"Digging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite the form of a modern cask, and with a tube in the centre for pouring in and drawing off the liquid. There were also found upon the walls of Troy, one and three-fourths feet below the place where the Treasure was discovered, three silver dishes, two of which were broken to pieces in digging down the debris, they can, however, be repaired, as I have all the pieces. These dishes seem to have belonged to the Treasure, and the fact of the latter having otherwise escaped our pickaxes is due to the above mentioned large copper ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... she cut the hide into as many thongs as enclosed ground sufficient to build a fort upon; which was in consequence called 'Byrsa.' In making the foundation, an ox's head was dug up, which being supposed to portend slavery to the city, if built there, they removed to another spot, where, in digging, they found a horse's head, which was considered to be a more favourable omen. The story of the citadel being named from the bull's hide was very probably invented by the Greeks; who, finding in the Phoenician narrative of the foundation of Carthage, the citadel mentioned by the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar permits us to rival the fish's fin; the sail, the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the industry ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... figure it," he was saying. "I had a little dough when I begun digging gopher holes in these here hills. Not much—say fifteen hundred, mebbe. I sure ain't got it now. Lost it in a hole in the ground. Well; I reckon I'll go on looking for it where I ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... entered that wild and broken tract of the Crow country called the Black Hills, and here their journey became toilsome in the extreme. Rugged steeps and deep ravines incessantly obstructed their progress, so that a great part of the day was spent in the painful toil of digging through banks, filling up ravines, forcing the wagons up the most forbidding ascents, or swinging them with ropes down the face of dangerous precipices. The shoes of their horses were worn out, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... fourth day the party reached the desired spot, exactly as old Tillie had described. The Lieutenant and his man found it. Clearing away the huge stones which had formed the walls of the house, they found, upon digging in the corner, an old iron chest of ancient Russian manufacture. In it were the proofs (if more were needed) that this was the identical Boundary House for which they had been seeking. A couple of small copper kettles, blackened with age and dampness, ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... fair?—digging, indeed, when it was the poor aunt who had been digging all the time. When I told Diana of this she shook her head and said,— "Betty, it frightens me. Do you think Sara will grow up that ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... shows itself at first it has the elements of neither. The child inherits the tendency to respond by "many different arm, hand, and finger movements to many different objects"—poking, pulling, handling, tearing, piling, digging, and dropping objects. Just what habits of using tools, and the like, will grow out of this tendency will depend on the education and training it gets. The habits of constructiveness may be developed in different sorts of media. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... too rugged to be really handsome, she thought, but he wouldn't have to start digging in his wallet to get a girl to change ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... a joke, William," says I. "Don't pay no attention to it. You see, Peanut's been over there again, digging up some petunies," ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... rarely possible to remove the carpal bones as a whole, from the diseased condition which renders the operation necessary, and the digging out of the various bones piecemeal renders the operation very tedious, especially if the proximal ends of the metacarpal bones are involved and require to be removed, hence this operation was practically impossible till after ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... gas-ring and put on the kettle. She had the luck to find in the breadpan a loaf far newer than it was their thrifty habit to eat, and carried it back to the table, finding just such delicious pleasure in digging her fingers into its sides as she found in standing on her heels on new asphalt; but turned her head ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... general term of Morphology. This is one of the most interesting departments of natural history, and may almost be said to be its very soul. What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include similar bones, in the same relative positions? How curious it is, to give a ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... same.) Journey from Santa Cruz to Mogodor, when no Travellers ventured to pass, owing to Civil War and Contention among the Kabyles.—Moorish Philanthropy in digging Wells for the Use of Travellers.—Travelled with a trusty Guide without Provisions, Tents, Baggage, or Incumbrances.—Nature of the Warfare in the Land.—Bitter Effects of Revenge and Retaliation on the happiness of Society.—Origin of these ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... 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 of our doubly stricken sister Rebecca—only just recovered, ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... have no doubt, exercised me enormously. I lay awake at night rehearsing it, and wondering about the next phase of our relationship. That took the form of the return of my twopence. I was in the Science Library, digging something out of the Encyclopedia Britannica, when she appeared beside me and placed on the open page an evidently premeditated thin envelope, bulgingly ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... disappeared, and we go to the hill where our fight occurred. Within the compass of a few rods we find a hundred men of the Third and Fifteenth lying stiff and cold. Beside these there are many wounded, whom we pick up tenderly, carry off and provide for. Men are already digging trenches, and in a little while the dead are gathered together for interment. We have looked upon such scenes before; but then the faces were strange to us. Now they are the familiar faces of intimate ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... belonging to the party (with the exception of one horse drowned while swimming ashore) was safely landed. The first camp was formed on some open forest-land behind the beach at a small fresh-water creek. On the 27th Mr Carson, the botanist of the party, commenced digging a piece of ground, in which he sowed seeds of cabbages, turnips, leek, pumpkin, rock and water melons, pomegranate, peach-stones and apple-pips. No trace of this first venture in gardening in North Queensland is now ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Innocent himself. Henry, in displeasure, took all the temporalities of the see into his hands, and for a year Richard lived at the expense of a poor parish priest named Simon, whom he strove to requite by working in his garden, budding, grafting, and digging, as he had once done for ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was a whirring, buzzing sound as a shadow glided through the sky where the stars shone peacefully. A company of boys in khaki, carrying intrenching implements, passed by, greeting them cheerily as they trudged back from doing their turn in digging the new trench line which ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... de mieux and not as, in the strict sense, perversions of the impulse. Even necrophily may be thus practiced. A young man who when assisting the grave-digger conceived and carried out the idea of digging up the bodies of young girls to satisfy his passions with, and whose case has been recorded by Belletrud and Mercier, said: "I could find no young girl who would agree to yield to my desires; that is why I have done this. I should have preferred to have relations with living persons. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... me," says I. "I used to wonder why you let go of it. I don't any more. I've got the right hunch at last. You got up bright and early one morning and tried digging around with a ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... coming, though what with the pig squealing, and the children all speaking at once, they made noise enough. But Mr McQueen had his head down digging, and he was in a bog-hole besides, so when they came up right beside him, with the pig, he ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... another has given a name which exists not in the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would be funny, though in this I suspect his hand, for I guess her reading does not reach far enough to know Bottom's Christian name—and one of Hamlet, and Grave digging, a scene which is not hinted at in the story, and you might as well have put King Canute the Great reproving his courtiers—the rest are Giants and Giantesses. Suffice it, to save our taste and ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... which we made the hour's run was sympathetically squalid. We had, to be sure, the sea on one side, and that was clean enough; but the day was gray, and the sea was responsively gray; while the earth on the other side was torn and ragged, with people digging manure into the patches of broccoli, and gardening away as if it had been April instead of January. There were shabby villas, with stone-pines and cypresses herding about the houses, and tatters of life-plant overhanging their shabby walls; there were stucco shanties which the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... appointed boundary, beating them with huge sticks, as required, and keeping the flames well in hand. The disastrous forest fires, caused by accidental circumstances, spoil the finest timber, and can only be stayed in their wild career, as we remarked elsewhere, by digging trenches, over which the roaring flames cannot pass. Such fires are one of the curses of Finland, and do almost as much harm as a flight of ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... too, were upon it—swarming over it like rats, and digging and hacking at it with their dirks. And so they were still hacking at it—although it had long since ceased to move, or to make any sound—when Merode came up and called ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... ginger cookies which Migwan gave them as a reward for their trouble. Silence fell on the house and Migwan returned to the mastering of the sum of the angles. Geometry was the bane of her existence and she was only cheered into digging away at it by the thought of the money lying in her name in the bank, which she had received for giving the clew leading to little Raymond Bartlett's discovery the summer before, and which would pay her way to college for one ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... coldness, or even blows, they receive the advances of other little children, who wish to play with them. Well, as for those others, they go off at once, and play by themselves. One of them, whose hat has been taken by the rest, is digging in the earth with a bent twig, sharpened at one end. Possibly he is digging for a treasure, which will be of no value to anybody but himself. When he is older, he will be sorry he is not ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... is treason in my brother to bring you thus, but he never has any regard for his poor sister. Penelon, Penelon!" An old man, who was digging busily at one of the beds, stuck his spade in the earth, and approached, cap in hand, striving to conceal a quid of tobacco he had just thrust into his cheek. A few locks of gray mingled with his hair, which was still thick and matted, while his bronzed features and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mineral form is to be found at various points on Luzon, and those engaged in working it, without the necessity of digging; collect the iron-bearing stones that constitute the upper stratum, these, when placed in fusion, generally yield about forty per cent clear metal. This is the case in the mountains of Angat, situated in the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... while following up some wild sheep, I came upon two bears very busily engaged in digging up the snow where an avalanche had fallen. Being hid from their sight, I determined to wait some little time to ascertain why they were digging. I accordingly placed myself behind a rock, and allowed them to work ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... the following spring, inasmuch as the spring of the year has proven a more satisfactory time for transplanting than the fall. To attain success in transplanting the newly dug tree, roots should be exposed as little as possible to the air. Prepare the holes before digging the trees, moving one tree at a time for best results. Move as much of the root stock as possible, usually about 18 to 24 inches. Trim roots with a sharp knife, making a clean cut facing downward. Remove at least half ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... waiting for us to make one slip." He paused, and Tom heard him pacing the compartment. "But I think we've got our boy. This one knows. We've been spoiling him so far, that's all. Well, now we start digging. When I get through with him, he'll be begging us to let him tell. You just watch me, as soon as the okay ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... many hands had already been at work on these buildings; and in these days every man soul in Nuremberg, from the boys even to the grey-haired men, wielded the spade or the trowel. Every serving-man in every household, whether artisan or patrician—and ours with the rest—was bound to toil at digging, and our fine young masters found themselves compelled to work in sun or rain, or to order the others; and it hurt them no more than it did the Magister, whose feebleness and clumsiness did the works less benefit than the labor did to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in Lord Fallowfeild anxiously. "Saw it myself—distinctly remember seeing gravel when the heather had been pared before digging the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the measure upon the heap of gold, filled it and emptied it often upon the sofa, till she had done: when she was very well satisfied to find the number of measures amounted to so many as they did, and went to tell her husband, who had almost finished digging the hole. While Ali Baba was burying the gold, his wife, to shew her exactness and diligence to her sister-in-law, carried the measure back again, but without taking notice that a piece of gold had stuck to the bottom. "Sister," said she, giving it to her again, "you see ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... the servile readiness of their companions, she endeavored to show herself prouder than her fellow travelers who were honest women, while he, feeling that he must set an example, continued in his attitude his mission of resistance begun by digging pitfalls in the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of every true civil and ecclesiastical institution, the Curia is gradually forced into a conflict with the whole world. . . . The Curia (to carry its aims into effect) tries one last means: its last attempt is to bring about a revolution. As 'the Church' succeeded in digging her charter out of the ruins of the commonwealths of the ancient world, so the spirits of Vaticanism hope again to rebuild the palace of their dominion out of ruins." (p. 4.) Again: "Bishop Hefele entertains the fear that the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... bending over in digging, Robinson's back, unused to severe toil, ached wretchedly. He decided to make a spade. With his flint he bored four holes in a great, round mussel shell. They formed a rectangle as long as a little finger and as wide. Through these holes he drew cocoanut fibre and bound ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... became one of them. When they went into camp he accompanied them, carrying the axe on his shoulder, thus passing the picket as a wood-chopper. He found three or four thousand soldiers at Fort Henry, hard at work, throwing up breastworks, digging ditches, hewing timber, mounting guns. He worked with them, but kept his eyes and ears open, noticing the position of the fort on the bank of the river, and how many guns there were. He found out what troops were there, where they ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... excitement were so great that he did not notice the silence and abstraction of his wife. His ardent mind invariably excavated a channel into which it poured its thoughts, digging its bed so deep as to flow on unconscious of everything else. Exulting in the prospect of attaching to himself a companion so gifted, never doubting for a moment that he could do so, reveling in the dreams of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Spaniards upon the Indians in fishing pearls, is as cruel, and reprehensible a thing as there can be in the world. Upon the land there is no life so infernal and hopeless as to be compared to it, although that of digging gold in the mines is the hardest and worst. 34. They let them down into the sea three and four and five fathoms deep, from the morning till sunset. They are always swimming under water without respite, gathering the oysters, in which the pearls grow. ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the morning of the 17th was painful work, many of the men freezing their fingers while handling the horse equipments, harness, and tents. However, we got off in fairly good season, and kept to the trail along the Washita notwithstanding the frequent digging and bridging necessary to get ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... went on. Unconscious of trouble, the children dug and planted in their little gardens. Each new leaf and shoot was a wonder and a delight to them. Bertha's plants flourished less than the others, because of a habit she had of digging them all up daily to see how the roots were coming on; but, except for that, all went well, and the bluest of skies stretched itself over the heads of the small gardeners. In the City, where Papa's office was, the sky was not ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... hear a spade in the night and know that this spade is digging a grave! I sit at my desk and listen to hear if any one in the house has been aroused or is suspicious, and then I turn to the window and try to pierce the gloom to see if anything can be discerned, from the house, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... noble ladies and the leaders of the 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his wife from the west country are busy digging to make bricks for the kiln. Their little daughter goes to the landing-place by the river; there she has no end of scouring and scrubbing of pots and pans. Her little brother, with shaven head and brown, naked, mud- covered ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... reassured the wavering spirits both of soldiers and of chiefs. A priest of Marseilles, Peter Bartholomew, came and announced to the chiefs that St. Andrew had thrice appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Go into the church of my brother Peter at Antioch; and hard by the high altar thou wilt find, on digging up the ground, the head of the spear which pierced our Redeemer's side. That, carried in front of the army, will bring about the deliverance of the Christians." The appointed search was solemnly conducted under the eye of twelve reputable witnesses, priests and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lay, that was the day that Donn ('the Brown Bull') of Cualnge came into the land of Margine [1]to Sliab Culinn[1] and with him fifty heifers of the heifers [2]of Ulster;[2] and there he was pawing and digging up the earth in that place, [3]in the land of Margine, in Cualnge;[3] that is, he flung the turf over him with his heels. [4]While the hosts were marching over Mag Breg, Cuchulain in the meanwhile laid hands on their camps.[4] It was ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... "shem hamphorash," that is to say, "the name that is declaratory," and they say that David found it engraved on a stone while digging into the earth. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... and voices, Employ'd at once in several acts of malice! Old men not staid with age, virgins with shame, Late wives with loss of husbands, mothers of children, Losing all grief in joy of his sad fall, Run quite transported with their cruelty! These mounting at his head, these at his face, These digging out his eyes, those with his brains Sprinkling themselves, their houses and their friends; Others are met, have ravish'd thence an arm, And deal small pieces of the flesh for favours; These with a thigh, this hath ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... fastened? for Mariners for the most part are destitute of such long cables, whereby they may let downe an anker to the bottom of the maine sea, therfore vpon the backs of Whales, saith Munster. But then they had need first to bore a hole for the flouke to take hold in. O silly Mariners that in digging can not discern Whales flesh from lumps of earth, nor know the slippery skin of a Whale from the vpper part of the ground: with out doubt they are woorthy to haue Munster for a Pilot. Verily in this place (as likewise before treating of the land-miracles of Island) he gathereth fruits as ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... Yet these sepulchral mines have sometimes proved worth the digging. Sarmiento speaks of gold to the value of 100,000 castellanos, as occasionally buried with the Indian lords; (Relacion, Ms., cap. 57;) and Las Casas - not the best authority in numerical estimates - says that treasures worth more than half a million of ducats had been found, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... empty, and exposing a large surface of black mud studded with the stumps of old trees, and the stream from the sulphur spring rippling along merrily in a channel it had cut for itself through the broken portion of the dam. While two men were set to digging a new channel for this stream, so as to lead it through the sluice-way, and leave the place where the work was to be done free from water, the others began to cut down half a dozen tall pines, and hew them ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... and they pulled with all their might, but for a time it seemed doubtful if they could lift the professor out of the crevasse as, despite his leanness, he was a fairly heavy man. He aided them, however, by digging his heels in the wall of the crevasse as they hoisted and in ten minutes' time they were able to grasp his hands and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... forgive her, of course. Likewise he forgave his son-in-law. When the Captain returned to Bayport he brought the newly wedded pair with him. I was not present at that homecoming. I was away at prep school, digging at my examinations, trying hard to forget that I was an orphan, but with the dull ache caused by my mother's death always grinding at my heart. Many years ago she died, but the ache comes back now, as I think of her. There is more self-reproach in it than there used to be, more vain ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... beneath the Stars and Stripes, with my right foot at Colon and left foot at Panama, I watch the digging of the interocean canal, with the High Priest Roosevelt joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in eternal wedlock, where the commerce of the globe shall ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... their way and Jan had again gone back to his digging, a terrible sense of fear came over him. What if Eric's horse should shy? What if the parson should drop the child? What if the mistress of Falla should wrap too many shawls around the little girl, so she'd be smothered when they arrived ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... 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 ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... as if over a smoothly-cut plank. We had to sweat and toil there before we removed those rocks and hindrances, so one could go along nicely. The plowing goes nicely in a clear field. But nobody wants the task of digging out the rocks and hindrances. There is no such thing as earning the world's thanks. Even God cannot earn thanks, not with the sun, nor with heaven and earth, or even the death of his Son. It just is and remains as it is, in the ...
— An Open Letter on Translating • Gary Mann
... excursion home. I believe that Rip Van Winkle, however, confined himself to hunting mostly with an old musket that was on the retired list when Rip took his sleepy drink on the Catskills. If he could have gone with me fishing last week over the old trail, digging angle-worms at the same old place where I left the spade sticking in the grim soil twenty years ago—if we could have waded down the Kinnickinnick together with high rubber boots on, and got nibbles and bites at the same places, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... upon the walls until they had been overcome with despair, and then they had set to work digging with the only instruments at hand—the bayonets on ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... these Union boys, 32,000 of them, who died at Andersonville, could at any moment have obtained release by taking the oath not to renew arms against the South. Some few did escape by digging under the stockade—but what perils they endured to escape from the enemy's country! They slept in leaves by day, and travelled by night. They were pursued by bloodhounds, lay in water and swamps, with only their lips ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Chia She, Chia Chen, Chia Lien, Lai Ta, Lai Sheng, Lin Chih-hsiao, Wu Hsin-teng, Chan Kuang, Ch'eng Jih-hsing and several others to allot the sites, to set things in order, (and to look after) the heaping up of rockeries, the digging of ponds, the construction of two-storied buildings, the erection of halls, the plantation of bamboos and the cultivation of flowers, everything connected with the improvement of the scenery devolving, on the other hand, upon Shan Tzu-yeh to make provision for, and after leaving Court, he ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... his doctor (Grayson). I shall be mighty sorry to leave here, where we have so many friends, but my hope is to get enough to buy a place in California, one of these days, and settle down to the normal life of digging a bit in the soil and then digging a bit in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Melodramatic music accompanies their preparation, and their conversation while at work forms a duet. Sustained trombone tones spread a portentous atmosphere, and a contra-bassoon adds weight and solemnity to the motif which describes the labor of digging:— ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... above the Hudson, stood the powerful fortress called Fort Washington. Describing these works more in detail, the first of the three lines, that furthest south, was the one already referred to on which troops were digging during the action of Harlem Heights. It extended along the line of One Hundred and Forty-sixth Street. The second line, which was much stronger, was laid out a short distance above at One Hundred and Fifty-third Street. There were four redoubts ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... point is, What remedies can be used to prevent the ravages of the borers? The usual means of fighting the borers is, to seek after them in the burrows, and try to kill them by digging them out, or by reaching them with a wire. This seems to be the most effectual method of dealing with them after they have once entered the tree, but the orchardist should endeavor to prevent the insects from entering the tree. For this purpose, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... gave a loud howl, nearly upsetting Polly from her stone; then, digging his two fists into his eyes, he plunged forward and thrust his black head on the folded hands in her lap. "I ain't naughty," he screamed. "I ain't, and ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... many words, but you knew I meant it, and but for a quixotic scruple of yours we should have been married. I remember asking you what we were making ourselves miserable about, since we both cared so much. It was at Versailles, the last time we walked together, and we had stopped, and I was digging little round holes in the road with my parasol. I'm not going to ask you again to marry me, so there is no reason in the world why you should behave differently to me if you have fallen in love with ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... stopped writing because dictating is pleasanter work, and because dictating has given me a strong aversion to the pen, and because two hours of talking per day is enough, and because—But I am only damaging my mind with this digging around in it for pretexts where no pretext is needed, and where the simple truth is for this one time better than any invention, in this small emergency. I shall never finish my five or six unfinished books, for the reason that by forty years of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... here were the ruins of a real city, and fresh ruins, too. Still curling up from the church was smoke from the burning rafters, and over there the hungry dogs, and the stragglers mournfully digging something out of the ruins. However preposterous it seemed, none the less it was a city that yesterday ran high with the tide of human life. And thousands of people, when they recall the lights and shadows, ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... 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 to be minded ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... ghastly distinctness the monuments and headstones of the cemetery and seemed to set them dancing. It was not a night in which any credible witness was likely to be straying about a cemetery, so the three men who were there, digging into the grave of Henry Armstrong, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... vulnerable and where the barbarians were going to make the assault with their engine of war. But far on in the night the enemy, perceiving what was being done, charged at full speed against those who were digging, and John went inside the fortifications with the Isaurians, since the trench was now in a most ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... lamentations, which grew louder and louder, as of one in great distress. "Oh! unworthy sinner that I am, let every man exert himself to remedy this misfortune!" a stifled voice was heard to cry out, as a crowd, having gathered round a pit, where some workmen had been digging for a well, discovered no less a person at the bottom, half buried in sand and water, than Major Roger Potter. "Peace, good man, and thy misfortune shall be remedied soon," said the Orthodox clergyman, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... told of it by Bibb. They first saw him in May, 1838. Mrs. Path remembers this date because it was the month in which she removed from Broadway to Harrison street, and Bibb assisted her to remove. Mrs. Path's garden adjoined Dundy's back yard. While engaged in digging up flowers, she was addressed by Bibb, who was staying with Dundy, and who offered to dig them up for her. She hired him to do it. Mrs. Dundy shortly after called over and told Mrs. Path that he was a slave. After that Mrs. Path took him into her house and concealed him. While concealed, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... They think of me now as one of themselves, and stay the night with me when they pass through Melihovo. Add to that, that we have bought ourselves a new comfortable covered carriage, have made a new road, so that now we don't drive through the village. We are digging a pond.... Anything else? In fact hitherto everything has been new and interesting, but how it will be later on, I don't know. There is snow already, it is cold, but I don't feel drawn to Moscow. So far I have not had ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... subscription, in which persons of all political parties joined. The preparation of the statue was delayed by the revolution in Italy, which placed Victor Emanuel on the Italian throne. While the quarrymen at Carrara were digging out the block of marble of which the figure was to be sculptured, they were roused by shouts of "Liberty," coupled with the name of Garibaldi, and they left their work to join the banner of that victorious leader. In front of the statue is the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Winter, and frequently the Weser breaks down some of the Dikes, and overflows all the Country round; and every Time the River overflows its Banks, the Cellars of all the new Town, and of that Part of the old Town next the River, are filled with Water. All the Year round, on digging two or three Feet deep into the Ground, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... almost raised trench digging to the level of a fine art, and on every occasion when their commandants have found it necessary to withdraw they have had an entrenched position ready for them at some distance in the rear. At Modder River the ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... mountain every day. My daughter said she had not; but, woe is me, she was soon to hear enough of him. For one morning, before sunrise, as she came down into the wood on her way back from her forbidden digging after amber, she heard a woodpecker (which, no doubt, was old Lizzie herself), crying so dolefully, close beside her, that she went in among the bushes to see what was the matter. There was the woodpecker, sitting on ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... out of the nest, excepting on particular occasions, such as the migrations of the ants, and when one of the working columns or nests is attacked, they then come stalking up, and attack the enemy with their strong jaws. Sometimes, when digging into the burrows, one of these giants has unperceived climbed up my dress, and the first intimation of his presence has been the burying of his jaws in my neck, from which he would not fail to draw blood. The stately observant ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... tied a string to your blind, because I knew I could go in and draw it up when you were practising. But I didn't mean to do any harm; and when Mrs. Florence was so mad, and changed your room, I was real sorry," moaned Bella, digging her knuckles ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... poets, he is sometimes at his worst—the truth of life seems rather obstinately warped. Why should legitimate love necessarily bring misery, and illegitimate passion produce permanent happiness? And in the piece, "Ah, are you digging on my grave?" pessimism approaches a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of any distinction, but in his desire to please Geth, took pains to prepare Cuddy for his death and burial. Gething was still at the big house although it was four o'clock and the men on Break-Neck Hill were busy with their digging. Willet called ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... fully concurred in by Colonel Totten and others of his staff, and orders were issued for digging the trenches and the establishment of batteries. Very soon all outposts and sentries of the enemy were driven in. General Scott had warned the foreign consuls in the city of his proposed attack and had furnished them safe conducts out of the city, but they had not ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... commandments, nor below the surface of his acts, or he would not have answered so jauntily. He had yet to learn that the height of 'goodness' is reached, not by adding some strange new performances to the threadbare precepts of everyday duty, but by digging deep into these, and bottoming the fabric of our lives on their inmost spirit. He had yet to learn that whoever says, 'All these have I kept,' thereby convicts himself of understanding neither them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... with a palace, a forum, a race-course, and a large synagogue. But to strict Jews the place was unclean, because it was defiled with Roman idols, and because its builders had polluted themselves by digging up the bones of the dead. Herod could get few Jews to live in his city, and it became a catch-all for the off-scourings of the land, people of all creeds and none, aliens, mongrels, soldiers of fortune, and citizens of the high-road. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... and I took the easier path. I am considering your interests as much as my own, Lola. She is about to marry Monte Irvin, and if his suspicions were aroused he is quite capable of digging ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the day for digging up records," he said in a low voice. "Here is one that may interest you and save time and money. What Mapleson says about Ferdinand Melrose is true. We'll pass by the motives I had in sending Phil East, and some other ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... because they can't have them. Where they are abundant, they are impoverished by the prices they pay for them. The Terryalt system, in the south, originated in the gentlemen farmers refusing to break up their land, and in the people assembling in mobs, digging the ground, thereby rendering it unfit for pasture, and compelling the owners to let it for potatoes. It may be said, how could they avoid doing this? They had no land to raise potatoes on, and they must have them or die. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... promote branching of the roots. The stocks must grow two years from seed to attain a diameter permitting of patch budding and must remain one or two years more to allow the scion to form a tree. The resulting plant is large in both root and stem and requires careful handling in digging, shipping, and planting in the permanent location. The vicissitudes which befall the production of the northern hickories are often so great as to discourage nurserymen who otherwise would grow them. This is an unfortunate fact ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... spring was late, the water was not off so that I could plant till the 21st of June, and so till the 26th we planted, and you never saw so much corn in any part of the States to the acre as I have got, and wheat and everything to the greatest perfection. I wonder how you and my Friends can prefer digging among the Stones and paying Rates to an easy life in this country. Last year I sold beef, pork and mutton more than I wanted for my family for three hundred Pounds, besides two colts for forty pounds apiece. A few days ago I sold four colts before they ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... but generally no attempt is made to take along the dressed stone of the foundations. The cost of hauling to the new site is out of proportion to the advantage gained. Native stones uncovered in digging the new cellar are made reasonably square and used instead. Old houses antedating 1800 are not usually over twelve or sixteen inches above the level of the ground and so ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... lamp posts are all down, and this once charming spot presents a most melancholy appearance. I found a crowd looking over the wall of the wharf beside the bridge. I looked over and found a number of labourers digging a huge square grave in which to bury some 25 Insurgents, who lay mangled ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... Cooky's fire shovel, and a few other iron implements which he converted into tools, devoted himself to the production of a fruit and vegetable garden in the immediate neighbourhood of our cave dwelling, clearing away all the scrub which grew around and choked some two dozen fruit trees, digging and hoeing up the soil, and planting therein every potato, onion, and bean that we could find for him among the cook's stores aboard the ship. And while he and we were busy in the manner described, Cunningham rescued a few sheets of paper and some lead pencils from ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... throat. Not so, however, for as the lithe, spotted form darted through the grass the antelope rose from the ground, as though shot into the air by a powerful spring, descending fair and square upon its enemy's back, its four sharp-pointed hoofs digging viciously through the spotted hide and extorting a scream of mingled rage and pain from the astonished assailant; and then, so quickly that the eye could hardly follow the movement, a second vigorous leap landed the antelope fully twenty feet ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... know exactly, your honor, but I hears as how Jem Ninnings, digging for stone for the limekiln, have dug ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inverted, to tell where a well should be sunk with a certainty of finding water. The process was simply to walk about with the twig thus held, and when the right place was reached, the forked twig would turn downwards, however firmly held; and on the strength of this, digging would be commenced in the place indicated. A curious feature about this was that there were but very few in whose hands the experiment would work, and hence the water discoverer was a person of some repute. I never myself witnessed the performance, but it was of common occurrence. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... ceremonies. Passionately fond of rowing, driving, horse-breeding, and the rearing of dogs, his ordinary occupations were those of the athlete or the artisan. He was skilful with his hands, and an excellent mechanic, proficient at the anvil and the forge, and proud of his skill in digging ditches and thatching roofs. Interested in music, and devoted to play-acting, he was badly educated, taking the coronation oath in the French form provided for a king ignorant of Latin. Vain, irritable, and easily moved to outbursts ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... rise to the south, we come to the Alton Road, lined with good houses, and a little to the west the Bessborough Road falls into it, and runs through a favourite residential district built up with fine dwellings. Here the hollows made by gravel-digging on the edge of the heath are being, in a measure, filled up with earth from the building going on near by, and opposite The Elms, on the brow of the common, a peculiar tomblike building is noticed. This is merely a spring-house covering the artesian well that supplies the drinking-fountain in the ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... European races now engaged in working the mines of California sink under the burning heat and sudden changes of the climate to which the African race are altogether better adapted. The production of rice, sugar, and cotton, is no better adapted to slave-labor than the digging, washing, and ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... possession of everything even as high as heaven.' Our friends in Dixie seem determined to prove that they have also fee simple in their soil downwards as far as the other place, and by the last advices were digging their own graves to an extent which will soon bring them to the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... imply that wood-cutting, digging, stone-breaking, and a hundred other daily tasks should only be performed during seven hours. Indeed not. There will be fourteen hours of labor, work being done in shifts of three and a half hours. The organization of all this will be military in character; there will be commands, ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... begin digging here?" called one of the men, whose eyes, nose, and mouth were all that was ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... usual day's work (300 cane-holes) by five 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 are now worth L10,000. Another writer, quoted by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Bacon had made a quick march on Jamestown and had surprised his enemies there. His force, however, was so small that he set to work immediately constructing earthworks around his camp. While his men were digging, "by several small partyes of horse (2 or 3 in a party, for more he could not spare) he fetcheth into his little league, all the prime men's wives, whose husbands were with the Governour, (as Coll. Bacons ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... country gave way to the sand, water became scarcer and scarcer, until it could only be obtained in small quantities by digging deep in the bone-dry bed of ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... that place, and without mangroves. We did not find water there, but, as there were a few blacks almost always in that neighbourhood, I have no doubt that there is some surface water, or that it is easily procured by digging.) ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... was a little child," said Singing Bird. "One time when my father's tribe was hunting, we came to a place where a lot of white men were digging in the sands of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... lip?