"Diggers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life itself," he continued, silencing his companion, who seemed eager to speak, with a motion of his finger, "through towns, over waters, upon deserts, still pursued his way; and, to be brief in a weary history, there, in the very heart of that great region of gold, among diggers and searchers, and men distracted in a thousand ways in that perilous hunt, to find his simple-hearted friend, the preacher, in an out-of-the-way wilderness among the mountains, exhorting the living, comforting the sick, consoling the dying—and then, for the first time he learned, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... said, "that you should not yet have said a word about the method of adjusting wages. Since the nation is the sole employer, the government must fix the rate of wages and determine just how much everybody shall earn, from the doctors to the diggers. All I can say is, that this plan would never have worked with us, and I don't see how it can now unless human nature has changed. In my day, nobody was satisfied with his wages or salary. Even if he felt he received enough, he was sure his neighbor had too ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Doctor, laughing, "you can do better than that. You had better offer the regular grave-diggers ten dollars to leave the body a short time in your possession before burying it; or, if Pattmore should insist upon seeing it buried, they can easily disinter it for you, and it will take me only a short time to remove the intestines. I shall then seal them up ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... after the aides-de camp. While they were undressing the marshal, in order to certify the cause of death, a leathern belt was found on him containing 5536 francs. The body was carried downstairs by the grave-diggers without any opposition being offered, but hardly had they advanced ten yards into the square when shouts of "To the Rhone! to the Rhone!" resounded on all sides. A police officer who tried to interfere was knocked down, the bearers were ordered to turn round; they obeyed, and the crowd carried ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wherever it was cheapest—in old tombs which had been 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 were wrapped about with palm-branches, lashed in the fashion ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... in the representation of Ophelia's madness, finds Hamlet's frequent levity and the buffoonery of Polonius alike regrettable —Shakespeare's favorite foible, he feels, is "that of raising a laugh." The introduction of Fortinbras and his army on the stage is "an Absurdity"; the grave-diggers' scene is "very unbecoming to tragedy"; the satire on the "Children of the Chapel" is not allowable in this kind ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... prayer book from his pocket, and without asking anyone's permission read with exquisite gravity and pathos the concluding words of the funeral service,—and then with his own hands assisted the grave-diggers to lay the coffined dead tenderly to rest. Awestruck, and deeply impressed by his manner the fisher-folk mechanically obeyed his instructions, and followed his movements till all the sad business was over, and then they lingered about the churchyard wistfully watching him, while he in turn, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... 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 a ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... The diggers, led by her captor, had been sent out that morning to relieve their comrades already at work. When none of them returned the Captain grew anxious, and was himself leading the ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... shall look on him scornfully and say: "Fie, Coriolanus, I wouldn't take a bite at you even if you were a sausage." [A knock is heard. BOLZ lays down his knife.] Memento mori! There are our grave-diggers. The last oyster, now, and ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and taking observations, before the cable could be laid, the Spanish charts being worse than unreliable. Then, too, a government transport dragged our cable with her anchor at one place, a fierce tropical storm wrecked it at another, while careless Moro trench diggers bruised it with stones at a third, which meant many extra days of work for the Signal Corps at each of these places, and for us idle ones a continuation of pleasant experiences, the whole trip taking in all three ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... Many, perhaps the majority, of the arrivals were totally unsuited for the actual work of mining. Some of these turned to other pursuits in the neighborhood, and, in no small number of cases, did far better than the diggers whose gold they received. But thousands turned back in despair after a few days' experience of the hardships of the life; so that, almost from the first, there was an enormous traffic to and fro, and strong division of parties upon the gold question. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... that day the grave-diggers' labors were pushed on with briskness. A large number of natives took part, under the direction of Queen Moini's first minister. All must be ready at the hour named, under penalty of mutilation, for the new sovereign promised ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... must not be crowded amongst the other houses. The twins needed air. Then the nearer he was to the creek, where the gold was to be found, the better. And again his prospecting must tap a part of it where the diggers had not yet "claimed." There were a dozen and one things to be considered, and he thought of them all until his gentle mind became confused and his sense of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... to work there, and the result solved all doubts. Half Dunedin rushed to Tuapeka. At one of the country kirks the congregation was reduced to the minister and precentor. The news went across the seas. Diggers from Australia and elsewhere poured in by the thousand. Before many months the province's population had doubled, and the prayerful and painful era of caution, the day of small things, was whisked away in a whirl of Victorian ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... other end of the body was presumably a face crushed in the earth. Two strokes with a pick, and the corpses might have been excavated and decently interred. But not one had been touched. Buried in frenzied haste by amateur, imperilled grave-diggers with a military purpose, these dead men decayed at leisure amid the scrap-heap, the cess-pit, the infernal squalor which once had been a neat, clean, scientific German earthwork, and which still earlier had been part of a fair countryside. The French ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... a place where were sitting some aged widows and some orphan children of the gold-diggers, who were helpless and destitute; they were weeping and bemoaning themselves, but stopped at the approach of a man whose appearance attracted the prince, for he had a very great bundle of gold on his back, and yet it did not bow him down at all; his apparel was rich, but he had no girdle ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... I watched them resume their work, feeling sympathy for the beavers, but not daring to interfere. Shortly after noon the quest ended quite unexpectedly. The diggers had discovered a hidden exit that was concealed among the willows, the beavers had followed the canal, which could not be drained, to their refuge tunnel in the bank; and when their enemies destroyed the tunnel, they had used the hidden exit, and had in all probability ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... night, not, in fact, incited to Herculean labours by the spur of larger possession. We visited one of the poorest villages hereabouts, of not quite a hundred souls, but of course, provided with church, school and Mairie. Many a group of potato diggers we saw in the exquisite twilight, suggestive of Millet, many a landscape recalling other masters. This handful of woodlanders—for the village is surrounded by forests—is perhaps as poor as any rural population to be found throughout ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... 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 ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... partridge-nestles, and pheasant-covers will be overrun by sports-men, her magnificent mountains will be scratched bald-headed by lumbermen, her laughing tributaries will be saddened with saw-dust, and her queer, quaint, original boat-pullers and "seng-diggers" will wear shoes in summer-time and coats in winter, weather-board their log cabins, put glass in the windows and partitions across the one room inside. Woods-meetings will creep into churches, square sousing in the river will degenerate to the gentle baptismal sprinkle; no picnics ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... and broiling the fresh-kill'd game, Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side. The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud, My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck. The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time; You should have been with us ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... interesting are the results of procedure, especially certain statistical results. The course of long practice will show that among real tramps there is hardly ever an individual whose calling requires very hard or difficult work. Peasants, smiths, well-diggers, mountaineers, are rarely tramps. The largest numbers have trades which demand no real hard work and whose business is not uniform. Bakers, millers, waiters are hence more numerous. The first have comparatively even distribution of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave. It was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the customary rites the grave-diggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to understand fully what was happening. When they began filling up the grave, he suddenly ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... riches were created, but then many former firms burst, and yesterday's men of wealth turned into beggars. The commonest of labourers bathed and warmed themselves in this golden flood. Stevedores, draymen, street porters, roustabouts, hod carriers and ditch diggers still remember to this day what money they earned by the day during this mad summer. Any tramp received no less than four of five roubles a day at the unloading of barges laden with watermelons. And all this noisy, foreign band, locoed by the easy money, intoxicated with the sensual beauty ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... 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 and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... half the labor of growing and securing a crop of potatoes. Digging is a long, laborious task. Many small fortunes are sunk yearly by inventors in experimenting with and constructing "potato-diggers;" but, so far, no machine has done the work properly except under the most favorable circumstances. Stones, vines, and weeds are obstacles not yet fully overcome. Many tubers are left covered with ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... spent the morning in the hall, and his sadness was respected. Each of the three women had occupations of her own. Grandet had left all his affairs unattended to, and a number of persons came on business,—the plumber, the mason, the slater, the carpenter, the diggers, the dressers, the farmers; some to drive a bargain about repairs, others to pay their rent or to be paid themselves for services. Madame Grandet and Eugenie were obliged to go and come and listen to the interminable talk of all these workmen and ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Aihen-loh became rich corn-land and garden, and Fulda an abbey borough and a principality, where men lived in peace under mild rule, while the feudal princes quarrelled and fought outside; and a great literary centre, whose old records are now precious to the diggers among the bones of bygone times; and at last St. Sturmi and the Aihen-lob had so developed themselves, that the latest record of the Abbots of Fulda which I have seen is this, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... a door in the transparent bubble from which Albanez was operating the diggers. "Anything?" ...
— Blessed Are the Meek • G.C. Edmondson
... greater part of Europe and Asia, and of which the most vivid delineation ever written (except that of a similar pest by Thucydides) has been preserved in the Decameron of Boccacio. Whole towns were depopulated. Estates were left without claimants or occupiers. Priests, physicians, grave-diggers, could not be found in adequate numbers; and the consecrated earth of the churchyards no longer sufficed for the reception of its destined tenants. In the order of Franciscans alone, 120,430 monks are said to have perished. This plague had been preceded by tremendous earthquakes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... 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 ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, where ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... merrily on until midnight, and even after that hour, under the light of a full moon; by which time the diggers were ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... the gate and made its way through the parting crowd to the grave selected for the occasion—that of a high official whom I had treated for chronic incumbency. The Great Mayor touched the grave with his golden spade (which he then presented to the Supreme Priest) and two stalwart diggers with iron ones ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... has 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)
... religious worship. The clerical name and privileges were extended to many pious fraternities, who devoutly supported the ecclesiastical throne. Six hundred parabolani, or adventurers, visited the sick at Alexandria; eleven hundred copiat, or grave-diggers, buried the dead at Constantinople; and the swarms of monks, who arose from the Nile, overspread and darkened the face of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... two men whom Asmack had provided as diggers, and in five minutes we were at the base of the little dark, conical mountain which for weeks had been the object of our dreams. Now, standing face to face with it, the glamour faded. The Mountain of the Golden Pyramid was exactly like a dozen ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... was too feeble to join in the enterprise, but hoped to improve the opportunity to escape when the work was done. Unfortunately the arching top of the tunnel was too near the surface of the ground, and the thin crust gave way under the weight of a sentry. He yelled "Murder!" Two or three of our diggers came scurrying back. The guard next to him shouted, "You Yanks! you G—d d—d Yanks!" and fired into the deep hole. No more tunneling ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... from which there comes a pestilential stench which steals down the wind in gusts of obscene odor. For three weeks and more dead bodies of Germans and Frenchmen have lain rotting there. There are few grave diggers. The peasants have fled from their villages, and the soldiers have other work to do; so that the frontier fields on each side are littered with corruption, where plague and fever ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... Yellowstone Park, at Cinabar, and went direct to Seattle. During our stay in 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 been found. Dr. Talmage was profoundly ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... 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
... so,' returned her brother. 'Funerals again! who talks to the child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers, I believe.' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... over the grasses which begin to stir about the dead bird.] Insect, where the body has fallen, be swift to come and open the earth. The funereal necrophaga are the only grave-diggers who never carry the dead elsewhere, believing that the least sad, and the most fitting tomb, is the very clay whereon one fell into the final sleep. [To the funeral insects, while the NIGHTINGALE begins ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... 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 result? ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... players, who thought "this 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 ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... 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 half amused, half irritated her. It was curious ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... also pointed out that capitalism had within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, that it was creating a new class, made up of the overwhelming majority, that was destined in time to overthrow capitalism. "What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers."[6] In the interest of society the nine-tenths would force the one-tenth to yield up its private property, that is to say, its "power to subjugate ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... we anchored in 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 our four ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... of the Pai-Utes in signs, which is contradictory to the statement above made by correspondents. The same is mentioned regarding a band of Shoshonis met near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, and one of "Diggers," probably Chemehuevas, encountered on a ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... 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)
... a thousand guineas," replied the young nobleman, "if the tomb has not been opened; but I shall give nothing if a single stone has been touched by the crow-bar of the diggers." ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... 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 ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... myth—Various origins of man and of things—Myths of Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus, Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans, Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians— Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various conditions of ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... fact that my competitors were notoriously persons far inferior to me in knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the capacity to analyze them; rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar with the language—mere delvers and diggers in a science in which I secretly felt that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to mind the fact that I knew the community before which I was likely to speak; I knew its deficiencies; knew the inferiority of its idols, and could and should have no sort of fear of its criticism. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... 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
... 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 ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... refusing of it—in connection with a new settlement, a fresh attempt to plant a colony where the climate was favourable on one of the great African rivers. His income at first would be small, and he must take his share of the hardships and labours of those who aimed at being more than gold-diggers or miners in the diamond-fields—that is, pioneers of civilization. The prospect, so far as it referred to scientific investigations, and to a large increase to accredited stores of knowledge, was simply splendid. Farther, he was assured of the sympathy and support of the leading men among ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... pariah-people: Japanese writers have denied, upon apparently good grounds, that the chori belong to the Japanese race. Various tribes of these outcasts followed occupations in the monopoly of which they were legally confirmed: they were well-diggers, garden-sweepers, straw-workers, sandal-makers, according to local privileges. One class was employed officially in the capacity of torturers and executioners; another was employed as night-watchmen; ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... enthusiasts whose interest ran from March to November. There were fanatics who insisted on trips thitherward in January. And there were one or two super-fanatics—ranking ahead even of the fishermen and the sand-diggers—who clung to that weird and changing region the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... 