"Digging up" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be in to-morrow, so you'd better be digging up the treasures you have buried, you old magpie,' said Mat, appearing to the pensive Livy ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... charcoal-burner, as in the famous ballad of Rauf Colyear. Not much coal was dug in the Middle Ages. Even in 1610 Camden speaks with disapproval, in his Britannia, of the inhabitants of Sherwood Forest who, with plenty of wood around them, persist in digging up "stinking pit-cole." ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... quite an affectionate and pleased letter from his father, he did, for a while, feel a little proud. The letter enclosed a cutting from the local paper recording his success, and digging up for the benefit of its readers an account of his adventure on the Alps. Also, it mentioned prominently that he was the son of the Rev. Mr. Knight, the incumbent of Monk's Abbey, and had received his education in that gentleman's ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... it cheaper and better to take up large trees from the woods, and transplant them to their grounds or to the road-side, than to buy nursery trees. As a rule, such trees die; they fail because proper precautions have not been taken. In digging up a tree, all the roots outside of a circle a few feet in diameter are cut off, and the tree is reset with its full head of branches. Whoever has seen trees in the forest that were upturned by a tornado, must have been struck by the manner in which the roots run very near to the surface, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... us know; but Mr. Crow said he had nothing whatever to do with it. He don't like Mr. Towser Dog, on account of some trouble the two of them had about Mr. Crow's digging up the corn just after Mr. Man had planted it. Hello! there comes Mr. Donkey, and now you may be sure Teddy Boy won't worry Mrs. Cow's baby for ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... especially such as branch so as to resemble the human form. (Both the Chinese name Schin-sen, and Garan-toguen, the Indian one, are said to mean like a man. Here is an interesting clue for the ethnologists to follow !) Imperial edict prohibited the Chinese from digging up their native plant lest it be exterminated. So Jesuit missionaries, who discovered our similar ginseng, were not slow in exporting it to China when it was literally worth its weight in gold. Indeed, it is always sold by weight - a fact on which the heathen Chinee ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... in so far as he is a military man he gives way without shame to the grossest folly, cruelty, and poltroonery. If any other profession in the world had been stained by those vices and by false witness, forgery, swindling, torture, compulsion of men's families to attend their executions, digging up and mutilation of dead enemies, all of which is only added to the devastation proper to its own business, as the military profession has been within recent memory in England, France, and the United States of America (to mention ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... country, Bertrand," he said, looking me squarely in the eye. "I'm not going to ask you why you quit bank bookkeeping to come out here and swing a pick in a construction camp. Here in the tall hills we don't think much of digging up graves—the graves of any man's past. You've done well in every job we've tried you at, and that's all to the good ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... impulse which may be practiced merely faute de mieux and not as, in the strict sense, perversions of the impulse. Even necrophily may be thus practiced. A young man who when assisting the grave-digger conceived and carried out the idea of digging up the bodies of young girls to satisfy his passions with, and whose case has been recorded by Belletrud and Mercier, said: "I could find no young girl who would agree to yield to my desires; that is why I have done this. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... could think of nothing but his new knife, and well pleased was he to show it to his young companions, many of whom had never before seen so polished a piece of iron. In his herb-gatherings for his mother, too, how useful it was to him in cutting through the tough stalks of some of the plants and in digging up the roots; and what fine things it enabled him to cut and carve for his mother,—new comb for her flax amongst other things, and a spoon to stir her ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... composed. It is told of certain savage tribes, the victims of constant scarcity, that they swallow little balls of clay in order to keep down their hunger; and during the great famines in India the distracted inhabitants may, we are told, be seen digging up the banks of the rivers to feed on the fertile clay in which the splendid vegetation of their country is developed. This is a desperate trial of that primeval system of alimentation which answers perfectly with the worm, but becomes a cruel mockery in the case of an organisation as ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... escape. They feed during the night. When they leave the nest they go in procession, following each other with great precision. On the summits of the Maures, and on all the mountains bordering the Riviera, grows the heath Erica arborea, from whose roots pipes are made. The digging up and the preparing of these roots for the Paris manufacturers form now an important industry in the mountain villages. In England they are called briar-root pipes, briar being a corruption of the French word bruyre, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... all down at the bungalow! I'm going there. Men are digging up the cellar. Mrs. Ocumpaugh says she's afraid Miss Gwendolen's body is ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... certain which. When he saw the date at which they came to the camp, and the date at which they left, he said at once, "They have left here to-day. If they had shifted to any other part of the creek, they would not have marked this." We set to work digging up the plant. We did not know where they had gone to, but thought they had left some instructions. Mr. Burke was too much excited to do anything, and Mr. Wills and myself dug up the plant. I got the bottle there and Mr. Burke said: "Whatever instructions they have left are in this bottle." ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... weight; there were half a dozen thicknesses of wool and linen between the arm and her shoulder, but the encircling touch sent a quiver through every nerve in her and shook her like electricity. She stood gazing on the ground, digging up the blades of grass with ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... the late rains; I therefore decided upon halting at the depot to rest the horses even for a day; and the party had no sooner reached their encampment, than, while one portion of the men took the horses up the watercourse to water, the others were employed in digging up the stores we had buried here, and in repacking and rearranging all the loads ready to move on again immediately. By the evening all the arrangements were completed and the whole party retired ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk, therefore I will drop lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic, and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... on his shoulders. He saw the strange lieutenant still dancing about, hastily gathering up his belongings and stuffing them into his knapsack. He heard him scold his orderly and bellow at him to hurry up, in between digging up fresh details, hideous episodes, from the combats of the past few days, which Weixler devoured in ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... her old quarters the Jaguar was apparently satisfied that they would serve their purpose another season, and set about renovating them. This consisted of carefully digging up and turning over the decayed bark and leaves that had sifted in through the opening. Nor was this labor without its reward, for numbers of fat grubs and the helpless larvae of rhinoceros beetles were unearthed, providing dainty morsels for the big cat. This accomplished, ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... anatomical or a physiological point of view. For, whilst the horn of the rhinoceros is merely a dermal production, a conglomeration of hairs cemented into one dense mass as hard as bone, and answering the purpose of a defensive weapon, besides being used for digging up the roots on which the animal lives; the horn of the ceratophora is formed of a soft, spongy substance, coated by the rostral shield, which is produced into a kind of sheath. Although flexible, it always remains erect, owing to the elasticity of its substance. Not having access to ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... afford a perfect instance of what is sometimes called "the natural family." A tract of a few miles square forms the beat of a small group of families, four or five at most, which, for the most part, singly or in pairs, wander round hunting, fishing, gathering honey and digging up the wild yams; whilst they likewise take shelter together in shallow caves, where a roof, a piece of skin to lie on—though this is not essential—and, that most precious luxury of all, a fire, represent, apart from food, the sum total ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Caymanas, are digging up the beach around a certain inlet of the island, in search of a treasure supposed to have been buried by the pirate Gibbs. Several flat stones, marked with cabalistic letters, have ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in preparations for departure. Mine consisted chiefly in superintending the digging up of the stockade of ivory tusks, which I did with the greatest satisfaction. There were some five hundred of them altogether. I made inquiries about it from Every, who told me that the stockade had been there so long that nobody seemed to know ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... interesting Roman relics of another kind was made in 1896. The owner of a garden near Queen Street, in the south-eastern part of the town, was digging up an apple tree when he came across a fine bed of gravel. Continuing the digging, in order to find the thickness of this deposit, his spade struck against a hard substance, which proved to be a lead coffin. After this ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... little farther than usual, we came to a rich little glen, running down to the sea. Here, digging up some plants, as was our usual custom, to make fresh discoveries, we found the mould of a beautiful bright red colour; this shaded off into deep chocolate or bright yellow. We could not discover any metallic substance in it, or that it tasted of anything, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... with his axe, and showed us a mass of cellular tissue filled up with a juicy substance which he handed to us, and applying a piece to his own mouth ate eagerly away at it. We imitated his example, and were almost immediately much refreshed. We found several other plants of the same sort, and digging up the roots gave them to the horses and ox, who crunched them up ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... folk wove the 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
... can see it. I am uneasy if a presentment err by defect, by excess, or by obscurity apparent to myself. I must get the whole in; and for due emphasis am very probably redundant. I am not willing to attempt seriously modifying my natural style, the reflection of myself, lest, while digging up the tares of prolixity I root up also the wheat of precision. The difference emphasized by Dr. Johnson, "between notions borrowed from without and notions generated within," seems to me to apply to the mode of expression as well as ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... acid, and putting it on the plates. When they were finished, we put them together with rust made of nitric acid, old iron and lead, and bound them with a piece of hoop iron, covering them completely with the rust." He describes the burial of the plates and their digging up, among the spectators of the latter being two Mormon elders, Marsh and Sharp. Sharp declared that the Lord had directed them to witness the digging. The plates were borrowed and shown to Smith, and were finally given to one "Professor" McDowell ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... mingled with contempt appears in Josiah's scattering the 'dust' of the images on the graves of their worshippers, as if he said: 'There you lie together, pounded idols and dead worshippers, neither able to help the other!' The same feelings prompted digging up the skeletons of priests and burning the bones on the very altars that they had served, thus defiling the altars and executing judgment on the priests. No doubt there were much violence and a strong strain of the 'wrath of man' in all this. Iconoclasts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his father had talked of the great lumps of gold the white men were digging up, two hundred miles north, up the Frozen River—"Cariboo gold," his father had called it, and said that it was sent down in numberless bags to "the front," and the stage brought it. And his father would always finish the tale with, "The white men will risk their lives ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... sure about: whatever the Plan was, they would have to carry it out as soon as possible. Two days had passed since the Scientist had shown up. The new gun he had ordered might arrive at any time now. Perhaps even today, when they had been digging up the pirate treasure, the Scientist had got his new rifle and had started to hunt ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... equal in importance to one performed during his consulship, for which he has recently received the cross of the Legion of Honor. In laying out their new concession at Shanghai, the French had excited the hostility of the people by digging up and levelling down many of those graves that occupied so much space outside of the city walls, and where the Chinese who worshipped their ancestors were to be seen every day burning paper and heaping up the earth. A furious mob fell on the French police, chased ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... took away the quiet and solitude from the place. The old man just picked up his belongings and went farther back into the mountains—no one knew where; but somewhere, I suspect, he is still talking aloud to the trees and making friends with the wild things, still giving his life to digging up dreams and living for hopes that will never be realized. It's a strange disease, this gold fever. I've never had it, but I've heard Old Ben at the Inn tell how it's nearly impossible for a man to go back to his work in the city after ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... that as murder was a crime, so treason was a crime, and "must be made odious," was welcomed with enthusiasm by the very men who afterwards impeached him. Nor, when we blame these men for trafficking with perjurers and digging up tainted and worthless evidence for the purpose of sustaining against him the preposterous charge of complicity in the murder of his predecessor, must we forget that he himself, without any evidence at all, had under his own hand and seal brought the same monstrous accusation against Jefferson ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... of our history has yet to be written. We know we were Celts to begin with, but how we came we have never learnt, whether we walked dry-shod from Wales or sailed in boats from Ireland. To find out the facts of our early history would be like digging up the island of Prospero. Perhaps we had better leave it alone. Ten to one we were a gang of political exiles. Perhaps we left our country for our country's good. Be it so. It was the first and last time that it could be said ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... planted: and I declare to you, it has taken wonderfully to the notion, as if it knew that it had relations of a higher species under its keeping. Benjy, too, has a profound air of knowing, and never scratches for bones there, as he does in other places. What horror, were I to find him digging up his mother's skeleton! Would ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... of "Emendations" interests Mr. Bayne more than it does us, and we decidedly disagree with him in his general apology for the digging up of early writings which the writers may be presumed to wish kept dark. The alteration in the words of Iphigenia in the "Dream of Fair Women" is not as good as it might be, and Mr. Bayne most justly condemns "the bright death," but it is quite clear that the lines ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... hat with a broad rim; all of which fitted him badly, and might have caused him some discomfort in other circumstances, but he was too much depressed just then to care much for anything. His duty that day consisted in digging up a piece of waste ground. To relieve his mind, he set to work with tremendous energy, insomuch that Peter the Great, who was ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... food, and then returned to the grave. Each day he was more sad, more lean, more feeble. He was chained up, but broke his fetters; escaped; returned to the grave, and never left it more. It was in vain that they tried to get him back. They carried him food, but he ate no longer. For hours he was seen digging up with his weakened limbs the earth that separated him from his beloved master. Passion gave him strength, and at last he was near to the body. Then his faithful heart gave way, and he breathed out a last gasp, as if he knew he had found ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... Mr. Lidgerwood, for God's sake don't stir up the devil in that long-haired knife-fighter at such a time as this!" he begged. "The Lord knows you've got trouble enough on hand as it is, without digging up something that belongs ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Young men were at a premium in Mariona, as in most other places, and it was something to have one of the species, of an accommodating turn, and very presentable, within telephone range. Mrs. Carr was grateful, and so, it must be said, was her husband, who did not care to spend his evenings digging up Egyptians that had been a long time dead, or listening to comic operas. It was through Mrs. Carr that Leighton came to be well known in Mariona; she told her friends to ask him to call, and there were now many homes besides ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... did I know about God's purposes? He refused to take my scruples into consideration, except such as concerned her. But, after a long argument, very painful, weak as we were and whispering in the dark, he yielded this much. If I were bent on digging up the dead, as he called it, it must be done in such a way as to leave her free. Free she was in law, and she must be given a chance to claim her freedom without talk or publicity. Absolute secrecy he demanded of me in the mean time. I begged him to see how unfair it was to her to bring her ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... diligently among the flower beds. Upon seeing Captain Waverley, he let drop his spade, undid his green apron, frowning all the time at Edward's guide for bringing his master's guest upon him without warning, to find him digging up the earth like a common labourer. But the Bradwardine ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... came through a U.S. officer, and then, as the people were used to mines and mining, a regular gold fever spread as if by swift contagion. Mr. Bennett was aroused and sold his farm, and I felt a change in my Oregon desires and had dreams at might of digging up the yellow dust. Nothing would cure us then but a trip, and that was ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... along the lake, adorning it with a palace, a forum, a race-course, and a large synagogue. But to strict Jews the place was unclean, because it was defiled with Roman idols, and because its builders had polluted themselves by digging up the bones of the dead. Herod could get few Jews to live in his city, and it became a catch-all for the off-scourings of the land, people of all creeds and none, aliens, mongrels, soldiers of fortune, and citizens of the high-road. It was the strongest fortress and probably the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... in front of him, in the foam at the edge of the surf, was two ducks as dead as Nebuchadnezzar—two of Lonesome Huckleberries' best decoy ducks—ducks he'd tamed and trained, and thought more of than anything else in this world—except rum, maybe—and the rest of the flock was digging up the beach for home as if they'd been telegraped for, and squawking "Fire!" ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in which the bark-collectors have hewn down the trees, often digging up the roots themselves, the production has greatly decreased. When the root is allowed to remain, and the stem hewn as near as possible to it, an after-growth is produced, which, in the milder regions, in the space of six years again produces bark. In the colder regions twenty years are required ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... here that the Spaniards were quartered when they took Montezuma prisoner, and here Cortes found and appropriated the treasures of that family. In 1830 a bust of stone was found in the yard of the convent, which the workmen were digging up. Don Lucas Alaman, then Minister of Exterior Relations, offered a compensation to the nuns for the curious piece of antiquity which they gladly gave up to the government, on whose account he acted. It is said to be the idol goddess of the Indians, Centeotl, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... caused by a consumption of any part of it, at a time when the whole of the common life and vigour was required for its reproduction and multiplication. This idea may have operated to enable the savage to restrain himself from digging up and eating the grain sown in the ground, or slaughtering his domestic animals for food, and a taboo on the consumption of grain and fruits during their period of ripening may have first begun in their wild ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... 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 going ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... a number of men. I arose immediately, and climbed into a tree; and lo, the vessel came to the shore, and there landed from it ten black slaves bearing axes. They proceeded to the middle of the island, and, digging up the earth, uncovered and lifted up a trap-door, after which they returned to the vessel, and brought from it bread and flour, and clarified butter and honey, and sheep and everything that the wants of an inhabitant would require, continuing to ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... visit from the Captain of the police. He had a gloomy, inaccessible look. He began quite bluntly about the illegal digging up of Egorka's grave. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... of threads or fibres, which were knotted in an intricate way. The whole was then buried with certain rites, and thereupon the victim wasted away of a languishing sickness which lasted twenty days. His life, however, might be saved by discovering and digging up the buried hair, spittle, or what not; for as soon as this was done the power of the charm ceased. A Maori sorcerer intent on bewitching somebody sought to get a tress of his victim's hair, the parings of his nails, some of his spittle, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... passed away, during which Ready repaired the boat, and William and Mr. Seagrave were employed in digging up the garden. It was also a very busy week at the house, as they had not washed linen for some time. Mrs. Seagrave and Juno, and even little Caroline were hard at work, and Tommy was more useful than ever he had been, going for the water as they required it, and watching ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... go to work too. So Mil will work the society end. I says to the madam, I says, 'All right, have your own way; and we'll see whether you make more out of the girl than I make out of the boy,' I says. But it ain't going to be all digging up. I've made the baron promise to go into business with me, and though I ain't told him yet, I'm going to put out a line of Higbee's thin-sliced ham and bacon in glass jars with his crest on 'em for the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... too again, and about 8 or 9 o'Clock, seeing no probability of our getting to Sea, I sent the Master to Sound the Harbour. But before this I order'd Matthew Cox, Henry Stevens, and Emanl Parreyra to be punished with a dozen lashes each for leaving their duty when ashore last night, and digging up Potatoes out of one of the Plantations.* (* Cook's care to deal fairly with natives is evinced by this punishment.) The first of the 3 I remitted back to Confinement because he insisted that there was no harm in what he had done. All this Forenoon had abundance of the Natives about ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... end of the second week, Malone was just about convinced that his idea had been a total washout. A full fortnight had been spent on digging up imbeciles, while the spy at Yucca Flats had been going right on his merry way, scooping information out of the men at Project Isle as though he were scooping beans out of a pot. And, very likely, laughing himself silly at the feeble efforts ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... be more correct to say naturally enough— Nat Dee ceased digging up in the Hall garden to watch Scarlett Markham, who, after sending his sister Lil back into the house in tears, because he refused to take her with him, started off at ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the idea of a garden, that, after Mrs. Dallas's consent was gained, he spent most of the day in digging up a little patch in which the children planted a remarkable collection of plants, both wild and cultivated. They even put in some corn, so as to have roasting ears, Dimple said, and a pumpkin seed, because she ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... a month was consumed in building boats and rafts to carry the artillery, in raising boats which had been sunk the previous fall, and in digging up cannon and stores ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... and to be able 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... was deceived. No good can be done by digging up the dead past, but you shall hear all that I know of the story. At that time there were three parties in the country. One section, led by your father, resolved upon armed insurrection; another, composed of Royalists, determined that nothing should be changed; ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... laughing. "Oh, I know you would find everything in that atmosphere. If we wanted such a simple thing, for instance, as a Coronation Canopy, we should walk down beyond the geraniums and find the Canopy Tree in full bloom. If we wanted such a trifle as a crown of gold, why, we should be digging up dandelions, and we should find a gold mine under the lawn. And when we wanted oil for the ceremony, why I suppose a great storm would wash everything on shore, and we should find there was a Whale ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... and, for a while, by inability to speak, she has nevertheless shown a keenness of pleasure and intellectual acquisition that shames us who have all our senses in their fullness. Think of her patient, unremitting delving, of the digging up, up, up to get to the light which most human beings are privileged to enjoy with no effort at all! The mind that accepts this wealth with no thought, no sense of responsibility, is a trifler with riches that are about us for God-given purposes. Think of the way in which Stevenson and John Richard ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... when she remarked (a propos of nothing), "Too much eleele (soil) for me!" The cacao (you must understand) has to be planted at first in baskets of plaited cocoa-leaf. From four to ten natives were plaiting these in the wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the boxful to the verandah. Lloyd and I and Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), were filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of clay; Austin and Faauma carried them when full to Fanny, who planted a seed in each, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chert gravel mixed with the clay, making excavation as difficult and laborious as digging up ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... lately digging up the soil by hundreds, trotted towards these girls yet breathing heavily from the speed with which they had run, and looking up in their faces, grunted and squeaked without any apparent cause; and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... value as a fertilizer. It is practically indestructible in the soil. In fact, they are digging up now charcoal in the graves of ancient Egyptians, who departed this life five thousand years ago. Charcoal has corrective influence in absorbing some substances which might make the soil sour or otherwise inhospitable to plants. ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... 'Bias, perpending and digging up the roadway with the point of his stick. "'Tis to be ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... but as Giaom by all others. Children are usually suckled for about two years, but are soon able, in a great measure, to procure their own food, especially shellfish, and when strong enough to use the stick employed in digging up roots, they are supposed to be ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... mine,' continued Michael, 'for the inspector of police to play on while his men are digging up your back garden.' Pitman stared at him ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... territory we loved to visit. The owner's name was Silas Whimple and he was the grouchiest, most miserly man in the county. He lived alone and what part of the ground that was tilled, he did it himself. As much to tease as to eat, we would pay him an occasional flying visit, digging up his newly planted seeds, nibbling at the young green shoots, or, later on, scratching up his potatoes. All his shouting and screaming did not scare us a bit. One day one of my companions came winging ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... men, we are kings, we must have our tribute. Ever since we have come upon the Earth we have been plundering her; and the more we claimed, the more she submitted. From primeval days have we men been plucking fruits, cutting down trees, digging up the soil, killing beast, bird and fish. From the bottom of the sea, from underneath the ground, from the very jaws of death, it has all been grabbing and grabbing and grabbing—no strong-box in Nature's store-room ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... his pupil read the ancient poets together, and rattled through them at a pleasant rate, very different from that steady grubbing pace with which he was obliged to go over the classis ground at Grey Friars, scenting out each word and digging up every root in the way. Pen never liked to halt, but made his tutor construe when he was at fault, and thus galloped through the Iliad and the Odyssey and the charming, wicked Aristophanes. But he went so fast that though he certainly galloped through a considerable extent of the ancient country, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to see your point of view," said he, forcing himself to answer her words, though his brain was weaving other phrases. "Even if I discover that Alfieri is digging up those precious camel-loads, it will be best for all parties that his success ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... The first thing I proposed to myself was, to throw down my enclosures, and turn all my tame cattle wild into the woods, lest the enemy should find them, and then frequent the island in prospect of the same or the like booty: then the simple thing of digging up my two corn-fields, lest they should find such a grain there, and still be prompted to frequent the island: then to demolish my bower and tent, that they might not see any vestiges of habitation, and be prompted to look farther, in order to find ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... 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 into little bits before, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was the day that Donn ('the Brown Bull') of Cualnge came into the land of Margine [1]to Sliab Culinn[1] and with him fifty heifers of the heifers [2]of Ulster;[2] and there he was pawing and digging up the earth in that place, [3]in the land of Margine, in Cualnge;[3] that is, he flung the turf over him with his heels. [4]While the hosts were marching over Mag Breg, Cuchulain in the meanwhile laid hands on their camps.[4] It was on the same day that the Morrigan, daughter ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... said one of our guards excitedly, and he pointed at the pinioned man. "He is a grave robber. He has been digging up dead Germans to rob the bodies. They tell me that when they caught him he had in his pockets ten dead men's fingers which he had cut off with a knife because the flesh was so swollen he could not slip the rings off. He ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a band of men were, in very deed, engaged in digging up the soil, while Chia Yuen was seated on a boulder on the hill, superintending the works. The time came for Hsiao Hung to pass by, but she could not muster the courage to do so. Nevertheless she had no ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... digging up your bones, Tom Paine, Will. Cobbett[112] has done well: You visit him on Earth again, He'll ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Herodotus, or some other, write this also, to oblige the cities by flattery? What need had they then to employ fruitless labor in digging up the earth, to make tombs and erect monuments for posterity's sake, when they saw their glory consecrated in the most illustrious and greatest donaries? Pausanias, indeed, when he was aspiring to the tyranny, set up this ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... New England, vide antea, p. 64, and of its preservation through the winter. The Pilgrims, in 1620, found it deposited by the Indians in the ground after the manner described in the text. Bradford says they found "heaps of sand newly padled with their hands, which they, digging up, found in them diverce faire Indean baskets filled with corne, and some in eares, faire and good, of diverce collours, which seemed to them a very goodly sight, haveing never seen any such before:"—His. Plym. Plantation, p. 82. Squanto taught the English how to "set it, and after how ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... that the Indian encampment consisted of anything more than half a dozen wigwams, where a few inoffensive savages, with their wives and children, were eking out a half-starved existence by hunting, fishing, and digging up roots from the forest. It did not seem wise to send an army of two hundred and sixteen men to carry desolation and woe to such humble homes. Crockett was ordered to return with this message to the Major. Military discipline, then and there, was not very rigid. He hired another ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... am satisfied that the treasure lies either in the Bay, or close on shore; if so, we have relieved ourselves from digging up ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... found at the bottom of each, thus testifying to their former use. If this deposit is in sufficient quantity to be submitted to chemical analysis, we might learn something respecting the nature of really old wine. Apropos of this matter, Dr Buist says, that while we are digging up antiquities in Mesopotamia, we are neglecting those, not less valuable, which we have at home, particularly the Runic stones found in Scotland. Two hundred of these are known to exist between Edinburgh and Caithness, but some have been used as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... something to eat while he read, and so went to the kitchen and got himself some apples and a huge slice of fresh bread. Ever since Vandover was a little boy he had loved fresh bread and apples. Through the windows of the dining-room he saw Mr. Corkle digging up great holes in the geranium beds. He went out and abused him and finally let him come back into the house and took ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... flight of stone steps to the rear lawn, the two started a grand chase along the brick walk leading to the stables; but Holmes's long legs were too much for them, and in a trice he had captured Louis and disarmed him, while Ivan hid behind a tree. Blumenroth, the gardener, digging up a flower-bed with a trowel nearby, put down his implement, and stared at ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... was back with five rejected manuscripts. The celebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books the young struggler had needed but one lift, apparently. However, he plowed through these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up some acres of adjective stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one wouldn't interfere with him for digging up that stuff, sir. I mean keepers or the like. And there's been two of 'em here, simminly. Oh, yes, look at the footmarks, only they don't tell no tales. I like marks in soft mud, where you can tell the size, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... patrolled the edge of the field listening to the saucy whistle of the striped little rascals, tracking them to their burrows and shooting them as they lifted their heads above the ground. I had moments of being sorry for them, but the sight of one digging up the seed, silenced my complaining conscience ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... waste time in conversation, however, for the digging up of two kegs from a gravelly beach with fingers instead of a spade was not a quick or easy thing to do; so Ruby found as he went down on his knees in that dark place ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... on his squad who had a great habit of digging up unusual fads, generally in the matter of diet. At this particular time he had decided to live solely on grape nuts. As he was one of the best men on the team, Jack did not burden himself with trouble over this fad, although at several ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... brought them within twenty miles of the island; for Philip knew his landmarks well. Again they landed, and all retired to rest, the Commandant dreaming of wealth and revenge; while it was arranging that the digging up of the treasure which he coveted should be the signal for ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... On the day of the arrival of the lady's answer, he was sitting at dinner, when his gardener came in and presented him with his mother's wedding ring, which she had lost many years before, and which the gardener had just found in digging up the mould under her window. Almost at the same moment, the letter from Miss Milbanke arrived; and Lord Byron exclaimed, "If it contains a consent, I will be married with this very ring." It did contain a very flattering acceptance of his proposal, and a duplicate of the letter ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dull reality clog the feet of dreams that it proved impossible to begin the day by digging up the treasure. Camp had to be arranged, for folk must eat and sleep even with the wealth of the Indies to be had for the turning of a sod. The cabin was reroofed and set apart as the bower of Aunt Jane and Miss Browne. I declined to make ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... personage couldn't stoop to that; but a clerk who overheard my insulting remark (he had not yet become the owner of a vast transportation system) condescended to make a desultory search. He succeeded in digging up a spark-coil—and that is all I ever saw ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... deliberate chapters of Ammon, Eichhorn, and Michaelis, we unconsciously identify ourselves with their generation, and exclaim, "Surely there will never be a step beyond this; the knife can have no edge for a deeper incision." As Neander toiled in his study, digging up the buried treasures of the past and enriching them with the John-like purity of his own heart in order that he might faithfully interpret the divine guidance of the church, he no doubt rejoiced in the conviction that the Rationalists had achieved ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and superstition of earlier times. One knows that the rain of the rainbow may be gathered at one's feet in a mud-puddle, but the fleeting spectrum of the bow is not a thing of life. Yet one would as soon think of digging up a rainbow in the mud as a swallow. The swallow follows the sun, and in August is off for the equatorial regions, where it hibernates on the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... If men want to hunt gold, they can do their hunting somewhere else. They can't go digging up the whole blamed country just on the chance of finding another pocket like this one. I'm in the cattle business myself. If I find any gold, it'll go into cattle and stay there; and there won't be any long-haired freaks pestering ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Heywood walked beside his son as he led the mare to the spot where Scudamore perforce awaited his return. They found him stretched on the roadside, plucking handfuls of grass, and digging up the turf with his fingers, thus, and thus alone, betraying that he suffered. Mr. Heywood at first refrained from any offer of hospitality, believing he would be more inclined to accept it after he had proved the difficulty of riding, in which case a previous ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... you out of your sleep; your eyes are only half open yet, you are reluctant to shake off a sleep which has shown you such fair visions, and so you scold. It is just the condition of the day-dreamer; he is rolling in gold, digging up treasure, sitting on his throne, or somehow at the summit of bliss; for dame How-I-wish is a lavish facile Goddess, that will never turn a deaf ear to her votary, though he have a mind to fly, or change statures with Colossus, or strike a gold- reef; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... said it amounted to a positive scandal. Why, in the summer-time some of these men drew as much as 35/- in a single week! (Shame.) and it was quite common for unskilled labourers—fellers who did nothing but the very hardest and most laborious work, sich as carrying sacks of cement, or digging up the roads to get at the drains, and sich-like easy jobs—to walk off with 25/- a week! (Sensation.) He had often noticed some of these men swaggering about the town on Sundays, dressed like millionaires and cigared up! They seemed quite a different class of men ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... began in India. Rodman had gone there to consult with the Marchese Giovanni concerning some molecular theory that was involved in his formulas. Giovanni was digging up a buried temple on the northern border of the Punjab. One night, in the explorer's tent, near the excavations, this inscrutable creature walked in on Rodman. No one knew how he got into the tent or where he ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... and louder, till he spoke against the pope himself. He translated the Bible into English, attacked many of the prevailing superstitions, and although condemned as holding heretical opinions, he yet died in peace, A.D. 1387. Rome revenged itself by digging up his bones and burning them, about thirteen years later. Rebellion spread even among the monks of the Church, and a vast number of some nonconformist Franciscan monks, termed Spirituals, were burned for their refusal to obey the pope on matters of discipline. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... his burial, the magistrates caused his body to be dug up; when it was found in just the condition of the bodies of those who in the eastern countries of Europe are called vampires. They buried the corpse under the gallows; but neither the digging up nor the re-burying were of avail to banish the spectre. Again the spade and pick-axe were set to work, and the dead man being found considerably improved in condition since his last interment, was, with various horrible indignities, burnt ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... I have buried a lot more money in a water-skin, hard by the river; you may dig it up and keep it if you like, for I have lots of my own here!" The rich brother did not wait to be told twice. Off he went to the river, and began digging up the water-skin straightway. He unfastened it with greedy, trembling hands; but he had no sooner opened it than the Unlucky Days all popped out and clung on to him. "Thou art ours!" said they. He went home, and when he got there he found that all ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... mighty Excalibur, sir, I've used it in joy and grief, For digging up many a tater, Or opening bully beef. I have used it for breaking wire, Making tents 'gainst rain and sun; I have used it as a hoof-pick, In a hundred ways ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... 500 years before Columbus touched the outlying islands of the West Indies. The Sagas of Leif the Lucky and Eric the Red told some marvelous stories of discoveries to the southwest of Iceland. Some of these stories seem to be verified in many ways, by digging up the logs of the Norse huts, by the written characters on Dighton rock, by the old tower at Newport, by the Benheim map of 1492, and a ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam') |
