dust-mounds

Updated: May 23, 2025

For, when a man with a wooden leg lies prone on his stomach to peep under bedsteads; and hops up ladders, like some extinct bird, to survey the tops of presses and cupboards; and provides himself an iron rod which he is always poking and prodding into dust-mounds; the probability is that he expects to find something.

Charles Dickens - Our Mutual Friend

There was a quantity of stable-manure and old straw, and a heap, as large as a two-story cottage, of old hoops stript from casks and packing-cases. I never understood, until I looked into this yard, how there could have been so much value in the dust-mounds at Boffin's Bower. Gradually the streets became narrower, wetter, dirtier, and poorer.

Various - Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 1 : Great Britain and Ireland, part 1