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 would have been matter for ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... been 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. We stooped low as we ran ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... in the form of interlinear texts by Dangberg (1927) and in Lowie's Ethnographic Notes (1939, pp. 333-351). There are two versions of the creation myth, one describing the creation of Paiute, Washo, and Diggers from the seeds of the cattail by the Creator Woman, and the second attributing the creation of Indians to the Creation Man, who formed the three groups from among his sons to keep them from quarreling. Lowie also reports the common theme of several previous ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... Brahmans; if the account of Noah and the deluge could be traced back to the story of Manu Satyavrata, who escaped from the flood, more discoveries might be expected in this newly-opened mine, and people rushed to it with all the eagerness of gold-diggers. The idea that everything in India was of extreme antiquity had at that time taken a firm hold on the minds of all students of Sanskrit; and, as there was no one to check their enthusiasm, everything that came to light in Sanskrit literature was readily accepted as more ancient than Homer, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... 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 ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Thring will proceed up the Hanson to see if there is water in the springs that I discovered on my first journey through the centre. If they are dry he will proceed with the examination of the Hanson to above where we crossed it; he will then return to the diggers; by that time they will be able to judge if there is sufficient water for the whole party. If there is sufficient he will leave them to dig, and come on to me; if not, and there is no more water higher up, he will bring them on with him, and I shall require to try a course more to the ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... five months in the midst of the rough, half-savage life of a new country. I lived almost entirely in the open air, sleeping on the ground with my saddle for a pillow, and sharing the hardships of the gold diggers, without taking ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... what I wanted, for 4 pounds, and the soda-water apparatus for 2 pounds 5 shillings. I also sold some books that we could not carry, but got nothing for them. Scientific works do not take. The people who buy everything here are the gold-diggers, and they want story books. A person I know brought out 100 pounds worth of more serious reading, and sold the lot ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... diggers," Graham answered. "They are going to work in the old cemetery to prepare a place for Silas Blackburn with his fathers. That's why I've come to wake you up. The minister's telephoned Katherine. He will be here before noon. Do you know it's after ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... the world, whether without this form they could be administered or have any certainty. For the sea is not traversed except that trophy which is called a sail abide safe in the ship; and the earth is not ploughed without it: diggers and mechanics do not their work except with tools which have this shape. And the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the hands extended and having on the face extending from the forehead what is called ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... Following him, come two "Diggers," of whom one stands on the surface of the peat, and with a heavy, long handled tool, cuts out the sides and end of the blocks, which are about seventeen by five inches; while the other stands in the ditch, and by horizontal thrusts ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... cleanliness, of calories in diet, of child-culture; one may strike a lofty attitude and speak of the Home (capital H), and how it is the corner stone of Society. I can but agree, but I must remind the indignant ones that ditch diggers, garbage collectors, sewer cleaners are the backbone of sanitation and civilization, and yet ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... 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
... least, the charity had gone on, and the estates had prospered. Wool-carding in Barchester there was no longer any; so the bishop, dean, and warden, who took it in turn to put in the old men, generally appointed some hangers-on of their own; worn-out gardeners, decrepit grave-diggers, or octogenarian sextons, who thankfully received a comfortable lodging and one shilling and fourpence a day, such being the stipend to which, under the will of John Hiram, they were declared to be entitled. Formerly, indeed,—that is, till within some fifty ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... circumstances, is remarkable, though in what its purity consists, I know not. But, be its composition what it may, it is certain its effects upon the spirits and bodily powers of visiters, are extremely exhilarating; and that it is not less salubrious than enlivening. The nitre diggers were a famously healthy set of men; it was a common and humane practice to employ laborers of enfeebled constitutions, who were soon restored to health and strength, though kept at constant labour; and more joyous, merry fellows were never ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... 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, which cut ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... tons. Valuing the precious metal at its ascertainable worth, it appears that gold to the value of upwards of L15,000 sterling was dug from the bowels of the earth, washed from the sand of the rivers, or discovered by fortunate diggers in various parts of Australia ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... 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 ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... as a pilot, shouted Marmaduke to the ruminative cow, and he intended to leave the blank R.F.C. for the Blanky Army Service Corps or the blankety Grave-diggers Corps. As a last resort, he would get a job as a double-blank Cabinet Minister, being no ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... he kept unwinking watch on the slow process which promised to protract itself through many days and weeks, whenever (to save himself from being choked with dust) he patrolled a little cinderous beat he established for the purpose, without taking his eyes from the diggers, he still stumped to the tune: He's GROWN too FOND of MONEY for THAT, he's GROWN ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... habits we shall study in detail in a later chapter. (For the Wasp known as the Pompilus, or Ringed Calicurgus, cf. "The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 12.—Translator's Note.) They are hunters of Spiders and diggers of burrows. The game, the food of the coming larva, is first caught and paralysed; the home is excavated afterwards. As the heavy prey would be a grave encumbrance to the Wasp in search of a convenient site, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... only shine when the dew-moist air of upland South Africa underlies them. Every one capable of making music, whether by means of violin, concertina, or voice, was much in demand. Coffee and rusks circulated freely. Quite a number of diggers had brought their families from the Colony; thus, many a pretty girl in print dress and "cappie" joined the firelit circle. Most of us were young and free from care. Life was full of romance, for Fortune scattered ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... all, and paper prayers were burned in the oven, and 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 Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... [Footnote: 'The hero of the horrid narrative.'—Horrid it certainly is; and one incident in every case gives a demoniacal air of coolness to the hellish atrocities, viz the regular forwarding of the bheels, or grave- diggers. But else the tale tends too much to monotony; and for a reason which ought to have checked the author in carrying on the work to three volumes, namely, that although there is much dramatic variety in the circumstances of the several cases, there is none in the catastrophes. The brave man and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Beale an' tote him aboard. Then come back an' go to work. You'll git yore shares, but you'll not git what's comin' to those who stood by. Now git out of my sight. You can bury That when you come back." He nodded at the sodden corpse of Deming, flung up on the grit. "You can take yore pay as grave-diggers out of what you owe him at poker. He ain't goin' to collect ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... old woman turned her back just one minute and the little girl slipped up and raised the lid ever so little. There was a great whirring noise; the lid flew off and out came all the Indians. Off through the air they flew—Washoes to Washoe land; Diggers to Digger land; Paiutis to Nevada—each Indian ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... shanties and canvas tents. And whenever the gold gave out, or news came of some richer mine, the diggers would forsake the little town, and rush off somewhere else. And no sign of life would be left in the once busy valley save the weather-worn huts and the upturned earth. Some men made fortunes almost in a day, many returned home ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... her way to Hampstead. The heath was wild enough in those days—clumps of woodland, straggling bushes, wide expanses of turf, vast pits made by the gravel and sand diggers, the slopes scored by water courses with here and there a foot path—all was picturesque. The ponds were very much as they are now, save that their boundaries were not restrained and after heavy rains the water spread at its own ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... wells were only about twenty feet deep; but by drawing the water as fast as the seepage accumulated, each was capable of watering several hundred head of cattle daily. By this time Deweese had secured ample help, and started a second crew of well diggers opposite the ranch, who worked down the river while my crew followed some fifteen miles above. By the end of the month of May, we had some twenty temporary wells in operation, and these, in addition to what water the pools afforded, relieved the situation to some extent, though ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... and the 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 ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... a hook and line;" and, 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 ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... soldiers, depending, I believe, on the Engineer Corps, are quartered just behind the lines, and go to them every day to put them in order, repair the roads, and do all the manual labor. Humble folk these, peasants, ditch-diggers, road-menders, and village carpenters. Those at Pont-a-Mousson were nearly all fathers of families, and it was one of the sights of the war most charged with true pathos to see these gray-haired men marching to the trenches with their ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... were busying themselves as follows: They made a tunnel from the city underneath the enemy's embankment, commanding the diggers not to leave this work until they should get under the middle of the hill. By this means they were planning to burn the embankment. But as the tunnel advanced to about the middle of the hill, a sound of blows, as it were, came to the ears of those Persians who were ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... wonderful and memorable hours, not ever to be lived again. They were the hours that all youth enjoys and delights in once—when, like gold-diggers arrived in sight of El Dorado, they halt and peer at the chimera that lies at ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... shocked that he was so much unconcerned. But, when the sentence was pronounced, he pulled out the pardon, presented it, and walked out a free man. He has been pardoned; and so have we. Then let death come, we have nought to fear. All the grave-diggers in the world cannot dig a grave large enough and deep enough to hold eternal life; all the coffin makers in the world cannot make a coffin large enough and tight enough to hold eternal life. Death has had his hand on Christ once, but ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... or adjacent tribes have been branded as "Diggers," and are generally thought to be the lowest class of Indians in America, but in some lines of artistic work they excelled all other tribes. For example, their basketry work, for domestic and sacred purposes, and their bows and arrows, were ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... has made a colossal fortune only because he was not blind, and did not hold on to his father's fence. Nationality and fa-ther-land, each is a darned sock—one of those labels which men with parti-colored clothes paste on a gate before which diggers are standing. One must escape from this position. One must ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... female produces from eight to ten at a birth, which she sends out of her burrow as soon as they are able to provide for themselves. When irritated it utters a low grunting cry, like the bandicoot. The race of people known by the name of Wuddurs, or tank-diggers, capture this animal in great numbers as an article of food, and during the harvest they plunder their earths of the grain stored up for their winter consumption, which in favourable localities they find in such quantities as to subsist almost entirely upon it during that season of the year. A single ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... 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 the "Julian ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... jet-excavations round Whitby and Middlesborough. By by-ways near the small place of Goldsborough I got down to the shore at Kettleness, and reached the middle of a bay in which is a cave called the Hob-Hole, with excavations all around, none of great depth, made by jet-diggers and quarrymen. In the cave lay a small herd of cattle, though for what purpose put there I cannot guess; and in the jet-excavations I found nothing. A little further south is the chief alum-region, as at Sandsend, but as soon as I saw a works, and the great gap in the ground ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... us!" cried a wee tot jumping up and down in the sand in a kind of ecstasy of emotion and the other babies took up the refrain and in a moment all of the sand diggers were shouting in glee but with absolutely no conception of what it all meant: "Dod loves us! Dod ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... more thronged than ever, and presently traffic was blocked by a line of marching men—more "diggers" on their way to the transport. Cecilia's chauffeur turned back into a side street, evidently a short cut. Half-way along it the taxi jarred once or twice and ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... glimpsed deserted cabins, habitations built by the gold-diggers of other days. Carefully he followed the all but indistinguishable sled tracks ahead of him until they swerved abruptly in toward the bank. Here he paused, pulled a mitten, and, moistening a finger, held it up to test the wind. What movement there was to the air seemed to satisfy him, for, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... more pleased with the mimic than the real voice of nature; and the four-footed puggys of the Brazils, like the true pig of the Grecian, are cast in the shade by their reasoning imitator! In short, not to be prosy on a subject which has awakened poetry and passion in all, hear, as the grave-diggers say, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... above the diggers, were three immense sharks. Their cruel mouths were partly open, showing three rows of big teeth, and they were slowly turning over on their backs to make a sudden rush and devour the men and boys. Owing to the peculiar shape of its maw a shark can not bite ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... 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 ...
— 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... the discovery of this marvellous specimen of ancient Assyrian art, Mr. Layard gives a graphic account:—"I was returning to the mound, when I saw two Arabs urging their mares to the top of their speed. On approaching me, they stopped. 'Hasten, O Bey!' exclaimed one of them, 'hasten to the diggers; for they have found Nimrod himself. Wallah! it is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen him with our eyes. There is no god but God!' and both joining in this pious exclamation, they galloped off, without further words, in the direction of their tents. On reaching the ruins I ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... the south end of the yard. If a guard appeared from around the mat-shop or coming out of the Principal Keeper's office, the convicts sunning themselves on the dirt-pile in the free hour of noon, or late in the afternoon, after the shops had closed, spoke with motionless lips to the two diggers. Plenty of time was thus afforded to shove a couple of boards over the aperture, kick dirt over the boards, and even push a barrow over the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... continually in a car conveying special supplies and to do various other duties. The chateau grounds are well within enemy gun range, and most of the neighbouring buildings have been blown to atoms. Yesterday the first news that greeted us from the trench-diggers was that they had been bombarded that morning by gas shells, among other pleasant surprises. While we were pursuing our duties I heard a boom, followed by a long, sighing screech, then a violent crash about fifty yards ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... who are half capitalists and half workers rising out of their nondescript condition into a new master class, as did the bourgeoisie under feudalism. For these reasons he contended the proletarian slaves would become the grave diggers for the bourgeois masters and so end capitalism with the burial ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... ever closer and closer to the dying thing, with awkward out-thrustings of their naked necks and great dust-raising flaps of the huge, unkempt wings; lifting their feathered shanks high and stiffly like old crippled grave-diggers in overalls that are too tight—but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the last tremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. To humans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect—he hangs aloft longer; ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... me, my fair Madeline, that Starlight and Company don't deal with single diggers; ours is a wholesale business—eh, Dick? We leave the retail ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... a 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. There were troops everywhere, and every soldier acted as though he was ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... wide, had been cut through our barbed wire, for the passage of the diggers. From these lanes white tape had been laid on the ground to the point where we were to commence work. This in order that we would not get lost in the darkness. The proposed trench was also ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... from the Persian Nim- chihrah or Half-faces. They escape to the Ape-island whose denizens are human in intelligence and speak articulately, as the universal East believes they can: these Simiads are at chronic war with the Ants, alluding to some obscure myth which gave rise to the gold-diggers of Herodotus and other classics, "emmets in size somewhat less than dogs but bigger than foxes."[FN252] The episode then falls into the banalities of Oriental folk-lore. Janshah, passing the Sabbation river and reaching the Jews' city, is persuaded to be sewn up in a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... his way, having satisfied his curiosity; and the door was closed again. Some straggling donkeys wandered near, which were mistaken for "Diggers;" and dreading their glittering eyes, the nervous prisoner drew the curtain over the one little sliding window. There was nothing to read, nothing to sew, no housekeeping duties, because no house to keep; she was glad ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... can't expect a girl, brought up as I have been, to believe that society is upside down, and would be better if it were tipped over the other way and run by a lot of hod-carriers and ditch-diggers and cooks. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... still living, still hopeful, still young at heart. "Father" Horton, the typical pioneer, deserves more honors than he has yet received. Coming from Connecticut to California in 1851, he soon made a small fortune in mining, buying and selling gold-dust, and providing the diggers with ice and water for their work. He rode over the country in those lawless times selling the precious dust disguised as a poverty-stricken good-for-naught, with trusty revolver always in his right hand on the pommel ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... by prohibiting the introduction of foreign iron, but why don't they protect American laborers by forbidding foreign workmen to land on our shores? I demand protection for the native ditcher. Forbid the Irishmen to land here and to lower the price of labor by competing with our own ditch-diggers. Put a stop to the influx of German tailors and bootmakers, who prevent native artists from earning the wages that would otherwise be theirs. Protect our authors by prohibiting the sale of works written by foreigners. Keep all foreign pictures out of the country, and give our ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... was to make an official declaration of the death at the town hall. A small linen sheet served as shroud, a clean, flower-lined soap box formed that baby's coffin, and Greorge and I were the grave diggers and chief mourners, who laid the tiny body at rest in the little vine-grown churchyard. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... of the dead forest, and staring curiously down upon the two potato-diggers, were three moose,—a magnificent, black, wide-antlered bull, an ungainly brown cow, and a long-legged, long-eared calf. A potato-field, with men digging in it, was something far apart from their experience and manifestly filled ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... cemetery where those bones you are going to break are to be found. You go in by the side gate, and ask any of the grave-diggers where—" ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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 ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Bakery. Here they saw millstones, ovens, water-vessels, and some other articles of which they could not guess the use. Not far away were some bakers' shops. In these shops loaves of bread were found by the diggers. Of course they were burned to charcoal; but they retained their original shape, and showed marks upon them which were probably intended to indicate the bakery from which they came. Heaps ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... of the "waste-places of the earth." The discovery of extensive goldfields in the extreme west of the territories now occupied by the Hudson's Bay Company, is a great fact. It no longer comes to us as the report of interested adventurers, or the exaggeration of a few sanguine diggers, but with well-authenticated results—large quantities of gold received at San Francisco, and a consequent rush of all nations from the gold regions of California, as well as from the United States and Canada. The thirst for Gold is, as it always has been, the most attractive, the strongest, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... colonists at first hung tents 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 such as ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... get the work so far advanced as to provide against interruption before the moon rose, which was about midnight. Our pickets were thrown far out in the jungle, to keep back the Spanish pickets and prevent any interference with the diggers. The men seemed to think the work rather good fun than otherwise, the possibility of a brush with the Spaniards lending a zest ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... and they all three strolled to the end of the lane, which ascended 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 ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... caught again by the flash of life, the fanfaronade of adventure. We throw Eugene Sue to the critics that we may save Alexandre Dumas. But Dumas' brain worked faster than his hand—or any human hand—could obey its orders; the mine of his inventive faculty needed a commercial company and an army of diggers for its exploitation. He constituted himself the managing director of this company; twelve hundred volumes are said to have been the output of the chief and his subordinates; the work ceased to be literature, and became mere commerce. The money that Dumas ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... here ten hours! Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams, with a couple of servants, and a pretty little child-daughter, were in the train each night, and I talked with them a good deal. They are reported to have made an enormous fortune by acting among the Californian gold-diggers. My cold is no better, for the cars are so intolerably hot, that I was often obliged to go and stand upon the break outside, and then the frosty air was biting indeed. The great man of this place is one Mr. Childs, a newspaper proprietor, and he is so exactly like Mr. Esse in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... unknown twelve men stood in a circle round the grave, where the coffin had been laid in presence of a crowd of loiterers gathered from all parts of this public garden. After a few short prayers the priest threw a handful of earth on the remains of this woman, and the grave-diggers, having asked for their fee, made haste to fill the grave ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... 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 return. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Professor Berry, the real leader of this expedition. Professor, this young red-head is Martin Grey, a sort of nephew by adoption who knows more about night life than most cabaret proprietors—and not much of anything else. He has shaken the dangers of the gold-diggers to face with us the dangers of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... 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 musician ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Comes in the shop every day. About nineteen, and the picture of the blonde that sits on the palisades of the Rhine and charms the clam-diggers into the surf. Hair the color of straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... heartily. "In fact why not do it to all of us? Please the Germans so too. But it can't be done, you know—there's a shortage of grave-diggers." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... body, and others of them to be runners before them, and captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds; they will also make them their artificers, makers of armor, and of chariots, and of instruments; they will make them their husbandmen also, and the curators of their own fields, and the diggers of their own vineyards; nor will there be any thing which they will not do at their commands, as if they were slaves bought with money. They will also appoint your daughters to be confectioners, and cooks, and bakers; and these will be obliged to do all sorts of work ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... which is in front of their church or chapel. The priest conducts the funeral ceremonies in the ordinary and usual way of mortuary proceedings observed by the Catholic church all over the world. While the grave-diggers are filling up the grave, the friends, relatives, neighbors, and, in fact, all persons that attend the funeral, give vent to their sad feelings by making the whole pueblo howl; after the tremendous uproar ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... the sofa seemed equally so. Bridget drank the coarse bush tea which the landlady brought in, and was glad that the woman seemed too sulky to want to talk. Then she sat down at the window and watched the life of the township—the diggers slouching in for drinks, the riders from the bush who hung up their horses and went into the bar, the teams of bullocks coming slowly down the road and drawing up here or at some other of the nineteen public houses ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... centinels; 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 be heard ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the Burman. "Three diggers going up to the hills to look for rubies. Make camp on little creek not a mile from here. Somebody pass the camp next day and see one man dead. Then they look, and see pieces of the other men in the jungle. Me forgot that, running ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... regarding cremation 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
... under Count De Lesseps undertook to construct a canal from Panama to Aspinwall, but after half a dozen years the French company suspended work, partly for financial reasons, and partly on account of the enormous loss of life among the diggers from the pestilent nature of the climate and the country. Then followed a period of waiting, until it seemed certain that the French would never resume operations. American promoters pressed the claims of a route through Nicaragua where they ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... seen a ghost? You look as solemn as grave-diggers. What ails you, Beulah? Come along to breakfast. How nice you look in your new clothes!" Her eyes ran over the face ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... spectators recoil to a little distance lest their shadows should fall into the grave and harm should thus be done to their persons. The geomancer and his assistants stand on the side of the grave which is turned away from the sun; and the grave-diggers and coffin-bearers attach their shadows firmly to their persons by tying a strip of cloth tightly round their waists. Nor is it human beings alone who are thus liable to be injured by means of their shadows. Animals are to some extent in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and the strategy and cruelties of an Alva is alone a title-deed to imperishable fame and honour. Dutch men and women fought and died at the dykes, and suffered awful agonies on the rack and at the stake. 'They sang songs of triumph,' so the record runs, 'while the grave diggers were shovelling earth over their living faces.' It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that a legacy of true and deep feeling has been bequeathed to their descendants, and the very suspicion of injustice or infringement of what they consider liberty sets the Dutchman's heart aflame with patriotic ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... impecuniary fancies. In bold and eager youth we go out on our travels: we visit Baalbec and Paphos and Tadmor and Cythera,—ancient shrines and ancient empires, seats of eager love or gentle inspiration; we wander far and long; we have nothing to do with our fellow-men,—what are we, indeed, to diggers and counters? we wander far, we dream to wander forever—but we dream in vain. A surer force than the subtlest fascination of fancy is in operation; the purse-strings tie us to our kind. Our travel coin ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... parts in one play. Thus, supposing Hamlet to be announced for representation, the stroller of inferior degree might be called upon to appear as Francisco, afterwards as a lord-in-waiting in the court scenes, then as Lucianus, "nephew to the king," then as one of the grave-diggers, then as a lord again, or, it might be, Osric, the fop, in the last act. Other duties, hardly less arduous, would fall to him in the after-pieces. "I remember," said King, the actor famous as being the original Sir Peter Teazle and Lord Ogleby, "that when I had been but a short time on the stage, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... 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, mounted his wife and children into ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... 'Wallenstein', as of all the plays that followed it, is its pervading seriousness. Humor plays no part. There are no Dogberries or grave-diggers, no quips or quibbles. Schiller had but little of the far-famed quality of 'irony'. It did not lie in his nature to take a position aloof from the moving panorama of life and depict it impassively ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... exaggerated has been said in regard to the adaptability of the gopher for his work. But it is a fact that he is of all the diggers best suited for his task. He uses his strong teeth, like a trench-digger uses a pick, to loosen the earth; and while his fore-feet are kept constantly at work in digging and pressing the dirt back under the body, the hind feet also aid in shovelling it still farther ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... deserters, etc., operated with incredible audacity under the orders of a redoubtable chief. The nucleus of the band had been formed by men pertaining to the scum of Europe who had been attracted to New South Wales, in Australia, by the discovery of gold there. Among these gold-diggers, were Captain Spade and Engineer Serko, two outcasts, whom a certain community of ideas and character soon bound ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... 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
... or two hours he would feel disgraced. Two hours was the least to be expected from a man of his promise. He had seen party chiefs and faction leaders go it for a whole afternoon, from four to eight, hoarse and puffing, sweating like diggers in a sewer, with their collars wilted to rags, watching the great hall-clock with the intentness of a man waiting to be hanged. "Still an hour left before closing time!" a speaker's friends would say. And the great orator, like a wearied horse, but a thoroughbred, would find new energy ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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
... 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, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... were grave-diggers delving, they brought up bones, And with rage and grief All the players shouted in full, kingly tones, ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... Forest, but loves the Old orchard and the Green Meadows. In some parts of the country there are members of his family who prefer to live just on the edge of the Green Forest. You will notice that Johnny has stout claws. Those are to help him dig, for all the Marmot family are great diggers. What other use do you have for ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess |
