"Diggers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notes in Hardy, is akin to the humor of the grave-diggers in Hamlet, but not so grim. I have heard a country undertaker describe the details of the least attractive branch of his uncomfortable business with a pride and self-satisfaction that would have been farcical had not the subject been so depressing. This ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... 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. And they ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... 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plows, root-cleaners, corn-planters, &c., &c. These possess different degrees of merit; all have their day, and will be superseded by others, in the general advancement that marks the science of soil-culture.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 recommend the use of the best tools, especially ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... deeds men go downward, by them men mount upward all, Like the diggers of a well, and like the builders of ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Several of the garrison had been killed, and a number were wounded. These last called piteously for water, and gazed with longing eyes at the limitless expanse of the lake, so near at hand and yet so hopelessly remote. By sunset the well-diggers were in moist earth, before nine o'clock the wounded were eagerly quaffing a muddy liquid that gave them new life, and by midnight two feet of water stood in ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... ransacked and abandoned; in the natural clefts of the rock; or in common pits. At Thebes, in the time of the Ramessides, great trenches dug in the sand awaited their remains. The funeral rites once performed, the grave-diggers cast a thin covering of sand over the day's mummies, sometimes in lots of two or three, and sometimes in piles which they did not even take the trouble to lay in regular layers. Some were protected only by their bandages; others ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... 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
... 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
... men in the world have suffered more, or carried a heavier cross, or worn a sharper crown of thorns, than those that have produced what we call the literature of our race. So my sympathies extend all the way from hod-carriers to sculptors; from well-diggers to astronomers. If the objects of the laboring men are to improve their condition without injuring others; to have homes and firesides, and wives and children; plenty to eat, good clothes to wear; to develop their minds, to educate their children—in short, to become prosperous ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of it. It was the only time and occasion in my life I could accomplish this to any purpose;—for Shakespeare lying upon the table, and recollecting I was in his books, I took up Hamlet, and turning immediately to the grave-diggers' scene in the fifth act, I laid my finger upon Yorick, and advancing the book to the Count, with my finger all the way over the name,—Me voici! ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... on the edge of the camp by this time and that strange afternoon ended, when one of a gang of ditch-diggers, swathed in bright-colored rags, addressed me in English, a Greek-Turk from the island of Marmora, who, climbing out of the trench in which he and his gang had been hiding, announced that he had lived in New York for five years, in Fortieth Street, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... and dry and that every spadeful that the tired men lifted was full of pearls; but some men sat quite still and watched the butterflies that flitted about the garden and the old witch did not beat them with her stick. And when I asked her who the diggers were she said, "These are my poets, they are digging for pearls." And when I asked her what so many pearls were for she said to me: "To feed the pigs ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... commerce with any of the ordinary miners, save Pretty Pierre, but he was more gambler than miner,—and he went, when the matter was all over, and told her some things that stripped her soul naked before her eyes. Pierre had a wonderful tongue. It was only the gentlemen-diggers—and there were many of them at Little Goshen—who called upon her when the lights were low; and then there was a good deal of muffled mirth in the white house among the pines. The rougher miners made no quarrel with this, for the gentlemen-diggers were popular enough, they were merely sarcastic ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their ignorant and credulous bondmen, and the Union will never be restored—never. We can not conquer ten millions of people united in solid phalanx against us, powerfully aided by Northern sympathizers and European allies. We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers, and choppers, from the blacks of the South—whether we allow them to fight for us or not—or we shall be baffled and repelled. As one of the millions who would gladly have avoided this struggle at any sacrifice but that of principle and honor, but who now feel that the triumph of the Union is ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... under the Constitution regarding this slavery question. By his own argument he lives in a foreign country; by our own argument he is not rectus in curia. Were I an invading general and wanted horses, I would decoy them from the rebels with hay and stable enticements. If I wanted trench-diggers, camp scullions, or artillerists, or pilots, or oarsmen, or guides, and, being that general, saw negroes about me, I should press them into my service. Time enough to talk about the rights of some one to possess the negroes by better claim of title to service when that somebody, with ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... or 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
... like a humming bird, excited and eager. She looked somewhat less disheveled and begrimed than the men. But if they looked like trench diggers, they felt like plutocrats, and their hearts were swelling ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... all the shanties round the place they'd heard his horse's tramp, He took the track to Wilson's Luck, and told the diggers' camp; But in the gorge by Deadman's Gap the mountain shades were black, And there a newly-fallen tree was lying on the track — He saw too late, and then he heard the swift hoof's sudden jar, And big Ben Duggan ne'er again ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... farmer. "His estate adjoined the Diamond Fields. Had he remained where he was, he could have made a large fortune. Milk, butter, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fruit, went up to fabulous prices. The market was his own to demand what he pleased. But he was disgusted at the intrusion upon his solitude. The diggers worried him from morning to night, demanding to buy, while he required his farm produce for his own family. He sold his land, in his impatience, for a tenth of what he might have got had he cared to wait and bargain, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... sand in Santa Rosa Sound. We all said we would not go with him; but a dozen of us came down with him when he told us that he had a way to float the steamer through, and he was sure it would work. We did not understand that we were to become mud-diggers. When we got here, we were satisfied that his plan amounted to nothing, and would ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... union today, other things remaining equal, is proportionate to the skill of the trade, or, in other words, proportionate to the pressure the surplus labor army can put upon it. If a thousand ditch-diggers strike, it is easy to replace them, wherefore the ditch-diggers have little or no organized strength. But a thousand highly skilled machinists are somewhat harder to replace, and in consequence the machinist unions are strong. The ditch-diggers are wholly at the mercy of the surplus ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... at, on account of its position and associations, was Panama. 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
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... newspapers made so 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 said that I had been arrested at Brugsbank, at Middelburg, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... translation would be an insult to Feydeau; nor will you find essays about it in the yellow volumes in which the French critics tenderly embalm their feuilletons; nor do I think Arthur Symons or George Moore, those indefatigable diggers in Parisian graveyards, have discovered it for their English readers. Reading the play is to miss half its pleasure; so you must take my word in the matter unless you have been lucky enough to see it yourself, in which case ten to one you will agree with me that one such play is worth a kettleful ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Falmouth Bay, thinking then of taking our gold straight to the Bank of England, as eccentric lucky diggers—that night I thought would be the last for one or other of us. He locked her in her cabin. He posted himself outside on the settee. I sat watching him across the table. Each had a hand in his pocket, each had a pistol in that hand, and there we sat, with ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... supported the almost continual evil tidings of the Emperor as best they might. It chanced I was the only gentleman among the privates who remained. A great part were ignorant Italians, of a regiment that had suffered heavily in Catalonia. The rest were mere diggers of the soil, treaders of grapes or hewers of wood, who had been suddenly and violently preferred to the glorious state of soldiers. We had but the one interest in common: each of us who had any skill with his fingers passed the hours ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Earths, yellow or liquid matters, that usually give notice of the Ore? And if there be more than one, how and at what depths they are wont to lye respectively? Of what thickness and consistence they are; and in what Order the Diggers meet with them? ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... all seasons of the year, as it was invariably served at funerals, where, in old times, sumptuous feasts were provided for relatives and friends, a regular custom for years among the "Pennsylvania Germans," and I have heard Aunt Sarah say, "In old times, the wives of the grave-diggers were always expected to assist with the extra baking at the house where a ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... 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 ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... little dead body he silently nosed and drew it out from the cave. Out there on the open turf of the Down Nature would see speedily to its sepulture, for Nature employs many grave-diggers and suffers no unseemly waste. She works on a huge scale, but only the superficial see wastefulness in ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Why the latter is right, rather than the former, is fully proved in text-books, so I will not occupy space by stating it here: but it can be illustrated very easily by the case of length, breadth, and depth. Suppose A and B are rival diggers of rectangular tanks: the amount of work done is evidently measured by the number of cubical feet dug out. Let A dig a tank 10 feet long, 10 wide, 2 deep: let B dig one 6 feet long, 5 wide, 10 deep. The cubical contents are 200, 300; i.e. B is best digger in the ratio ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... neighborhood. They have talked so much about ghosts, and are so familiar with all the tricks of which those mischievous spirits are capable, that they fear them hardly at all. Night is the time when all three, hemp-beaters, grave-diggers, and ghosts, principally exercise their callings. At night, too, the hemp-beater tells his harrowing tales. May I be pardoned for ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Fitzmaurice and myself, was, in later years, one of the founders of Winton, on the Western River. Mrs. Lynett lately died in Winton at the ripe age of 84, her husband, Tom Lynett, having pre-deceased her some years. Like most of the women who pioneered, she had a grand heart, and I learnt how the diggers appreciated her ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... Dagos and diggers, who can't understand That the planet you'll never get through— Why, there is three times as much water as land, And but for the least little seam in the sand Your life is worth less ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Seattle the whole town was excited one morning by the arrival of a ship from the Klondike, that region of golden romance and painful reality. The Doctor and I went down to the wharf to see the great ship disembark these gold-diggers; but for several hours the four hundred passengers had been detained on board because $24,000 in gold dust, carried by two miners, had been stolen; and though a search had been instituted, to which everyone had been compelled to submit, no clue to the thief had ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... which immediately concern us, the first is one of self-congratulation—the diggers and other inhabitants of Griqualand accept the British Government with heartfelt satisfaction. Sir Henry says nothing of the unaccountable and daily increasing dissatisfaction with that Government, and perhaps he knows nothing of it, as it would be an act of suicide for the Commissioners, ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... Bennington did not question him in regard to her conduct after he was a little accustomed to the ways of Miss Liverage. The young man did not place much reliance upon the statements of the nurse. He had heard and read about "money-diggers" before. He was familiar with the story of Wolfert Webber, who had dug over the whole of his cabbage garden in search of hidden treasure, and he had no little contempt for those who allowed themselves ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... others grouped about the camp-fire only one is specially noticeable, for, as Mark Twain remarks, "the average of gold-diggers look alike." This person was a little, deformed old man; hump-backed, bow-legged, and white-haired, with cross eyes, a large mouth, a big head, set upon a slim, crane-like neck; blue eyes, and an immense ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... of "Hamlet" is opened, without impropriety, by two sentinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio's window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms which a modern audience would not easily endure; the character of Polonius is seasonable and useful; and the Grave-diggers themselves may ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... even here. Our wild vaqueros have waylaid and tortured to death some foreigners. The Diggers, Utes, and Hill Indians butcher any wanderer. Keep closely under my protection. Don Miguel adores Donna Juanita, sweet Christian lady! She will lend me aid; you are thus safe. If your people leave the Hawk's Peak without a battle, our cavalry will not take ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... indeed!" He held 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 ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... and raised his hand to his cap 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 ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Confraternity of Arezzo, which is now in the Audience Chamber where they assemble. This figure is recommending the people of Arezzo to Our Lady, and in this picture he portrayed the Piazza of the said city and the holy house of that Confraternity, with certain grave-diggers who are returning from burying the dead. He also painted another S. Rocco for the Church of S. Pietro, likewise on a panel, wherein he portrayed the city of Arezzo exactly as it stood at that time, when it was very different from what it is to-day. And he made another, which was much better ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... prices in Adelaide, but when the land was unlocked and the Victorian soil and climate were found to be as good as ours it was Mark lane that fixed prices over all Australia for primary products. After the return of most of the diggers there was a great deal of marrying and giving in marriage. The miners who had left the Burra for goldseeking gradually came back, and the nine remarkable copper mines of Moonta and Wallaroo attracted the Cornishmen, who preferred steady wages and homes to the diminishing chances ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... you mind," said Mitch. "Others have found treasure and so can we." He told the miller we were digging in the woods, because he said to me if it leaks out we're after these old cellars and places, there'll be a slough of diggers out here lookin' for treasure, and they'll ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... I remember the meaning of shapes. In the paths of evolution there are grass eaters and berry eaters and root diggers. Each has its functional shape of face and neck—and its wide, startled-looking eyes to see and run away from the hunters. In all their racial history they have never killed to eat. They have been ...
— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris
... of the 4th of May. Many negroes also escaped the vigilance of their taskmasters, and remained to welcome the victors. The fine works of Yorktown are monuments to negro labor, for they were the hewers and the diggers. Every slave-owner in Eastern Virginia was obliged to send one half of his male servants between the ages of sixteen and fifty to the Confederate camps, and they were organized into gangs and set to work. In some cases they were put to military service and made excellent sharpshooters. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... handful of people stood round the grave. In addition to the English chaplain, and a couple of diggers, there were present Dove, two Americans, and a young clerk from the consul's office, who was happy to be associated, in any fashion, with the English residents. It was the coldest day of that winter. Over the earth swept a harsh, dry wind, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... the hill of Hissarlik, begun by Dr. Schliemann in 1871, and carried on under his superintendence for more than ten years, have, on the contrary, yielded most definite, satisfactory, and conclusive results. At a depth of fifty-two feet the diggers came to the virgin soil, a very hard conchiferous limestone. The immense masses of DEBRIS of which the embankment is made up date front different epochs; we have before us, if we may use such an expression, a perpendicular Pentapolis or series of five ancient ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... religion. The son stabs his father, who is half a Gu'ebre, too. The high-priest rants and roars. The Emperor arrives, blames the pontiff for being a persecutor, and forgives the son for assassinating his father (who does not die) because—I don't know why, but that he may marry his cousin. The grave-diggers in Hamlet have no chance, when such a piece as the Guebres is written agreeably to all rules and unities. Adieu, my dear Sir! I hope to find you quite well at my ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and women burned to an even blue-black tint—civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes. They explained themselves as 'diggers'—just diggers—and opened me a new world. Granted that all Egypt is one big undertaker's emporium, what could be more fascinating than to get Government leave to rummage in a corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying to pay ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... blasted a raw pit in the street ahead. Two people were at the bottom, digging it even deeper with shovels. The whole thing seemed meaningless. Just as Jason and the wounded man rolled up the drum the diggers leaped out of the excavation and began shooting down into its depths. One of them turned, a young girl, ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... creeper-covered rocks, and so lonely that only an occasional boundary rider in search of stray cattle had visited it; but now it was swarming with life, and was reduced to the dull dead level of an ordinary diggers' camp. The tall forest trees had been cut down, and only their blackened stumps were left; the dainty ferns and grasses and creepers had all disappeared before the pick and shovel, and rough windlasses, whips, and heaps of yellow ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... taken from an agreement made in 1836 by certain cane hole diggers. Every laborer agreed to dig 405 cane holes in four and one half days due his master, and to receive ten pounds of salt fish and a daily allowance of sugar and rum, the salt fish to be diminished in the ratio of one pound for every forty holes short of 405. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... caste of labourers belonging to the eastern Districts of the United Provinces, of whom about 200 persons were returned from Bilaspur in 1891. They are found in the Korba zamindari, and are professional diggers or navvies, like the Murhas. They are apparently a mixed caste derived from the primitive tribes with some Hindu blood. They eat fowls and pork, but will not take food from any other caste. They work by contract on the dangri system of measurement, a dangri ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... 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 of its idols, and could and should have no sort of fear of its criticism. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... stung by the unsheathed sarcasm of this remark, I was accustomed afterwards to wander off towards "Steeple Rock." The rock was accessible at low-tide, and from thence I could watch the ocean on one side, and the clam-diggers on the other; could see Grandma on her hands and knees, a dot of broad good nature in the distance, always remaining apparently in the one place, and always, somehow, getting her basket full of clams as she gradually sank deeper and deeper into the briny soil; but no true Wallencamper ever caught ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... lid. Another suggested derivation is that billy is shortened from billycan, which is said to be bully-can (sc. Fr. bouili). In the early days "boeuf bouilli" was a common label on tins of preserved meat in ship's stores. These tins, called "bully-tins," were used by diggers and others as the modern billy is (see quotation 1835). A third explanation gives as the origin the aboriginal word billa ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... 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 ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... had an opportunity of paying their respects to it. If, as sometimes happens, a corpse is interred before a relative can arrive from a distance, he will on arrival break out into reproaches and upbraidings against the grave-diggers for exposing him to the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... coat, lifted his hat from the ball of leaves it covered, and presently drew on his knickerbockers, having emptied them of their stuffing. He was cold and calm. He had learned more than he expected to learn; for that startled exclamation left no doubt at all concerning one of the grave-diggers. It was Giuseppe Doria who had come to move the body, and there seemed little doubt that Brendon's would-be murderer ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... 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 ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... rough night for the money diggers," said mine host, as a gust of wind bowled round the house ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... of the diggers was a series of circular low mounds, about sixty in number, extending over an area of three acres. Imagine the delight of the gentlemen when they discovered that each of these mounds contained the remains ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... digging for perhaps an hour when hell broke loose. They'd seen us. All about was a storm of machine-gun and rifle bullets, and we dropped on our faces, the diggers in their trench—pretty shallow it was. As for the covering party, we simply took our medicine. And then the shrapnel joined the music. Word was passed to get back to the trenches, and we started promptly. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... 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
... all the way, till they found themselves upon a fine upland, with a lovely view of woodland and valley stretching away towards Alresford. Here in the warm June sunshine they seated themselves on a ferny bank to wait for the diggers and delvers below. It was verily weather in which to bask was quite the most rapturous employment. The orchestral harmonies of summer insects made a low drowsy music around them. There was just enough air to faintly stir ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... while he walked unresistingly between two of the giants. Another went before them and lighted the way with the green ray of a flame-thrower on the melting rock. These were men—men of a different sort. Evolution, working strange changes underground, had made them half beasts, diggers in ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... chinks in the walls, or even in the lair of the Spider on whom the larva feeds. In these cells, acquired without exertion, they build only an attempt at a wall with a few fragments of mortar. But we must beware of generalizing about this expeditious method of establishment. Other Pompili are true diggers, valiantly sinking a burrow in the soil, to a depth of a couple of inches. These include the Eight-spotted Pompilus (P. octopunctatus, PANZ.), with her black-and-yellow livery and her amber wings, a little darker at the tips. For her game she chooses the Epeirae ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 waterless ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... out of charity and grace, and not of right, to dig for mine ore and cinders, to be carried to his Majesty's iron-works, and not to any other place, at the accustomed rates; if the farmers of the King's iron-works should refuse to give those rates which, as well as the number of diggers, were to be ascertained by Commissioners to be named by the Court, that then they might sell the ore to others; but no new diggers were to be allowed, but only such poor men as were inhabitants of the said Forest." It was not intended that this order should always continue in force, but only until ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... sap several fresh men were constantly awaiting their turn at the face with pick and shovel. The diggers did no more than five minutes' work, hacking and spading at top speed, yielding their tools to the next comer and retiring, panting and blowing and mopping ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... soldier who blew his head off, accidentally, his 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 was stamped ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is given by Adam Johnston, in Schoolcraft [Footnote: Hist. Indian tribes of the United States, 1854, part IV, p. 224] and relates to the Bonaks, or root-diggers: ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... goodly frame, the earth, a steril promontory, and this brave o'er-hanging firmament, the air, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;" whom "man delighted not, nor woman neither;" he who talked with the grave-diggers, and moralised on Yorick's skull; the school-fellow of Rosencrans and Guildenstern at Wittenberg; the friend of Horatio; the lover of Ophelia; he that was mad and sent to England; the slow avenger of his father's death; who lived at the court of Horwendillus five hundred years ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a touch of sublimity about it. Mr. Silas Peckham had gone a little deeper than he meant, and come upon the "hard pan," as the well-diggers call it, of the Colonel's character, before he thought of it. A militia-colonel standing on his sentiments is not to be despised. That was shown pretty well in New England two or three generations ago. There were a good many plain officers that talked about their "rigiment" and their "caounty" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bullet holes, and a similar number in the Red Cross flag itself. Some of the occupants of the hospital were Boer prisoners, some were defenceless natives, so all set to work to throw up trenches for the protection of these non-combatants, and among the diggers and delvers was the Wesleyan chaplain with coat thrown off, and plying pick like one to the manner born. To that task he stuck till midnight, and oh, that I had been there to see! A chaplain thus turning himself ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... 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 passed through the lych-gate and traversed the chestnut avenues ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... and the young potato-diggers, having, as they supposed, got the information they wanted, suffered their insolence to ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... gate of the town the grave-diggers met him: they shone their torch on his face, and, recognising Zarathustra, they sorely derided him. "Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog: a fine thing that Zarathustra hath turned a grave-digger! For our hands are too cleanly for that roast. Will Zarathustra steal the bite ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... majority submit to the feudal lords and the minority. Elizabeth, with her 'aristocracy of genius,' is too strong for them: the people's heart is with her, and not with dukes. Each mine only blows up its diggers; and there are many dry eyes at their ruin. Her people ask her to marry. She answers gently, proudly, eloquently: 'She is married—the people of England is her husband. She has vowed it.' And yet there is a tone of sadness in that great speech. Her woman's heart yearns after love, after children; ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... once the maneuver of their opponents. They broke into a fierce rush, determined to stop the work of destruction before it should be too late. From his left Major Lawrence threw out a few skilled marksmen, who concentrated a telling fire upon the diggers, delaying but not putting an end to the furious energy of their efforts. Already a stream of turbid water was stealing through. Presently it gathered force and volume, spreading out swiftly across the marsh, and at the same time the crest of the dike was fringed ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... expected to do considerable excavating in order to locate the buried city, or cities, as the case might be, he had to contract for a number of Indian diggers and laborers. These could be hired in ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... was one of a numerous class of people who are termed, in the west, "money diggers," living a sort, of vagrant life, imposing upon the credulous farmers by pretending that they knew of treasure concealed, and occasionally stealing horses and cattle. Joseph Smith was the second son, and a great favourite of his father, who stated everywhere that Joe ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to-day there will be no attempt to relieve us till the 15th, if then. A Natal newspaper, with extracts from the Transvaal Standard and Diggers' News, brought in yesterday, exaggerates our situation almost as much as the Boers themselves. If all Englishmen now besieged were asked why most they desired relief, there is hardly one would not ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... And I am far from complaining of this. I believe that it is what Shakespeare intended, and that he despised the groundlings if they laughed. Of course he could have written without the least difficulty speeches five times as humorous; but he knew better. The Grave-diggers make us laugh: the old Countryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra makes us smile at least. But the Grave-digger scene does not come at a moment of extreme tension; and it is long. Our distress for Ophelia is not so absorbing that we refuse to be interested in the man who digs ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... dozen free-standing marble statues have come down to us in their pristine condition. The quarrymen were beset by students and collectors anxious to obtain inscriptions. Traders in forgeries supplied what the diggers could not produce. Classical art became a fetish.[124] The noble qualities of antiquity were blighted by the imitators, whose inventive powers were atrophied, while their skill and knowledge left nothing to be desired. Excluding the Cosmati, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... I send word many times that these two Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet farther North, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet were frozen, and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for which I was paying money to the diggers were being made for the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Started this morning at eleven for Lechner's. Passed some deserted mining-camps, where the surface had been seamed and scarred by the diggers; then across a creek, where we saw ducks and a red-tailed hawk. Squire Lechner has a large log tavern on the brow of a hill: he was absent, but his wife took us in. Sepia went on the hill to sketch, and we others drove off in search of a trout-brook of which we heard flattering accounts. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Battalions have created a very favorable impression, the officers being keen and ingenious, and the men of good physique and good diggers. The equipment is suitable. The training in field works has been good, but, generally speaking, they require the assistance of Regular Royal Engineers as regards laying out of important works. Man for man in digging the battalions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... troops had a considerable share in the last few months of fighting, and acquitted themselves in a highly creditable manner. They were great trench diggers and trench fighters, and their endurance on the march was a marvel to the allied armies. They were very popular with the French people, who were delighted with their good nature and their never-ceasing songs. Regular negro melodies these songs were, nearly all of them of the camp-meeting ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... of the party took off their tunics. One hapless individual got into trouble immediately. His shirt was not regulation colour, it was spotlessly white and visible at a hundred yards. A whispered order from the officer on the left faltered along the line of diggers. ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... 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 brought ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... enjoyments, to the real satisfactions of mankind. If the Californian gold merely replaces in the world that which has been lost and destroyed, it may have its use. If it increases the amount of cash, it will depreciate it. The gold diggers will be richer than they would have been without it. But those in whose possession the gold is at the moment of its depreciation, will obtain a smaller gratification for the same amount. I cannot look upon this as an increase, ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... 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
... horses, enjoy a landscape; and I once knew a large dog, in Switzerland, who would sit enchanted for a long time on the brink of a mountain cliff, gazing off at the lake below. It is only fair to suppose, therefore, that even these idle diggers in Indian mounds had some pleasure in looking from a hill-top; at any rate, they were fond of frequenting this one. Pewee, and Riley, and Ben Berry, and two or three others of the same feather, had come down on ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... to the trees to 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 ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... well were to be sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... to Paris a seal already bearing his shield, but lacking the small private mark that authenticated it as his signet. Fitzhugh would stand over the lapidary and see this added, and bring it back. Ralf Percy had meantime been sent to bring a report of the diggers, but he was long in returning; and when Henry became uneasy, James had volunteered to go himself, and Henry had consented, not because the air was full of sleety rain or snow, but because his hands were full of letters needing to be despatched ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 women slaves, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... earth was removed by the shaking hands of the frightened coolies, shouts, hisses, and oaths went up from the maddened crowd, but Oppert and the French abbe, half scared as they were, still pined for the hidden treasure, and encouraged the grave-diggers with promises of rewards as well as with the invigorating butt-ends of their rifles. At last, after digging a big hole in the earth, their spades came upon a huge slab of stone, which seemed to be the top ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... the reply. "Thet was long before I come to Middle Park. But I heerd all about it. The baby was found by gold-diggers up in the mountains. Must have got lost from a wagon-train thet Indians set on soon after—so the miners said. Anyway, Old Bill took the baby an' raised her ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... beat this mighty music through the Sydney slums, through those hateful back streets, through those long endless rows of mortgaged cottages and crowded apartment-houses? Why was it not carried out to the great West, hymned from shed to shed, told of in the huts and by the waterholes, given to the diggers in the great claims, to the drovers travelling stock, borne wherever a man was to be found who had a wrong to right and a long account to square? Ah! How they would all leap to it! How they would swell its victorious chanting and gather in their thousands and their hundred thousands to march ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... 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 ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... exhibited at the Paris Salon, 1893, and "Jessica," belong to the Public Library in Williamsport; "Clam-Diggers Coming Home—Cape Cod" was in the Venice Exhibition, 1903; one of her pictures shows ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... assistant, the farm manager and half a dozen hands. The partners themselves slept in a tent. There was also a cook tent near the house where three meals a day were prepared for everybody, including the carpenters, masons, concrete men and well diggers who were working on the new buildings. They drove out in Fords from two or three near-by towns in time for breakfast and didn't go home till after supper. The wagon shed of the old horse barn served ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sand make it be like that," the driver answered unconcernedly. "Diamond fields all make up of fine red sand; and diggers pile it about around their own claims. Then the wind comes and blow, and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... tremendous prestige and publicity for Know Your Universe! if Murphy uncovered a tomb, a library, works of art. The Sultan would gladly provide diggers. They were a sturdy enough people; they could make quite a showing in a week, if they were able to put aside ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time; You should have been with us ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... rock ran across the 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 ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... them or even talk with them. In the past Eta have often been prosperous, and many are prosperous to-day, but a large number are still restricted to earning a living as butchers and skin and leather workers, and grave diggers. The members of these "special tribes," believing themselves to be despised without cause, usually make some effort to hide the fact that they ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Cuthbert, that if you don't walk about you will certainly freeze before you can be rescued. Between every two or three words you want to take at least one turn around that place. How dreadful it would be if you were suddenly to become benumbed and stiff! Everybody is thinking of that. The best diggers that Mr. Burton had were three colored men; but after they had gone down nothing like as deep as a well, they came up frightened and said they would not dig another shovelful for the whole world. Perhaps ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... call schoolmasters 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 authority," ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... of the Panjab. The only ones of any importance are in the Peshawar Valley. These draw their supplies from the Kabul, Bara, and Swat rivers, but the works supplied by the first two streams only command small areas. The Lower Swat Canal was begun in 1876, but the tribesmen were hostile and the diggers had to sleep in fortified enclosures. The work was not opened till 1885. A reef in the river has made it possible to dispense with a permanent weir. The country is not an ideal one for irrigation, being much cut up by ravines. But a large area has been brought under command, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... supposition," chuckled the priest, "that there is one law for the crowd, the mob, the diggers, and another for the illuminati. Now, let me tell you, Mr. Endicott, that with all his faith Tim Hurley could not have welcomed priest and oils more than I shall when I need them. The anguish of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... 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
... always returned to her prayer-book. In this way the procession arrived at the cemetery. The grave was open. The children threw down the first handful of earth, being followed by their father, who remained standing while their mother knelt, holding her book close to her eyes. The grave-diggers completed their business, and the procession, half disbanded, returned. At the door there was a slight altercation, as the wife evidently considered some charge of the undertaker too high. The mourners scattered in all directions. The old ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... these," replied Uncle Ben. "The dome is only the roof of their house. They are famous diggers—I assure you of that. Talk about our miners, with their tunnels running deep into the mountains: why, their work is nothing in comparison with that of these little creatures. They make wonderful under-ground tunnels, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 the lot for ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... They are so much 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 jocose ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... was foreman and overseer in charge of the potato diggers, and carted in the crop. He was a handsome lad of twenty, steady and sound for his age, and a proper son of the house. There was something no doubt between him and Froken Elisabeth from the vicarage, seeing she came ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... in some 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 Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the midnight, many a choking cry rang fearfully through the stony halls, but came not to the outer air; and the waning moon shone faintly down upon the enclosure of the garden, where worked a band of silent grave-diggers, clad in black armour, and with blood-red hands. The good country folk, who came at early morning with their presents of poultry and milk, little guessed what sheep's clothing the gray cowls and gowns of Oyster-le-Main had become in a single night, nor what impious lips those were which now muttered ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... 