"Digging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... walking in her little garden, she suddenly noticed him squatted on the stump of a tree as if he were lying in wait for her; and again when she sat in front of the house mending stockings while he was digging some cabbage-bed, he kept watching her, as he worked, in ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... small and tributary streams, and the varying hues of fields of pasture, corn, vines, and vegetables, but by the combinations and contrasts of nature and of art, and the occupations of rural and commercial industry. Factories and furnaces were seen rising amidst barns and sheep-cotes, peasants were digging, and ploughs gliding amidst forges and foundries; verdant slopes and graceful clumps of trees were scattered amidst the black and ugly mouths of exhausted coal-pits; and the gentle murmur of the stream was subdued by the loud ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... the idea of digging a canal from the lakes to the river, by means of which a portion of our army might be thrown to the other side; a project which is said to have been suggested by Sir Alexander Cochrane; but which, wheresoever originating, was at once bold and judicious. The canal was ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... glanced magisterially at the offender, a young Dorset, who a year ago was hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blackmore, but who has lately done enough digging for a whole parish. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... has done no digging. It is really an accidental hole with spacious winding passages, the result of the mason's negligence and not of the Wasp's industry. The closing of the cavity is quite as rough and summary. A few crumbs of mortar, heaped up before the doorway, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Medwin the following account of this cup:—"The gardener in digging [discovered] a skull that had probably belonged to some jolly friar or monk of the abbey, about the time it was dis-monasteried. Observing it to be of giant size, and in a perfect state of preservation, a strange fancy seized me ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... priests, have been scorned as superficial by later investigators. But was there not something in their view, after all? Have not we, of a later and more critical day, got into so inveterate a habit of digging deep that we sometimes fail to see what lies before our very noses? Modern Japan is there to furnish an example. The Japanese are, it is true, commonly said to be an irreligious people. They say so themselves. Writes one of them, the celebrated Fukuzawa, teacher and type of the modern educated ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... have tried to dig on Aldington Knoll," said the respectable elder, solemnly, "one time and another. But there's none as goes about to-day to tell what they got by digging." ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... eyeing it disdainfully, but Fanny, making no remark, led the way to the plot of ground the gardener had laid out for them. One part of it was full of summer flowers, the other half she had left uncultivated that Norman might have the pleasure of digging it up and putting in seeds ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... encouraging the youngster, Finn would lower himself to the ground, head well out, and, covering his eyes and muzzle with his two fore legs, would allow Jan to plunge like a little battering-ram upon the top of his head, furiously digging into the wolfhound's wiry coat in futile pursuit of flesh-hold for his teeth, and still exhausting fifty per cent. of his energies in maintaining a ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... drifts. It was as if real relief had come with the lifting of the strain of our modern life and the momentary relapse into the slow-going way of our fathers. Out in Queens, where we were snow-bound for days, we went about digging one another out and behaving like a lot of boys, once we had made sure that the office would have to mind itself for ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... flashed lightning, and digging the spur into his horse, he darted ahead of the column, disappearing in the middle of a swarm ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... knew that the charge had come. An instant later the Hon. Morison broke upon his vision, racing like mad for safety. The man lay flat upon his pony's back hugging the animal's neck tightly with both arms and digging the spurs into his sides. An instant later ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... swift, sharp, saw-like cutting among the stones and the slime, the scrape, scrape of the hundred of knives into the moist earth. This ceaseless scraping, lunging, digging, made a new world of sound—strange, sinister, uncanny. It was neither of the sea nor yet of the land—it was a noise that seemed inseparable from this tongue of mud, that also appeared to be neither of the heavens above nor of the earth, from the bowels out of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... something to eat behind one of the empty crates, I perceived behind it, crouching on the ground, a figure in woman's clothes dank with the rain and clinging fast to her stooping shoulders. Standing over her, I watched to see what she was doing. It appeared that she was digging a trench in the sand with her hands—digging away under one ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... actively engaged stood and stared over the treetops southwestward, and the men digging would stop every now and again to stare in the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... found their way. In that blackness dreadful apprehensions seized me, for I became convinced that we had been brought here to be murdered. Every minute I expected to feel a knife-thrust in my back. I thought of digging my heels into the horse's sides and trying to gallop off anywhere, but abandoned the idea, first because I could not desert Marut, of whom I had lost touch in the gloom, and secondly because I was hemmed in by the escort. For the same reason I did not try to slip from ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... seek to be a poor man's wife and do all the hoeing. But bring me the hundred cattle and we will see, for, speaking truth from my heart, if you were a big chief there is no one I should like better as a son-in-law, unless it were Macumazahn here," he said, digging me in the ribs with his elbow, "who would lift up my House ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... amount and tonnage that of all the other countries of the world put together. The "wooden walls"[3] of England exist no more, for iron has superseded wood. Instead of constructing vessels from the forest, we are now digging new navies out of the bowels of the earth, and our "walls," instead of wood, are now of ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... naturalists; and such of these, as have visited their towns, have been only allowed time to make a hurried examination of them. They are very shy; rarely letting you get within range of a gun. They are, therefore, seldom shot at. Moreover, it takes great trouble to capture them by digging—on account of the depth of their burrows—and as their skins are not very valuable, and their flesh but a bite at best, they are not ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... with chains, and made fast to the ship; then the great blocks and ropes fastened to the main and fore mast for hoisting in the blubber were brought into play. When all was ready, the captain and the two mates with Tom Lokins got upon the whale's body, with long-handled sharp spades or digging-knives. With these they fell to ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... unparalleled for purity and extent by any that had ever been discovered. Heaps of quartz rock, in which particles of gold glittered, strewed the bottom of the cavern as if they had been blocked out and cast aside in digging the purer metal. Among these were found a number of chisels made of a metal which, by reason of its being so corroded, they could not make out. Mallets of stone were also found, looking as if but lately used. These instruments had cheated time of its prey, and lay there in their pristine ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... we were more like a Spillikins Circle than an Army unit, he would, from sheer native kindness of heart, save us the imminent gibbet or the burial by a trench-digging party which awaited us. He would merely illustrate our manifold faults by taking the case of No. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... in her mind when, in the afternoon, they went to the beach. Billy was already in the water; the faithful Pilot was digging on the beach for dog treasures. Because of the drizzling rain Mrs. Lee ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... the fall planting was done, Claude got the well borers out from town to drill his new well, and while they were at work he began digging his cellar. He was building his house on the level stretch beside his father's timber claim because, when he was a little boy, he had thought that grove of trees the most beautiful spot in the world. It was a square of about thirty acres, set out in ash and ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... in a trap. It was pent in at one end of a narrow little island. It had been no one's business to foresee that it must some day outgrow this space; now men were digging a score of tunnels to set it free, but they had not begun these until the pressure had become unendurable, and now it had reached its climax. In the financial district, land had been sold for as much as four dollars a square inch. Huge ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... is precisely what I mean," said Danglars, almost digging his nails into his breast, while he preserved on his harsh features the smile of the heartless though clever man; "ruined—yes, that ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wall, similar to the beetles and wasps. The wings are usually thin and transparent though in some cases they are leathery or hard as in case of beetles or covered with scales as in the butterflies. The three pairs of legs are jointed and used for running, climbing, jumping, swimming, digging or grasping. The feelers or antennae are usually threadlike, clubbed, or resemble a feather and extend forward or sidewise from the head. The large eyes are compound, being made up of many great small units ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... as I was to try my hand at whatever came along, I went into the meadow and followed the plough with a bogging hoe, and one day tried digging muck but the chief of the group thought the labor was too heavy for me; I would have to ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... and emptied; the beer-cans go round cheerily, and the men work with a sort of savage joy at being able to do something, if not all, and stop the sluice on which so much depends. As for the outer land, it is gone past hope; through the breach pours a roaring salt cataract, digging out a hole on the inside of the bank, which remains as a deep sullen pond for years to come. Hundreds, thousands of pounds are lost already, past all hope. Be it so, then. At the next neap, perhaps, they will be able to mend the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... of a chief the log is of ironwood, some three feet or more in diameter and some thirty feet in length. One end of this is sunk some four or five feet into the ground. The erecting of such a massive support is a task of some difficulty, achieved by first digging the pit at the foot of the log and then hauling up the other end with a rough windlass. The upper end, which is always the root-end of the log, is cut in the form of a deep cleft, just wide enough to receive the coffin. Above the cleft a large slab of hardwood forms a cover for the coffin, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... mansion was not a mile from the Doctor's; but it never occurred to him to think of walking to see any of his patients' families, if he had any professional object in his visit. Whenever the narrow sulky turned in at a gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing corn, or swishing through the grass with his scythe in wave-like crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheel-barrow, or trudging lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated, short-legged oxen, rocking along the road as if they had just been landed after a three-months' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... at the section-house, digging his heels into the cinders that lined the track, and looking impatiently down the road. Presently the section boss came limping along painfully, and sat down on the bank in the warm spring sunshine. He had dropped a piece of heavy machinery on his foot, the week ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Lussac, at the strategical point where it could best be defended. I have myself no manner of doubt that it was a so- called demi-dolmen, a tribal ossuary of neolithic man. Not only is it quite in character with his megalithic remains scattered over the country, but treasure-seekers who in digging displaced and brought down one of the side slabs found two diorite axes, one of which I was fortunate enough to secure. Persons in Gaulish or post-Roman times would not have dreamed of going to the enormous labour and attempting the difficult task of forming the sides with ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... impulse which may be practiced merely faute de mieux and not as, in the strict sense, perversions of the impulse. Even necrophily may be thus practiced. A young man who when assisting the grave-digger conceived and carried out the idea of digging up the bodies of young girls to satisfy his passions with, and whose case has been recorded by Belletrud and Mercier, said: "I could find no young girl who would agree to yield to my desires; that is why I have done ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... remind him of the ancient city.[116] He speaks of a statue with a complete head as if that were very remarkable—almost the only statue he mentions at all. Ghiberti describes two or three antique statues with such enthusiasm that one concludes he was familiar with very few. In fact, before the great digging movement which enthralled the Renaissance, antique sculpture was rare. But little of Poggio's collection came from Rome: Even Lorenzo de' Medici got most of his from the provinces. A century later Sabba del Castiglione complains of having to buy a Donatello owing to the difficulty of getting good ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... rolling over its head. They laughed and boasted to one another of the somersault they had turned, as they went up on to the high ground to look for blackberries. Thence they went to some birds' nests in the small firs, and last of all they set about their best game—digging up mice-nests. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... (hand and power). In 1892, at Warwick, the competitions related to ploughs—single furrow (a) for light land, (b) for strong land, (c) for press drill and broad-cast sowing; two-furrow; three-furrow; digging (a) for light land, (b) for heavy land; and one-way ploughs. In 1893, at Chester, self-binding harvesters and sheep-shearing machines (power) were the appliances respectively in competition. In 1894, at Cambridge, the awards ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... their skipper and Clancy too well to imagine that they were to be too long left in peace. And then, too, the next man off watch reported a proper night for mackerel. "Not a blessed star out—and black! It's like digging a hole in the ground and looking into it. And the skipper's getting nervous, I know. I could hear him stirrin' 'round up there when I was for'ard just now, and he hollered to the wheel that up to the no'the'ard it looked like planty of fish. 'And I callate we ain't the only vessel ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... as the case was discovered the house was closed, and none suffered to go in or out, a watchman being placed before the door day and night. Two men therefore were needed to each infected house, and this afforded employment for numbers of poor. Others were engaged in digging graves, or in going round at night, with ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... needn't stay any longer on our account." The man who had acted as spokesman turned and sat down on a stone. The other man stood viciously digging his ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... box or purse (thirteenth month); the pulling out and emptying, and then the filling and pushing in, of a table-drawer; the heaping up and the strewing about of garden-mold or gravel; the turning of the leaves of a book (thirteenth to nineteenth month); digging and scraping in the sand; the carrying of footstools hither and thither; the placing of shells, stones, or buttons in rows (twenty-first month); pouring water into and out of bottles, cups, watering-pots (thirty-first to thirty-third months); and, in the case of my boy, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... of such severity and keenness that the House believed he was "digging his own grave;" for Ewing was a high-spirited man who would not hesitate to answer by a challenge. It was, in fact, only the interference of their friends which prevented a duel at this time between Ewing and Lincoln. ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... second day went by; and when the third day came, Hyacinthia wept, and became a little blue flower growing by the roadside. An old man came along, and digging up the flower carried it home with him and planted it in his garden. He watered and tended it carefully, and one day the little flower became ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... been most kinds of fool in my time," returned Loudon, "but not the gold-digging variety. Every man has a sane ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... parrots and their allies climb trees and rocks with exceptional ease and agility. Even in their own department they are the great feathered acrobats. Anybody who watches a woodpecker, for example, grasping the bark of a tree with its crooked and powerful toes, while it steadies itself behind by digging its stiff tail-feathers into the crannies of the outer rind, will readily understand how clear a notion the bird must gain into the practical action of the laws of gravity. But the true parrots go a step further in the same direction than the woodpeckers or the toucans; for, in addition ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Muse has lain absolutely unnoticed by me for the last four months, during which period I have been digging in the mines of Scapula for Greek roots, and instead of drinking with eager delight the beauties of Virgil have been culling and drying his phrases for future use."—"I fear my good genius, who was wont to visit me with nightly visions in woods and brakes and by the river's marge, is now dying of ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... rose early. He was out digging by six o'clock in the morning, he went to his work at half-past eight. And Ursula was usually in the garden with him, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... never a word, but the tears dripped faster and an observing person would have noticed that the child was digging her finger nails into her palms to keep back the sobs. But her family was too disgusted with her to be either sympathetic or observing. They scarcely noticed that she ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... that they are very much alike," he said. "Why, whatever is that dog doing? I think it is going mad," and he pointed to Tommy who was digging furiously at the base of the lowest step, as at home I have seen him do at ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... were honoured by the raptures of the god. To this temple, so well worthy of their indignation, Theophilus directed the attention of his people. It happened that the Emperor Constantius had formerly given to the Church the site of an ancient temple of Osiris, and, in digging the foundation for the new edifice, the obscene symbols used in that worship chanced to be found. With more zeal than modesty, Theophilus exhibited them to the derision of the rabble in the market-place. The old Egyptian ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of which the ancient city, then insulated by the sea, was taken. The remains of the causeway gradually formed the promontory by which the place is now connected with the main land. These are the principal indications of Tyre above ground, but the guide informed us that the Arabs, in digging among the sand-hills for the stones of the old buildings, which they quarry out and ship to Beyrout, come upon chambers, pillars, arches, and other objects. The Tyrian purple is still furnished by a muscle found upon the coast, but Tyre is now only noted for its tobacco and mill-stones. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... demi-monde alike became scholars. There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates the temper of the times with singular felicity. On April 18, 1485, a report circulated in Rome that some Lombard workmen had discovered a Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, engraved with the inscription "Julia, Daughter of Claudius," and inside the coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, preserved by precious unguents from corruption and the injury of time. The bloom of youth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... digging around among the ribs and bringing into tangible shape what looked like several sets of huge bird-wings. "No more climbing down red-hot ladders through belching flames! No more children being thrown from fifth story windows! ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... laconically described by General Sherman as hell, is not without its comedy. The marching through rain and mud; camping in marshes; digging in trenches, using the bayonet for a pick and the meat-ration can for a shovel; wading rivers by day and sleeping exposed to the elements by night, are all sandwiched with numerous mirthful incidents. Soldiers, above all people, have an eye for the ridiculous, and are ever ready ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... himself is evidently reserved on the subject in his letter to his sister, though he was accustomed to make her his confidant in his ecclesiastical proceedings; he only speaks of his heart having burnt within him in presage of what was to happen. The digging commenced, and in due time two skeletons were discovered, of great size, perfect, and disposed in an orderly way; the head of each, however, separated from the body, and a quantity of blood about. That ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... relays of water-carts and wagons that had been up the hills with food for the gunners at the front; and engineers were at work repairing the stone bridges or digging detours to avoid those that had disappeared. They had been built to support no greater burden than a flock of sheep, an ox-cart, or what a donkey can carry on his back, and the assault of the British motor-trucks ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... of the morning and the evening, that they could pursue their painful march. Having, after infinite pains, crossed the downs, they met with vast plains, where they had the good fortune to find water, by digging holes in the sand: this refreshing beverage gave them fresh life ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... perhaps, that if there is any truth in what I advance, I should have come from that country laden with silver and gold; and that if these precious metals are to be found there, as I have said, it is surprizing that the French have never thought of discovering and digging them in thirty years, in which they have been settled in Louisiana. To this I answer, that this objection is only founded on the ignorance of those who make it; and that a traveller, or an officer, ordered by his superiors to go to reconnoitre the country, to draw plans, and ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... told him, and said that the land here was as rich as manure. Gradually the talk worked round to problems involving carpenters, nails, lumber, hinges—and money. Aaron was pleased to discover that the natives thought nothing of digging a cellar and raising a barn in midwinter, and that ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... himself as living, though he could not deny that he was civilly dead. He looked forth from his prison on the world as a stage on which he still played a part, and might once more lead. He would keep digging up the buried past. He assumed the offensive against the majesty of the law. He was not patient of injustice because a court of justice was its source. He had the audacity to speak, think, and write, as if he were entitled to canvass affairs of State. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... markings showed a very low stage of artistic development, fish scales, charred maize and bones of small animals, the remains of aboriginal banquets. Within the enclosure, corn-cobs were found by digging down though the mould, and a good specimen of a bone needle, well smoothed, but without any decoration, was turned up in the bed of the stream where it passes ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... road from Safed to Tyre; it recalls the days of David. Hiram was King of Tyre in the time of David. The tomb is a limestone structure of extraordinary massiveness Unfortunately the Mosque of Omar stands on the site of Solomon's Temple and there is no hope of digging there. As for the palace of Solomon, it should be easy to find the foundations, for Jerusalem has been rebuilt several times upon the ruins of earlier periods and vast ancient remains must be still buried there. The work is being pushed vigorously ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... 'I desire, O chief of the Bharatas, to hear from thee what the rewards are which are attached, O best of the Kurus, to the planting of trees and the digging of tanks.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... They told us the form of this earth. They informed us that eclipses were caused by the sins of man; that the universe was made in six days; that astronomy, and geology were devices of wicked men, instigated by wicked ghosts; that gazing at the sky with a telescope was a dangerous thing; that digging into the earth was sinful curiosity; that trying to be wise above what they had written was born of ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... said T. X. complacently. "You must come out and see me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect devil when they let me loose ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... to Louis the appearance of fire having scorched the bark of the trees where they were at work, but it seemed to have been many years back; and when they were digging for the site of the root-house [Footnote: Root-houses are built over deep excavations below the reach of the frost, or the roots stored would be spoiled.] below the bank, which they had just finished, they had met with charred wood at the depth of six feet below the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... upon my precious idea of "frankness," and being bent upon applying it to the full in myself, I thought the quiet, confiding nature of Lubotshka guilty of secretiveness and dissimulation simply because she saw no necessity for digging up and examining all her thoughts and instincts. For instance, the fact that she always signed the sign of the cross over Papa before going to bed, that she and Katenka invariably wept in church when ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... another man told how a friend had been seen carrying a spade into his cousin's cabin and the cousin had said, 'Daniel, what foh you brung that weapon into by [TR: my?] cabin? That very spade will dig my grave,' and sure enough the cousin had died and the same spade had been used in digging his grave. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... removed, and the car is moved forward about 8 feet by winding the rope upon the drum, the other end of the rope being attached to any suitable fixed object near the line of the track. The forward end of the car is then again lifted by means of the 3 screw-jacks, and the digging is resumed. The machine cuts a channel from 25 to 35 feet wide, and deposits all the dirt upon one side. If necessary, it can dump earth about 25 feet above the track. The miners follow in the wake of the machine, getting out the phosphate as fast as it is uncovered. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... road, but in the midst of the company-village. In the distance he saw the great building of the breaker, and heard the incessant roar of machinery and falling coal. He marched past a double lane of company houses and shanties, where slattern women in doorways and dirty children digging in the dust of the roadside paused and grinned at him—for he limped as he walked, and it was evident enough what ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... within the establishments output may be regularized by taking orders in advance; by producing various products successively in the same factory; by overcoming weather conditions as has been done successfully in brick and tile making, ditch digging, and building operations; by transferring workers from one department of an establishment to another; by improving the employment departments so as to build up a more stable force, thus reducing the great expense of "hiring ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... variations in temperature much more than we otherwise would have done. A calm, clear, magnificently warm day followed, and next day came a strong southerly blizzard. Drifts four feet deep covered everything, and we had to be continually digging up our scanty stock of meat to prevent its being lost altogether. We had taken advantage of the previous fine day to attempt to thaw out our blankets, which were frozen stiff and could be held out like pieces of sheet- iron; but on this day, and for the next two ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... not,' answered Stan, going on with his digging, and the dragon, in dread lest he should fulfil his threat, tried what bribes would do, and in the end had again to promise seven sacks of ducats before Stan would agree to leave the brook alone and let him carry the ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... or six o'clock in the forenoon; then, after resting a short time, they were prepared for another task, which they completed; and still had some hours left for their own provision-grounds. When the heat is considered, and the labor of digging one cane-hole, (a trench three or four feet square and one foot deep,) we may imagine what the work of opening 600 in a day must be. The same author states that plantations which could not find a purchaser before emancipation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... we saw a man digging a grave, and, scrambling out of the hole, he let us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of monuments. Their general shape and construction are peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or other stone, within a framework of ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... day the final move of the main camp was made, and we established ourselves in the cirque at the head of the Muldrow Glacier, at an elevation of about eleven thousand five hundred feet, more than half-way up the mountain. After digging a level place in the glacier and setting up the tent, a wall of snow blocks was built all round it, and a little house of snow blocks, a regular Eskimo igloo, was built near by to serve as a cache. Some details of our camping may be of interest. The damp from the glacier ice had incommoded ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour. In one of the winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation. Mr. Holt rose from his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with a trowel. His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity at dinner the night before, was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... well out of his body, they hoisted him up and carried him away to burial. I followed out of mere curiosity, and found that the lazy rascals had shoved the body into an ant-eater's hole in order to save the trouble of digging a grave." ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... mark only." The owner of a property not abutting on a lake has no legal right to abstract some of the water from the lake by building an infiltration gallery, or a vertical well of large diameter intended for the same purpose. On the other hand, an owner may take subterranean water by driving or digging a well on his own property, and it does not matter, from the law's point of view, whether by so doing he intercepts partly or wholly the flow of water in a neighboring well. But, if it can be shown that the subterranean water ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... McNabbs might have passed the hut a hundred times, and gone all round it, and even over it without suspecting its existence. It was covered with snow, and scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding rocks; but Wilson and Mulrady succeeded in digging it out and clearing the opening after half an hour's hard work, to the great joy of the whole party, who eagerly took ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... digging in the snow. The boys and Betty were here this morning, and we made a grand snow-house, but no one has come back to finish up." Charlotte looked out as she spoke and opened the window a crack to ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... summer-time to lie at full length upon the beach on some ambrosial summer evening, when a glow floats over the water, whose calm surface is tenderly rippled with gold and blue. And while the children play beside you, dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... in digging a well on Hacker's creek, found a piece of timber which had been evidently cut off at one end, twelve or thirteen feet in the ground—marks of the axe were plainly distinguishable ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... youngster who was digging in the yard, "don't you make that hole any deeper, or you'll ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... little "Sir" Bevis [such was his pet name] was digging in the farmhouse garden, he saw a daisy, and throwing aside his spade, he sat down on the grass to pick the flower to pieces. He pulled the pink-tipped petals off one by one, and as they dropped they were lost. Next he gathered a bright dandelion, and ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... monk, who, for a valuable consideration, imparted the secret to Paracelsus." "Pardon me," cried the painter, "it was first used by Solomon, as appears by a Greek manuscript in his civil handwriting, lately found at the foot of Mount Lebanon, by a peasant who was digging for potatoes—" "Well," said Wagtail, "in all my vast reading, I never met with such a preparation! neither did I know till this minute, that Solomon understood Greek, or that ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... arm about him, and at the very moment she did so the man who had been digging found the necklace and picked it up, and at that the young Prince sank back ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... fifties O. W. Childs contracted with the city to dig a water ditch 1,600 feet long, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep and the city allowed him a dollar per running foot. In payment for the ditch digging he took land, a large part of which was the square from Sixth street to Twelfth street, from Main to Figueroa. When Childs put this property into the market his wife ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the long tunnel underground until he reached the end. Then when he heard Reddy Fox digging and knew that he was really coming, Johnny Chuck began to dig, too, only instead of digging down he dug up towards the sunshine and the ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... to come!" she said. "I knew Freddy would be busy, digging up something that was once somebody, four thousand ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... stability of the state in general. This being accepted as an omen of its lasting character, there followed another prodigy portending the greatness of the empire. It was reported that the head of a man, with the face entire, was found by the workmen when digging the foundation of the temple. The sight of this phenomenon by no doubtful indications portended that this temple should be the seat of empire, and the capital of the world; and so declared the soothsayers, both those who were in the city, and those whom they had summoned from Etruria, to consult ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... all three relations toward Ned Newton—part of a Sunday newspaper. It was turned to a page containing a big illustration of a diver attired in the usual rubber suit and big helmet, moving about on the floor of the ocean and digging out boxes of what was supposed to be gold from ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... boys went on digging, making a deep and large hole in the garden. They tossed the dirt out with their shovels, and, as the soil was soft, it was easy for them to dig ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... contain four crickets. That is the amount of food necessary for a larva during its evolution, and these insects are in fact large enough to supply a considerable amount of nourishment. When the Sphex interrupts digging operations it is to fly on a hunting expedition. It soon returns with a cricket it has seized, holding it by one antenna which it turns round in its jaws. It is a heavy burden for the slender Sphex to bear. Sometimes on foot, dragging its burden after it, sometimes flying, and carrying ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... and being uncertain what sort of people they might be, whether friends or foes, I thought it not safe to be seen. I got up into a very thick tree, from whence I might safely view them. The vessel came into a little creek, where ten slaves landed, carrying a spade and other instruments for digging up the ground. They went towards the middle of the island, where I saw them stop, and dig for a considerable time, after which I thought I perceived them lift up a trap door. They returned again to the vessel, and unloaded several sorts of provisions and furniture, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... jealous efforts and lying and plotting to injure Ben Stone, whom he bitterly hated. The boys of the town had talked that matter over many times, and it was universally conceded that Bernard's unrestrained hatred of Stone and plotting for the boy's injury had led him at last into a pit of his own digging and brought upon him nothing ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... industrious. Then, I presume, they will take the same measures for securing a supply of water throughout the year which have been so long adopted in India, and were formerly in South America by the Mexicans. I mean that of digging large tanks, from which the water cannot escape, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... British left and seized Gallows Hill, within a musket-shot of the French right bastion. Here his men dug hard all night long, in spite of the fierce fire kept up on them at point-blank range. In the morning reliefs marched in, and the digging still continued. Sappers, miners, and infantry reliefs, they never stopped till they had burrowed forward another hundred yards, and the last great breaching battery had opened its annihilating fire. By the 21st both sides saw that the end was near, ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... he said, with a touch of mingled disappointment and embarrassment, "they shall be replanted, of course, just as monsieur wishes." And Pierre went to digging weeds with a will while I went back ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... excitement. There was a flush in his cheeks, and he breathed rapidly. The emotion that possessed him could not be altogether pleasurable, for at moments he cast his eyes about him with a pained, almost a desperate look. He walked up and down with clenched fist, occasionally digging ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... sent all the church-roof gutters, so far as I honestly could cut them, through the red pine-door, I began to long for a better tool that would make less noise and throw straighter. But the sheep-shearing came and the hay-season next, and then the harvest of small corn, and the digging of the root called "batata" (a new but good thing in our neighbourhood, which our folk have made into "taties"), and then the sweating of the apples, and the turning of the cider-press, and the stacking of the firewood, and netting of the woodcocks, and the springles ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Two men were digging a hole in the sand at the foot of the little redoubt. Murat watched them mechanically. When the two men had finished, they went into a neighbouring house and soon came out, bearing a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... not listening, and did not answer. He was digging down where he had found the thing, and came to a quantity of arrow heads, evidently made of the same material as the other, but of what it was he could not determine. Anne, with a strong stick in her hand, commenced searching, and soon came upon what they knew to be a stone mortar, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... far into the opening as the length of his arm, he drew out to his surprise one of the long bones of the human skeleton; and his curiosity being excited, and having a suspicion that the hole communicated with a subterranean cavity, he commenced digging a trench through the middle of the talus, and in a few hours found himself opposite a heavy slab of rock, placed vertically against the entrance. Having removed this, he discovered on the other side of it an arched cavity, seven or eight ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... mine, and some digging in it for treasure. If you will come, with a little pains you ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that their civilisation could lose the advantages gained; the march of progress seemed as inevitable as the rotation of the earth. Firm in this conviction, one could fold one's arms and leave all to nature; who meanwhile was waiting for them at the bottom of the pit that she was digging. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the busy little creature within me, whom we call self, was digging pits for comfort to flow in, of any kind, in any form; and it seized on every idea, every circumstance, to turn it to that purpose, and with such success, that when by-and-by I learnt how entirely inactive special Providence had been ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for talk such as were rarely ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... were no pavements—there were mountains and valleys and rivers, gullies and ditches, and great hollows full of stinking green water. In these pools the children played, and rolled about in the mud of the streets; here and there one noticed them digging in it, after trophies which they had stumbled on. One wondered about this, as also about the swarms of flies which hung about the scene, literally blackening the air, and the strange, fetid odor which assailed one's nostrils, a ghastly ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... says Charley, talking sad-sounding and digging away at his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief, "Brother Hart has left us"—Hart being in the kitchen that was dead true—"and for the third time to-day our Sunshine Club has suffered a fatal loss. Still more lamentable is the case ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... condition in which we find punctured foot—treatment must be prompt and decided. Careful search must at once be made by thinning down the sole, and carefully trimming the frog. On no account should the veterinary attendant rest content with 'digging' in one place, and upon that basing a negative opinion as to the existence of pus. The paring should be carried on, until either pus or haemorrhage shows itself, in at least three positions—namely, at the most anterior portion of the sole, and in the sole ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... and we had a long armorial chat together, which lasted for some time—then the library was to be looked at, etc. So, when they went away, I had little better to do than to walk up to the spring which they are digging, and to go to my solitary dinner on ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded of a thing which happened ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Pinacate Mountains, northwestern Mexico, we saw about twelve cactus-defended burrows of the pack rat, some of them carefully located in the midst of large stones that rendered digging by ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... manners and ethnology with an axe! However, after one or two more journeys between the tap and the flower-bed, he would pass within striking-distance of the dog as he worked his slow way along the tract of earth he was supposed to be digging up with the ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... of the wild little folk of Neighbor Street, and worse, of Arctic Street. She wanted to do something with them. She had tried to get them in with gingerbread and popcorn; they came in fast enough for those; but they would not stay. They were digging in the gutters and calling names; learning the foul language of the places into which they were born; chasing and hiding in alley-ways; filching, if they could, from shops; going off begging with lies on their lips. It was terrible to see the springs from which the ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... month of August 1798, permission having been obtained from the guardian of the present owner to investigate the foundation by digging, a very successful attempt was made to retrieve the whole ichnography of the church, of which there were no remains above the surface to assist conjecture, or to guide research, but one jamb of the west ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
