a piece of bark or a large shell. By tapping also the knotty excrescences of trees they find the fluid, which they suck out. Many of these modes of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... its footing and is constantly slipping off into the sea. Such sad missteps are the occasion for bands of convicts to appear on the scene under the marshaling of a police officer and be set to work to repair the slide by digging a little deeper into the mountain-side. The convicts wear clothes of a light brick-color which at a distance looks a little like couleur de rose, while the police are dressed in sombre blue. It would seem somewhat of a ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... about a peg?" exclaimed Tom. "What's that about a peg? And then there's something about digging, too!" It was as though a sudden light began shining into his brain. He felt himself growing quickly very excited. "Read that over again, sir," he cried. "Why, sir, you remember I told you they drove a peg into the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... the experiment, he had not clear ideas upon the subject. He missed a number of little pleasures and conveniences, which he had scarcely noticed, whilst they had every day presented themselves as matters of course. The occupation of digging was laborious, but it afforded no exercise to his mind, and he felt most severely the want of Henry's agreeable conversation; he had no one to whom he could now talk of the water-cresses of Cyrus, or the black broth of the Spartans; he had no one with whom he could dispute concerning the Stoic or ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... when he was digging for roots near the shore, his spade struck gold. If he had been a wise man he would have enriched himself quickly, and returned to Athens to live in comfort. But the sight of the gold vein gave no joy but only scorn to Timon. "This yellow slave," he said, ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... the inscription has not been without its use, in averting what the sensitive poet most dreaded; for it is recorded in one of the books sold here, that some years ago, in digging a neighboring grave, a careless sexton broke into the side of Shakspeare's tomb, and looking in saw his bones, and could easily have carried away the skull had he not been ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... contain. First we notice an encircling trench and mound surrounding the barrow, the purpose of which is supposed to have been to keep the dead person in the tomb, and prevent it from injuring the living. After much digging in the centre of the barrow we find a single stone chamber, entered by a passage underneath the higher and wider end of the mound. Sometimes the chamber is divided into three parts, the centre one ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... moonlight, Peter came upon a monster. It was a bear, a huge mother bear, with two butter-fat cubs wrestling and rolling in the moon glow. Peter had never seen a bear. But the mother, who raised her brown nose suddenly from the cool mold out of which she had been digging lily-bulbs, had seen dogs. She had seen many dogs, and she had heard their howl, and she knew that always they traveled with man. She gave a deep, chesty sniff, and close after that sniff a whoof that startled the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... drove through the field,—there was quite a good road now,—and on by the lake to Woodlawn. His father was standing near a company of men who were digging with spades, throwing the dirt out ...
— Berties Home - or, the Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... India. It is built up in the form of a round tower or cylindrical shell of burnt bricks, well cemented with good mortar, and covered inside and out with good stucco work, and let down by degrees, as the earth is removed by men at work in digging under the light earthy or sandy foundation inside and out. This well is about twenty feet below and twenty feet above the surface, and had to be built higher as it was ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... things should be reasonably clear to every officer of the fighting establishment. It makes little difference whether a man is digging a ditch or is working up a loading table for an invasion: what he thinks about his work will depend in large measure upon the attitude of his superiors. He will develop no great conviction about what he is doing except as it is transmitted to him. The fundamental cause ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... to take share of the work about our little farm, with your dear brother George. Poor fellow! he has so much to do, and does so much, that I fear he will overwork himself. He is at this present time out in the little field, opposite my window, digging up the docks, which are very hard to conquer; he has made a brave large heap of them, but I wish to my heart he would not toil ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... with a Bell full of Gold; but in succeeding times, being unable to perform it, they were commanded to cut it in two, and fill one part therewith, for the Inhabitants of this Isle were altogether inexperienced, and unskilful in Mine-works, and the digging Gold out of them. This Caiu proferred his Service to the King of Castile, on this Condition, that he would take care, that those Lands should be cultivated and manur'd, wherein, during the reign of ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... was teaching in Prattville, Alabama, a town built on a quagmire by Daniel Pratt, of whom one of his negroes said his "Massa seemed dissatisfied with the way God had made the earth and he was always digging down the hills and filling up the hollows." Prattville was a small manufacturing town, and Lanier was about as appropriately placed there as Arion would have been in a tin-shop, but he kept his humorous outlook on life, departing from his serenity so far as to ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... search in the pines showed a great bank of earth that had been scratched up within a few months. It must have come from a hole, and yet there was none to be seen. It is well known that a really cute fox, on digging a new den, brings all the earth out at the first hole made, but carries on a tunnel into some distant thicket. Then closing up for good the first made and too well-marked door, uses only the ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... officers or gentlemen; and as for his wife, she is really too bad. I am sent every day on shore to the cottage, because I belong to the captain's gig. They never ask me to sit down, but set me to work somehow or another. The other day he had a boat's crew on shore digging up a piece of ground for planting potatoes, and he first showed me how to cut the eyes, and then gave me a knife, and ordered me to finish the whole bag which lay in the field, and to see that the men worked properly at the same time. I never cut potatoes ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... vessel. The story spread, and grew as it was passed along, until it became the most colossal smuggling enterprise ever known in the country. The captain came on board at noon on the day following the arrival, and found a large number of Custom-house officers on board. Some were in the holds digging vigorously at the ore with picks and shovels. Their coats were off, and their shirt sleeves doubled up. Others were on deck ready for action, but the chief mate prevented them going into the forepeak, which caused both suspicion and irritation. The captain gave ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... a tall, slender young man was sitting in the shade, idly digging at the sod with an open pocket-knife. There was something magnetic about him, the presence that even in a crowd demands a ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... weapon only meant to be used by navvies. Don't buy it. Get a small spade, about half-size—it is nice and light and doesn't tire the wrist, and with it you can make a good display of enthusiasm, and earn the hypocritical admiration of your wife. After digging for half-an-hour or so, get her to rub your back with any of the backache cures. From that moment you will have no further need ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... this visit a meeting of those concerned took place at the beldame's house. She herself pointed to the place where she thought the vault lay, and with all due legal formality digging was commenced, and the place was found not far off. At first glance the vault seemed empty. In one corner, however, was found, covered lightly over with withered ferns, many bottles of wine and—a box. The two men of law, Le Roi's solicitor and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... supposed to be a cow, found two feet below the surface, in digging for the Great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... forgot to tell you," said Miss Tapehorn, "that our Patrick, one morning last Spring, was digging in the garden there, and he turned up some things that looked just like sweet potatoes; mother and I looked at them, and thought they were potatoes those Mackintoshes had left undug when ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... in flocks!" exclaimed Phil; "let's see if we can dig up a whole bunch of 'em, boys!" But although they all started digging with the toes of their shoes, no more shining coins came to light; and it began to look as if Bobolink had been fortunate enough to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... rather panicky at the time, and the people were kept busy digging clams to sustain life in order to raise Indian corn enough to give them sufficient strength to pull clams enough the following winter to get them through till the next corn crop should give them strength to dig for clams again. Thus a trip to London ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... not ten yards farther, we beheld them stop. A low cry arose. Silver doubled his pace, digging away with the foot of his crutch like one possessed; and next moment he and I had come ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Theodora, an influential lady, fell in love with a young priest of Ravenna, and had him elected Pope, by the name of John X. Her daughter Marozia, a young girl and a virgin, gave herself to Pope Sergius III, a capricious, fantastic man, who had once had the witty idea of digging up Pope Formosus and subjecting him, putrefied as he was, to the judgment of a Synod. By this eccentric man Marozia had a son, and afterwards was married three times more. She exercised an omnipotent ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... with the most favourable reception, because in the novelty of an art, men are never difficult to please, before their taste has been made fastidious by choice and abundance. Must not this situation have had its influence on him before he learned to make higher demands on himself, and by digging deeper in his own mind, discovered the rich veins of noble metal that ran there? It is even highly probable that he must have made several failures before he succeeded in getting into the right path. Genius ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... greatly impeded by the piles which had been driven in, but still more by the attacks of the Spaniards, who burst with desperate courage through the thickest of the enemy, stabbed the pioneers in the pits where they were digging, and filled up again with dead bodies the cavities which the living had made. At last, however, when most of their officers were killed or wounded, and the number of the enemy constantly increasing, while fresh laborers were supplying the place ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of my digging is that I know now and I want you to know that I know, why First Church young people should join in welcoming you to Delafield. Some of them don't know yet, any more than I did ten days ago; but I intend to enlighten them the first ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... nearly two inches in diameter, it could not have been the work of the downy, but must have been that of the hairy, or else the yellow-bellied woodpecker. His home had probably been wrecked by some violent wind, and he was thus providing himself another. In digging out these retreats the woodpeckers prefer a dry, brittle, trunk, not too soft. They go in horizontally to the centre and then turn downward, enlarging the tunnel as they go, till when finished it is the shape ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... resolved should be the most magnificent and the best appointed theater in the world. The site chosen was the south-eastern corner of the Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street in New York, and in the summer of 1867 the work of clearing away the old buildings and digging the foundations of the new theater was begun. It was carried forward steadily, and the building was completed and opened to the public ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... we strike when we start digging is the distinction between voluntary and involuntary. A man has committed homicide, and the question in court is whether he did it "with malice aforethought", i.e., with full will and intention, whether he did it in a sudden fit of anger, i.e., impulsively rather than quite ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... they decided to dispose of the body secretly and not tell any one of their part in the sad business. But how to do it was the question that troubled them. They dared not bury it, for fresh digging in that small city yard would arouse suspicion at once. Bessie suggested that they should carry it far off in the night and throw it away. This plan seemed the best they could think of, till Helen said they would not be allowed to go out in the city ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... Norway and Sweden, looking straight at the Pole, lies the country of Finmark. It is very cold and very bare, and for half the year very dark; but inside its stony mountains are rich stores of metals, and the strong, ugly men of the country spent their lives in digging out the ore and in working it. Like many people who dwell in mountains, they saw and heard strange things, which were unknown to the inhabitants of the lands to ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... challenge in the night. High overhead there was a whirring, buzzing sound as a shadow glided through the sky where the stars shone peacefully. A company of boys in khaki, carrying intrenching implements, passed by, greeting them cheerily as they trudged back from doing their turn in digging the new trench line which ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... understand me, for Chagoo began to pull his rope with both paws, while Wanahon undertook the task of digging up by the roots the sapling to which I had ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... soon be digging gold-nuggets instead of potatoes. Why, man, it's the chance of a lifetime, and anybody else would jump at it. Of course, if you're afraid of the hardships and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the party carried with them a small electric searchlight, run by a "pocket" battery, and two oil lanterns. They also took with them some provisions, and a pick, a shovel and a crowbar, for Bahama Bill said there might be some digging to do to get ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... generally adopted is, by digging pits in places where the hippopotami are known to pass in leaving the water to feed on the herbage of the neighbouring plain. These pits have to be dug in the rainy season, when the ground is soft; for during the dry months the earth becomes so hard as to resist the ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop, and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong; and I did a bit of digging ('fossicking', rather), a bit of shearing, a bit of fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking,—anything, just to keep ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... of removing camp the caravan made its morning march up the Powder River. Upon the wide table-land the women were busily digging teepsinna (an edible sweetish root, much used by them) as the moving village slowly progressed. As usual at such times, the trail was wide. An old jack rabbit had waited too long in hiding. Now, finding himself almost surrounded by the mighty plains people, ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... Mental Consciousness has come the wonderful work of Intellect, as shown in the achievements of Man up to this time, and while we must recognize its limitations, we gladly join in singing its praises. Reason is the tool with which Man is digging into the mine of Facts, bringing to light new treasures every day. This stage of Mental Consciousness is bringing to Man knowledge of himself—knowledge of the Universe—that is well worth the price he ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... curiosity than as the cause of future revolutions. Towards 1840, in the recesses of secret societies, republicans and socialists coalesced. Whilst the Liberal leaders, Lamartine and Barrot, discoursed on the surface concerning reform, Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc were quietly digging a grave for the monarchy, the Liberal party, and the reign of wealth. They worked so well, and the vanquished republicans recovered so thoroughly, by this coalition, the influence they had lost by a long series of crimes and follies, that, in 1848, they were able to conquer ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... very agreeable. He invited the field-mouse and Thumbelina to walk along the underground passage he had dug between their houses. Mr. Mole was very fond of digging underground. ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... away, and Madeline began to grow restless, at finding no opportunity for saying a word in private to Claire. At last fortune favored her. Olive, seeing her gardener digging about a little summer-house, which was a favorite retreat on a warm afternoon, bethought herself of a plan for adding to its comfort, by laying down certain vines, etcetera, for next season's growing. So she bade the girls note how she should have improved her arbor ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... connection between increased respiration and enhanced muscular activity in birds.[125] He interpreted structure at times in terms of function, the short, strong clavicle of the mole as an adaptation to digging, the keeled sternum of birds as an adaptation to flying, and so on. But we may say that his whole tendency was to disregard function, to look upon it as subsidiary. He protests against arguing from function and habits to structure, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... many great public works. The Venetians had, as we shall see, re-fortified Ravenna; these fortifications the papal government enlarged, and in the middle of the seventeenth century undertook the digging and construction of the Canale Pamfilio, so named in honour of Innocent X., and in the following century of the Canale Corsini. These works were necessary, it is said, not only for the maritime commerce of the city, which one may think was scarcely large enough to have excused them, but for ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... hurry lest somebody ask him to treat; who has a chronic toothache —in the stomach—which nothing but drugstore whiskey will relieve; who keeps a jug of dollar-a-gallon bug-juice hid under his bed and sneaks to it like a thieving hyena digging up a dead nigger—rents his property for saloon purposes, then piously prays the Lord to protect ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... laid, Y-branches are left every few feet. A record of the branches and their distance from the manhole is kept generally in the Department of Sewers or Public Works. Therefore, the exact measurement of any branch can be obtained and the branch found by digging down to the depth of the sewer. A branch should be chosen so that the pipe can be laid with a pitch, the same way as the main sewer pitches. This can be done by getting the measurements of two of these branches and choosing the one that will serve best. When there is a brick ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... and corruption being destroyed. Moreover, He was buried in a monument "hewn out of a rock," as Jerome says on Matt. 27:64, "lest, if it had been constructed of many stones, they might say that He was stolen away by digging away the foundations of the tomb." Hence the "great stone" which was set shows that "the tomb could not be opened except by the help of many hands. Again, if He had been buried in the earth, they might have said: They dug up the soil and stole Him away," ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas |