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 ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Shakspeare has been blamed by some few critical asses for the raillery of Mercutio, and the humor of the nurse, in "Romeo and Juliet;" for the fool in "Lear;" for the porter in "Macbeth;" the grave-diggers in "Hamlet," etc.; because, it is said, these bits interrupt the tragic feeling. No such thing; they enhance it to an incalculable extent; they deepen its degree, though they diminish its duration. And what is the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... place sitting on an iron picket fence, and we saw the people coming up the street towards the Winter Palace, dressed mostly in blouses, and looking as innocent as a crowd of sewer diggers at home going up to the city hall to ask for a raise in wages of two shillings a day. Nobody had a gun, and no one would have known how to use a gun, and all looked like poor people going to prayers. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... to beat about the harbor in a catboat, and feel the tug and pull of the tiller. Kinney protested that that was no way to spend a vacation or to invite adventure. His face was set against Fairport. The conversation of clam-diggers, he said, did not appeal to him; and he complained that at Fairport our only chance of adventure would be my capsizing the catboat or robbing a lobster-pot. He insisted we should go to the mountains, ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... back startled as I heard the loud military commands, and the effect was the same upon the gang of rough gold-diggers, who stopped short, while half of them turned ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... slackening of unremitting toil. Upward of seven hundred men worked as they had never 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
... tapers were lighted at the altar; and for the refreshment of the angels that should come to bear little Wang Tai's soul to the farther depths of blue heaven some savory viands were spread upon the grave. The grave filled, the diggers hid their spades behind the oven, Romulus watching them narrowly. The little bent woman gathered her grief to her heart and bore it away; and a cloud of dust, widening away alongside the broken fence, disappeared in the distance. The dome of Mount Hamilton had changed from copper to ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... and shot the victims marked out for sacrifice. Some Thugs confessed to between seventy and eighty murders, and one to the incredible number of one hundred and ninety-two (what saints they would make!). The members of the sect-were classified into spies, stranglers, and grave-diggers, the spies being in the first stage and not ranking with the two more advanced degrees. Assuming usually the garb of merchants or pilgrims, they often craved the protection of their intended victims. Their favorite instrument ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... 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 ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... You had 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
... manufactories of locks and guns, tools, and carriages, with countless other appliances of civilized life, are on a similarly large scale. Their products are to be found among the sugar plantations of the south, the diggers of California, the settlers in Oregon, in the infant cities of the far West, the tent of the hunter, and the shanty of the emigrant; in one word, wherever demand and supply ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... The old man had raised himself into a sitting position; his eyes were dilated, his whole face was rigid with terror, his hands were stretched out convulsively toward his grandson. "The White Women!" he screamed. "The White Women; the grave-diggers of the drowned are out on ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... nodding a mechanical agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... officers could be seen studying their maps. On some of these vehicles were chalked Berlin-Paris. No branch of the service was absent, no serviceable part if it overlooked—not even a complement of grave diggers. It moved forward always at an even pace, as if on parade, with prearranged signals passed down the line when there was any obstacle, a descent ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... names from an ignoble oblivion, and vindicate the unrewarded bravery of one of yourselves! He was once my mate, the bearer of our standard, the "Southern Cross." Shot down by a murderous hand, he fell and died struggling like a man in the cause of the diggers. But he was soon forgotten. That he was buried is known by the tears of a few true friends! the place of his burial is little known, ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... from this direction, rather than from the wide introduction of steam-ploughs and diggers, that the first great impetus to the employment of mechanical power on the farm may be looked for. The steam-plough, no doubt, has before it a future full of usefulness; and yet the slow progress that has been made by it during a quarter of a century suggests that, in its present form—that ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... 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 the walls of the room. The ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... were attracted chiefly by the celebrity of the man, or by the curiosity of his humorous discourse; but there were a few who partly grasped one side or other of his mission and character. The most brilliant undergraduate of the time, seen at this breakfast table, but not one of the diggers, was W.H. Mallock, afterwards widely known as the author of "Is Life Worth Living?" He was the only man. Professor Ruskin said, who really understood him—referring to "The New Republic." But while Mallock ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood |
