"Digs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dirty hole That painful animal a Mole: Above ground never born to go, What mighty stir it keeps below? To make a molehill all this strife! It digs, pukes, undermines for life. How proud a little dirt to spread! Conscious of nothing o'er its head. 'Till lab'ring on, for want of eyes, It blunders ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... tube, the shaman goes into the forest to a tree which has been struck by lightning. At its base he digs a hole, in the bottom of which he puts a large yellow stone slab. He then puts in the tube, together with seven yellow pebbles, fills in the earth, and finally builds a fire over the spot to destroy all traces of his work. The yellow stones are ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... seems to be, and the fickle goddess will perhaps remain faithful to him longer than to many others, for he is busy from early till late, and is his father's right-hand. At least he won't fall into one of the pits Fate digs for mortals." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... information about the habits of these turtles. They invariably lay their eggs during the night. In the evening they may be seen with their heads above water, eager for the moment of the sun's setting; then, directly it is dark, they land and commence operations. The animal first digs a hole, three feet in diameter and four in depth, with its hind feet, which are very long, and furnished with crooked claws. So anxious is it to lay its eggs that it often descends into a hole that ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... always, witnessed the following: when once the Bee realises the shortcomings of the unfinished nest, she begins to gnaw the clay lid closing one of the adjoining cells. She softens a part of the mortar cover with saliva and patiently, atom by atom, digs through the hard wall. It is very slow work. A good half-hour elapses before the tiny cavity is large enough to admit a pin's head. I wait longer still. Then I lose patience; and, fully convinced that the Bee is trying to open the store-room, I decide to help her to shorten the work. The ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Power I have 'joyed, in sooth, but not the name. Thou smilest, Thurlow. Ah, thou little know'st What hole it is Ambition digs i' th' heart What end, most seeming empty, is the mark For which we fret and toil and dare! How hard With an unrounded fortune to sit down! Then, what a lustre from most ancient times Heaven has flung o'er the sacred head ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... "Indian turnip" (psoralea esculenta), he may be seen tearing up the earth with his claws, and leaving it turned into furrows—as if a drove of hogs had been "rooting" the ground. On the bottoms of the streams he also digs up the "kamas" root (camassia esculenta), the "yampah," (anethum graveolens), the "kooyah" (Valeriana edulis), and the root of a species of thistle (circium virginianum). Many species of fruits and berries furnish him with an occasional meal; and ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... at the expense of man, wipes out the fundamental difference of true and false, calls bad "good in the making," and virtually extinguishes the sense of duty and the permanence of personality? And how the denial of all possible knowledge of the absolute digs away the only foundation on which sanity can establish a religion, and then palms off material comfort as the proper ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... shows us a man who is thus seeking. He has heard that in old times a great treasure was hidden in a particular field. So he digs away patiently in various places until, at last, he finds out that what he heard is quite true. He is sure the treasure is there; and his desire is to become possessed of the field, so that he may obtain the buried riches. He is willing to sell all that he has if by so doing he may buy ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous
... is properly an incarnation of the fiend of destruction. Every part of its legitimate work is to destroy. If it constructs bridges and builds roads, erects forts and digs trenches, these are all that it may destroy, or prevent some other incarnation from destroying it. Armies lay waste and destroy. Cornfields, orchards, lawns, life, and treasure are all prey for ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... to get to the top in this here prize rube burg, provided he has now gumption and his methods is new. I'll see you to-morrow night and let you know how I made out; I know you won't have no peace till you hear about it!" He digs into his pockets feverishly and grabs out a handful of letters. "Here's what they thought of me up in Vermont!" he goes on, never takin' his eyes off the girl's face. The wife is starin' at him with her mouth and eyes as open as a crap tourney, like she figured he'd gone nutty—and me and Little ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... reminder is wise, like that which they give to the suff'rer Who has had his dwelling burnt down, that under the ruins, Gold and silver are lying, though melted and cover'd with ashes. Little, indeed, it may be, and yet that little is precious, And the poor man digs it up, and rejoices at finding the treasure. Gladly, therefore, I turn my thoughts to those few worthy actions Which my memory still is able to dwell on with pleasure. Yes, I will not deny it, I saw late foemen uniting So as to save the town from ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... scorns the verdant meads and flow'ry fields: Then dances jocund o'er the watery way, While the breeze whispers, and the streamers play: Unbounded prospects in his bosom roll, And future millions lift his rising soul; In blissful dreams he digs the golden mine, And raptur'd sees the new-found ruby shine. Joys insincere! thick clouds invade the skies, Loud roar the billows, high the waves arise; Sick'ning with fear, he longs to view the shore, And vows to trust the faithless deep no more. So the young Authour, panting after fame, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... course I need not remind you that our Lord here is not beginning at the very beginning of everything; for prior to all men's love to Christ is Christ's love to men, and ours to Him is but the reflection and the echo called forth by His to us. 'We love Him because He first loved us' digs a story deeper down in the building than the words of my text, which is speaking, not of the process by which a man comes to receive the love of God for the first time, but of the process by which a Christian man grows in his possession of it. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... delusion which it was so easy to dissipate and the effects of which must be so terrible, where is the excuse of Providence? Is it not true that grace failed man here? God, whom faith represents as a tender father and a prudent master, abandons us to the fatality of our incomplete conceptions; he digs the ditch under our feet; he causes us to move blindly: and then, at every fall, he punishes us as rascals. What do I say? It seems as if it were in spite of him that at last, covered with bruises from our journey, we recognize our road; as if we offended his glory ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... say!" he hissed in dark passion. "You've gone too far, Gulden. Here's where I call you!... You don't get a gram of that gold nugget. Jim's worked like a dog. If he digs up a million I'll see he gets it all. Maybe you loafers haven't a hunch what Jim's done for you. He's helped our big deal more than you or I. His honest work has made it easy for me to look honest. He's supposed to be engaged to marry my daughter. That more than anything was a blind. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... He sometimes performs remarkable journeys, but ordinarily he is outstripped by a good dog team. Reindeer have the advantage of finding their food under the snow, while provision for dogs must be carried on the sledge. When turned out in winter, the deer digs beneath the snow and seeks his food without troubling his master. The American sailors when they have liberty on shore in these northern regions, invariably indulge in reindeer rides, to the disgust of the animals and ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the rasping of blades against the scabbards, three or four closely following digs into the soft sandy ground, with our horses' muscles quivering beneath us, and then we were off at full speed, tearing after the outposts, which had wheeled round and galloped back, while with our sabres at the ready ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... "Who digs a well, or plants a seed, A sacred pact he keeps with sun and sod; With these he helps refresh and feed The world, and ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... leading part, but the imp, as Scott remarked to Miss Seward, "by the natural baseness of his propensities contrived to slink downstairs into the kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in The Monastery (1830)—a boisterous creature who rides on horseback, splashes through streams and digs a grave—was wisely withdrawn in the sequel, The Abbot. In the Introduction ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... section of the size of a whole universe. This effect of the introduction of this force is as that of the blowing of a mighty breath; it has formed within this aether an incalculable number of tiny spherical bubbles, [The bubbles are spoken of in The Secret Doctrine as the holes which Fohat digs in space.] and these bubbles are the ultimate atoms of which what we call matter is composed. They are not the atoms of the chemist, nor even the ultimate atoms of the physical world. They stand at a far ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... to see the flowers grow, To see the pansies in a row; I think a well-kept garden's fine, And wish that such a one were mine; But one can't have a stock of flowers Unless he digs ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... should not be sought to be crossed which is really uncrossable. That should not be snatched from the foe which the foe would be able to recover. One should not seek to dig at all if by digging one would not succeed in getting at the root of the thing for which one digs. One should never strike him whose head one would not cut off. A king should not always act in this way. This course of conduct that I have laid down should be pursued only in seasons of distress. Inspired by the motive of doing thee good I have said this for instructing thee ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... during which an animated conversation was kept up on all sides. From Scotch to Irish is but a handsbreadth. The Tweed, several fathoms wide, digs a deeper trench between Scotland and England than the twenty leagues of Irish Channel, which separates Old Caledonia from the Emerald Isle. Paddy O'Moore related his history. It was that of all emigrants driven ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... season, as full of hope as before, but only to be disappointed. Each time he goes to a new place in the mountains where he digs and delves, so members of the parties he hires tell me, but with no success. He carries with him something in a small iron box, and, whatever this is, he consults it from time to time. It may be directions for finding whatever he is after. But there ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... produce the best quality of tortoise-shell. It is strange that the habits of these creatures down here in the Caribbean Sea should so closely resemble those of the tiny tortoises described by Thoreau as frequenting Walden Pond. The female turtle digs the hole in which to deposit her eggs on the sandy beach, just above the margin of high tide, generally choosing a moonlight night for the purpose. The hole is often so large that the turtle will require an hour ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Oline digs down and down in the snow, and finds no ax. Manage without, then—and she strains at the tree to lift it where it lies, but with no more strength than a child; she can but shake the branches here and there. Tries for the ax again—it ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... but must fix his eye on the bright particular star of Justice, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. To him, office, money, social rank, and fame are but toys or counters which the game of life is played withal; while wisdom, integrity, benevolence, piety are the prizes the game is for. He digs through the dazzling sand, and bids men build on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... tooth of a bear on the bottom. By thrusting this into the snow he can tell whether the layers deposited by successive winds are separated by bands of soft snow, which would cause the blocks to break. When the snow is selected, he digs a pit to the depth of eighteen inches or two feet, and about the length of the snow-block. He then steps down into the pit and proceeds to cut out the blocks by first cutting down at the ends of the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... "If he digs round as fast on land as he does in the water there's goin' to be a circus when we get him out on the bank," said ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... has not spun greatness into your destiny, be sure that it does not matter. The reward of Cecil Rhodes was in the thing he did, and not in the memory which men have of it. The man who digs a well has precisely the same reward. The point is that you must do the deed for the deed's sake. Do not do it because the crowd will clap their hands. When present applause or ultimate fame become your chief purpose in life, what are you, after all? You are a play-actor—that is ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... swear the scratches were not there when I went away. If you didn't tell me yourself the car hadn't been used much I'd stake my oath it had had a great deal of knocking about while I was gone. Look here, Mr. Tolman! Look at that, and that, and that—great digs in the paint as if people with boots on ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... revenue officer had disappeared one day and never been heard of again. He had been surprised—by the free-traders—perhaps in the very act of surprising them—brought over to L'Etat in a boat, been dragged through the tunnel, or made to crawl through, perhaps, with vicious knife-digs in the rear, and had been left bound in the darkness till he should be otherwise disposed of. His captors had been captured in turn, or maybe killed, and he had lain there alone and in the dark, waiting, waiting for them to return, shouting ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of habitation, or resort.] Abode — N. abode, dwelling, lodging, domicile, residence, apartment, place, digs, pad, address, habitation, where one's lot is cast, local habitation, berth, diggings, seat, lap, sojourn, housing, quarters, headquarters, resiance^, tabernacle, throne, ark. home, fatherland; country; homestead, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... man of dress have their heads filled with a fox or a horse-race, a feather or a ball; and live in ignorance of every thing beside, with as much content as he that heaps up gold, or solicits preferment, digs the field, or beats the anvil; and some yet lower in the ranks of intellect, dream out their days without pleasure or business, without joy or sorrow, nor ever rouse from their lethargy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... keen she was to come to the wild, wonderful west, of how she thinks that "one crowded hour of glorious life" is worth a whole leaden existence. That reminds her of her graduating essay, which she digs out of the trunk, tied with baby-blue ribbon. "One Crowded Hour" was her burning topic, but her hours and days and years have been crowded only with homely toil and poverty ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... than a genius is Mrs. Hungerford at gardening. Her dress protected by a pretty holland apron, her hands encased in brown leather gloves, she digs and delves. Followed by many children, each armed with one of 'mother's own' implements—for she has her own little spade and hoe, and rake, and trowel, and fork—she plants her own seeds, and pricks her own seedlings, prunes, grafts, and watches with the deepest eagerness ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... which the mesquite twigs flourish greenly. Fifteen or twenty feet under the drift, where it seems no rain could penetrate, the main trunk grows, attaining often a yard's thickness, resistant as oak. In Shoshone Land one digs for large timber; that is in the southerly, sandy exposures. Higher on the table-topped ranges low trees of juniper and pinon stand each apart, rounded and spreading heaps of greenness. Between them, but each to itself in smooth clear spaces, tufts of tall ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... An alluvial field is where you can dig out gold with a pick and shovel and wash it out with a pannikin. You don't want any machines, and everybody digs for himself, or mates with other fellows, and if you want a man to do a job you've got to pay him as much as he could dig for himself in ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... falling; but so perverted are the eye and the heart of every sinner that the city watchman has become a partaker with thieves, and our trusted guide and guardian a traitor and a knave. If thine eye, therefore, offends thee; if it places a stone or a tree in thy way in a dark night; if it digs a deep ditch right across thy way home; if it in any way leads thee astray, or lets in upon thee thine enemies—then, surely, thou wert better to be without that eye altogether. Pluck it out, then; or, what is still harder to go on all your days doing, pluck the evil thing out of ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... growing youth between sixteen and eighteen there is a bit of the soul of Hamlet. Don't ask him to understand the war! (All right for you men, who have had your fill!) He has all he can do to understand life and forgive its existence. As a rule he digs himself in with his dream and with the arts, until the time comes when he has got used to his incarnation, and the grub has achieved its agonizing passage from larva to winged insect. What a need he has for peace and meditation during ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... men lose money in railway speculations nowadays. We sank him, and that was the last of it. After he had towed us I don't know how far-out of sight of the ship at any rate,—he suddenly stopped, and we pulled up and gave him some tremendous digs with the lances, until he spouted jets of blood, and we made sure of him, when, all at once, down he went head foremost like a cannon-ball, and took all the line out of both boats, so we had to cut, and he never came up again. At least, if he did, it became ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... some of the mounds, the investigator finds they are made of the fallen walls of great adobe buildings, and as he digs deeper he finds rooms of various dimensions, and which, in many instances, have cemented walls and floors. In one instance there were found the impressions of a baby's feet and hands, made, presumably, as the child had ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... his poison he goes into the forest in quest of the ingredients. A vine grows in these wilds which is called wourali. It is from this that the poison takes its name, and it is the principal ingredient. When he has procured enough of this he digs up a root of a very bitter taste, ties them together, and then looks about for two kinds of bulbous plants which contain a green and glutinous juice. He fills a little quake which he carries on his back with the stalks of these; and lastly ranges up and down till he finds two species of ants. One ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... who has a private ghost of his own does the same in his own sacred place. About two months afterwards there is another public sacrifice when the root crops generally have been dug; pig or fish is then offered; and a man who digs up his yams, or whatever it may be, offers ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... again! She digs her fingers into my throat! Hold her hands! Hold her hands! She will be ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I thought it would be a short one, but it is surprising how, when one digs into his memory, the smallest details of a scene that was interesting at the time, shall by degrees come to light again. I now recall, as if I had seen and heard them yesterday, the looks and words of eighteen years ago. Awakening between six and seven next morning, I heard Scott's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... road is usually only wide enough for a couple of coolies to pass, and in this province, as it is often necessary (especially in the Yuen-nan-fu district) for one cart to pass another, the farmer, to prevent trespass on his crops, digs around them deep ditches, resembling those which are dug for the reception of gas mains. In the rainy season the fields are drained into the roads, which at times are constantly under water, and beyond Yuen-nan-fu, on my way to Tali-fu, I often found it easier and more ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... salvation of his soul digs a well. It would be a pleasant thing if each of us left a school, a well, or something like that, so that life should not pass away into eternity without ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... house or lodging-place in the middle of the net, well contrived for warmth, security, or concealment. There is a large spider in South America, who constructs nets of so strong a texture as to entangle small birds, particularly the humming bird. And in Jamaica there is another spider, who digs a hole in the earth obliquely downwards, about three inches in length, and one inch in diameter, this cavity she lines with a tough thick web, which when taken out resembles a leathern purse: but what is most curious, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... till you are satisfied." Again: "Has Douglas the exclusive right in this country to be on all sides of all questions?" Again: "The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle." Again: "Douglas shirks the responsibility of pulling the national house down, but he digs under it, that it may fall of its ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... which tarnishes whatever it touches; which exercises its fury on the good grain equally as on the chaff, on the profane as on the sacred; which, wherever it passes, leaves only desolation and ruin; digs even into the bowels of the earth, and fixes itself on things the most hidden; turns into vile ashes what only a moment before had appeared to us so precious and brilliant; acts with more violence and danger than ever, in the time when it was apparently smothered up and almost ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... business is lively, and both governors and governed rejoice. But the more they work to-day, the more idle will they be hereafter; the more they laugh, the more they shall weep. Under the rule of property, the flowers of industry are woven into none but funeral wreaths. The laborer digs his ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... talkin' around that Bud Shoop is a fighter, with a record for gettin' what he goes after. And that this same Bud Shoop is as honest as the day is long. Now, I've seen some mighty short days when I was tradin' hosses. And then this here stingin' lizard goes to work and digs up my deputy number over to Sterling and sets the papers to printin' as how it was me, with the help of a few parties whose names are of no special int'rest, ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... real attitude toward church and school. While Mark Twain is determined to present life faithfully as he sees it, he dislikes as much as any Puritan to see evil triumph. In his stories, wrongdoing usually digs ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... form, seeking him, but failing to see what lies nearly under their feet. They pass on, talking of the night's startling event. Cushing dares not rise again. Yet the swamp must be gained, and speedily. Still flat on his back, he digs his heels into the soft earth, and pushes himself inch by inch through the rushes, until, with a warm heart-throb of hope, he feels the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... bear lives in a region infested only by small game, such as rabbits, wood-mice, ants and grubs, and when he cannot get a meal by turning over flat rocks or stripping the bark from a decaying tree, he digs roots for a living. He is not accustomed to battle and he is not a killer, and he may be timorous in the presence of man. Another Grizzly haunts the cattle or sheep ranges and is accustomed to seeing men and beasts flee before him for their lives. He lives by the strong arm, takes ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... He looks older than you," Bella declared harshly. "You sit down and keep quiet; that's the best you can do; and for God's sake don't look so scared. There's a grave outside to show them, and nobody digs up a six-year-old grave. They won't find Hugh. Nobody's ever seen him. Don't shake so, Sylvie. They may not even be after him; this country has sheltered other outlaws, you know. Hush! I hear them. I'll be in the kitchen. Pete, be taking ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... by preaching both heaven and hell in their fitten places, what's a thing this younger generation don't know how to do any more, it seems like. A sermon that sets up heaven like a circus tent, with a come-sinner-come-all sign, and digs hell no deeper than Mill Creek swimming pool, as is skeercely over a boy's middle, ain't no sermon at all to my mind. Most preaching in ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... saying. "He always eats. And when I take him for a walk in the park, he digs up bones that other dogs have buried, and carries them home with him. We look very disreputable." The Crown Prince laughed with delight, but just then Nikky saw Hedwig, and his own ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the cotton wool most times. We know where Fortune has got a lot of it put away. Iris does not think it quite right to steal, but the rest of us don't mind. And we have banners, and Orion plays the Jew's harp, and I beat the drum, and Iris sings, and Apollo digs the grave, and the dead 'un is put into the ground, and we all cry, or pretend to cry. Sometimes I do squeeze out a tiny tear, but I'm so incited I can't always manage it, although I'm sure I'll cry when Rub-a-Dub is put into the ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... a chimbly an' a po'ch wha' I kin sot cans er jewraniums an' a box er portulac! I been a dreamin' 'bout sech a house all my life, Miss Judy. Sometimes when I is fo'ced ter sleep in the ca'ige, when Miss Ann an' me air a visitin' wha' things air kinder crowded like, I digs me up a little flower an' plants it in a ol' can an' kinder makes out my coachman's box air a po'ch. Miss Judy, it air a sad thing ter git ter be ol' an' wo' out 'thout ever gittin' what you wanted when ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... says he sees no such monstrous sin. I inquire if this is really a promise to me? He repeats that it is a promise, and resumes digging. My contribution to the labour is that of directing the light constantly upon the hole. When he has reached something more than a foot deep he digs more cautiously, saying that, be it much or little there, it will not lie far below the surface; such things never are deep. A few minutes later the point of the pickaxe clicks upon a stony substance. He draws the implement out as ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... what the Jacks have got to laugh and laugh about I'm sure the worms don't see the joke when Jacky digs them out. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... there to-night. But I'm not going to have my breakfast there to-morrow morning. No fear! I'll have it up town. Lucas'll be able to put me up to some new digs. He always knows about that sort of thing. Then I'll drive down and remove all my ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... hard and resisting. The balls cannot be fired so as to strike, without great difficulty, as the fort is on the shore and the country is perfectly level. Within there is fresh running water in abundance; and in addition to that, wherever one digs, excellent drinking water is found. It is impossible to undermine the fort, because there is water around it, at a distance of one or two varas, or even less in some places. The city is surrounded by water—the sea on one side; on another the moat, which extends to the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... creation to provide for their sustenance, each according to its nature, to its wants. By his marvellously acute ear, the fox detects the ground mouse under the snow, though he should utter a noise scarcely audible to a human ear. Mr. Fox sets instantly to work, digs down the earth, and in a trice gobbles up mus, his wife, and young family. Should nothing occur to disturb his arrangements, he devotes each day in winter, from ten or half-past ten in the forenoon, to repose; selecting the loftiest ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... frail man, with a plaintive face. Constant walking, digging, and pumping has broken his health and ruined his nervous system. His joyless life has driven him to drink and smoke more than is good for him, and his hand often shakes as he digs ditches. He has not the strength to work as the others can, in fact, as Hamlin Smith has said, "A can do more work in one hour than ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... He cannot conquer her, and she awes him. He cannot dig down the cliffs, or chain the storm-blasts; and his fear of them takes bodily shape: he begins to people the weird places of the earth with weird beings, and sees nixes in the dark linns as he fishes by night, dwarfs in the caves where he digs, half-trembling, morsels of copper and iron for his weapons, witches and demons on the snow-blast which overwhelms his herd and his hut, and in the dark clouds which brood on the untrodden mountain-peak. He lives in fear: ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... be one of them one day, and I'm afraid I never shall. I was talking to the old man who digs graves, the other day; the first part of the verse doesn't fit me, and the last doesn't fit him—at least he said so. I wonder if ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... chocolate, and eighteen biscuits, so they are much better off than we are. After we had our meal we started to dig out our sledge, which we found right under. It took us two hours, and one would hardly credit how weak we were. Two digs of the shovel and we were out of breath. This was caused through our lying up on practically no food. After getting sledge out we took it around to the Skipper's tent on account of the heavy sastrugi, which was very high. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... do to lose heart over a mine, sir. No, no; man who digs in the earth for metals mustn't ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... social body. The waiter one tips probably has a hundred or so in some remote company, the will of the eminent labour reformer reveals an admirably distributed series of investments, the bishop sells tea and digs coal, or at any rate gets a profit from some unknown persons tea-selling or coal-digging, to eke out the direct recompense of his own modest corn-treading. Indeed, above the labouring class, the number of individuals in the social ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... she had heard lately from Gilbert, but passed her by with a frosty bow. Anne, who had always liked Gilbert's merry, young-hearted mother, was grieved in secret over this. Marilla said nothing; but Mrs. Lynde gave Anne many exasperated digs about it, until fresh gossip reached that worthy lady, through the medium of Moody Spurgeon MacPherson's mother, that Anne had another "beau" at college, who was rich and handsome and good all in one. After that Mrs. Rachel held ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... side by side with his jaunty young friend. The watchman was still enjoying the balmy, and snoring in short, sharp snorts, when Master Hubert remorselessly caught him by the shoulder, and began a series of shakes and pokes, and digs, and "hallos!" while Sir Norman stood near and contemplated the scene with a pensive eye. At last while undergoing a severe course of this treatment the watchman was induced to open his eyes on this mortal life, and transfix the ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... were sensible and characteristic, and had grown in the soil where we found them;... and he is certainly a man of intellectual and moral substance, a sturdy fact, a reality, something to be felt and touched, whose ideas seem to be dug out of his mind as he digs potatoes, beets, carrots, and turnips out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... So that the monster could no longer drop Or raise his horrid jaws, which this extends. 'Tis thus who digs the mine is wont to prop The ground, and where he works the roof suspends, Lest sudden ruin whelm him from atop, While he incautiously his task intends. Roland (so far apart was either hook) But by a leap could reach ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... kinds of weather, and the lack of proper grooming. But the vicious jerks on the torture-provoking cavalry bit, the flat sabre blows on the flank which he not infrequently got from his ill-tempered master, and, above all, the cruel digs of the spur-wheels—these things he could not understand. Such treatment he was sure he did not merit. "Mars" Clayton he came to hate more and more. Some day, Pasha told himself, he would take vengeance with teeth and heels, even ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... is on rockers, six or eight feet long, open at the foot, and its head had a coarse grate, or sieve; the bottom is rounded, with small cleets nailed across. Four men are required to work this machine; one digs the ground in the bank close by the stream; another carries it to the cradle, and empties it on the grate; a third gives a violent rocking motion to the machine, whilst a fourth dashes on water from the stream itself. The sieve keeps the coarse stones from entering the cradle, the current of water ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... is," she says to herself, "and something must be done about it. Buried under Ossa and Pelion somewhere he must be supposed to have a soul, and the sooner he is dug into, the sooner it will be exhumed." So she digs. She would never have made you, nor of her own free-will elected you; but being made, such as you are, and on her hands in one way or another, she carves and chisels, and strives to evoke from the block a breathing statue. She may succeed so far as that you shall become ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... help crisis," I said. "There are two things that they really want. The first is to have employers absolutely dependent on them, and the second is a gay life. To take the first. I remember that when I was in digs—" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... to reward him for his plucky day: one dried salmon or a little meal-soup when he's off on a holiday like this. Works without a let-up, and keeps in good flesh on one fish a day. Doesn't even get anything to drink; eats a little snow after dinner, digs his bed, and sleeps in a drift ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... through the sieve ten or fifteen buckets before breakfast. After breakfast, all hands resume work till about twelve o'clock, when they dine, then rest through the heat of the day till three o'clock, and go on again till dark. They usually divide the work as follows: one in the hole digs, fills the bucket with earth, and, if necessary, bales the water out of the hole; another takes the bucket and empties it into the tray of the machine; while a third rocks, supplies the machine with water, and empties the tray of the large stones. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... She digs in her garden With a shovel and a spoon, She weeds her lazy lettuce By the light of ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... hot-headed, ungifted, unedifying preacher, asserting 'that the grand security of the matrimonial state, and the pillar upon which it stands, is founded upon the wife's belief of an absolute unconditional fidelity to the husband;' by which bold assertion he strikes at the root, digs the foundation, and removes the basis upon which the happiness of a married state is built. As for his personal reflections, I would gladly know who are those 'wanton wives' he speaks of? who are those ladies of high stations that he so boldly traduces in his ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Indian baskets, but the greater part had a rude machine, known as the cradle. This is on rockers, six or eight feet long, open at the foot, and at its head has a coarse grate, or sieve; the bottom is rounded, with small cleets nailed across. Four men are required to work this machine: one digs the ground in the bank close by the stream; another carries it to the cradle and empties it on the grate; a third gives a violent rocking motion to the machine; while a fourth dashes on water from the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... of insects, roots, nuts, and berries. Its dangerous fore-claws are normally used to overturn stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and in the other. It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occasional luckless woodchuck or gopher. If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no light task to gather enough ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... of human events it becomes necessary," "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to separate—" upon her typewriter, over and over and over again, while she listened to Captain Morton selling young Mr. Van Dorn a patent churn, and from the winks and nods and sly digs and nudges the Captain distributed through his canvass, it was obvious to Miss Mauling that affairs in certain ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is probable that the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the top. The nest does not look comfortable, but it is, for inside it is lined with the softest white feathers, whereon are laid the pearly-white eggs. The sand-martin, the house-martin's cousin, prefers the side of a cliff. He digs into a cliff or sandbank a long tunnel quite as long as your arm, and just big enough for him to pop in and out with comfort. At the very far end of this in the warm darkness he puts bits of straw and feathers ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... modern crown, his stern, destructive law prevails; he's tearing all our idols down, disproving all our fav'rite tales. Is there a legend you hold dear, some legend of the long ago? King Skeptic hears it with a sneer, and digs up history to show that things of that sort never chanced, and never could, and never will. "We have," he says, "so much advanced, that fairy tales don't fill the bill. No faked-up tales of knightly acts, no Robin ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... is able to reveal many deep levels of human obliquity. But one thing it cannot reveal, because of the strain of malice it carries with it, and that is the spring of genuine love. "Like unto like" is the key to the situation; and the deeper the clairvoyance of malice digs into the subterranean poison of life, the more poison it finds. For in finding poison it creates poison, and in finding malice ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the dead are alive. It is quite true that with this historic sense men inherit heavy responsibilities and revenges, fury and sorrow and shame. It is also true that without it men die, and nobody even digs their graves. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... with the more serious element of the State University students (that popularity which meant so little to Sylvia, and which she so ignored) had given him a large acquaintance among the class which it was necessary to reach. He knew the men who at the University had been the digs, and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men in their communities; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the Boche continues to play our game for us, by attacking. If he tumbles to the error he is making, and digs himself in again—well, it may become necessary to draw him. In that case, M'Lachlan, you shall have first chop at the Victoria Crosses. Afraid I can't recommend you for your last exploit, though I admit it must have ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... statement of Bell'-Imperia. Yet it brings small comfort, as it seems impossible to strike so high as at Lorenzo and Balthazar. In his despair Hieronimo contemplates suicide, until he remembers that the act would leave the murderers unpunished. He cries aloud before the king for justice, digs frantically into the earth with his dagger in mad excess of misery, then hurries away without telling his wrong. He haunts his garden at night-time; and in the silence of that darkness at last hits upon a scheme: under the appearance of quietness ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... rested nightly; into the farmyard, where the dog is loose and the chickens are safe under lock and key, instead of roosting in trees; across the highway, and through the swamp, and into the big bare empty woods; till in the sad gray morning light he digs under the wild apple tree and sits down on the snow to eat a frozen apple, lest his stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the day away and tries to forget that he ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... conversation, and his "Cockney" sure did sound funny to me; he was one of the sappers, and when he found that I had left the Infantry to join them he was disgusted. "Well," said he, "you are a bloomin' ass. Why, blime me, mite, this here's the worst bleedin' job in the Army; a man digs till the sweat rolls off, and all he gets for it is a bleedin' shilling, and he has to give six-pence of that to the old woman; blime, it doesn't leave ye enough for bacca, and all the fellas think this is a bomb-proof job—why, blime, you dig and sweat for days, and Fritz sends along a blinkin' ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... INRI, and the rains have effaced the letters. At the foot of the cross, as on the real Golgotha, is a confused heap of skulls and bones which the indifferent grave-digger has thrown from the graves he digs, and there they will probably await, not the resurrection of the dead, but the coming of the animals to defile them. Round about may be noted signs of recent excavations; here the earth is sunken, there it forms a low mound. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of this root; the queer paisano (? ground woodpecker) which eats snakes, when wounded by a vibora de cascabel, runs into woods, digs up and eats a root of the agave, just like the mongoose; but more than that, goes back, polishes off his enemy, and eats him. This has been told me by Mexicans who, it may be remarked, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... Fabricius, in his "Fauna Graenlandica" (p. 24), informs us that the tendons are converted into sewing threads. The female bear has one or two, and sometimes three, cubs at a time. They are born in the winter, and the mother generally digs for them and for herself a snug nestling-place in the snow. The males in the winter time leave the coast, and go out on the ice-fields, to the edge of the open water after seals.—Adam ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... says the old woman, smoothing him down; 'father used to give them a deal of attention.'—' 'Tain't that! 'tain't that!' says he quick and spiteful-like; 'they have got old like ourselves, and good for fire-wood.' Out pickax and spade and digs three foot deep round one, and finding nothing but mould goes at another, makes a little mound all round him, too—no guinea-pot. Well, the village let him dig three or four quiet enough; but after that curiosity was awakened, and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... are all so good about helping me and putting up with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I sometimes think I must be related to one of them—a distant cousin or sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces side by side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any striking family resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company. The least ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the whispered reply, while she digs a hole in the gravel path with the heel of her white satin shoe. 'I boxed him on the ear, I hardly knew what I was doing at the moment, and now I can't think how I could do it—you see he'd asked me ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton |