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and began to peel a rutabaga, and his upper lip hung down over his teeth, and was covered with something that looked like shoemaker's wax, "You look as though you had been digging potatoes with ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... The second party then says, "Work away!" whereupon all the players in the first party proceed to imitate some occupation in which an old woman might engage, and which they have previously agreed on among themselves, such as sewing, sweeping, knitting, digging a garden, chopping wood, kneading bread, stirring cake, washing, ironing, etc. The opposite party tries to guess from this pantomime the occupation indicated. Should they guess correctly, they have a turn to perform in the same ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... planks wofully shrunk with the sun, and though much stove forward, more especially to larboard, yet its main timbers looked sound enough. Then, too, it lay none so far from high-water mark and despite its size and bulk I thought that by digging a channel I might bring water sufficient to float it, could I but make good the breakage ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... later all six were frantically digging, hoeing, chopping, beating in a frenzy against the spread of the flames. In some manner the fire had jumped the line. It might have been that early in the fight a spark had lodged. As long as the darkness of night held down the temperature, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... not likely to decrease the distaste, which results from comparisons to our own disadvantage. It is, therefore, scarcely to be wondered at, that those nearest to the throne should be least attached to those who fill it. How little do such persons think that the grave they are thus insensibly digging may prove their own! In this case it only did not by a miracle. What the effect of the royal brothers' and the nobility's remaining in France would have been we can only conjecture. That their departure caused, great and irreparable evils we know; and we have good reason ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Moderns, it was a disadvantage they could not help; but desired them to consider whether that injury (if it be any) were not largely recompensed by the shade and shelter it afforded them. That as to the levelling or digging down, it was either folly or ignorance to propose it if they did or did not know how that side of the hill was an entire rock, which would break their tools and hearts, without any damage to itself. That they would therefore advise the Moderns rather to raise their own side ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... an international service equal in importance to one performed during his consulship, for which he has recently received the cross of the Legion of Honor. In laying out their new concession at Shanghai, the French had excited the hostility of the people by digging up and levelling down many of those graves that occupied so much space outside of the city walls, and where the Chinese who worshipped their ancestors were to be seen every day burning paper and heaping up the earth. A furious mob fell ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... for forty or fifty miles an end. In the low grounds and islands in the river there are cypress, bay-trees, poplar, plane, frankincense or gum-trees, and aquatic shrubs. All part of the province are well watered; and, in digging a moderate depth, you never miss of a ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... of Hilton Head by the Northern armies caused the greatest consternation in the cities of Charleston and Savannah, From both places people fled into the interior, expecting an immediate advance of the Union troops. But the armies were set to digging, not to marching, and soon the affrighted citizens returned to their homes. Port Royal was held by the Northern forces until the end of the war, and proved of great value for the proper maintenance of the blockade. Its greatest disadvantage was its unhealthiness. Of fifteen thousand ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Naples and all that belongs to it. The rich young Englishman is ignorant of the language, and the interpreter who assists him knows nothing of the sea. He is at his wits' end for want of useful help in this strange place; he has no more knowledge of the world than that child who is digging holes with a stick there in the sand; and he carries all his money with him in circular notes. So much for the person. As for the risk, estimate it ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... you and your science!" cried the old man, now thoroughly aroused. "If you hadn't been poking about up there, and digging your sneezing-horn in everywhere, the glacier would have kept quiet, as it has done before, as far back as man's memory goes. I knew at once that mischief was brewing when you and your black Satan came here with your pocket-furnaces, and your long-legged gazing-tubes, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and wounded, but drove back the Mahrattas on their main body, which kept on retreating slowly for several days, contesting every inch of the ground until they reached Panipat. Here the camp was finally pitched in and about the town, and the position was at once covered by digging a trench sixty feet wide and twelve deep, with a rampart on which the guns were mounted. The Shah took up ground four miles to the south, protecting his position by abattis of felled timber, according to his usual practice, but pitching in front a small unprotected tent ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... get it done by Spring," said Red Nose Mike. He had been giving Lazybones some instructions about digging sweet potatoes, which he had offered to pay ...
— The Chickens of Fowl Farm • Lena E. Barksdale
... there's a chance," he said, dully. "I was a fool to think there was any better God than the one that"—digging his toe into the frozen pools. "It's all ruled. I'm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... June night in 1917. If the 7th Manchesters, and not only the 7th, but the 5th, 6th and 8th as well will allow me to say so, I did not enjoy the same complete confidence as to the result before and during the night in question. The operation consisted of digging a complete new front line trench, a mile long, on the whole Brigade Sector, five hundred yards in advance of the existing front line, and half way across No Man's Land. June nights are short and it needed practically the whole brigade to get the job done in time. We ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... Montdidier's sudden disappearance. The dog was accordingly followed, and was seen to come to a pause on some newly-turned-up earth, where it set up the most mournful wailings and howlings. These cries were so touching, that passengers were attracted; and finally digging into the ground at the spot, they found there the body of Aubry de Montdidier. It was raised and conveyed to Paris, where it was soon afterwards interred in one of ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse |
