"Diggers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disturbance wherever the banquet invites them; and soon as the shadows of evening shall fall, the hyena of the desert will be here to gorge himself upon what they have left, having scented afar off upon the tainted breeze the fumes of the rich feast here spread for him. These Roman grave-diggers from the legion of Bassus, are alone upon the ground to contend with them for their prize. O, miserable condition of humanity! Why is it that to man have been given passions which he cannot tame, and which sink him below the brute! Why is it that a few ambitious are permitted by ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... shelter them from the sun; and the best of their houses "could neither well defend wind nor rain." Captain John Smith wrote to England, begging his friends there to "rather send thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, and diggers-up of the roots, well provided, than a thousand of such as ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... diggings on the Transvaal side was Klipdrift, and on the opposite side Pniel. In all there were fourteen river diggings. Du Toit's Pan and Bultfontein mines were discovered in 1870 at a distance of twenty-four miles from the river diggings. The diggers took possession of these places. Licenses were granted giving the first diggers a right to work. In 1871 De Beer's and Kimberley mines were discovered, and in 1872, Mr. Spalding's great diamond of 2821/2 carats was found ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... mouth improved, not for uses of commerce, but of warfare. Veteran soldier and raw recruit, bugler, baker, and farrier, man who came to fight and man who came to write about it, all had been turned into navvies, diggers, drivers of piles, or of horses, or wheelbarrows, by the man who turned everybody into his own teetotum. The Providence that guides the world showed mercy in sending that engine of destruction before there was a Railway for him to ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... unconcerned. But, when the sentence was pronounced, he pulled out the pardon, presented it, and walked out a free man. He has been pardoned; and so have we. Then let death come, we have nought to fear. All the grave-diggers in the world cannot dig a grave large enough and deep enough to hold eternal life; all the coffin makers in the world cannot make a coffin large enough and tight enough to hold eternal life. Death has had his hand on Christ once, ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... life itself," he continued, silencing his companion, who seemed eager to speak, with a motion of his finger, "through towns, over waters, upon deserts, still pursued his way; and, to be brief in a weary history, there, in the very heart of that great region of gold, among diggers and searchers, and men distracted in a thousand ways in that perilous hunt, to find his simple-hearted friend, the preacher, in an out-of-the-way wilderness among the mountains, exhorting the living, comforting the sick, consoling the dying—and then, for the first time ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... Ilja Jovanovi['c], a boy who used to be employed at the fortress (and who had not been permitted by the Magyars to learn his own language), saw the children being fed, very often, on salt fish—no matter whether they were ill or not—and sometimes on the intestines of horses. The Serbian grave-diggers used to cook themselves a dish of grass, salt and water. They were too weak to work, and they had work enough: on February 1, 1915, for instance, twenty-nine people were buried. A certain captain (afterwards Major) Lachmann, an Austrian officer, arrived in Arad and heard ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... is this time, following hard upon the sunburned heels of Elizabeth, Evelina, and I do not know how many more hairpin gardeners. Why does not some man with a real spade and hoe give his experience in a sure-enough garden? I am wearied of these little freckled-beauty diggers who use the same vocabulary to describe roses and lilies that they do in discussing evening toilets and ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... irresolute being, contrary to himself, marvellously vain, various and changeful, were perhaps not unconnected with (peut etre pas etrangeres a) the conception of HAMLET. The author of the scene of the grave-diggers must have felt the savour and retained the impression of this thought, humid and cold as the grave: 'The heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor are but the repast of a little worm.' The translation of Plutarch, or rather of ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... brick buildings, banks, hotels, and streets of shops, offices, and dwelling-houses, with a population of some 15,000, at the time of which I write there stood an open forest of eucalyptus dotted here and there with the white tents and camps of diggers. A part of the timber had already been cleared to admit of "dry-blowing" operations—a process adopted for the separation of gold from alluvial soil in the ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... peak in silence. Very slowly she lowered her head in acknowledgment. At the foot of the stretcher she paused, with bowed head, and stood awhile so; if she prayed, it was with lips that did not move. In the grave the diggers ceased to work, and stood, sunk to their waists, to watch. The great open space was of a sudden reverend and solemn. Then she knelt, and, taking in both hands the bough of laurel which she carried, she bent above the covered shape and laid it ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... up, it must not be crowded amongst the other houses. The twins needed air. Then the nearer he was to the creek, where the gold was to be found, the better. And again his prospecting must tap a part of it where the diggers had not yet "claimed." There were a dozen and one things to be considered, and he thought of them all until his gentle mind became confused and his sense ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... made! Good Lord, man, you stopped about a hundred feet this side of a very pretty success! If your men had gone a hundred feet farther you would have made a great charge, but as it is—what a lot of mud diggers ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... The diggers were now so far advanced in their labours as to discover that the sides of the grave which they were clearing out had been originally secured by four walls of freestone, forming a parallelogram, for the reception, probably, of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Lenni-Lenape,—the Delaware Indians,—mankind was once buried in the earth with a wolf; and they owed their release to the wolf, who scratched away the soil and dug out a means of escape for the men and for himself. The Root-Diggers of California were released in the same way ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... a gold frame announced that Mr. Leathersham was descended from the Gold Digger Indians, a noble ancestry indeed; and it was no secret that his wife had played in "The Gold-diggers," during its ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... worked before. As the end of the time drew nearer, as success became ever more assured, they worked longer hours, they accomplished swifter results. For each man of them, from Brayley to the ditch-diggers, was laboring not only for the company, but for himself. Each and every man had been promised a bonus for every day between the time when water was poured down into the sunken Valley and the coming of high noon upon October the first. And Conniston still held to his determination to have everything ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... caught by spreading out their table cloths and clothes; and then, by wringing them, a degree of moisture was imparted to their parched lips, and their hearts were revived, and prepared to hear the joyful news, which was communicated by the diggers soon after midnight, that they had found water in the well, and a small bottle of this most dearly prized treasure was handed to the captain. So great was the excitement of the people on receiving the announcement, that it became necessary to plant sentries, in order ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... thousand guineas," replied the young nobleman, "if the tomb has not been opened; but I shall give nothing if a single stone has been touched by the crow-bar of the diggers." ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... was impossible, and the sofa seemed equally so. Bridget drank the coarse bush tea which the landlady brought in, and was glad that the woman seemed too sulky to want to talk. Then she sat down at the window and watched the life of the township—the diggers slouching in for drinks, the riders from the bush who hung up their horses and went into the bar, the teams of bullocks coming slowly down the road and drawing up here or at some other of the nineteen public houses 'to wet the wool,' in bush vernacular. She counted ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... was meant as an innocent frolic, it was productive of much mischief to several respectable characters amongst the clergy, undertakers, sextons, and grave-diggers: they were, it must be acknowledged, sufferers; for it is a well-known fact, that during the three months the college was suspended in the air, and therefore incapable of attending their patients, no deaths happened, except a few who ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... or dealers. We also wish to avoid all participation in the controversies respecting the merits of various new inventions. We have several forms of cultivators, horse-hoes, subsoil-plows, drills, seed-sowers, land-diggers, and drainers, various formed plows, root-cleaners, corn-planters, &c., &c. These possess different degrees of merit; all have their day, and will be superseded by others, in the general advancement that marks the science of soil-culture. We strongly ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... one Kingdom of God. See here! See here! And here! This brave little French priest in a helmet of steel who is daring to think for the first time in his life; this gentle-mannered emir from Morocco looking at the grave-diggers on the battlefield; this mother who has lost ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... with the grave diggers about the bones, skulls and greatness of a politician, courtier, lady, lawyer, tanner; and when the skull of the old king's jester is thrown out of the grave after a sleep of twenty-three years, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... response, the younger and nimbler of the two—he was a mere boy, for all his amazing growth of beard—put his foot in the bucket and went down on the rope, kicking off the sides of the shaft with his free foot. A group of diggers, gathering round the pit-head, waited for the tug at the rope. It was quick in coming; and the lad was hauled to the surface. No hope: both drives had fallen in; the bottom of the shaft was blocked. The crowd melted with ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... sprinkled pretty emerald isles beckoning with all the lure of nature, while tree bedecked peninsulas shelter hundreds of cuddling coves. Near the dividing shore line the "tide lands" reach out from the sunny beaches and supply a sort of neutral ground, enjoyed now by the clam diggers or oyster culturists and again claimed ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... agreed, "let's get back to the serious work of his resurrection. You asked me to recruit other brisk diggers, and I've hunted about quite a bit. There's that chap Crothers and his wife, but so far they're the best I can do—and the Crothers pair seem rather blind. They can't see the ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... of antiquity were forgotten, or sought to be buried in oblivion. The tomb of Du Gueselin shared the same fate as that of Louis XIV. The skulls of monarchs and heroes were tossed about like foot balls by the profane multitude; like the grave-diggers in Hamlet, they made a jest of the lips before which the nations ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... runners come to cull your tales, How Generals talked with you, in splendid humours, And how the Worcestershires have gone to Wales; Up yonder trench each lineward regiment swings, Saying some shocking things; And here at dark sad diggers stand in hordes Waiting the late elusive Engineer, While glowing pipes illume yon notice-boards, That say, "No LIGHTS. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... friends claimed, and he was buried on what was supposed to be his own land just north of Raften's, but it afterward proved to be part of the highway where a sidepath joined in, and in spite of its diggers the grave was at the crossing of two roads. Thus by the hand of fate Bill Garney ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Brazils, like the true pig of the Grecian, are cast in the shade by their reasoning imitator! In short, not to be prosy on a subject which has awakened poetry and passion in all, hear, as the grave-diggers say, "the truth on't."{13} ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and inasmuch as they do answer to them. We may grant, for instance, that the vulgarities of old Phoenix in the ninth Iliad, or of the nurse of Orestes in the Choephoroe, or perhaps of the grave-diggers in Hamlet, are in themselves unworthy of their respective authors, and refer them to the wantonness of exuberant genius; and yet maintain that the scenes in question contain much incidental poetry. Now and then the lustre of the true metal catches the eye, redeeming ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... urged against Hamlet, and that is the introduction of low characters and comic scenes in tragedy. Even Garrick, who had just assisted at the Stratford Jubilee, where Shakespeare had been pronounced divine, was induced by this absurd outcry for the proprieties of the tragic stage to omit the grave-diggers' scene from Hamlet. Leaving apart the fact that Shakespeare would not have been the representative poet he is, if he had not given expression to this striking tendency of the Northern races, which shows itself ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the grasses which begin to stir about the dead bird.] Insect, where the body has fallen, be swift to come and open the earth. The funereal necrophaga are the only grave-diggers who never carry the dead elsewhere, believing that the least sad, and the most fitting tomb, is the very clay whereon one fell into the final sleep. [To the funeral insects, while the NIGHTINGALE begins gently to sink into the ground.] Piously dig ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... under Count De Lesseps undertook to construct a canal from Panama to Aspinwall, but after half a dozen years the French company suspended work, partly for financial reasons, and partly on account of the enormous loss of life among the diggers from the pestilent nature of the climate and the country. Then followed a period of waiting, until it seemed certain that the French would never resume operations. American promoters pressed the claims of a route through Nicaragua where ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... will be enough for me. And you shall have all the rest, my dear—that is, if you will spare me a bit, Miss Remy. It all belongs to you by discovery, according to the diggers' law. And your eyes are so bright about it, miss, that the whole of your heart must be ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... two from some landmark, we set to work a few feet inside, under cover of the bushes and the shadows, like two grave diggers. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... yet. The battens that kept the trench-sides vertical were wider apart than what you'd have thought, when you come to try 'em with a two-fut rule. And the short lengths of quartering that kep' 'em apart were not really intersecting the diggers' anatomies as the weaver's shuttle passes through the warp. That was only the impression of the unconcerned spectator as he walked above them over the plank bridge that acknowledged his right of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... one can tell you: if he and Archer returne againe, they are sufficient to keep us always in factions. When you send againe I entreat you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees roots, well provided, then a thousand of such as we have; for except wee be able both to lodge them, and feed them, the most will consume with want of necessaries before they can be made good for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... possibility of those who are half capitalists and half workers rising out of their nondescript condition into a new master class, as did the bourgeoisie under feudalism. For these reasons he contended the proletarian slaves would become the grave diggers for the bourgeois masters and so end capitalism with ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... are greatly recommended for strengthening the tone of the viscera, and as an aperient; and said to have excellent effects in the dropsy, jaundice, cachexies, and scorbutic disorders. Boerhaave informs us, that this is the common medicine of the turf-diggers in Holland, against scurvies, foul ulcers, and swellings in the feet, which they are subject to. The roof of this plant is said to ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... after the aides-de camp. While they were undressing the marshal, in order to certify the cause of death, a leathern belt was found on him containing 5536 francs. The body was carried downstairs by the grave-diggers without any opposition being offered, but hardly had they advanced ten yards into the square when shouts of "To the Rhone! to the Rhone!" resounded on all sides. A police officer who tried to interfere was knocked down, the bearers were ordered to turn round; ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the mine. In Burton's Anat. of Mel. we read, "Subterranean devils are as common as the rest, and do as much harm. Olaus Magnus makes six kinds of them, some bigger, some less. These are commonly seen about mines of metals," etc. Warton quotes from an old writer: "Pioneers or diggers for metal do affirm that in many mines there appear strange shapes and spirits who are apparelled like unto the labourers in the pit." 'Swart' (also swarty, swarth, and swarthy) here means black: in Scandinavian ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... "Ditch diggers!" The engineer banged his fist down on the table. His lean pickled face was a furious red. "I guess we don't dig half so many ditches as the infantry does...an' when we've dug 'em we don't crawl into 'em an' stay there ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... McCloud River that have come under my observation differ considerably in habits and features from the Diggers and other tribes of the foothills and plains, and also from the Pah Utes and Modocs. They live chiefly on salmon. They seem to be closely related to the Tlingits of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and may readily have found their way here by passing from stream to stream ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... better throw what remains of the piece into a farce, to appear immediately afterwards. No foreigner who should happen to be present at the exhibition, would ever believe it was formed out of the loppings and excrescences of the tragedy itself. You may entitle it The Grave-Diggers; with the pleasant Humours of Osric, the Danish Macaroni.' Garrick ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... travel and energy. People rushed to America for gold: these people had to be fed and clothed. Then farmers and manufacturers followed the gold-hunters; they tilled the soil to feed the miners. The new farms which dotted the region of the gold-diggers added to the wealth of the country in which the mines were located. Colonization followed gold-digging. But it was America that became enriched, not the old countries from which the miners came, except so ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... frequent levity and the buffoonery of Polonius alike regrettable —Shakespeare's favorite foible, he feels, is "that of raising a laugh." The introduction of Fortinbras and his army on the stage is "an Absurdity"; the grave-diggers' scene is "very unbecoming to tragedy"; the satire on the "Children of the Chapel" is not allowable in this ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... the loose condition of the wet earth allowing unsupported portions to fall from the freshly exposed surface, but there was also the risk that the softer earth was sliding under the weight of that above. The workmen, two of whom were experienced well and cistern diggers, declared the risk too great and demanded to be ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... in the car and looking back, we watched the river of war wind toward us. Cavalry, artillery, lancers, infantry, sappers and miners, trench-diggers, road-makers, stretcher-bearers, they swept on as smoothly as if in holiday order. Through the dust, the sun picked out the flash of lances and the gloss of chargers' flanks, flushed rows and rows of determined faces, found the least touch of gold on faded uniforms, silvered ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... and sextons "old," irrespective of their years. Clerks in the shop style their employer "the old gentleman" without meaning to impute antiquity. Gray-haired diggers and pounders speak of their overseer as "the old man," even though he be a rosy-cheeked youth of two-and-twenty. Lexicographers should look to this. "Old" evidently means sometimes "having independent ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Riggins who joined us. "I read that story of yours, sir. It was good, I must say. It is just like something that happened in my own personal experience. A few months ago, I was down at Homosassa, Florida; and, while I was there, some clam diggers discovered a large chest of old Spanish coin. They sold them to the Government for thirty thousand dollars, and have now retired ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... up and down the Boulevard. You are a man of the world with a vengeance! You have spent some deadly dull hours, and you have done some extremely disagreeable things: you have shoveled sand, as a boy, for supper, and you have eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers' camp. You have stood casting up figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty girl in another pew. All that is rather stiff, as we say. But at any rate you ...
— The American • Henry James
... counting the accessory or insignificant places which exist by tens and hundreds of thousands, from secretaries, clerks, bailiffs and notaries, to gendarmes, constables, office-clerks, beadles, grave-diggers, and keepers of sequestered goods. The pasture is vast for the ambitious; it is not small for the needy, and they seize upon it. Such is the rule in pure democracies: hence the swarm of politicians in the United States. When the law incessantly calls all citizens to political ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... clouds obscured the starless sky, not a breath of wind was stirring, the air felt oppressively close and sultry even at the hour of midnight. A single torch was all the light which the grave-diggers dared to employ while engaged on their dangerous work. In almost perfect darkness were the remains of Hadassah and her unhappy son lowered into the dust. There was no silver moonlight streaming between the stems of the olives, as ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... Mines in the deep Groves, he observ'd that there would often arise in them a warm Steam (not of that malignant sort which the Germains call Shwadt, which (sayes he) is a meer poyson, and often suffocates the Diggers [Errata: diggers)], which fasten'd it self to the Walls; and that coming again to review it after a couple of dayes, he discern'd that it was all very fast, and glistering; whereupon having collected it and ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... kindred or adjacent tribes have been branded as "Diggers," and are generally thought to be the lowest class of Indians in America, but in some lines of artistic work they excelled all other tribes. For example, their basketry work, for domestic and sacred purposes, and their bows and arrows, were of very superior workmanship ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... 1851, and which in all amounts to nearly 800 tons. Valuing the precious metal at its ascertainable worth, it appears that gold to the value of upwards of L15,000 sterling was dug from the bowels of the earth, washed from the sand of the rivers, or discovered by fortunate diggers in various parts of ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... apparently forgot his grief for a minute. Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave. It was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the customary rites the grave-diggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to understand fully what was happening. When they began filling up the grave, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... laborers were much alarmed, and were on the point of abandoning the work. They were advised to stay and give up strong drink. They all remained, and all quit the use of strong drink except one, and he fell a victim to the disease.' He says also: 'I had a gang of diggers in a clay bank, to whom the same proposition was made; they all agreed to it, and not one died. On the opposite side of the same clay bank were other diggers who continued their regular rations of whisky, and one third ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... absorption in the impersonal harmony, the spiritual receptivity, from which the grand truths are visible. The actors' masks allowed only the facial expression of a single mood; and it was a single mood the dramatist aimed to produce: a unity; one great word. There could be no grave-diggers; no quizzing of Polonious; no clouds very like a whale. The whole drama is the unfoldment of a single moment: that, say, in which Hamlet turns on Caudius and kills him—rather, leads him out to kill him. To that you are led by a little sparse dialog, ominous enough, and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... which greeted "Frithjof's Saga" was due in no small measure to this half-juvenile robustness of its author's genius. As I cannot help regretting in myself the loss of my boyish appetite for swashbuckling marauders, and mysterious treasure-diggers, I am, indeed, far from deploring Tegner's delight in the insane prowess of Charles XII., or the gay and chivalrous gallantry of Gustavus III. There is a sort of fine salubriousness in it which makes one, on the whole, like ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the two "well-diggers," who have entered like spirits, and now look as if, for the first time since their advent in Oakley, they feel quite at home. Nearest to Madeline stands Clarence Vaughan. Back of these, a little in the shadow, two others—two women. One stands with her face turned ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... sanguinary than those of the Guinea Coast negroes, so the Kafirs themselves were, when the whites first saw them, somewhat more advanced in civilization. Compared with the Red Indians of America, they stood at a point lower than that of the Iroquois or Cherokees, but superior to the Utes or to the Diggers of the Pacific coast. They could work in iron and copper, and had some notions of ornament. Their music is rude, but not wholly devoid of melody, and they use instruments of stone, wood, and iron, by striking ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... labor of growing and securing a crop of potatoes. Digging is a long, laborious task. Many small fortunes are sunk yearly by inventors in experimenting with and constructing "potato-diggers;" but, so far, no machine has done the work properly except under the most favorable circumstances. Stones, vines, and weeds are obstacles not yet fully overcome. Many tubers are left covered with ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... thousand bodies that Charles IX. might have seen floating down the Seine; La Popeliniere reduces them to one thousand. There is to be found, in the account-books of the city of Paris, a payment to the grave-diggers of the cemetery of the Innocents for having interred eleven hundred dead bodies stranded at the turns of the Seine near Chaillot, Auteuil, and St. Cloud; it is probable that many corpses were carried ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in the habit of talking of ghosts, and are so well acquainted with all the tricks of which these evil spirits are capable, that they scarcely fear them at all. It is especially in the night that all these worthies, grave-diggers, flaxdressers, and ghosts, exercise their industry. It is in the night also the flaxdresser relates his lamentable stories. But he is no more than the sacristan addicted exclusively to the pleasure of inspiring his auditors with fear; he delights in raising a laugh; and is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... pocket of your brain A care for me; wherefore my gratitude For your attention is commensurate With your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings; We are as royal as two ditch-diggers; But owe me not your sceptre. These are the days When first a few seem all; but if we live, We may again be seen to be the few That we have always been. These are the days When men forget the stars, and ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... industrial problem. "It is an extraordinary thing," I said, "that you should not yet have said a word about the method of adjusting wages. Since the nation is the sole employer, the government must fix the rate of wages and determine just how much everybody shall earn, from the doctors to the diggers. All I can say is, that this plan would never have worked with us, and I don't see how it can now unless human nature has changed. In my day, nobody was satisfied with his wages or salary. Even if he felt he received enough, he was sure his neighbor ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... For many a year it slept on neglected and almost forgotten. Now it has been completely aroused from its lethargy, to find itself in the middle of the highway to California, and the chief resting-place of gold-diggers. It is bounded by the sea on three sides, and surrounded by a wall with ditch and bastions on the land side. In the centre is the plaza, into which converge several streets of old-fashioned, sedate-looking Spanish houses, with broad verandas and heavy folding-shutters. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... moved in the moonlight. They were opening the first of those long, deep trenches. They were careful in these early days of war. They turned each face downward as they packed them in. The grave diggers could not then throw the wet dirt into their eyes and mouths. Aching hearts in far-off homes couldn't see; but these boys still had hearts ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... for verily he is our father;" and all came hurrying after us. Here the river, again making a bend, is lost to sight, and we marched through large woods and cultivated fields to Muhugue, observing, as we passed long, the ochreish colour of the earth, and numerous pits which the copal-diggers had made searching for their much-valued gum. A large coast-bound caravan, carrying ivory tusks with double-toned bells suspended to them, ting-tonging as they moved along, was met on the way; and as some of the pagazis composing it were men who had formerly taken me to the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... hardihood. In vain did I recall the fact that my competitors were notoriously persons far inferior to me in knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the capacity to analyze them; rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar with the language—mere delvers and diggers in a science in which I secretly felt that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to mind the fact that I knew the community before which I was likely to speak; I knew its deficiencies; knew the inferiority ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... street shall look on him scornfully and say: "Fie, Coriolanus, I wouldn't take a bite at you even if you were a sausage." [A knock is heard. BOLZ lays down his knife.] Memento mori! There are our grave-diggers. The last oyster, now, and ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... that is to say, the false accusers and dissembled gospellers, will therein oppose me. This genealogy was found by John Andrew in a meadow, which he had near the pole-arch, under the olive-tree, as you go to Narsay: where, as he was making cast up some ditches, the diggers with their mattocks struck against a great brazen tomb, and unmeasurably long, for they could never find the end thereof, by reason that it entered too far within the sluices of Vienne. Opening this tomb ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Kimberley. Gold was unearthed in Lydenburg. From that hour a procession of European miners began slowly to march north from the Cape. A highway was opened up between the two promising districts, and diggers of every race, pioneers bent on the propagation of modern ideas, teachers, missionaries, and traders of all kinds, attracted by the promise of wealth, flocked to the scene and settled themselves among ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... his cup untasted for a moment, looking thoughtfully into the fire. "Tea is the best drink you can have in difficult, fatiguing journeys. Even the gold-diggers of Australia know that. They drink hard enough when they are on the spree, but when at work in earnest they stick to the teapot," he said, turning his eyes full upon her with a cool, critical gaze, which half amused, half irritated her. It was curious to sit there talking easily with a total stranger. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... even the low-browed herdsman shivering in the currents blowing from the Trojan heights, could then have named the fortunate tribe. Still the exposure was not complete; a part remained for finding out. We knew the diggers of the pit; but for whom was it? To this I devoted myself. Hear me closely now—my Lord, I have traversed the earth, not once, but many times—so often, you cannot name a people unknown to me, nor a land whither ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... achievement of a great scientist's career (I refer, Dr. Stuart, to my brilliant predecessor). They were buried alive; but no surgeon in Europe or America would have hesitated to certify them dead. Aided by a group of six Hindu fanatics, trained as Lughais (grave-diggers), it was easy to gain access to their resting-places. One had the misfortune to be cremated by his family—a great loss to my Council. But the others are now in China, at our headquarters. They are labouring ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... its due bridges for communication; all is in readiness, and waiting manifold as in the slip,—and there is Engineer Walrave, our Glogau Dutch friend, who shall, at the right instant, "with his straw-rope (STROHSEIL) mark out the first parallel," and be swift about it! There are 2,000 diggers, with the due implements, fascines, equipments; duly divided, into Twelve equal Parties, and "always two spademen to one pickman" (which indicates soft sandy ground): these, with the escorting or covering battalions, Twelve Parties they ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... work went merrily on until midnight, and even after that hour, under the light of a full moon; by which time the diggers were buried ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... of exultation and joy, notwithstanding the loud weeping of the mother. The other children, its late companions, broke with it, suddenly, into the place where the deep black bed lay open to receive it. Pushing away the grim fossores, the grave-diggers, they ranged themselves around it in order, and chanted that old psalm of theirs—Laudate pueri dominum! Dead children, children's graves—Marius had been always half aware of an old superstitious fancy in his mind concerning them; as if in coming ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... that a theology is the real belief of few, and varies with their changing intellectual point of view; while superstition is the belief unacknowledged of the few and acknowledged of the many, nor does it materially change from age to age. The rites employed among the clam-diggers on the New York coast, the witch-charms they use, the incantations, cutting of flesh, fire-oblations, meaningless formulae, united with sacrosanct expressions of the church, are all on a par with the religion of the lower classes as depicted in Theocritus and ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... who had kept up an undercurrent of disapproval—they disliked Charles; it was not a moment to speak of such things, but they did not like Charles Wilcox—the grave-diggers finished their work and piled up the wreaths and crosses above it. The sun set over Hilton: the grey brows of the evening flushed a little, and were cleft with one scarlet frown. Chattering sadly to each other, the mourners ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... valley, and over it in the old time the Yuba had poured in a cascade seventy feet deep into the ravine. But the rock now was level with the gravel, only showing its jagged points here and there above it. This ledge had been invaluable to the diggers: without it they could only have sunk their shafts with the greatest difficulty, for the gravel would have been full of water, and even with the greatest pains in puddling and timber-work the pumps would scarcely have sufficed to keep it down as it rose ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... which has spread all over the world, and around whose borders young territories have sprung into existence and flourished vigorously; two of them indeed having attained to the condition of independent States. After the Californian gold-diggers had changed the configuration of the ground of entire provinces by having, with Titanic might, deposited masses of earth into the sea until they expanded into hilly districts, so as to obtain therefrom, with the aid of ingenious machinery, the smallest ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... this day much earlier to have a look at Cap'n Amazon Silt. Women left their housework at "slack ends" to run over to the store for something considered suddenly essential to their work. Some of the clam-diggers lost a tide to obtain an early glimpse of Cap'n Amazon. Even the children came and peered in at the store door to see that strange, red-kerchief-topped ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... the grave-diggers is another stroke of wit. One of them tells him that Polonius is carried off by apoplexy—a bust has been erected to his memory bearing the inscription, "Words! Words! Words!" He also learns that Yorick was his half-brother, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Lady Diana's letter, which was spiteful beyond description as far as we were concerned; making all manner of accusations on the authority of the Australian relations; the old stories exaggerated into horrible blackness, besides others for which I could by no means account. Gambling among the gold-diggers, horrid frays in Victoria, and even cattle-stealing, were so impossible in a man who had always been a rich sheep farmer, that I laughed; yet they were told by the cousins with strange circumstantiality. Then came later tales—about our ways at Arghouse—all as a warning ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... complete, showers of shot will rain on us all at once. Non-combatants have been ordered to leave or prepare accordingly. Those who are to stay are having caves built. Cave-digging has become a regular business; prices range from twenty to fifty dollars, according to size of cave. Two diggers worked at ours a week and charged thirty dollars. It is well made in the hill that slopes just in the rear of the house, and well propped with thick posts, as they all are. It has a shelf also, for ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... are always the daring spirits of the neighborhood. They have talked so much about ghosts, and they know so well all the tricks of which these malicious spirits are capable, that they fear them scarcely at all. It is especially at night that all of them—grave-diggers, hemp-dressers, and ghosts—do their work. It is also at night when the hemp-dresser tells his melancholy stories. Permit me to make ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... much of the affair that my humble fortunes and my whereabouts were discussed in long columns of print, and even in the crash of the war I became to the Boers a topic all to myself. The rumours in part amused me. It was certain, said the "Standard and Diggers' News," that I had escaped disguised as a woman. The next day I was reported captured at Komati Poort dressed as a Transvaal policeman. There was great delight at this, which was only changed to doubt when other telegrams ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... selected, not without difficulty, workmen to help us—diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I could get together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. They people their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, with malignant spirits—ani they call them. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... The diggers, led by her captor, had been sent out that morning to relieve their comrades already at work. When none of them returned the Captain grew anxious, and was himself leading the ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... his head upon his hand, and reasoned an hour which way to have gone—reason, with all her force, could not have directed him to any think like it: there is something, Sir, in fish-ponds—but what it is, I leave to system-builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt 'em to find out—but there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered that neither Pythagoras, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... no woman's face—the music was floating upward from an adjoining chamber. But in the room into which I gazed was a strange sight—four men stripped to the waist and toiling for all the world like diggers of a well. The flagstones of the floor had been torn up, and a great hollow cavern had been dug below. From this cavity two of the figures were passing up baskets of mud and gravel, into the hands of Mustafa Khan himself, who was bestowing the material around ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... been presented in the form of interlinear texts by Dangberg (1927) and in Lowie's Ethnographic Notes (1939, pp. 333-351). There are two versions of the creation myth, one describing the creation of Paiute, Washo, and Diggers from the seeds of the cattail by the Creator Woman, and the second attributing the creation of Indians to the Creation Man, who formed the three groups from among his sons to keep them from quarreling. Lowie also reports the common ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... viceroy moved great and petty treasurers; scribes of grain, wine, cattle, woolen stuffs; chief masons, ditch-diggers, naval and land engineers, healers of various diseases, officers over regiments of laborers, police scribes, judges, inspectors of prisons, even executioners and dissectors. After them the worthy nomarch ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of diggers had arranged that they should make their egress first, and inform the others just as they were going out. But each man had a particular friend whom he wished to notify, and, as we were seen packing our clothing, it ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... New South Wales. We used to say 'on' Gulgong—and old diggers still talked of being 'on th' Gulgong'—though the goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the last of the great alluvial 'rushes' of the 'roaring days'—and ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... God doth our doda call, oy dodo oy dodo le! That dewy rain may fall, oy dodo oy dodo le! And drench the diggers all, oy dodo oy dodo le! The workers great and small, oy dodo oy dodo le! Even those in house and stall, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and the soda-water apparatus for 2 pounds 5 shillings. I also sold some books that we could not carry, but got nothing for them. Scientific works do not take. The people who buy everything here are the gold-diggers, and they want story books. A person I know brought out 100 pounds worth of more serious reading, and sold ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... of hundreds; they will also make them their artificers, makers of armor, and of chariots, and of instruments; they will make them their husbandmen also, and the curators of their own fields, and the diggers of their own vineyards; nor will there be any thing which they will not do at their commands, as if they were slaves bought with money. They will also appoint your daughters to be confectioners, and cooks, and bakers; and these will be obliged to do all sorts of work which ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... why don't they protect American laborers by forbidding foreign workmen to land on our shores? I demand protection for the native ditcher. Forbid the Irishmen to land here and to lower the price of labor by competing with our own ditch-diggers. Put a stop to the influx of German tailors and bootmakers, who prevent native artists from earning the wages that would otherwise be theirs. Protect our authors by prohibiting the sale of works written by foreigners. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... cemetery where those bones you are going to break are to be found. You go in by the side gate, and ask any of the grave-diggers where—" ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... became rich corn-land and garden, and Fulda an abbey borough and a principality, where men lived in peace under mild rule, while the feudal princes quarrelled and fought outside; and a great literary centre, whose old records are now precious to the diggers among the bones of bygone times; and at last St. Sturmi and the Aihen-lob had so developed themselves, that the latest record of the Abbots of Fulda which I have seen is ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Rataplan, Santa Claus de la Muscovado, Senor Grandissimo Bastinado. His was the rental of half Havana And all Matanzas; and Santa Anna, Rich as he was, could hardly hold A candle to light the mines of gold Our Cuban owned, choke-full of diggers; And broad plantations, that, in round figures, Were stocked with at least ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... had an archaeological strike. The mound is levelled, the wall foundations have disappeared, and so have the diggers. I am afraid the Society are now awaiting your return to give them a lead. My grounds, alas, have produced nothing beyond the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... that I first became an almoner for others, whilst filled with a desire to build a missionhall among the coprolite diggers in Cambridgeshire. ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... with the diggings and the diggers. We have often wished we could interrogate one of those unquiet spirits in the manner of Macbeth—'What is't ye do?' How do you manage? By what signs do you know a locality that is likely to repay your pains? What are your instruments, your machinery? What do you conceive ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... reservations torn from them one after another as the States extended westward, until at length they are shut up into these hideous mountain deserts of the centre—and even there find themselves invaded, insulted, and hunted out by ruffianly diggers? The eviction of the Cherokees (to name but an instance), the extortion of Indian agents, the outrages of the wicked, the ill-faith of all, nay, down to the ridicule of such poor beings as were here with me upon the train, make up a chapter of injustice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... day the grave-diggers' labors were pushed on with briskness. A large number of natives took part, under the direction of Queen Moini's first minister. All must be ready at the hour named, under penalty of mutilation, for the new sovereign promised to follow the defunct ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... of gold strides far and near, And deep and strong it enters: This purple chimar which we wear, Makes madder than the centaur's. Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange; We cheer the pale gold-diggers— Each soul is worth so much on 'Change, And marked, like sheep, with ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Snana called loudly to her companion turnip-diggers. Her cry soon brought all the women into sight upon a near-by ridge, and they immediately gave a general alarm. Mato saw them, but appeared not at all concerned and was still intent upon dislodging the girl, who ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... not being so tied to the soil from morning to night, not, in fact, incited to Herculean labours by the spur of larger possession. We visited one of the poorest villages hereabouts, of not quite a hundred souls, but of course, provided with church, school and Mairie. Many a group of potato diggers we saw in the exquisite twilight, suggestive of Millet, many a landscape recalling other masters. This handful of woodlanders—for the village is surrounded by forests—is perhaps as poor as any rural population to be found ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... enough, O King, and we thank you," answered Dick. "And now, behold, our work here is done; give us therefore a guide to the place of red stones, and send the diggers after us that we may be gone, for, as you have said, our journey is long, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... exclaimed the Doctor, laughing, "you can do better than that. You had better offer the regular grave-diggers ten dollars to leave the body a short time in your possession before burying it; or, if Pattmore should insist upon seeing it buried, they can easily disinter it for you, and it will take me only a short time to remove the intestines. I shall then seal them up for the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... at last, after seventeen years, Polybius' pupils persuaded the great senator Cato to speak for them, and he did so, but in a very rough, unfeeling way. "Anyone who saw us disputing whether a set of poor old Greeks should be buried by our grave-diggers or their own would think we had nothing else to do," he said. So the Romans consented to their going home; but when they asked to have all their rank and honours restored to them, Cato said, "Polybius, you are less wise than Ulysses. You want to go back into the Cyclops' cave for the wretched ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exasperated, "how can a man from Australia know anything about prices for port? You can't divest your ideas of diggers' prices. You're like an intoxicating drink yourself on the tradesmen of our town. You think it fine—ha! ha! I daresay, Philip, I should be doing the same if I were up to your mark at my banker's. We can't all of us be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... many animals whose fore-feet resemble hands, and these, generally, convey their food to their mouths—among these are the squirrel and dormice. They are good climbers and diggers. You see, my dear young lady, how the merciful Creator has given to all his creatures, however lowly, the best means of supplying their wants, whether of ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill |
