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More "Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disgraceful thoroughfare I ever saw in any town. I believe the whole of it, or at any rate a great portion, has been paved with wood; but the boards have been worked into mud, and the ground under the boards has been worked into holes, till the street is more like the bottom of a filthy ditch than a road-way through one of the most thickly populated parts of a city. Had Quebec in Wolfe's time been as it is now, Wolfe would have stuck in the mud between the river and the rock before he reached the point which he desired to climb. In the upper town the roads are not ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a roadside ditch or pool in spring-time, take from it any bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to the stick: eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... not in the darkness, seeking the way, lest ye fall into the ditch; but gather together, sustain one another, put your faith in your God and wait for the first glimmer of light ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... Then suddenly I became aware of something jolting up and down behind me. My hand went back in search: there was no time to look: the prairie just here was cut up with little gopher-holes and criss-crossed by tiny canals from the main acequia, or irrigating ditch. It was that wretched Smith & Wesson bobbing up and down in the holster. The Colt revolver of the day was a trifle longer, and my man in changing pistols had not thought to change holsters. This one, made for the Colt, was too long ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... outside! It was only the twentieth of March; but the boy lived in West Vemminghoeg Township, down in Southern Skane, where the spring was already in full swing. It was not as yet green, but it was fresh and budding. There was water in all the trenches, and the colt's-foot on the edge of the ditch was in bloom. All the weeds that grew in among the stones were brown and shiny. The beech-woods in the distance seemed to swell and grow thicker with every second. The skies were high—and a clear blue. The cottage door stood ajar, and the lark's trill could be heard in the room. The ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... some transformed prophetess raising her gaunt arms in appeal or malediction; an occasional five-barred gate marked the entrance to some by-road to the farm; on one side of the way a deep black-looking ditch lay under the scanty shelter of the low hedge, and hinted at possible water rats to the traveller from cities who might happen to entertain a fastidious aversion ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... excitement. Straight through the open doorway he rushed the swindler, and out upon the platform. Arrived there, the farmer changed his mind. The depot was about two hundred feet ahead. Just where the coach was running was a deep ditch. ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... expression, and had he directly asked for an explanation, would probably have died in ignorance; but the boy, proud of his cow, encouraged an exhibition of her talents: she was made to jump across the ditch several times, and this adroitness in breaking through fences, was termed "getting her own living." As soon as the cow's education is finished, she may be sent loose into the world to provide for herself; turned to graze in the poorest pasture, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Barrow and a lieutenant on the first creaking wagon, the others followed, but there was no road. A morass was there, that formerly had been a road—a ditch sloshy with mud which, in some places, made it necessary for all hands to climb down and put their shoulders ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... among the Turks and the garrison, by a well-timed sortie, did great damage to the enemy's works. Before the breach, however, could be repaired, the janissaries, recovering from their panic, again assailed it, and, after a desperate struggle, established themselves in the ditch and front of the bastion, while the defenders endeavoured, by changing the direction of their guns, to enfilade the ground thus won by the enemy, so as to prevent their penetrating into the interior, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... looking rather used up. He was a man who liked to keep himself clean and tidy, and it was plain that the cross-country trip had done him no good. He seemed to be scraping mud off his face. I learned later that he had had the misfortune to fall into a ditch ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... he peered through the iron grating, and pondered on the seductiveness of the dusty road and of the ditch beyond. To his surprise he found, presently, that the gate was moving outwards; it was yielding to his weight. One thing leads easily to another sometimes, and the open gate led easily on to the seductive road. The result was that a minute later Jimbo was chasing ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... calories in diet, of child-culture; one may strike a lofty attitude and speak of the Home (capital H), and how it is the corner stone of Society. I can but agree, but I must remind the indignant ones that ditch diggers, garbage collectors, sewer cleaners are the backbone of sanitation and civilization, and ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... drawbacks have any terror for me, Agnes. As for the ruin, I shall take good care not to invite that by any large risks or imprudent speculations. There are few dangers for wise and prudent men, in any business. It is the blind who fall into the ditch—the reckless who stumble. You may be very certain that your husband will not shut his eyes in walking along new paths, nor attempt the navigation of unaccustomed seas without ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... was absolutely simple, and yet, had it been carried out as conceived, absolutely effective. It was not his intention to go near any of that entanglement of ditch and wire which had been so carefully erected for his undoing. The weaker party, if it be wise, atones for its weakness by entrenchments. The stronger party, if it be wise, leaves the entrenchments alone and uses its strength to go round them. Lord Roberts ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mirrour and example to euerye housholde seruaunt, and to all other whatsoeuer they bee, to beware how they attempt any thing against the honour of Ladies. For many times it chaunceth, that he which diggeth a ditch, and setteth vp a Gallowes, is the first that doth fall, or is stretched thereuppon. As you may see by this present discourse, which setteth before your eyes what ende the fonde loue of them ordinarily haue, which without reason, not measureing ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... the person in the car about? More explosions and the blue of burning oil as the car came forward, its cutout open, turning to the left off the road over a ditch and into a field. The gate-keeper ran forward shaking her flag and screaming as she guessed the motorist's intention. But it was too late. The car was hidden for a moment from Markham's view in the declivity upon the other side of the railroad embankment, the exhaust roaring ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... recognition, the poor shell of respectability and self-respect which, during his lonely years, had grown about him, was torn asunder, and he was what he knew the doctor believed him. To such, Mary McAdam's request seemed a cruel jest, a taunt to drive him into the open. And yet he knew that up to the last ditch he must hold to what he had secured for himself—the trust and friendship of these simple people. Hard and distasteful as the effort was he dared not turn himself from it. Full well he knew that Ledyard's ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... his brother's horse, and urging it with his own to their fullest speed, took the most unfrequented path, and dashing over every obstacle, through brake and briar, and over hedge and ditch, placed him in ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... ditch extending from the swamp towards the river. It had been cut to within a few yards of the latter, and all the men of the place were busily engaged with primitive picks, spades, and shovels, in that harmonious unity of action of which the captain had ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... guerdon gains from thee!" Despoiled of crown and scepter, by the hands They hang him on a column—neath their feet They roll him down.—They with great clubs deface And beat him; then from Tervagant they snatch His carbuncle; Mohamed in a ditch Throw down—there bitt'n, trampled on, by ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... service. These derelict things stood there in long rows with a dismal look of lifelessness and abandonment, and as I looked at them I knew that though the remnants of the Belgian army might be fighting in its last ditch and holding out at Antwerp against the siege guns of the Germans, there could be no hope of prolonged resistance against overwhelming armies. These engines, which should have been used for Belgian transport, for men and food and guns, were out of action, and dead ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... eyes, and not the water, that have been playing tricks," he said. "Ground levels and ditch grades are deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one's natural line of vision. That's why water seems to run uphill when you look toward the range. I'll soon fix your ditch line when I set an instrument in your bean ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... and swamme oftentimes for our liues. [Sidenote: Agra a great citie.] Agra is a very great citie and populous, built with stone, hauing faire and large streetes, with a faire riuer running by it, which falleth into the gulfe of Bengala. It hath a faire castle and a strong with a very faire ditch. [Sidenote: The great Mogor.] Here bee many Moores and Gentiles, the king is called Zelabdim Echebar: the people for the most part call him The great Mogor. From thence we went for Fatepore, which is the place where the king kept his court. The towne is greater then Agra, but the houses and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... twenty feet below them the irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim, sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled up the opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creede looked back and laughed ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... more he was convinced of the reality of the whole thing, and of the existence of some great marvel. That he had seen the lady was beyond question. That she had vanished the next moment was also beyond question. That she had hidden behind a tree or gone crouching in a ditch was inconceivable, to say the least of it; so fair and gracious a person would scarcely descend to such undignified manoeuvres, worthy only of a hoydenish peasant girl. And yet, what could possibly have become of her? The enigma was ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... na coom back to ax nowt fro' noan o' them," sobbed the girl. "I'd ray ther dee ony day nor do it! I'd rayther starve i' th' ditch—an' it's comin' to that." ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... There was a deep ditch under the wall, filled with cactus-plants and dry grass. We lay in the bottom of this for some minutes, panting with fatigue. Our limbs were stiff and swollen, and we could hardly stand upright. A little delay then was necessary, to bring ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... difficulty at the siege of Halicarnassus, from the bravery of the garrison, commanded by Memnon, and the strength of the defenses, aided by the Persian fleet. But his soldiers, "protected from missiles by movable pent-houses, called tortoises, gradually filled up the deep and wide ditch round the town, so as to open a level road for his engines (rolling towers of wood) to come up close to the walls." Then the battering-rams overthrew the towers of the city wall, and made a breach in them, so that the city was taken by assault. Memnon, forced to abandon his defenses, withdrew the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... frightened for any human creature. But, on the other hand, Tom Isdall was a human creature, and she had seen him last week actually thrown from his horse, and had not felt much concern. But then he was not a friend; and he fell into a soft ditch: and there was something ridiculous in it which prevented people from caring about it. With such nice casuistry she went on pretty well; and besides, she was so innocent—so ignorant, that it was easy for her to be deceived. She went on, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... nag, and with these fastened them each to a separate tree in the best manner I could. This done, I returned to the chaise and the postillion. In a minute or two Belle arrived with two poles, which, it seems, had long been lying, overgrown with brushwood, in a ditch or hollow behind the plantation. With these both she and I set to work in endeavouring to raise the fallen chaise from ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... sewed my cheap holokus on that crazy machine, he bought land with the money—the upper Nahala lands, you know—a bit at a time, each purchase a hard-driven bargain, his face the very face of poverty. To-day the Nahala Ditch alone pays ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... asleep, Tur-il-i-ra was so irritated at his slowness that he slipped the toe of his stockinged foot under him, and gave him a tremendous send right out of the door, and he went flying over the trees at the bottom of the lawn, and over the barley-field on the other side of the ditch, and over the pasture, where the cows were kept, and over the pomegranate orchard, and over the palm-grove by the little lake, and over Hassan ab Kolyar's cottage, right smack down into the soft marsh, back of the sunflower garden; and he didn't get back to the castle until his master ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... shut the window of the sexton's cottage carefully. Lastly, he made arrangements as to what they were to do in case anything unforeseen should occur, whereupon the sergeant and the constable left the churchyard, and lay down in a ditch at some distance from the gate, but opposite ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... do legislating, and how they overdid the council work and neglected to "bug" their potatoes. I remember, also, of his description of how the crew, working on the original big irrigating canal, struck when it was about half done, and swore that from the Poudre the ditch was going to run up hill, and would, therefore, be a failure. The engineer didn't know at first what was best to do with the belligerent laborers, but finally he took the leader away from the rest of the crew and said, "Now, I tell you this in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... twenty-sebben in de squad I wuz wid. 'Long a while atter dark, dey tuk us out an' marched us off, wid a guard on each side. We hadn't gone more'n two or t'ree hundred yards afo' de guard begun ter shoot at us. Dey hit me in t'ree places, an' I fell down an' rolled inter a ditch by de roadside, kinder under de weeds like. Atter a while I sorter come ter myself an' crawled off fru de weeds ter de bushes. Nex' day I got a chance ter send word ter mammy, an' she come an' nussed me till we managed ter ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... he answered, hastily throwing back his head, with its thick, waving raven locks. "If, in leaping over the ditch, I should fall into the marsh, I must endure it, if thereby I can only reach the shore where ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... six battles of the French formed their encampment against the front of the capital, the basis of the triangle which runs about four miles from the port to the Propontis. [65] On the edge of a broad ditch, at the foot of a lofty rampart, they had leisure to contemplate the difficulties of their enterprise. The gates to the right and left of their narrow camp poured forth frequent sallies of cavalry and light-infantry, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Presently an elderly lady—a Mrs. Maginley—arose and expressed her opinions. She had confidence in Mr. Lincoln, but denounced Gen. Banks, who, she said, was a hero in one place and a slave-driver in another. As next President, we may get a ditch-digger—(Mrs. M. evidently intended this as a sly allusion to a distinguished military chieftain)—and then what are we to do? She wished to know who, loving the black man, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... d'Enghien was shot on the night of the 21st of March, 1804, in the wood or in the ditch of the castle at Vincennes, is admitted even by Government; but who really were his assassins is still unknown. Some assert that he was shot by the grenadiers of Bonaparte's Italian guard; others say, by a detachment of the Gendarmes d'Elite; and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... if we must lie out under the stars, and be fed, like the wolves we heard howling, on wind. By the roadside, at the crossways, but not in view of the road, a council of our ragged regiment was held in a deep ditch. It would be late ere we reached the town, gates would scarce open for us, we could not fee the warders, houses would be shut and dark; the King's archers were apt to bear them unfriendly to wandering men ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... name rather of the island of which we have spoken before—but Tinakonk. It lies on the west side of the river, and is separated from the west shore, not as he said, by a wide running branch of the river, as wide as the Eemster, near Amsterdam, but by a small creek, as wide as a large ditch, running through a meadow. It is long and covered with bushes, and inside somewhat marshy. It is about two miles long, or a little more, and a mile and a half wide. Although there are not less miles than he said, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... St. Meuse is a fortress. It has a citadel or at least such fragments of a citadel as the bombardment had left, and the quaint old town is surrounded with bastions which are linked by curtains and flanked by lunettes, the whole being girdled by a ditch, beyond the counterscarp of which spreads a sloping glacis which makes a very pleasant promenade. The defensive strength of the place is reduced to zero in these days of far-reaching rifled siege artillery, for it lies in a cup and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... favoured by the fact he led us up the lane. Only a little way; then he stopped by something lying in the ditch—and once more we cried in the same breath, 'It's ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... They had been careful to prepare a list of plausible reasons for leaving then. They had first invented a gold rumor that they hoped would sound convincing, but Andy had insisted upon telling him straightforwardly that they did not favor fence-building and ditch-digging and such back-breaking toil; that they were range men and they demanded range work or none; that if they must dig ditches and build fences and perform like menial tasks, they preferred doing it for themselves. "That," said Andy, "makes us out such dirty, low-down sons-of-guns ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... free trial and examining of the equity of the same, then we could not be punished for doing, unwillingly and in ignorance, things unlawful prescribed by them. Whereas every soul that sinneth shall die; and when the blind leads the blind, he who is lead falls in the ditch as ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... in any place where there are old leaves, as in a dry ditch, you will usually get through the ear the first tidings of any moving thing. For instance, you will hear a field-mouse rustling long before you can see its queer pointed nose pushing its way through the dead leaves. Or it may be a mole blundering blindly along. If by any chance ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... duchy, of which he is very proud: among the blessings of grandeur, of which he makes her mistress, there is a most beautiful ass for her palfrey, a blooming meadow of nettles and thistles to walk in, and a fine troubled ditch to slake her thirst, after either of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... poor place, with no defences but a dry ditch and some miserable earthworks, the Confederates had not the least chance to maintain; Kaminiec, the only fortress of the Province, they never even got into, finding some fraction of royal soldiery who stood ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... changes made. The tabulated figures proved that his reasoning had been correct. He was positive, forceful, and insistent in driving home his argument and in compelling his superior to admit their force and cogency. When it was all admitted and Burton, fighting to the last ditch, had been over-whelmed, Nyall's unconcealed air of triumph was keenly and painfully exasperating to the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... in his arms, looking down at me as I stood with his cup of tea in my hand. And as he looked I felt my whole rebellious heart and mind laid bare and I knew that he knew that I was ready to fight him to the last ditch in the battle for possession of the souls of my friends. I would fight for their independence of thought and sincerity of life, and he would fight to lead them off into a far country in quest of what I considered a tradition, ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... he staggered to his feet, his head throbbing viciously and his face and clothing smeared with blood from his nose, to see between puffed eyelids the erect figure of Forsythe swaggering around a distant corner. He stanched the blood with his handkerchief, but as there was not a brook, a ditch, or a puddle in the neighborhood, he could only go home as he was, trusting that ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... the Canal directly through this pond, at least a quarter of a mile of excavation will be avoided. M. DE LESSEPS is known to have decided upon making a similar use of the Bitter Lakes in the construction of his Suez ditch, after having seen ELKANAH HOPKINS' plans for our great Cape Cod Canal. Vessels will hereafter pass through this Canal instead of taking the long voyage around the Cape; and it is believed that the saving which will be effected in the transportation of cod-fish and garden-sass by the consequent ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... spirits up as well as you can; I am not going to be like your wonderful nephews and nieces at Ashfield. I never saw such ignorant children; they did not know how to make dirt pies, nor could they jump across the ditch, or get up by the trees to the top of the garden wall. Harriett and I had such a beautiful race round that garden, and they looked ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... S.E. of Churchill, on the summit of a conspicuous hill, is Dolbury Camp. It occupies 22 acres, is irregularly oblong in shape, and is defended by a rampart, constructed of fragments of limestone piled together, outside of which is a ditch, traceable in places. The camp is presumably British in origin, but was used by the Romans, who seem to have made their ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... sour face. "We are ditch-water dull. Festivals are celebrated quietly in the home; there is small religious fervor; courtships are consummated by family contract. I fear you will find little sensational material here ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... that he was never more sober in his life, but that Horton and Cox were "pos-(hic)-tively-(hic)-beasley." All three would then start off, bent on seeing one another safely home, and, like the blind leading the blind, generally fall into the ditch. Three irate women would then make their appearance on the scene, and they would each be led home, declaring they were never more sober in their lives. Fox found that Cox was known by his friends as Josh. Cox, and he was ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... and then that of the Comtesse. He had no time to think what they wanted or how they came to be crouching in a damp ditch in the rain while the evening darkened over them. He leaped from the bank, crossed the road, and raced off again towards ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... any public cause. He seems to have thought resistance hopeless; and in truth, to a military eye, the defences of Londonderry appeared contemptible. The fortifications consisted of a simple wall overgrown with grass and weeds: there was no ditch even before the gates: the drawbridges had long been neglected: the chains were rusty and could scarcely be used: the parapets and towers were built after a fashion which might well move disciples of Vauban to laughter; and these feeble defences were on almost every side commanded by heights. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cross-roads, and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night from Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black trees, and heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!" Larry's natural surprise at this accounted for his being found next morning asleep in the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left life on November Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies or the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... reasoned about the sore and sad estate of a banished and exiled condition, how they were exposed to hunger, to cold, to perils, to nakedness, to enemies, and a thousand calamities; and at last, it may be, to die in a ditch, like a poor and desolate sheep. But I thank God, hitherto I have not been moved by these most delicate reasonings, but have rather, by them, more ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... Mary. For instance, we find under Dr. Freke, Bishop of Norwich, and in the reign of glorious Queen Bess, as her admirers term her, Mathew Hammond, a poor ploughwright, of Hethersett, was condemned as a heretic, had his ears cut off, and after the lapse of a week was committed, in the Castle ditch at Norwich, to the more agonizing torment of the flames. The translation of Dr. Whitgift to the See of Canterbury was the signal for augmented rigour. He was charged by his imperious mistress to restore religious ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Its deep foss is cut in the solid rock, and furnished with subterranean magazines for the storage of provisions. The three piles of solid masonry on which the drawbridge rested, still stand in the centre of this ditch. The oblique grand entrance to the foss descends by a flight of well-cut steps. The rock itself over which the fort was raised is honeycombed with excavated passages for infantry and cavalry, of different width and height, so that one sort can be assigned to mounted horsemen and another ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Several strange instances illustrative of the truth of this theory were current in my native village. Let one case suffice. An old soldier having on some long march been induced through extreme thirst to drink from a ditch, had swallowed some animal. Years after he was taken ill, and came home. His hunger for food was so great that he could scarcely be satisfied, and notwithstanding the great quantities of food which he consumed, he became thinner and thinner, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... the track that led to the hut. This was difficult, for the snow was already thick enough to efface all trace of a path. We scrambled through the bushes, and after crossing a ditch, we managed at last to reach the hut and get inside. The dogs, in ecstasy, rolled over and over on the dry ground, barking. Our satisfaction was no ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... to be a wall of mud, willow hurdles and sand bags; in reality two walls. I followed him down a short bit of zigzag ditch or communicating trenches and found myself in the trenches that will go down to history, the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... it to the height or his head, pouring it into a small basin of earth. The second man fills his bucket from this basin and in turn delivers it to the third man, who is about six feet above him. The third man raises the water to the height of his head and pours it into a ditch which carries it upon the land. The heavy weights on the shadouf help to raise the water, but the labor of lifting this water all day is strenuous. The shadouf men work with only small loin cloths, and occasionally one of ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... others. There was plenty of way here for carriages, and half a dozen vehicles passed through Larry's farmyard. Immediately behind the house was a meadow, and at the bottom of the meadow a stubble field, next to which was the ditch and bank which formed the bounds of Dillsborough Wood. Just at this side of the gate leading into the stubble-field there was already a concourse of people when Tony arrived near it with the hounds, and ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... little proud, God knows, to be seen upon so pretty a beast, and to my cozen W. Joyce's, who presently mounted too, and he and I out of towne toward Highgate; in the way, at Kentish-towne, showing me the place and manner of Clun's being killed and laid in a ditch, and yet was not killed by any wounds, having only one in his arm, but bled to death through his struggling. He told me, also, the manner of it, of his going home so late [from] drinking with his whore, and manner of having it found out. Thence forward to Barnett, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... heights of from 4 to 6 feet from the ground. The Customs hedge is a great place for their nests, but I have noticed that they are partial to bushes in the immediate neighbourhood of water; and at Hansie, whence he sent me many nests and eggs, Mr. W. Blewitt always found them either in the fort ditch or along the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... least to check their career, the republican leaders thought it would be best for them to give up their useless efforts there, go home, get into their respective legislatures, embody whatever of resistance they could be formed into, and if ineffectual, to perish there as in the last ditch. All, therefore, retired, leaving Mr. Gallatin alone in the House of Representatives, and myself in the Senate, where I then presided as Vice-President. Remaining at our posts, and bidding defiance to the brow-beatings and insults by which they ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... captain fought a stubborn battle, surprisingly stubborn and protracted for him, but he surrendered at last. Serena drove him from one line of entrenchments after the other, and, at length, when she had him in the last ditch, where, argument and expostulation unavailing, he could only say, "No! no, I won't, I tell you!" over and over again, she used her most effective weapon, tears, and brought ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... away a quarrel broke out. Each man felt the others must be in some way responsible for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Hall and accusations flew back and forth. One of the men threw a heavy stone that ran down along the tracks and jumped into a ditch filled with dry weeds. It made a heavy crashing sound. Hugh heard heavy footsteps running. He was afraid the men were going to attack him, and climbed over a fence, crossed a barnyard, and got into ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... feet apart. The so-called bricks are not in the least like our bricks, being 6 inches long, 12 inches wide and 11/2 inch thick. The Wall was 20 feet high, with towers and bastions at intervals about 50 feet high. At first there was no moat or ditch, and it will be understood that in order to protect the City from an attack of barbarians—Picts or Scots—it was enough to close the gates and to man the towers. The invaders ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... breakfast, see to the fire, fuel, clean and light the lamps, dip and carry out some water and mud (but have now found a place to drain off the water by cutting through the heavy stone wall and digging a ditch underneath). I dig whenever I have time. Then the boys begin to come in- some right from the trenches, others who are resting up after a siege in the trenches. They are all covered with mud when they come in and have to talk, stand and even sleep in mud. Then I must have the cocoa ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... because he has the ague." "Oh, well," Mr. Veil replied, "that's no matter, I know how to cure him; I'll tell him how to cure himself." So they sent for me, and Veil told me how to get rid of the ague. He said, "you dig a ditch in the ground a foot deep, and strip off your clothing and bury yourself, leaving only your head uncovered, and sleep all night in the Mother Earth." I did it. I found the earth perfectly dry and warm. I had not much more than engulfed ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... was certainly going. It had careened from the road, tilted itself down into a ditch and gone on across the fields, lights shooting from it ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... upon them. In their rapid flight they came to a deep gulley which Yates cleared at a bound, but young Downing failed in the attempt. His breast struck the opposite almost precipitous bank, and he rolled to the bottom of the ditch. Some obstruction in the way prevented the Indians from witnessing the fall of Downing. They continued the pursuit of Yates, crossing the gulley a few yards below where Downing had met his mishap. Thus in less time than we have occupied in the narration, the Indians ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... but the wise king, Marsilius, at last put some slight degree of method into the general rout. He collected the remnant of the troops, formed them into a battalion, and retreated in tolerable order to his camp. That camp was well fortified by intrenchments and a broad ditch. Thither the fugitives hastened, and by degrees all that remained of the Moorish army was brought ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... began to roll down the hill. Immediately there arose a shout of trouble and dismay from the teamsters below. Something very much like a stampede ensued; for the pumpkins came bounding under the horses and oxen. One cart ran into the ditch and upset. Alfred Batchelder's prize steers ran away and caught the hook of a chain which they were dragging, into the wheel of a wagon belonging to the Sylvesters, and upset it. There was a wreck of all the jelly and ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the slave. "It is not possible through the palace—guards are at every entrance; and you would also fall into the hands of the watchmen in the city. You cannot fly over the garden wall, for on the other side is a deep ditch, full of mud and water. If you jumped over, you would be embedded in ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... horror. At the corner of a lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow with a heavy mallet (the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the last ditch as surely as they did in the war," he said to Darcy, rubbing his hands in great glee. "I tell you, old chap, it was a lucky thought of starting just as we did. You see, we shall come up with the good times; for I do honestly believe ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... into the ditch, collapsed there on his quarters, and recovered himself with the grunt and flounder of a ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the riding of English and American women. The Spanish riding horse is a pacer rather than a trotter, and this cradle-like motion is certainly better suited to the Spanish women. Few, if any, of them aspire to follow the hounds, a ditch or a gate would present difficulties which would be truly insurmountable, and they never acquire the ease and grace in this exercise which are the mark ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... shaft of 30 feet deep to be sunk, it has been calculated that this would only be effectual for draining a circle of about 100 yards, the water running down an incline of about 5 to 1; for it was found in the course of draining the bog, that a ditch 3 feet deep only served to drain a space of less than 5 yards on each side, and two ditches of this depth, 10 yards apart, left a portion of the Moss between them scarcely affected ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... charged upon some, of our foragers, who were plundering the plantation; my aide, Colonel Audenried, who had ridden forward, came back somewhat hurt and bruised, for, observing this charge of cavalry, he had turned for us, and his horse fell with him in attempting to leap a ditch. General Woods's skirmish-line met this charge of cavalry, and drove it back into the woods and beyond. We remained on that ground during the night of the 15th, and I camped on the nearest dry ground behind the Little Congaree, where on the next morning were made the written' ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... doorway, a painted reredos, and a beautiful old roodstone in good preservation. Avebury House is Elizabethan, with a curious stone dovecot. The village has encroached upon the remains of a huge stone circle (not quite circular), surrounded by a ditch and rampart of earth, and once approached by two avenues of monoliths. Within the larger circle were two smaller ones, placed not in the axis of the great one but on its north-eastern side, each of which consisted of a double concentric ring of stones; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... place, and they are unprecedented and new. None of us—do you hear, Rolland?—none of us Germans today would hesitate to help destroy every monument of our holy German past, if necessity made it a matter of the last ditch, for that from which alone all monuments of all times draw their right of existence and their worth unless they are empty husks, skeletons, and framework; even so, we alone may ask what shall come to pass, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... interspersed, a pleasing effect is produced. The appearance is much improved by a lattice before each house. The houses also are of a superior description, a few only are of brick. The fort is surrounded by an additional wall, and a broad but shallow ditch. The palace is a handsome, irregular, gilt edifice; but its precincts are not kept so clean as they might be. The Shwottoo is a handsome hall. The town altogether conveys an idea of importance. The river is about 800 yards broad opposite the Residency; ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... all our War correspondents Mr. PHILIP GIBBS contrives to give in his despatches the liveliest sense of the movement, the pageantry and the abominable horror of war. Pageantry there is, for all the evil boredom and weariness of this pit-and-ditch business, and Mr. GIBBS sees finely and has an honest pen that avoids the easy cliche. You might truthfully describe his book, The Battles of the Somme (HEINEMANN), as an epic of the New Armies. He never seems to lose his wonder at their courage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... mellower sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods—or the ditch. As, for instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than they set up that ribald ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... night, General Paine's division made a demonstration towards the lower fort, driving in the enemy's pickets. General Paine advanced almost to the ditch in front of the fort. Preparations were made to hold the ground, but during the night there came up a terrific thunder-storm and hurricane, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... from the county seat Rand stopped his car on a deserted stretch of road and got out. Unwinding the wire Kirchner had wrapped around the revolver, he picked up an empty beer-can from the ditch, set it against an embankment, stepped back about thirty feet and began firing. The first shot kicked up dirt a little over the can—Rand never could be sure just how high any percussion Colt was sighted—and the other four ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... confused walk. And if this confusion is long continued, the mental deterioration shows itself in external things,—the shabby hat and seedy clothing, and the gradual drop of the man from stratum to stratum of society, till he brings up some night in the ditch. As the world looks more and more different to him, so does he look more and ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... expense of the law, the bad name that your sister will be having over the head of being in a breach of promise, and all the expenses of solicitors and lawyers. Then, after that, trying to get the money out of us, and, mind you, we will fight you to the last ditch. Won't we, John? ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... the third he was standing by long ditches of water frozen fast, and over them glided hundreds upon hundreds of lads and maids. Outside each door stood a wee wooden shoe empty. Teig saw scores of them as he looked down the ditch of a street. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... have the sense to stay there to-night, then," said George. "He'll fall off his horse in a fit coming home drunk some of these nights, and be found dead in a ditch!" ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Time and labor be counted as nothing, compared with the accomplishment of an object. Back to Vicksburg paddled the fleet and transports. Across the river from the city, on the pasty mud behind the levee's bank were dumped Sherman's regiments, condemned to week of ditch-digging, that the gunboats might arrive at the bend of the Mississippi below by a canal, out of reach of the batteries. Day in and day out they labored, officer and men. Sawing off stumps under the water, knocking poisonous snakes by scores from the branches, while the river ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... after a meal I started on what seemed a first rate car. But we had a breakdown lasting an hour, a dozen miles out of Glasgow, and then, running down Garelochside in the face of the storm, we smashed into the ditch. After making sure that the car was hopeless, I left the man at a wayside cottage and tramped the rest of the way. Hence my late arrival, and you know ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the gold that all the millionaires have given for educational purposes. Another brought to success a prodigious physical undertaking. For no further reason than that he might serve his country where best he could, he went into a fever-laden land and dug a mighty ditch, bringing together two great oceans and changing the commerce of ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... attack for several weeks. The lines were formed and fortified; breast works, with a ditch in front, were built, with here and there a small fort, or redoubt, in which a part of the field ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... bushes. A moment later he reappeared with a small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and entered the narrow mouth of a deep, freshly dug ditch. Ten feet farther on he was halted by a tall black column solidly wedged in the narrow passage, at the base of which was a bench of yellow dirt extending not more than two feet from the foot of the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... where Fleet Ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dykes than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood.— Here strip, my children, here at once leap in; Here ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Ursulines, or with the Jesuits; redoubts were raised, loop-holes bored and patrols established. At Ville-Marie no fewer precautions were taken; the governor surrounded a mill which he had erected in 1658, by a palisade, a ditch, and four bastions well entrenched. It stood on a height of the St. Louis Hill, and, called at first the Mill on the Hill, it became later the citadel of Montreal. Anxiety still prevailed everywhere, but God, who knows how to raise up, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... thee oft, ill recompense hath found." Then they take off his sceptre and his crown, With their hands hang him from a column down, Among their feet trample him on the ground, With great cudgels they batter him and trounce. From Tervagant his carbuncle they impound, And Mahumet into a ditch fling out, Where swine and ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... runs close by the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes to terrify the adventurer. Thence he goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark valley he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones of those whom they ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... just over the Black Ditch, as it was then called, at the end of Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch Parish. It has been since made a yard for keeping hogs and for other ordinary uses, but is quite out of use as ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... wiser ancestors, no doubt, hung it there as being the animal which the Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which certainly in that particular does not so well merit the epithet cold-blooded, by which naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Fanueil Halls, meeting-houses, and other ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... plain of the Champ de Mars. The officer, having speared his way through the crowd with the usual courtesy of a Frenchman, at length drew up the cab in a long line of anonymous vehicles under the rows of stunted elms by the stone-lined ditch, on the southern side of the plain when, turning his charger round, he saluted Mr. Jorrocks, and bumped off at a trot. Mr. Jorrocks then stuck the pig-driving whip into the socket, and throwing forward the apron, handed out the Countess, and installed Agamemnon ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... would shear. Of the hide he carved a thong, very small and very long, the thong was not very broad, but as it were a thread of twine; when the thong was all slit, it was wondrously long, about therewith he encompassed a great deal of land. He began to dig a ditch very mickle, there upon a stone wall, that was strong over all, a burgh he areared, mickle and lofty. When the burgh was all ready, then shaped he to it a name, he named it full truly Kaer-Carrai in British, and English knights they called it Thongchester. Now and evermore the name standeth ...
— Brut • Layamon
... one town which Jughi's force took by a kind of stratagem. A certain engineer, whom he employed to make a reconnoissance of the fortifications, reported that there was a place on one side of the town where there was a ditch full of water outside of the wall, which made the access to the wall there so difficult that the garrison would not be at all likely to expect an attack on that side. The engineer proposed a plan for building some light bridges, which the soldiers were to throw over the ditch in ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... down the scale. Your Edison pries fearlessly into the intimate secrets of matter; your Marconi employs the mysterious properties of the "jellied ether," but let a man seek to experiment with the laws of that singular electricity which connects you and me (though you be a millionaire and I a ditch-digger), and we think him a wild visionary, an academic person. I think sometimes that the science of humanity to-day is in about the state of darkness that the natural sciences were when Linneus and Cuvier and Lamarck began groping for the great laws of natural unity. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... work of the problem. They decided to follow the train-hands to the next village, twelve miles off; so they picked up their guns and knapsacks, and sprang over the ditch that lay on the mountain side of the track and wound along the base of the hill to the level beyond where the train had stopped. After they were gone the three remaining men proceeded to discuss the situation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... a few canoes and surf-boats under a raised clay-bank binding the stream on the left. This was Tumento (Tomento), our destination; the word means 'won't go,' as the rock is supposed to say to the water. The aspect of the Ancobra becomes gloomy and menacing. The broad bed shrinks to a ditch, almost overshadowed by its sombre walls of many-hued greens; and the dead tree-trunks of the channel, ghastly white in the dull brown shade, look to the feverish imagination like the skeleton hands and fingers of monstrous spectres outspread to ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... leave it all to me?" she pleaded, fighting to the last ditch for her secret and for time. "Can't you see that I'm placing a double-crosser in ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... which only is agreed to by Agamemnon. When the funerals are performed, the Greeks, pursuant to the advice of Nestor, erect a fortification to protect their fleet and camp, flanked with towers, and defended by a ditch and palisades. Neptune testifies his jealousy at this work, but is pacified by a promise from Jupiter. Both armies pass the night in feasting but Jupiter disheartens the Trojans with thunder, and other signs of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... wishing vainly that she might have gone, until she became suddenly aware that some one was staring at her. Turning, she saw that a child with very yellow hair and very round blue eyes was sitting between two alder bushes on the edge of a ditch, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... he just grand!" he exclaimed. "Honest, Stephanie, your young man has me in the ditch with two ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... gathering flowers in the plains of Enna, in Sicily. The victims offered to the infernal gods were black: they were killed with their faces bent downwards; the knife was applied from below, and the blood was poured into a ditch.] ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Charlie, as he ran along the communicating trench with the other two lads to the front line ditch. "We can't ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... knight errant was lunging with his spear in all directions, the meek followers of the dead body became ensnared in their skirts and gowns and long white shirts, and fell head over heels wherever they happened to be, in ditch or field. Moans, groans, and prayers were intermingled, and they all were convinced that the procession had been interrupted by the devil himself, come to carry away the body ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lending you a hand, and you now in the last ditch, with Dolliver riding on you and me all the time. It don't go. You hear me, it don't go. Dolliver couldn't cough up eleven dollars to save you. Let him get off and walk, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... low, so the Bennett kept carefully in the channel; but the channel of the great muddy ditch which drains half the Union is as fickle as disappointed lovers declare women to be, and it has no more respect for great steamer-loads of corn than Goliath had ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the bit. In an instant pony and trap had disappeared, and the man was lying in the drive with a broken leg. We had to carry him home on a door, and then went in search of the pony, expecting every moment to find it and the trap in a ditch; about half a mile from Aldington we met my own man who had come in search of my remains. He told us that the pony and trap were quite safe and uninjured. The clever animal had trotted the whole distance, over two miles, with the reins dragging behind him, taken the turning ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... and proper, but——" Her steely calm broke. She burst out in a screaming, hysterical voice: "You've just got to, Emma Hulett! You've just got to! If you don't I won't never go back to 'Niram's house! I'll lie in the ditch by the roadside till the poor-master comes to get me—and I'll tell everybody that it's because my own twin sister, with a house and a farm and money in the bank, turned me out to starve—" A fearful spasm cut ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... most helpless and enslaved females of the dark race and the most recklessly dominant males of the white. "He enters a world in which there was no place prepared for him." His father was about as sensible of his parental obligations towards him as a toad towards its spawn in the next ditch. To him he "was a broken wineglass from last night's feast." "Often without a family, always without a nation or race, without education or moral training, and despised by the society in which he was born," is it any wonder ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... not quite vanished from Scotland before I was sent thither, but remained to help me get ready for the kingdom of heaven: those dykes must still be dear to my brothers who have gone up before me. Some of the fields had only a small ditch between them and the road, and some of them had no kind of fence at all. It was a dreary road even in summer, though not therefore without its loveable features—amongst which the dykes; and wherever there is anything to love, there is ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... they would be in danger from the Gauls if they were unable to defend themselves. Caesar undertook that they should have no hurt, but he insisted that their arms must be given up. They affected obedience. They flung their swords and lances over the walls till the ditch was filled with them. They opened their gates; the Romans occupied them, but were forbidden to enter, that there might be no plundering. It seems that there was a desperate faction among the Aduatuci who had been for fighting to extremity. A third part of the arms had been secretly reserved, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the country, and which scarce any body that comes to London omits seeing). The tower, which stands by the Thames, is a large strong building, surrounded with a high wall, about a mile in compass, and a broad ditch supplied with water out of the River Thames. Round the outward wall are guns planted, which on extraordinary occasions are fired. At the entrance, the first thing we saw was a collection of wild beasts, viz. lions, panthers, tygers [sic], &c. also eagles and vultures: These are of no sort ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... those who still think, however, in terms of the days of sailing-ships. They advise us to pull our warships and our planes and our merchant ships into our own home waters and concentrate solely on last ditch defense. But let me illustrate what would happen if we followed ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... and strong enough to create frogs in one way in every ditch at this moment, is he not wise and strong enough to create frogs by some other way, if he should choose, whether in Egypt of old, or now, here, this ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... nodded Chadron. "That feller's opened a ditch from the river up there on my land ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... difficult to comply with an editorial request such as this: "The story I send you is as dull as ditch-water; do please read it over and illustrate it with ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... v. tr., to cast away, to fall down; daro langi si asidaro laona kilu, shall they not both fall into the ditch? ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens
... came to the fore. As soon as they had wandered about they could see that the stockade of gnarled trees which framed in Casterbridge was itself an avenue, standing on a low green bank or escarpment, with a ditch yet visible without. Within the avenue and bank was a wall more or less discontinuous, and within the wall were packed ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... defensive wall, guarded by the Tower, and crowned by the cathedral. The city proper lay on the north of the Thames, and the wall made a semicircle of some two miles, from the Tower on the east to the Fleet ditch and Blackfriars on the west. Seven gates pierced the wall to the north, and the roads passing through them into the fields were lined with houses. Westward along the river were great palaces, behind which the building was practically continuous along the muddy road that ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... hair lightly sprinkled with gray. The second that he looked into that woman's eyes taught him her character, absolutely, as finally as if he had grown up with her. One could trust her to the last ditch, ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... close within his arm, resting his red head against the dark one below it. "I don't seem to feel particularly tired, now," he observed. "Curious, isn't it? Fatigue, as I've often noticed, is more mental than physical—with most of us. Your ditch-digger is tired in his back and arms, but the ordinary person is merely tired because his mind tells ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... the force of Peterborough, and should have been able to defend the city against an army vastly exceeding their own numbers. Ten bastions and some old towers protected the town toward the north and east; between the city and the sea was a long rampart with an unfinished ditch and covered way; while to the west, standing on a lofty elevation, the castle of Montjuich overlooked and guarded the ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... mean. I certainly do not go blindly over hedge and ditch after the opinions of John Calvin. I am not ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... and marriage. You had better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the world. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has been ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... finding it save in street gangs and at labor that was mostly done by Greeks and Italians fresh from Europe. A man had to begin at the bottom, he realized, but he did not desire to begin at the bottom of a ditch. He did not seek for such small clerical jobs as he knew himself able to fill. He did not mean to sit on a high stool and ruin his eyes over interminable rows of figures. That much at least the North had done for ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... retreated as far as the ditch, from which each took a concealed musket; the result was that our seven travelers were outnumbered in weapons. Aramis received a ball which passed through his shoulder, and Mousqueton another ball which lodged in the fleshy part which prolongs the lower portion of the loins. Therefore ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is a square fortress, having four bastions connected by curtains, surrounded by a ditch. The walls are about twenty-four feet high, and built also of coral rock. Besides the houses, &c. mentioned in the text and near to what is called the Iron Magazine, is the grass plot where criminals are executed: It is a square space, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... beast of burden, the ass, signifies the people that lets itself be bridled and ridden, and goes as it is led, like the ass, who was forced and beaten cruelly when he went out of the way into the ditch, and must neither give place before the angel in the way so long as it could help, nor turn aside, and so must fall down. For in the same way have these seducers also urged on the people, until these last have become sensible that it is a thing not to be endured, and that they ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... there faithfully, as a friend that waited his return. He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comradeship, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless picaresque, a geste of innocent rogue-errantry; its place is with Lavengro ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... softly as a shadow; and in his wildest dash, what a sure judgment he has for the lie of the ground, how unerringly—and at a moment when a mistake is death—he selects his cover! How learned, too, he is in his knowledge of the countryside! There is not a dry ditch, or a water-course, or an old drain, or a hole in a bank for miles around that is not mysteriously set down in the map he carries in his graceful, clever head; and one need hardly say that all the suitable hiding-places in and ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... nourished a fancied slight would have been laughed at by his fellows. She had a town-bred girl's curiosity and interest in camp life, which she declared was like a "perpetual picnic," and her slim, graceful figure halting beside a ditch where the men were working seemed to them as grateful as the new spring sunshine. The whole camp became tidier; a coat was considered de rigueur at "Prossy's mother" evenings; there was less horseplay in the trails, and less shouting. "It's all very well to talk about 'old mothers,'" said the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... regularly waited on him (though I make bold to say that he trusted in me rather than in them), gave him the permission which he had taken. He had caused a mantlet to be built for him which was brought up to the edge of the ditch with which the town was surrounded. In this he sat, with a cross-bow in hand, and shot not a few of the enemy, being skilful beyond the common in the use of this weapon. But towns are not taken by the shooting of bolts, howsoever well aimed ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... American history, we have been engaged in change—in a perpetual peaceful revolution—a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions—without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... little girl's shrieks grew louder she began to think something serious was the matter, and the two ladies started away in the direction of the sound. Poor Rikli was indeed in a wretched plight. She was standing in a ditch, covered quite to her neck in the muddy water, and holding up her arms above her head, in an effort to protect it from the many little green frogs that were sporting about her. Aunty reached her first, and, taking the little ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... Prince of Orange had rewarded their insurrectionary election of him to the Stadtholdership by redeeming them from the despair to which the French invasion and the English fleet had reduced them, although since his famous "I will die in the last ditch," Holland no longer strove to commit suicide by opening its own sluices, yet the unloosed floods of popular passion were only partially abated. A stone that grazed his cheek and plumped against the little hand-bag that held his all of luggage, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... having a uniform dip, or inclination. Oftener, however, in hilly regions especially, they are quite irregular—the impervious stratum frequently having depressions of greater or less extent, and holding water, like a bowl. Not unfrequently, as we cut a ditch upon a declivity, we find that the dip of the strata below has no correspondence with the visible surface of the field, but that the different strata lie nearly level, or are much broken, while the surface has a ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... end of the valley was another, called the Valley of the Shadow of Death. On the right hand of this valley was a very deep ditch; it was the ditch into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have there miserably perished. And on the left hand was a dangerous quagmire, into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to stand on. The pathway here was exceeding narrow and very dark, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the Hawaiians can not well live without horses. Some of the people live on the shore and make salt, which you see stored up in pandanus bags under the shelter of lava bubbles. When I was there a number were engaged in digging a ditch in which to lay an iron pipe, intended to convey fresh water to the denser part ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... Brigliador, and John Ingram himself," cried Arthur. "Oh, my uncle! my uncle!" And, in one moment, he had bounded across the ditch, which fenced in their exercising ground, and had rushed to meet Ingram. "Oh, John!" exclaimed he, breathlessly, "have they done it? Oh, tell me of Uncle ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in appearance. The palace is a handsome building of Italian architecture, surrounding three sides of a square. It is built of hewn stone, and over the centre entrance is placed a large gilt crown. Not far from the modern palace is the ancient Chateau, surrounded by a deep ditch, and flanked by gloomy bastions, formerly the requisites to a prince's residence, but incompatible with the luxury sought for in a ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... advisable to save myself all unnecessary fatigue. I was of course accompanied by a servant to bring back the horses when they were of no further use. By leaving the lane and making our way across the fields over hedge and ditch, we contrived to ride about half a mile. The horses then became useless, as the drifts were so deep against the hedges and gates, that the poor animals became imbedded in them, and were unable to find any firm footing to leap from. The servant therefore ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... his sword, and cursing horribly in his Hindustan jargon. Behind him came troops of matchlock-men, who picked off every one of our men who showed their noses above the ramparts: and a great host of blackamoors with scaling-ladders, bundles to fill the ditch, fascines, gabions, culverins, demilunes, counterscarps, and all the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... playing-cards, which he had stuck on thorns from time to time, each inscribed with a blasphemous comment on the discomforts of such travel. After an apparently interminable interval we crossed an irrigating ditch, where the horses were glad to water, and so came to one of those green flowering lush California villages so startlingly in contrast to ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... was distinctly of a different nationality and race. This, with a certain neatness of dress and artificial suavity of address, had gained him the nickname of "the Count" and "Frenchy," although he was really of Flemish extraction. He was the Union Ditch Company's agent on the Bar, by virtue of his knowledge ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... slight or so unevenly distributed that agriculture cannot be carried on except by means of irrigation. This irrigation consists of taking water out of the streams and conducting it by means of ditches which have a very gentle slope over the land which it is proposed to irrigate. From the original ditch, smaller ditches are taken out, running nearly parallel with each other, and from these laterals other ditches, still smaller, and the seepage from all these moistens a considerable area on which crops may be grown. This, very roughly, is irrigation, a subject of incalculable ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... be joined the remark of Leonard Swett, that "any man who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man would wake up with his back in the ditch." ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... him to put up his hands, at the same time snatching away Colquhoun's revolver. Sergeant Shoebotham, Corporal Stewart and Constable Browning ran after Dunn, firing as they went, he returning the fire as he ran. After some twenty shots had been exchanged Dunn fell into a ditch and threw up his hands, saying, 'I am shot.' The men ceased firing and took two revolvers from Dunn. On taking him out of the ditch it was found he had been shot in the calf of the leg, the bullet going ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... irrepressibly: he laughed till he reached the Temple Gate; and when in Fleet Street went almost into convulsions of hilarity. Holding on by one of the posts in the street, he sent forth such peals of laughter that they seemed in the silence of the night to resound from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... to make him smoke. I tried to make him talk about his travels. Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off." "What did he say? Did he say anything?" "But little." "Anything? Mary, confess He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me." "Warren!" "But did he? I just want to know." "Of course he did. What would you have him say? Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man Some humble way to save his self-respect. He added, if you really care to know, He meant to clear the upper pasture, too. That sounds like ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... at the mountains on my left—the lower ridge of the Kapanja Sirt—and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and I thought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come out at last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch with the trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M—'s ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... decided gesture of her foot every stone that lay in her way. There were many in that rocky path, but Becky left it smoother as she climbed, and paused now and then to send some especially sharp or large one spinning into the grassy ditch ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... regarded Philip's exactions as intolerable, and rebelled. Against them marched the royal army of iron-clad knights; and the desperate citizens, meeting these with no better defence than stout leather jerkins, led them into a trap. At the battle of Courtrai the knights charged into an unsuspected ditch, and as they fell the burghers with huge clubs beat out such brains as they could find within the helmets. It was subtlety against stupidity, the merchant's shrewdness asserting itself along new lines. King Philip had to create ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lane were heard, or neigh of a colt from the four-cross roads, people at dinner would start up and cry, "The French, the French have landed!" while the men in the fields would get nearer the hedge to peep through it, and then run away down the ditch. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... chuckling answer. "Nothing but good, old-fashioned sarsaparilla soda pop with the pop left out. It's as flat as ditch water. Where'd ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... had better stop and talk over the matter of drainage. There are three kinds of drains, namely: the open drain, the blind drain, and the tile drain. Each one has worked out of the other. The simplest sort and the one man first used is the open ditch. A piece of land was covered with water. A ditch was dug through the land at the place or places where water was standing. Usually a little stone is thrown into the bottom to help drain ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... were felled, and log-huts wore erected, the interstices of which were filled up with earth, moss, and a rude kind of mortar, in order to render them warm and comfortable. Around them, for defence, two redoubts were erected and an intrenchment, drawn with a ditch six feet wide and three or four feet deep. His left was covered by the Schuylkill, and his rear, for the most part, by an abrupt precipice; but his right was somewhat accessible, and the centre of his front was weak, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is used with reference to the progress of work on a wall or ditch from one end of it ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... upon one another, and the great ditches which run on the plains and elsewhere so many miles, were (not unlikely) their boundaries, and withall served for defence against the incursion of their enemies, as the Picts' Wall, Offa's Ditch, and that in China; to compare small things to great. Their religion is at large described by Csesar; their priests were the Druids. Some of their temples I pretend to have restored; as Anbury, Stonehenge, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... thoroughly rational; in other words, a combination of knave and fool. Bob, in consequence of his accomplishments, was always a great favorite in the village. Upon some odd occasions he was a ready and willing drudge at everything, and as strong as a ditch. Give him only a good fog-meal—which was merely a trifle, just what would serve three men or so—give him, we say, a fog-meal of this kind, about five times a day, with a liberal promise of more, and never was there a Scotch Brownie who could get through so much work. He knew no fatigue; frost ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... occurred there. It was one of the very strangest places in the whole world, for there, in the middle of that great desolate waste, were herded together seven or eight thousand men—warriors, you understand, men of experience and courage. Around there were a double wall and a ditch, and warders and soldiers; but, my faith! you could not coop men like that up like rabbits in a hutch! They would escape by twos and tens and twenties, and then the cannon would boom, and the search parties run, and we, who were left behind, would laugh ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the town they have cleared ten acres, (the garden) and planted corn and rice, which is growing nicely. They have set out mulberry, peach, and apple trees, which are doing well; in the middle of the garden, which is enclosed with a fence and ditch, they have built a corn-house, a cabin in which to live, and a stable." Another cabin, the first erected in the garden, had been burned in January, at which time Mrs. Waschke was living in it, though she was away when it caught fire, and returned ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... neighbours," said Bailie Craigdallie; "and this feud cannot be patched up as the former was: citizen's blood must not flow unavenged down our kennels, as if it were ditch water, or we shall soon see the broad Tay crimsoned with it. But this blow was never meant for the poor man on whom it has unhappily fallen. Every one knew what Oliver Proudfute was, how wide he would speak, and how little he would do. He has Henry Smith's buff ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a strong one. Fronting us to the north we had a large and rapid river; on the south we were Banked by a ditch forty feet broad and ten feet deep, which isolated the building from a fine open ground, without my bush, tree, or cover; the two wings were formed by small brick towers twenty feet high, with loop-holes, and a door ten feet from the ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... a beautiful surprise for Peter's mother, that sketch, which was a larger copy of the one on the fly-leaf of his geography. There was the gray worm-fence, a bit of brown ditch, an elder in flower, a tall purple thistle, and on it the Red Admiral. Peter wished to make his mother personally acquainted with the Red Admiral, so he printed on the back of ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... showing the Author's Route Sir Wilfred Laurier Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada Winnipeg, the Buckle of the Wheat Belt The Canadian Women's Press Club A section of Edmonton The Golden Fleece of Saskatchewan Irrigation ditch, Calgary, Alberta A Waldorf-Astoria on the prairie's edge Athabasca Landing Necessity knows no law at Athabasca The Missionary Hymnal for the Indians C.C. Chipman, Commissioner of the H.B. Co. A "sturgeon-head" on the Athabasca ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... kitchen-garden a raised causeway led into the Bawtry road, between an old drain of the Tome River and a narrower ditch running down to the parsonage duck-pond. The ditch as a rule was dry, or almost dry, being fed through a sluice in the embankment from time to time when the waters of the duck-pond ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lady nodded her head in assent. "Nurse, I once saw a robin's nest when I was in England; it was in the side of a mossy ditch, with primroses growing close beside it; it was made of green moss, and lined with white wool and hair; it was a pretty nest, with nice eggs in it, much better than ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... told him that he had a farm hand, but, he added, "he won't go, because he has the ague." "Oh, well," Mr. Veil replied, "that's no matter, I know how to cure him; I'll tell him how to cure himself." So they sent for me, and Veil told me how to get rid of the ague. He said, "you dig a ditch in the ground a foot deep, and strip off your clothing and bury yourself, leaving only your head uncovered, and sleep all night in the Mother Earth." I did it. I found the earth perfectly dry and warm. I had not much more ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... with a blast of powder by some enemy. Unable to bear the disappointment, Don Juan blew out his brains in the office belonging to his mine. A month afterward, Don Eugenic Mendoza y Jara, the bishop of Cuzco, sent a couple of Indians for the body, with instructions to throw it into a ditch: the men attached a rope to the feet and dragged it to a ravine, where dogs and vultures disposed of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... at the side of a ditch, which had been newly cut through a meadow at the end of our plantation, I caught sight of a small black object protruding from the side of the cutting, which turned out to be a fragment of Indian pottery made of coarse ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... would do in ten years. And him you think To put in place of Michael Angelo, In building the Basilica of St. Peter! The ass that thinks himself a stag discovers His error when he comes to leap the ditch. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... pleasantly, yet profanely, told me that he was General Walker (the poor fellow was killed the 22nd of July, at Atlanta), and that I had better get further. He passed on and waked others. Just then, General Cleburne and staff rode by me, and I heard one of his staff remark, "General, here is a ditch, or gully, that will make a natural breastwork." All I heard General Cleburne say was, "Er, eh, eh!" I saw General Lucius E. Polk's brigade form on the crest of ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... of the rooms under some mattresses, five men were found, and under a bridge crossing an irrigating ditch another was discovered. All these were immediately shot by the orders of Santa Ana, and so hastily and excitedly was it all done that a Mexican was killed with them by accident. The wife of Lieutenant Dickinson, a negro servant of Travis, and a few Mexican women were the only human ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... our Maryland woods. At Christmas-tide, when we came to the eastern shore, we would gallop together through miles of country, the farmers and servants tipping and staring after her as she laid her silver-handled whip upon her pony. She knew not the meaning of fear, and would take a fence or a ditch that a man might pause at. And so I fell into the habit of leading her the easy way round, for dread ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... presents," says Mr. G. T. Clark, "in a remarkable degree the features of a well-known class of earthworks found both in England and in Normandy. This kind of fortification by mound, bank and ditch was in use in the ninth, tenth, and even in the eleventh centuries, before masonry was general. {13} The mound was crowned with a strong circular house of timber, such as in the Bayeaux tapestry the soldiers are attempting to ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... times. The same street frequently changes its name in each division, and this part of the Calle de Tacuba is occasionally called the "Plazuela del Sopilote," "San Fernando," and the "Puente de Alvarado," which is the more classic of the three, as celebrating the valour of a hero; while a ditch, crossed by a small bridge near this, still retains the name of "el Salto de Alvarado," in memory of the famous leap given by the valiant Spaniard, Pedro de Alvarado, on the memorable night called the "noche triste," of the 1st of July, 1520, when the Spaniards were forced to retreat from ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the ladder," said Bart, pointing to a little ditch through which ran a small stream of water. "No one would ever think ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... killed the old witch. As the huntsmen came up they crowded round him, and praised him; and then they fastened the witch's body to a horse by ropes, and dragged her to the bottom of the valley, where they buried her in a ditch. That night, when the miser heard of her death, he dropped ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... to see except the transmission room and the upper conning tower—the twin holy of holies in a commissioned ship—and slipped away, escaping the Captain by a bare two minutes. Which was lucky, as he would probably have had us thrown into the "ditch." ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... excitement of the moment he could hardly have told how he got out of that car; but it did not seem ten seconds before he was standing beside the engineer and conductor of the train, looking at the battered engine, as it lay upon its side in a deep ditch. The baggage-car, just behind it, was broken all to pieces, but the passenger-cars did not seem to have suffered very much; and nobody was badly hurt, as the engineer and fireman had ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... light compared with that which the Nationalists would have on hands. I am aware that, at the time when we were all talking at concert pitch on the Irish Question, a good deal was said about dying in the last ditch by men who at the threat of any real trouble would be found more discreetly perched upon the first fence. But those who know the temper and fighting qualities of the working-men opponents of Home Rule ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... arrived at the lowest drain of that vast basin of clay absorbing many rivers, so that they lose themselves as in the ocean. Here the final outlet or channel of the waters of the Macquarie, was but a muddy ditch one might step across, which the magnificent flood we had seen in the same river above the marshes was not at all likely to reach. That flood had gone to fill thousands of lagoons, without which supply, those vast regions had been unfit for animal existence. Here we discover ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... say, and he had gone off a little way to get some dry wood to make a fire to boil the kettle over, and then he hadn't seemed to be able to recollect which was his way back; and had wandered and wandered off in quite the wrong direction; and at last he had got drowsy and fallen asleep in a dry ditch with his wooden leg on the lower rail of a fence; and then a local policeman who didn't know him had taken charge of him and trotted him off to Winklechurch, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... nourish cockatrices in their own bosoms; they choose to themselves those paths which have written upon them in large characters, These are the ways of death and damnation. They are offended with them that endeavour to pull them out of their ditch, and choose rather to lie and die there than to go to God by Christ that they may be saved from wrath through him; yea, so mad are they, that they count the most sober, the most godly, the most holy man, the mad one; the more earnest for life, the more mad; the more in the Spirit, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... face glided past the carriage at the level of the wheels as we drove slowly by. The imbecile face was red, and the bullet head with close-cropped hair seemed to lie alone, its chin in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes growing thick along the bottom of the deep ditch. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... pulled a sour face. "We are ditch-water dull. Festivals are celebrated quietly in the home; there is small religious fervor; courtships are consummated by family contract. I fear you will find little sensational ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... not tempt me. I'm too old to acquire such habits, and if Gerald lets his car get beyond a fair rate of speed during our journey home, I shall leap out into the ditch. Then just think how badly ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... good at a five-barred gate, and would make but a very bad hand at a double ditch. If you are inclined to remain among the tame people, she will ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... got behind a log, and by pushing, rolled it ahead of him until at last it fell with a splash in the water of a ditch or canal which led from near that grove of trees to the pond. Paddy followed into the water and began to push it ahead of ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... honour to hand the lady of the house to her own well-appointed table. Indignation, vexation, disbelief of the whole matter spoiled his dinner effectually. Mrs Grove's exquisite soup might have been ditch-water for all he knew to the contrary. The motherly concern so freely expressed, looked to him dreadfully like something not so praiseworthy. How she could look her dear Fanny in the face, and talk, so softly on indifferent subjects, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... help the Trojans, verily then I too would desire that even instantly this might be, that the Achaians should perish here nameless far from Argos: but and if they turn again, and we flee back from among the ships, and rush into the delved ditch, then methinks that not even one from among us to bear the tidings will win back to the city before the force of the Achaians when they rally. But come as I declare, let us all obey. Let our squires hold the horses by the dyke, while we being harnessed ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... and hot, the Union lines reach the strong defences of Peachtree Creek. Here Confederate Gilmer's engineering skill has prepared ditch and fraise, abattis and chevaux-de-frise, with yawning graves for ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... for this purpose. This done, they appointed Mr. Hansen their agent to make the projected improvements; and they, it may be supposed, worked a little more steadily and lived a little more frugally in San Francisco. He employed Spaniards and Indians as laborers; and what he did was to dig a ditch seven miles long to lead water out of the Santa Anna River, with four hundred and fifty miles of subsidiary ditches and twenty-five miles of feeders to lead the water over every twenty-acre lot. This done, he planted on every farm eight acres of grapes and ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... of the book. Nothing, for example, can be more admirable than the different manifestations of meanness which take place among the travellers of the stage-coach, in the oft-quoted chapter where Joseph, having been robbed of everything, lies naked and bleeding in the ditch. There is Miss Grave-airs, who protests against the indecency of his entering the vehicle, but like a certain lady in the Rake's Progress, holds the sticks of her fan before her face while he does so, and who is afterwards ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... way, saw the carcase lying on the road, and pulled it on one side; but the Bodhisattva, seeing it there, took it by the tail, and tossed it over seven fences and ditches, when the force of its fall made a great ditch. I suspect that the characters in the column have been disarranged, and that we should read {.} {.} {.} {.}, {.} {.}, {.} {.}. Buddha, that is Siddhartha, was at this time only ten ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... us, before all things, push on with the war! It is by our victories that slavery will be in the beginning most thoroughly attacked. If the South, as it professes, means to fight to the last ditch, and to the black flag, all discussion of emancipation is needless; for in the track of our armies the contraband assumes freedom without further formula. But we are by no means convinced that such will ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... small in comparison with the wonderland that lies beyond the rubber plantations between Hana and the Honomanu Gulch. Two days were required to cover this marvellous stretch, which lies on the windward side of Haleakala. The people who dwell there call it the "ditch country," an unprepossessing name, but it has no other. Nobody else ever comes there. Nobody else knows anything about it. With the exception of a handful of men, whom business has brought there, nobody has heard of the ditch country of Maui. Now a ditch ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside ditch, bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge at both ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double meadow thus inclosed is doubtless the result ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... with different trees planted about it, amongst which were several of those called etoa, very large. These, as they resemble the cypress, had a fine effect in such a place. There was, also, a row of low palms near one of the houses, and behind it a ditch, in which lay a great number ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... sunk when we entered Cassala. It is a walled town, surrounded by a ditch and flanking towers, and containing about 8,000 inhabitants, exclusive of troops. The houses and walls were of unburnt brick, smeared with clay and cow-dung. As we rode through the dusty streets, I sent off Mahomet with ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... II.), 1389, Adam Shakespere, who is described as son and heir of Adam of Oldediche, held lands within the manor of Baddesley Clinton by military service, and probably had only just then obtained them. Oldediche, or Woldich, now commonly called Old Ditch Lane, lies within the parish of Temple Balsall, not far ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... as had arisen, viz., the capture of the fort by our troops. I therefore went with the colonel up to the fort to listen for the mining operations, and got the men who claimed to have heard the subterranean noises, down in the bottom of the ditch of the fort, which was ten feet deep, and at the angles formed a fairly good listening gallery, but nothing unusual could be heard. I therefore made arrangements to sink a line of pits in the bottom of the ditch, something like ordinary wells; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... our horses which had come a journey, put a pair of his horses and one of his postillions to our coach: the postillion had, it seems, amused himself at a club in Castle Pollard while we were at the ball, and he had amused himself so much that he did not know the ditch from the road: he was ambitious of passing Mr. Dease's carriage—passed it: attempted to pass Mr. Tuite's, ran the wheels on a drift of snow which overhung the ditch, and laid the coach fairly down on its side in ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... recognized the metallic bars to which he clung. He was in the cage under the ball of St. Paul's. The dome rose but a little way above the general contour of the city, into the still twilight, and sloped away, shining greasily under a few distant lights, into a circumambient ditch of darkness. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... wind rushed up the high road as though it would tear Peter off his feet and fling him into the sea, but he walked sturdily, no cap on his head and the wind streaming through his hair. Some way along the road he found a child crying in a ditch. He loved children, and, picking the small boy up, he found that he had been sent for beer to the Cap and Feathers, at the turn of the road, and been blown by the wind into the ditch and was almost dead with terror. At first at the sight of Peter the child had ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... mile or so from the gate we came to an inner enclosure, that answered to the South African cattle kraal, surrounded by a dry ditch and a timber palisade outside of which was planted a green fence of some shrub with long white thorns. Here we passed through more gates, to find ourselves in an oval space, perhaps five acres in extent. Evidently this served as a market ground, but all around ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... hares and rabbits from their hiding-places. Gaily went they forth, these merry sportsmen and their helpers; light was their step across the green meadows and up the sandy hill-sides; loud was their laughter when one of them, trying to jump through a broken hedge, fell into the neighbouring ditch; great was their mirth when another's gun went off and lamed a squirrel in an adjoining tree; and joyous was the shout with which they scared a frightened rabbit from its ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... was foolish two seconds after the words had left his lips. But a temper which has been allowed to leap hedges, unchecked throughout life, is in peril of forming a habit of taking them even at such times as a leap may land its owner in a ditch. This last was what her interested eyes were obviously saying. It suited him best at the moment to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... countermarching for months, and had a jaded, dejected appearance, not pleasant to look upon, and very far removed indeed from the buoyant and hopeful air with which they entered upon the campaign. At one point, during the retreat of the day before, it had been necessary to leap the horses over a difficult ditch. Many of them fell into it, and the riders were overtaken by the enemy's horse before they could be extricated. Among these was Hobart, sergeant major, who was taken to Libby prison, where he remained until the next year, when he ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... Past hedges, gates, and trees; past cottages, and barns, and people going home from work. Yo-ho! Past donkey chaises drawn aside into the ditch, and empty carts with rampant horses whipped up at a bound upon the little watercourse and held by struggling carters close to 5 the five-barred gate until the coach had passed the narrow turning in the road. Yo-ho! By churches dropped down by themselves in quiet nooks, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... dream, so far as this valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep ditch; that ditch is it, into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold, on the left hand there was a very dangerous quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... confusion he held up his white hand in the scorching sunrays and commented jovially: "Talk about Eastern heat—this is a hundred and five Fahrenheit at the very least! A-a-ah!" He drew in a deep breath of the dry pure air. "This is something like! When you get your land under ditch, you'll have a paradise." ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth. The whole story of the past night sprang into his mind with every detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of sight, and he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage, went ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... behind, mounting the hills and then striking the turnpike—every rod of which he could have found in the dark—his thoughts, like road-swallows, skimmed each mile he covered. Here was where he had stopped with Kate when her stirrup broke; near the branches of that oak close to the ditch marking the triangle of cross-roads he had saved his own and Spitfire's neck by a clear jump that had been the talk of the neighborhood for days. On the crest of this hill—the one he was then ascending—his father always tightened up the brakes on his ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Salvat had suddenly escaped from the detectives by bounding into the Bois de Boulogne, it had occurred to him to slip round to the Dauphine gate and there descend into the deep ditch* of the city ramparts. He remembered days of enforced idleness which he had spent there, in nooks where, for his own part, he had never met a living soul. Nowhere, indeed, could one find more secret places of retreat, hedged round by thicker bushes, or concealed from view by loftier ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... these ideas, the squire had them all on horseback at an early age, and made them ride, slap-dash, about the country, without flinching at hedge or ditch, or stone wall, to the imminent danger of ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... of water in a ditch The frogs stand only with their muzzles out, So that they hide their ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... years, as if our inheritance were the crown of some archaic king. I myself feel that strongly. If it came to the point, though I have said that I am too old to fight for distressed Virtue, I should very likely die in the last ditch for every inch of land and every worthless object I ever owned. When Vetch talks about taxing property more heavily I am utterly and openly against him because it is my instinct to be. I refuse to ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Thames, when he sallied out to see it, had been too good to be true, the smallest thing in rivers he had ever seen, and he had had to restrain himself from affecting a marked accent and accosting some passer-by with the question, "Say! But is this little wet ditch ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Provisions from Tolu, and the River Sina, as to prevent any Attempts being made this Way. The next place of Defence was Castillo Grande, which is about eight Miles up the Harbour. This Castle is a regular Square with four Bastions, strong and well built, and defended to the Land by a wet Ditch and Glacis proper, and one Face towards the Sea has a Raveline, and a double Line of Guns. This Castle can mount sixty one Guns, though there was but fifty seven in it. Opposite to this was a Horse-shoe Battery ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... afterward on the same spot—stood on a slight conical rise some distance back from the little stream that watered the ranch. From his windows Jim Laramie could look on gently falling ground in all directions. Toward the creek lay an alfalfa field which, with a crude irrigating ditch and water from the creek, he had brought to a prosperous stand. Below the alfalfa stood the barn and ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... inhabitants took refuge in the palace, in the fort, with the Ursulines, or with the Jesuits; redoubts were raised, loop-holes bored and patrols established. At Ville-Marie no fewer precautions were taken; the governor surrounded a mill which he had erected in 1658, by a palisade, a ditch, and four bastions well entrenched. It stood on a height of the St. Louis Hill, and, called at first the Mill on the Hill, it became later the citadel of Montreal. Anxiety still prevailed everywhere, but God, who knows how to raise up, in the very moment of ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... a long bicycle ride into the country, taking my shame and rage with me. On a certain Saturday, bestriding my faithful bike, I went for a spin along the dusty high-road which runs past the camp. After going at high speed, I dismounted, seated myself under a tree in the shade, by the side of a ditch, and was falling asleep. It was summer, the sun was pouring down. A cyclist stopped in front of me with a punctured tyre. He asked me to lend him the wherewithal to repair it; and whilst the solution was drying ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... one's body, one's beauty, little by little; one is feared like a beast of prey, scorned like a pariah, surrounded by people who always take more than they give; and one fine day one dies like a dog in a ditch, after having ruined others and ruined ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... his travels to-night," he said, in a low tone. "Easy served with a bed, that lad be; six foot o' dry peat or heath, or a nook in a dry ditch. That lad hasn't slept once in a house this twenty year, and ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... ready here hard by in the brew-house; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and, without any pause or staggering, take this basket on your shoulders: 10 that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in Datchet-mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... out of him, but he's had a bad attack of pneumonia, and it's an old enemy of his, as it always is to a man of his physique. He's a good worker, but lacks judgment to make his work count. Doesn't really seem to have much to work for. But he's a friend to the last ditch. Just hear the rain!" ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... clump, crawled through a gap into it, and walked through it. One pheasant scuttled out of it, down the hedgerow to the wood below. The occurrence pleased him. He crawled out of the clump on the farther side, and proceeded to lay a train of raisins down the ditch of the hedge to the wood. He did not lay it right down to the wood lest some inquisitive gamekeeper might espy it. Then he returned with fine, red Indian caution to Erebus. They rode ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... Msalala, came selling from Sakuma on the north—a jocular man, always a favourite with the ladies. He offered a hoe as a token of friendship, but I bought it, as we are, I hope, soon going off, and it clears the tent floor and ditch ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... breathing-room for their gasping population. Besides, air, water, light, and cleanliness are modern innovations. The nose seems to have acquired its sensitiveness within a hundred years,—the lungs their objection to foul air, and the palate its disgust at ditch-water like the Thames, within a more recent period. Honestly dirty, and robustly indifferent to what mortally offends our squeamish senses, our happy ancestors fattened on carbonic acid gas, and took the exhalations of graveyards and gutters with a placidity of stomach ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... and destruction of their castles. These castles were not as yet the vast and elaborate structures which arose in after days. A single strong square tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous. The possession of these strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his prince and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours. Every season of anarchy is marked by the building of castles; ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... the village her father had to get out and pluck a flower for her, which he could not see and which she pointed out to him growing on the edge of the ditch. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... splendid!" he exclaimed; "you're fine! You could put life into a dead man. You're the kind of girl that are the making of men. By Jove, you'd back a man up, wouldn't you? You'd stand by him till the last ditch. Of course," he went on after a pause—"of course I ought to go to New York. But, Blix, suppose I went—well, then what? It isn't as though I had any income of my own, or rich aunt. Suppose I didn't find something to do—and the chances are that I wouldn't for three or four months—what ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... ready here hard-by in the Brew-house, & when I sodainly call you, come forth, and (without any pause, or staggering) take this basket on your shoulders: y done, trudge with it in all hast, and carry it among the Whitsters in Dotchet Mead, and there empty it in the muddie ditch, close ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... thinking of the unspeakable ruin of the souls of men through the wickedness culminating in the "Pope's confessors," that the Son of God said:—"If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." To every woman, with very few exceptions, coming out from the feet of her confessor, the children of light may say:—"I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, but thou art dead!" ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... now got into order; the north and south sides were protected by a bank 4 feet 6 inches high on the inside, having a ditch 10 feet wide and 6 feet deep on the outside. The west side, facing the bay, had a 4 foot bank crowned by a palisade, with no ditch; and the east side, on the bank of the river, was protected by a double row of water casks. The armament ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the ground the smaller may be the troughs, but on ground where the slopes are great, more expense will be necessary in stilting the flumes to maintain the level, and the harder it will be to find a large section that can be brought under the ditch. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... said, and kicked a stone into the ditch; "take my chances of that. It's the kid I'm ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Frejus, the harbour is filled with sand and soil brought down by the river Argens and washed in by the waves, and is now a level meadow, every portion belonging to a farmer cut off from another portion by a ditch, in which spring the rushes and croak the frogs. Augustus enlarged the port, and after the decisive battle of Actium (B.C. 31) sent thither the galleys captured from Anthony. The sea is ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... held to comprise the following: a privately owned water supply system formerly operated under contract with the municipality effecting the taking;[640] a right of way across a neighbor's land for the enlargement of an irrigation ditch therein to enable the taker to obtain water for irrigating land that would otherwise remain valueless;[641] a right of way across a placer mining claim for the aerial bucket line of a mining corporation;[642] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... would have been glad to arrange the terms of peace sooner, but there was much inner turmoil at home. The men who, through thick and thin, had abetted the King in one plan after another to fight to the last ditch had nothing more to propose. Lord North, when he heard of the surrender of Yorktown, almost shrieked, "My God! It is all over; it is all over!" and was plunged in gloom. A new ministry had to be formed. Lord North ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... even then she did n't stop. Seemed like ploughin' through the minister's family only give her fresh strength. She kept right straight on down the crick road, 'n' jus' by the ditch she come on Mr. 'n' Mrs. Jilkins. They was comin' up to town to spend the night with the Whites, 'n' they had the green 'n' yellow parasol all done up to send to Mrs. Jilkins' niece along with 'em. The cow was 's unexpected to them as to every one else, 'n' she ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... today, other things remaining equal, is proportionate to the skill of the trade, or, in other words, proportionate to the pressure the surplus labor army can put upon it. If a thousand ditch-diggers strike, it is easy to replace them, wherefore the ditch-diggers have little or no organized strength. But a thousand highly skilled machinists are somewhat harder to replace, and in consequence the machinist unions are strong. The ditch-diggers are ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... soon, then, or he'll be in the ditch," said Tom grimly, for a little, sluggish stream crossed the meadow not far ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... sky, here and there, like some transformed prophetess raising her gaunt arms in appeal or malediction; an occasional five-barred gate marked the entrance to some by-road to the farm; on one side of the way a deep black-looking ditch lay under the scanty shelter of the low hedge, and hinted at possible water rats to the traveller from cities who might happen to entertain a fastidious aversion ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... spoken, D'Artagnan cleared the ditch by the roadside and crossed the plain so as to wind around the village. He had observed between the house that Madame de Longueville inhabited and the convent of the Jesuits, an open space surrounded by ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was big and strong, and drunk. He clenched his fists, and made for his adversary, head down, in the futile Italian fashion. The Englishman stepped aside, landed a left-handed blow behind his ear, and followed it up with a tremendous kick, which sent the fellow upon his face in the ditch under the rocks. Clare looked on, and her eyes brightened singularly, for she had fighting blood in her veins. The man seemed stunned, and lay still where he had fallen. Johnstone turned to the fallen mule, which lay bleeding and ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... run away with him," Trove continued. "His character is like a broken buggy; and his imagination—that's the unbroken colt. Every day, for a long time, the colt has run away with the wagon, tipping it over and dragging it in the ditch, until every bolt is loose, and every spoke rattling, and every wheel awry. I do hope he's repaired ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... from its hiding-place, "tie this round thy waist, and I will let thee down from the window; by God's mercy it looks out on a deserted part of the garden, where the guards but rarely come, and thou canst steal over the ditch, and down the garden, and round the Calton Hill, and so down to the sea at Leith. Karl's boat is there; he will be watching for thee. Thou wilt know her by her long black hull, and by a red light he will burn in the stern. Nay, Hugh," for he would have taken her in his arms. "The ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... not the scornful ask me what avails So small a pack to follow mighty trails: Long since I saw what difference must be Between a stream like you, a ditch like me. This drains a garden and a homely field Which scarce at times a living current yield; The other from the high lands of his birth Plunges through rocks and spurns the pastoral earth, Then settling silent to his deeper course Draws in his fellows to augment his force, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... emerged from the enchanted castle we knew ourselves and each other for what we were, and fell weeping into each other's arms. So feeble were we that we could hardly move, nevertheless we have made a shift to crawl hither, trusting to your hospitality to recruit us from the sawdust and ditch-water which we vehemently suspect to have been our diet during the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... legislating, and how they overdid the council work and neglected to "bug" their potatoes. I remember, also, of his description of how the crew, working on the original big irrigating canal, struck when it was about half done, and swore that from the Poudre the ditch was going to run up hill, and would, therefore, be a failure. The engineer didn't know at first what was best to do with the belligerent laborers, but finally he took the leader away from the rest of the crew and said, "Now, I tell ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... scrambling over a hedge in the direction of Ash Grove. Now, Miss Moore, for a desperate effort." We all looked in the direction where he pointed with his whip, and all set off at once at full speed. There was a small ditch between the field we were in, and the one we were making for; all the horses took it at a flying leap, except mine, who positively refused to budge. In vain I struck him and urged him on; he began rearing violently, but would ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... the furious storm continued, the very seams of the ship seemed to open like pores, to let in the sea, which was knocking and raging without for admittance, till at length the hold became like a ditch, which we rats could not cross ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... not gone far when the moon rose, and from behind the clouds diminished the darkness a little. The first part of her journey lay along a narrow lane, with a small ditch, a rising bank, and a hedge on each side. About the middle of the lane was a farmyard, and a little way farther a cottage. Soon after passing the gate of the farmyard, she thought she heard steps behind her, seemingly soft and swift, and naturally felt a little ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... of Datiya is surrounded by a stone wall about thirty feet high, with its foundation on a solid rock; but it has no ditch or glacis, and is capable of little or no defence against cannon. In the afternoon I went, accompanied by Lieutenant Thomas, and followed by the best cortege we could muster, to return the Raja's visit. He resides within the walls of the city in a large square garden, enclosed with ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... surrounding three sides of a square. It is built of hewn stone, and over the centre entrance is placed a large gilt crown. Not far from the modern palace is the ancient Chateau, surrounded by a deep ditch, and flanked by gloomy bastions, formerly the requisites to a prince's residence, but incompatible with the luxury sought ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... to the end of Ligny. On the left in the distance the Prussians were shooting from the windows again, while we did not reply. The shout rose—"The Guard! the Guard!" I do not know how that mass of men passed the muddy ditch, probably by means of plank thrown across, but in a moment they were on the left ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... free men; ignorant to-day, to-morrow educated; from one position to another the Negro has traveled until they have produced some of the best men in the country, and some of them have traveled all the way from the ditch to the State House in less than a quarter of a century. With men such as R. T. Greener, J. E. Bruce, T. Thomas Fortune, J. M. Henderson, of New York; Booker T. Washington, W. H. Council, Henry C. Smith, of Alabama; George L. Knox. G. L. Jones, Will M. Lewis, W. A. Sweeney, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... and was blockading the province of Narbonensis. Titius underwent no punishment, being preserved for his father's sake and because his soldiers carried the name of Sextus on their shields: he did not, however, recompense his benefactor fairly, but fought him to the last ditch and finally slew him, so that his name is remembered among the most prominent of his kind. Menas besides the exploits mentioned sailed to Sardinia and had a conflict with Marcus Lurius, the governor there; and at first he was routed, but later when the other was pursuing him heedlessly ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... fight, an' thrash him till the others came in, an' got him away. Then he'd carry tales to his father, and one day old Westall beat Jim within an inch of 'is life, with a strap end, because of a lie George told 'im. The poor chap lay in a ditch under Disley Wood all day, because he was that knocked about he couldn't walk, and at night he crawled home on his hands and knees. He's shown me the place many a time! Then he told his father, and next morning he told me, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had been shot I came to the ditch for some water, but she was dry as a whistle. Ever notice how things are that way? A fellow wants water; none there. It's rainin' rivers; the ditch is runnin' strong. There's a sermon for a ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... observe the Etruscan rites: the founder traces a square enclosure with a plough with share of bronze, drawn by a white bull and a white heifer. Men follow the founder and carefully cast the clods of earth from the side of the furrow. The whole ditch left by the plough is sacred and is not to be crossed. To allow entrance to the enclosure, it is necessary that the founder break the ditch at certain points, and he does this by lifting the plough and carrying it an ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Cape Colonna in Attica. Yet these are nothing to parts of Illyria and Epirus, where places without a name, and rivers not laid down in maps, may, one day, when more known, be justly esteemed superior subjects, for the pencil and the pen, to the dry ditch of the Ilissus and the bogs ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the playground, beyond the swings, broke into a patch of tangled thicket, beyond which again a little ditch separated the grounds of Stonebridge House from the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... fell. Upon the 24th of June three Dutch captains were relieving guard in the trenches near the great north bastion of the town, when it occurred to them to scale the wall of the fort and see what was going on inside. They threw some planks across the ditch, and taking half a company of soldiers, climbed cautiously up. They obtained a foothold before the alarm was given. There was a fierce hand to hand struggle, and sixteen of the party fell, and nine of the garrison. ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... steep steps slowly, three guards at his back and three in front of him. The priests would be gone from the Temple, but there might be one or two last-ditch defenders remaining, and they would be armed with the Weapons of Kor ... hand-weapons which shot dark beams that could disintegrate anything in their path. They would be dangerous. Well, there would be no temple-guards in the inner court; his ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... prediction that he exposed his son in a wood. The child was found by a magician, who brought him up, and from whom he afterwards escaped. He went to the court of the king, his father, and won the hand of the princess (his own sister) by leaping his horse over a broad ditch. At the marriage banquet the king handed his son a glass of wine, and the latter recognized him and exclaimed: "Behold, the father serves the son." The marriage was of course given up and the previous aversion of the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... of the town were the natural drains feeding the stagnant ponds. Not only was the Church Lane an open drain, but the piece of Back Street, between the Cross and Kneesworth Street, was an open ditch, across which was a plank bridge into the back way of the "Coach and Horses." The High Street had no paving, but only a rough raised path running along next the shops. The condition of the street was such that ladies generally wore pattens and clogs, which were home-made at ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... that an exit has been made that way; lock the door; place the key—where shall we put the key?—under 'Chrysostom' on the book-shelf; and if any ask for it, say I keep it there, and told you where to find it, if you had need to go to my room. The descent is easy down the wall into the ditch; and so, once more farewell, until I see thee again, my dear son." And with this the intrepid Father mounted the buffet with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window, lifting up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only leaving ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... thoughtfully removing another horse-fly from Old Trumpeter Rollo's father leaned over his son's shoulder and said kindly, "My son, you must not disturb Jonas while he is driving, or we shall soon all be in the ditch. It is only reasonable to suppose that Mr. Bishop was mistaken in thinking that there was a little bird in the studio. Or there may have been one under his black cloth. Did you look under ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... seen, the results are brought about by the same irrigating ditches that the aborigines used more than three hundred years ago. The touch of moisture is like the enchanter's wand. In California, water is conveyed thirty, forty, and even fifty miles, by means of ditch and flume; here the sources of supply are not usually half the first-named distance away. Grapes are grown, as at Chihuahua, in great abundance, the soil seeming to be particularly adapted to their cultivation. Many tons of the big purple fruit are regularly converted into ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Old Goodie She trots betimes Over the meadows To Farmer Grimes. And never was queen With jewelry rich As those same hedges From twig to ditch; Like Dutchmen's coffers, Fruit, thorn, and flower - They shone like William And Mary's bower. And be sure Old Goodie Went back to Weep, So tired with her basket She ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... spent, the Colonel no longer felt vigorous enough to leap the ditch. He had seen the truth in all its nakedness. The Countess' speech and Delbecq's reply had revealed the conspiracy of which he was to be the victim. The care taken of him was but a bait to entrap him in a snare. That speech was like a drop of subtle poison, bringing on in the old soldier a ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... sudden swerve. Of course the car skidded. It skidded all over the place, as if it were drunk, and, aided by Marigold, described a series of ghastly half-circles. At last he performed various convulsive feats of jugglery, with the result that the car, which was nosing steadily for the ditch, came to a stand-still. Then Marigold informed me in unemotional tones that the steering gear ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... spoke. Alongside the road at this point lay a ditch that was a couple of feet lower than the surface of the pike. Straggly bushes partly over-ran the watercourse; and caught on the twigs of these was some sort of object that had attracted the attention ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... laughed Maggie, pulling the old horse almost into the ditch, "you'd trot off with a bundle quick enough ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... scorcher of a jolt! I hope none of the wheels break down!" answered the other, over his shoulder; but he dared not take his eyes off the uneven "tote" road which they were following, for more than a second at a time, lest some unfriendly root hurl him into the ditch, a wreck. ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... of day he was in the saddle again, but did not ride far afield. He hardly left his own land, and it was evident that Lenfield was surrounded. In the afternoon he returned home, unconscious that Monmouth had been taken during the morning, found in a ditch clad in a shepherd's dress, and was already on ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... bullets fly wide in the ditch, Don't call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch; She's human as you are—you treat her as sich, An' she'll fight ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... and the poles in each row were about ten feet distant from each other. The lane between them was covered by sticks, that were set up sloping towards each other from the top of the poles on each side, like the roof of a house. This rail-work, with a ditch that was parallel to it, was carried about a hundred yards down the hill in a kind of curve; but for what ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... No, Sir; what he has is rather the contrary; I will, indeed, allow him courage, and on this account we so far give him credit. We have more respect for a man who robs boldly on the highway, than for a fellow who jumps out of a ditch, and knocks you down behind your back. Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Capt. Lossier and bade him take fifty men and advance to the right and post himself in an advantageous ditch and ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... the ditch; we passed them before I spoke. I see them on a blackberry-bush; they've got little ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... said the bishop; "there is a weakness of heart of which you remind me. You are right, too, for that, indeed, is an immense obstacle. The horse afraid of the ditch, leaps into the middle of it, and is killed! The man who trembling crosses his sword with that of another leaves loopholes whereby his enemy ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which were perforated for the discharge of musketry. They were formed of the hardest and most knotted pines that could be procured; the sharp points of which were seasoned by fire until they acquired nearly the durability and consistency of iron. Beyond these firmly imbedded pickets was a ditch, encircling the fort, of about twenty feet in width, and of proportionate depth, the only communication over which to and from the garrison was by means of a drawbridge, protected by a strong chevaux-de-frise. The only gate with which the fortress ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the slightest notion how to fight. From my everyday school life in Copenhagen, I knew hundreds of tricks and feints that he had never learnt, and as soon as I perceived this I flung him into the ditch like a glove. He sprang up again, but, with lofty indifference, I threw him a second time, till his head buzzed. That satisfied me that I had not been shamed before Henrietta, who, for that matter, took my exploit ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... far, that he would sometimes mount his horse, and make believe he was going to St. Michael's; and, in thirty minutes afterward, you might find his horse tied in the woods, and the snake-like Covey lying flat in the ditch, with his head lifted above its edge, or in a fence corner, watching every movement of the slaves! I have known him walk up to us and give us special orders, as to our work, in advance, as if he were leaving home with a view to being absent several days; and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... "We've reached the last ditch as surely as they did in the war," he said to Darcy, rubbing his hands in great glee. "I tell you, old chap, it was a lucky thought of starting just as we did. You see, we shall come up with the good times; for I do honestly believe ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... thinking that my child was calling on Satan to help her. Only one lad, of about five-and-twenty, whom, however, I did not know, tarried a few paces behind the cart, until his father came, and seeing he would not go away willingly, pushed him into the ditch, so that he sank up to his loins in the water. Thereat even my poor child smiled, and asked me whether I did not know any more Latin hymns wherewith to keep the stupid and foul-mouthed people still further from us. But, dear reader, how could I then have been able to recite Latin ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... in the ditch when he was dyin', dying in sight of his home. Mine was the only hand that wiped away his tears. I can see only HIS ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... We decided to overhaul ours with a few brief excursions, just long enough to give an opportunity for having it towed home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... he was away through the brush. Speed and the utmost caution were necessary. If a limb cracked, if he fell over a hidden ditch, the quarry would be frightened away. He must see what was going on, see ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... accomplished by the labor of man. The tread-wheel is usually worked by two men or women, who steady themselves by holding to a cross-bar, while their weight revolves the tread-wheel and works a chain of water-pockets. The pockets dip water from a hole or ditch and empty it into troughs, whence it spreads over the field. The screeching of these wheels can be heard for miles, and the grotesque Chinese figures stepping up, up, up in pairs, yet never ascending, the women singing in shrill, falsetto ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... reason to feel cheerless. They fight, each man according to his temperament, swearing or laughing, sobbing or singing comic songs, until the case looks grim. Then, though, the same thrill runs through the whole of them, the same fire blazes in their eyes, and the last ditch that they line has been known to be ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... colorists, many and many a time during that week Desiree took her excursion again. The violets reminded her of the little moss-covered mound on which she had picked them, seeking them under the leaves, her fingers touching Frantz's. They had found these great water-lilies on the edge of a ditch, still damp from the winter rains, and, in order to reach them, she had leaned very heavily on Frantz's arm. All these memories occurred to her as she worked. Meanwhile the sun, shining in at the open window, made the feathers of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... assigned to the several divisions. Each column was provided with a certain number of axemen, selected to act as pioneers; but not one of the necessary implements was in a condition to be used; neither had a single fascine or ladder been provided, although it was well known a deep ditch remained to be passed before the axes, inefficient as they were, could be ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... stood on their feet: "Is the rope twined?" "Nay, rope-twiner," said one of them. Then Roger turned and whispered to Ralph: "Friends. Get out thy sword!" Wherewithal the gate was opened, and they all passed out through the wall, and stood above the ditch in the angle-nook of a square tower. Then Ralph saw some of the men stoop and shoot out a broad plank over the ditch, which was deep but not wide thereabout, and straightway he followed the others over it, going last save Roger. By then they were on the other side he ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... laughed. "The wine isn't very good, but the others seem able to stand for it. I once laid out a mine ditch in a neighborhood where you'd have wanted some courage to throw away a drink the ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... jagged-rimmed bluff standing boldly up against the star-flecked sky. Then he shook himself impatiently, muttered something which had to do with a "doddering fool," and retraced his steps quickly through the orchard, the currant bushes, and the strawberry patch, jumped the ditch, and so entered the grove and returned to ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... and looked over a low wall. They were particularly interested in a little soldier posted on the shore of the Morelle, behind the remains of an old bateau; he stretched himself out flat on the ground, watched, fired and then glided into a ditch a trifle farther back to reload his gun; and his movements were so droll, so tricky and so supple, that they smiled as they looked at him. He must have perceived the head of a Prussian, for he arose quickly and brought his weapon to his shoulder, but before he could fire he uttered a cry, fell ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... if he would abandon the other provinces to their grasp; and, urging his consent, asked him if he did not see that the republic was ruined? "There is one means," replied the Prince of Orange, "which will save me from the sight of my country's ruin—I will die in the last ditch." ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... after throwing away his crutch, he leaped a great ditch ten feet wide, and of undiscoverable muddy depth. I wonder if the old cripple would think me the lamer one now, thought Israel to himself, arriving on ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... damage in a single day To that fair harbor than the sea had done Or would do in ten years. And him you think To put in place of Michael Angelo, In building the Basilica of St. Peter! The ass that thinks himself a stag discovers His error when he comes to leap the ditch. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... then rushed forward, attempting to storm the stockades. The fort, from one side to the other, was in a blaze of light. Each man was fighting with desperation, and hurling back those who crossed the ditch and endeavoured to climb the walls. After the Spaniards had made several desperate attempts, they were driven back; and again getting under shelter, contented themselves with keeping up a hot fire at us. We, of course, replied in the same fashion; but, except that both parties expended a large ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... spoken before—but Tinakonk. It lies on the west side of the river, and is separated from the west shore, not as he said, by a wide running branch of the river, as wide as the Eemster, near Amsterdam, but by a small creek, as wide as a large ditch, running through a meadow. It is long and covered with bushes, and inside somewhat marshy. It is about two miles long, or a little more, and a mile and a half wide. Although there are not less miles than he said, he did not ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... along the coast, with the great mountains on the mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and as there was eleven ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. It showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. Not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. In the heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. There had been no obliteration, because there ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dykes than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood.— Here strip, my children, here at once leap in; Here prove who best can dash ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... till at last Hugh had to beg her to go more quietly, for Harry's sake. She drew up alongside of them at once, and made her mare stand as still as she could, while Harry made his first essay upon a little ditch. After crossing it two or three times, he gathered courage; and setting his pony at a larger one beyond, bounded across ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... and fancy yoursel' a man o' the same blude as they, and fa' in love wi' one o' them—and then they'll teach you your level, and send ye off to gauge whusky like Burns, or leave ye' to die in a ditch as they did wi' ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... to breast chilling winds or atmospheric conditions many degrees removed from their places of services. In this practice is the exposure from sudden changes of temperature without preparation. The drayman, the cartman, the man in the ditch and others whose employment is in the open air are exposed not alone by the character of the work in which they are engaged but also by reason of the fact that six days of the week, those in which they labor, of necessity, their clothing is poor and shabby and their persons are ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... tramp!" returned Winston, disdainfully. "As villanous a dog in physiognomy and dress as I ever saw! Such an one as generally draws his last breath where he drew the first—in a ditch or jail; and too seldom, for the peace and safety of society, finds his noblest earthly elevation upon a gallows. It is a nuisance, though, having him pay this trifling debt of Nature—nobody but Nature would trust him—in my house. There must be an inquest and a commotion. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... "is named after a ditch, or rather the canal of water which leads from the Meuse, since in the vulgar tongue a ditch is generally called delft. It is distant two leagues from Rotterdam, and is a town truly great and most beautiful in every part, having goodly and noble ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... must use much water. As soon as the capitan has left, Juan begins to pour buckets of water on the street. But when the water all flows away, Juan thinks that his irrigation is not good enough: so he takes his cart and carabao, and with their help he digs a large ditch. All night long Juan works filling the ditch with water. The next morning, when the capitan sees the ditch, he becomes very angry, and summons Juan. Juan excuses himself by saying that the laws of the town are ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... of a vestibule, r, and two rooms, s, lighted by two electric lamps, R. In the portion of the figure situated to the left it is easy to see the process employed for insulating the line. A commencement is made by digging a ditch in the street and paving the bottom of it with bricks. Upon these latter there is laid a mixture of sand and asphalt, and then the wires and bobbins are put in, and the whole is finally covered with a new ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... month Paul was fighting in the last ditch, wandering disconsolately among those who dwell in outer darkness and have grimy thumbs. Seven of these in all he visited on that black Thursday, and each of the seven rubbed the surface of the painting with a grimy thumb, snorted, and dismissed him. Sick and beaten, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Baron walked on till they reached the garden, which was separated from the road by a light paling. On more level ground it would have been by a moat or ditch. ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... be drained by gutters filled with loose stones, or tiles, and then covered with earth. Surface-draining can be done by running a small ditch or furrow every sixth or eighth row, parallel with the hillside, and leading into a main ditch at the end or the middle of the vineyard. Steep hillsides should be terraced or benched; but, as this is very ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... in. The brigands scattered—so did we; and I found myself with two troopers in chase of a pair of bandits, one of whom seemed to be the chief of the band. A small stream wound through the plain, which we dashed across. Just beyond was a tributary ditch, which would have been considered a fair jump in the hunting-field: both brigands took it in splendid style. The hindmost was not ten yards ahead of the leading trooper, who came a cropper; on which the brigand reined ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... our American history, we have been engaged in change—in a perpetual peaceful revolution—a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions—without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of a man who deserts me on my wedding-day—who makes me an outcast—an object of scorn and disgrace! I would die first! I would face starvation and death in this great city. I know what I am saying. I would sweep a crossing like that beggar in rags yonder; I would lie down and die in a ditch sooner. Let me go, Miss Catheron, I beg of you; you only distress me unnecessarily. If you pleaded forever it could not avail. Give my love to Lady Helena; but I will never go back—I will never accept a farthing from Sir Victor Catheron. Don't come here more—don't ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... hot, the Union lines reach the strong defences of Peachtree Creek. Here Confederate Gilmer's engineering skill has prepared ditch and fraise, abattis and chevaux-de-frise, with yawning graves ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... bulwarks and the rampires large and strong, With cavalieros [116] and thick counterforts, And room within to lodge six thousand men; It must have privy ditches, countermines, And secret issuings to defend the ditch; It must have high argins [117] and cover'd ways To keep the bulwark-fronts from battery, And parapets to hide the musketeers, Casemates to place the great [118] artillery, And store of ordnance, that from every flank May scour the outward ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... sidewalks, since it was an unfrequented part of the town with no residences for many blocks until one reached the little, tumbledown section in the Hollow. Here and there were heavy drifts, and now and then an unexpected ditch in the path gave Carol a tumble into the snow, but, laughing and breathless, she was pulled out again and they ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... occupy the intermediate defiles, and to intercept either the troops themselves, or their convoys of provisions. The camp of Valens, which he pitched under the walls of Hadrianople, was fortified, according to the practice of the Romans, with a ditch and rampart; and a most important council was summoned, to decide the fate of the emperor and of the empire. The party of reason and of delay was strenuously maintained by Victor, who had corrected, by the lessons of experience, the native fierceness of the Sarmatian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... soon as the smoke cleared off they recommenced their fire with fresh ardor. Although even this fort had not been constructed with the same strength in the rear as they all presented in the front, the resistance was most vigorous. A premature attempt to throw a pontoon across the ditch was defeated with the loss of sixteen men. The coolie corps here came to the front, and, rushing into the water, held up the pontoons while the French and some English troops dashed across. But all their efforts to scale the wall were baffled, and it seemed as if ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of Acre are well known. Although surrounded by a wall, flanked with strong towers, and having, besides, a broad-and deep ditch defended by works this little fortress did not appear likely to hold out against French valour and the skill of our corps of engineers and artillery; but the ease and rapidity with which Jaffa had been taken occasioned us to overlook ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... around the corporation cock and goose neck, the greatest care should be taken. The writer has seen cases when indifferent workmen have tossed heavy stones in the ditch and broken off the corporation cock or destroyed the goose neck. After the pipe is covered with 18 inches of refill and tunnels have been filled, water can be run in the trench and ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... and twist iron and sand to. And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally Toward his castle from out of the valley, Men and women, like new-hatched spiders, Come out with the morning to greet our riders. 390 And up they wound till they reached the ditch, Whereat all stopped save one, a witch That I knew, as she hobbled from the group, By her gait directly and her stoop, I, whom Jacynth was used to importune To let that same witch tell us our fortune. The oldest Gipsy then ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... large town with strong walls and a deep moat, or ditch, around it. There are eight gates in the wall and bridges ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... was in tense whispers, and the listening was now of the same tenseness. Two khaki-clad Sammies stood on the alert in the muddy ditch, dignified by the title, "trench," and tried to pierce the darkness that was like a pall of black ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... causeway led into the Bawtry road, between an old drain of the Tome River and a narrower ditch running down to the parsonage duck-pond. The ditch as a rule was dry, or almost dry, being fed through a sluice in the embankment from time to time when the waters of the duck-pond ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sunk, the steamers alone remaining. Tons and tons of powder must have been blown up. About 8 A.M. I got an order to commence a plan of the works, for which purpose I went to the Redan, where a dreadful sight was presented. The dead were buried in the ditch—the Russians with the English—Mr. Wright reading the burial ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... brutal-looking Cars with the swollen Wheels came along and tried to Ditch him. They showed him the same courteous consideration that would be lavished upon a Colored ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... "Ah, ditch the sarcasm," says I, "and spring your game! What is it this trip, a wire-tappin' scheme, or just plain ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... moment of extreme peril. Sam brought the automobile to a stop. Had the roadway been wider he might have sheered to one side, but the highway was too narrow for that, and with a ditch on either side, to carry off rain water, he did not want to take a chance ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... Some men, who were working at a distance, took off their large hats and remained motionless until the white vestment had disappeared behind some farm buildings; the women who were making up the sheaves, stood up to make the sign of the cross; the frightened black hens ran away along the ditch until they reached a well-known hole through which they suddenly disappeared, while a foal, which was tied up in a meadow, took fright at the sight of the surplice and began to turn round at the length of its rope, kicking violently. The choir-boy, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... she being newly come from her husband; but I did lose my labour, and so walked back again, but with pleasure by the walk, and I had the sport to see two boys swear, and stamp, and fret, for not being able to get their horse over a stile and ditch, one of them swearing and cursing most bitterly; and I would fain, in revenge, have persuaded him to have drove his horse through the ditch, by which I believe he would have stuck there. But the horse would not be drove, and so they were forced to go back again, and so I walked ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... high, rugged, and abrupt on the land side; flanked by the German Ocean, and strong natural rampires of sand, matted together with sea rushes on the east; and only accessible to an enemy on the south-east, which is guarded by a deep, dry ditch, and a series of towers in the wall, on each side of the gateway. Nature has mantled the rock with lichens of various rich tints: its beetling brow is 150 feet above the level of the sea, upon a stratum ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... Nolte," said Livingston, "since it is your cotton you will not mind the trouble of defending it."[1] Before the final battle a red hot ball set fire to the cotton, thereby endangering the gunpowder, and the cotton was removed, leaving only an earth embankment about five feet high, with a ditch in front to ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... long aqueduct across the Alleghany River, which was stranger than the bridge at Harrisburg, being a vast, low, wooden chamber full of water - we emerged upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy galleries and stairs, which always abuts on water, whether it be river, sea, canal, or ditch: and ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... they were commanded; and when they came near the ditch they stretched out their hands, and with entreaties requested to be admitted into the city as Romans. When they were admitted, however (since no suspicion existed to hinder their admission), and were questioned as to the plans of the enemy, they varied in their ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit, and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch, and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... observer. A sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might not understand, is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute that the whole concern is going over, a conviction which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly macadamized road comes in sight. Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to run into him; and he never finds himself ascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning to speculate upon his chances, supposing—as seems ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... river road. Here the way narrowed a trifle, and Dave had to give all his attention to the running of the car. As the automobile turned in toward the stream, they passed several other touring-cars, and then came in sight of a horse attached to a buggy, the two wheels of which were deep in a ditch. ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... toward San Francisco. And still no word was spoken until we had outraged the sensibilities of all whose bad luck it was to meet us, those whom we passed going at a more reasonable pace, scared a team of work horses into the ditch, and settled down to a ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... period of perfect joy—to be with Ben Edwards and Moose Jones in the glorious freedom of the open country in the far hills. Here the dogs did what their fancies dictated. They swam, unmolested, in the ditch; ran for miles with their chum, the dappled gray horse; gave chase to saucy, chattering squirrels, and even fished so successfully that they were the admiration of all the ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... give 'im to me till the cotton crop is picked, and several months more to work on the Jackson Swamp ditch if Fetters gits the contract. You stand by us here, Haines, an' help me git all the han's I can out o' this county, and I'll give you a job at Sycamo' when yo'r time's up here as constable. Go on and feed the niggers, an' stir up Bud, and I'll be on hand ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... multiply illustrations. One has but to look about him in this unsettled country of ours. The other day in front of my door the perennial ditch was being dug for some gas-pipe or other. Two of the gentlemen who had consented to do this labor wore frock-coats and top hats—or what had once been those articles of attire—instead of comfortable and appropriate overalls. Why? Because, like the stable- boy, to have worn any distinctive ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... then striking the turnpike—every rod of which he could have found in the dark—his thoughts, like road-swallows, skimmed each mile he covered. Here was where he had stopped with Kate when her stirrup broke; near the branches of that oak close to the ditch marking the triangle of cross-roads he had saved his own and Spitfire's neck by a clear jump that had been the talk of the neighborhood for days. On the crest of this hill—the one he was then ascending—his father always tightened up the brakes on his four-in-hand, and on the slope beyond ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... side. The Rats, which, as every one knows, never turn out of their road, but always go straight forward, through field and wood, over hedge and ditch, gnawing their way through stick and stone, fell without ado upon the chests and boxes. The fresh young pine-wood boards were a welcome prize to their sharp teeth, and so too the strong hempen ropes. Speedily off fell the box-lids, one here, one there,—crack ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... it there as being the animal which the Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which certainly in that particular does not so well merit the epithet cold blooded, by which naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Faneuil Halls, meeting-houses, and other ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... first place we did not know which way south-east was, and in the second a snow-drift could not properly be described as having a corner. I started around the stove-pipe, however, in a circle, with the hope of finding some sort of an entrance. The inmates had dug a deep ditch or trench about thirty feet in length for a doorway, and had covered it over with sticks and reindeerskins to keep out the drifting snow. Stepping incautiously upon this frail roof I fell through just as one of the startled men was coming out in his shirt ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... came in he put to shameful flight The fearful watch, and o'er the trenches leaped, Even with the ground he made the rampire's height, And murdered bodies in the ditch unheaped, So that his greedy mates with labor light, Amid the tents, a bloody harvest reaped: Clorinda went the proud Circassian by, So from a piece two ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and Aggie. With a shiver in the very middle of his body, he hastened to the other side: there lay the country of air, and fire, and safe earthly homeliness: the side he left was the dank region of the unknown, whose march-ditch ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... English woman with such savage barbarity, that she had scarce a whole bone left; after which they threw her into a ditch; but not satisfied with this, they took her child, a girl about six years of age and after ripping up its belly, threw it to its mother, there to languish till it perished. They forced one man to go to mass, after which they ripped open his body, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the plough ditches of slight declivity leading along the hillsides to the natural waterways. One of the most satisfactory marks of the improvement which is now taking place in the agriculture of the cotton-yielding States of this country is to be found in the rapid increase in the use of the ditch system here mentioned. This system, combined with ploughing in the manner where the earth is with each overturning thrown uphill, will greatly reduce the destructive effect of rainfall on steep-lying fields. But the only effective protection, however, is accomplished by carefully ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... ousted Catholic Spain from the command of the ocean, and made it Britannia's realm, was a story which he loved to tell. "The young King," Henry VIII., "like a wise man, turned his first attention to the broad ditch, as he called the British Channel, which formed the natural defence of the kingdom." It was "the secret determined policy of Spain to destroy the English fleet, pilots, masters, and sailors, by means of the Inquisition." ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... found every thing so quiet, that he gave up all suspicions of mischief intended by the natives as groundless. We had, however, another source of security; our little fortification was now complete. The north and south sides consisted of a bank of earth four feet and a half high on the inside, and a ditch without ten feet broad and six deep; on the west side, facing the bay, there was a bank of earth four feet high, and pallisadoes upon that, but no ditch, the works here being at high-water mark; on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... and intrenched villages, usually perched on cliffs and jutting points overhanging river or sea, were defended by a double palisade, the outer fence of stout stakes, the inner of high solid trunks. Between them was a shallow ditch. Platforms as much as forty feet high supplied coigns of vantage for the look-out. Thence, too, darts and stones could be hurled at the besiegers. With the help of a throwing-stick, or rather whip, wooden spears could be thrown in the sieges more than a hundred yards. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Richelieu, and about 5 a cloack we entred Richelieu, a toune that give yeell consider its bigness it hath not its match in France. For being about a mile in circuit, besides a wery strong wall, it hath a considerable ditch environing it having something of the nature of a pond; for it abounds wt all sorts of fisches. The French calls it une canale. Being entred the toune ye have one of the prettiest prospects thats imaginable. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... interested—interested to the bottom of my heart. I'm going to put the best there is in me into this problem. I never tackled anything in my life that appealed to me more powerfully. If that's any comfort just now, I offer it. If you were my brother I couldn't be more anxious to pull you out of this ditch. Now, trust me, and try ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... that very moment a gigantic figure came bursting through the hedge, clearing the ditch in a single bound—and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... called to the driver. And as he whipped up the horses again, his Homeric laughter mingling with the curses of the man in the ditch, she sank back trembling and gasping. It was her first experience of the vileness of man, for the men of her day respected the women of their own class unless met half way, or, violently enamoured, given full ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... all the night and keeping awake its mother, who could not quiet it by any means. "I'll tell you what you'll do with the brat," she replied; "whip it well first, and then bring it to the cross-roads, and leave the fairy in the ditch there for any one to take that pleases; for I have your child at home safe and sound as he was handed out of the window last night to me." When the mother heard this, she just stepped out to get a rod; but before she returned the changeling had ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... wept with despair, but she laughed a cold, bitter laugh and passed on. Googly-Goo caught at her arm, as if to restrain her, but she whirled and dealt him a blow that sent him reeling into a ditch beside the path. Here he lay for a long time, half covered by muddy ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... you suppose they're going to lie down just because an unknown and penniless inventor sues them? Bless you, no! They'll fight to the last ditch, they'll engage the best legal talent in the country. You'll have to carry the case to the Supreme Court of the United States if you want a winning decision. And that's going to cost you thousands—hundreds ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... serpent rolled over into the ditch, and Siegfried was covered by the folds of his huge body. He did not fear or falter. He thrust Balmung, his wonderful sword, deep into the monster's body. The blood poured forth in such torrents that the ditch ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... the implication. "And why not?" said he. "Could you not serve the cause better by attaching yourself openly to the liberals than by lurking in the ditch to throw mud at ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... change," returned the baroness, gently, "so long as she leaps over hedge and ditch with her father, and even ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... mind was ever active in devising new schemes for the welfare of humanity. The most trivial events would often suggest to him measures conducive to the most beneficial results. It is said that Franklin saw one day in a ditch the fragments of a basket of yellow willow, in which some foreign commodity had been imported to this country. One of the twigs had sprouted. He planted it; and it became the parent of all the yellow willows ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... a very great and populous city built of stone, having large and handsome streets, upon a fine river which falls into the gulf of Bengal, and has a strong and handsome castle with a broad and deep ditch. It is inhabited by many Moors and Gentiles, the king being Zelabdim Echebar, called for the most part the great Mogor. From thence we went to Fatepore, where the king ordinarily resides and holds his court, which is called Derican. This town is larger than Agra, but the streets ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... has done that surprises me. And it is not on him that the sorrow will fall. For she is good. She is very good. Do yu' remember little black Hank? From Texas he claims he is. He was working on the main ditch over at Sunk Creek last summer when that Em'ly hen was around. Well, seh, yu' would not have pleasured in his company. And this year Hank is placer-mining on Galena Creek, where we'll likely go for sheep. There's Honey ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... anatomy of the darlin' beast as well as I do my own, inside and out. But, be dashed, if the wheels without the horse aren't beyond me quite. Lord love you, but the skittish animal's given me some ugly knocks, cast me away, it has, in the wayside ditch, covering me soul with burning shame, and me jacket with ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and factory of Tidore were built upon the same principle as almost all the Portuguese defences in those seas. An outer fortification, consisting of a ditch, with strong palisades embedded in masonry, surrounded the factory and all the houses of the establishment. The gates of the outer wall were open all day for ingress and egress, and closed only at night. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the three-cornered bastions of the rectangular fort; a distant bayonet caught the light and twinkled above the stockaded ditch like a slender point of flame. Outside the works squads of troops moved, relieving the nearer posts; working details, marching to and from the sawmill, were evidently busy with the unfinished abattis; a long, low earth-work, surmounted by ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... striking emblem of the troubled and uncertain prospect which his undertaking afforded." He remained, however, unshaken; and at length they reached the spot at which they had agreed to separate. A small ditch divided the moor from the road, and, in going over it, Park's horse stumbled, and nearly fell. "I am afraid, Mungo," said the Sheriff, "that is a bad omen." To which he answered, smiling, "Freits (omens) follow those who look to them." ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... he muttered, "I saw the ditch and the palisade myself! Now, if they are not the work of the city, it will be interesting to find out what is going on there.... Ah! suppose this idiot Wulf was not deceived! Suppose he really heard the Singing Fountains the ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing, trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That would have been even worse than with us: it would have been to proclaim virtue and vice mere bubbles and chimeras. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... now generally used—are small embankments, made by throwing up dirt from an excavation inside. They can be erected quickly, for it will be seen that those behind them have the advantage, not only of the height of the embankment, but also of the depth of the ditch. Thus an excavation of two feet would give a protection of four feet. This is the ordinary rifle pit, but when time permits it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said the stout huntsman, mopping his forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite to his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the ditch between them. ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... of his face going white, and said, stretching out his hand, "Woman, y'are me wife, I know, whativer y' be; an' y've right to have shelter and bread av me; but me arms, an' me bed, are me own to kape or to give; and, by God, ye shall have nayther one nor the other! There's a ditch as wide as hell ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... something? It wasn't Sexty's fault nigh so much as it was his. I wouldn't say it to you if it wasn't for starving. I wouldn't say it to you if it wasn't for the children. I'd lie in the ditch and die if it was only myself, because—because I know what your feelings is. But what wouldn't you do, and what wouldn't you say, if you had five children at home as hadn't a loaf of bread among 'em?" Hereupon Emily got up and left the room, bidding her visitor ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... besides, that, in consequence of the liberty of curtailment you have allowed me, some parts of the story have been huddled up without the necessary details. But, after all, it is better that the travellers should have to step over a ditch, than to wade through a morass—that the reader should have to suppose what may easily be inferred, than be obliged to creep through pages of dull explanation. I have struck out, for example, the whole machinery of the White Lady, and the poetry by which it is so ably supported, in the original ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... wide, he chose the most rugged branch he could find, the one with the steepest and highest banks, and up that dry bed, with many a twist and turn, he painfully limped his way. At last he found himself in a snug and safe ditch, precisely like a front line trench seven feet wide, with perpendicular walls and zig- zagging so persistently that the de'il himself could not find him save by following him up to close quarters, and landing upon his horns. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... first attacked, and the stockade carried at the point of the bayonet. Lieutenant Colonel Bowen, who now commanded, then moved against the position at Doodpatnee. This was very strong. Steep hills covered the rear; while the other faces of the intrenchments were defended by a deep ditch, fourteen feet wide, with a chevaux de frise of pointed bamboos on its outer edge. Although the position was attacked with great gallantry, it was too strong to be captured by so small a force; and they were obliged to withdraw to Jatrapur, with the loss of one officer killed ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... against him, at the head of a very inferior force, was defeated with loss. In the rout lord Sheffield, ancestor of the earl of Mulgrave, and the person alluded to in the text, fell with his horse into a ditch, and was slain by a butcher with a club. The rebels were afterwards defeated by the earl of Warwick.—DUGDALE'S Baron, vol. ii. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... of the big ditch shortly before the runaway came past," went on Blake, "but that was only a coincidence, of course. We had no idea of going there, and I can't yet understand what Mr. Hadley refers to when he says we may take you there with us, ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... of the entrance. Here the bank was cut away, and solid buttresses of masonry supported the high gates. The opening in the outer bank was not opposite to the gate in the inner, being fifty yards away, so that any who entered by it would have for that distance to follow the ditch between the two banks, exposed to the missiles of those on the wall before arriving at the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... not the only persons involved in the risk of this joyous adventure. Just outside the bombarded hamlet ahead of us we were stopped by some Belgian [? French] soldiers hidden in the cover of a ditch by the roadside, which if it was not a trench might very easily have been one. They were talking in whispers for fear of being overheard by the Germans, who must have been at least a mile off, across the fields on the other side of the river. A mile seemed a pretty safe distance; but ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... Sun on his car of great speed and unto which are yoked seven steeds, will proceed towards the direction occupied by Vaisravana, verily, even then, will I yield up my life like a dear friend dismissing a dear friend! Let a ditch be dug here around my quarters ye kings! Thus pierced with hundreds of arrows will I pay my adorations to the Sun. As regards yourselves, abandoning enmity, cease ye from the fight, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to believe that human nature can endure such hardships and sufferings as the slaves have to go through: I have seen them driven into a ditch in a rice swamp to bail out the water, in order to put down a flood-gate, when they had to break the ice, and there stand in the water among the ice until it was bailed out. I have often known the hands to be taken from the field, sent down ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had gone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the child who was called "a divil" jumped down from the high ditch by the lane, and said she would believe her "an ordinary lady" if she had "two skirts," for "ladies always had two skirts." The "two skirts" were shown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... Mulvaney, diving hastily into his accoutrements. "Come up to the top av the Fort an' we'll pershue our invistigations into M'Grath's shtable." The relieved Guard strolled round the main bastion on its way to the swimming-bath, and Learoyd grew almost talkative. Ortheris looked into the Fort ditch and across the plain. "Ho! it's weary waitin' for Ma-ary!" he hummed; "but I'd like to kill some more bloomin' Paythans before my time's up. War! Bloody war! North, East, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... 1124; others state that the place was made before that time; but this is certain, that a number of monks from the monastery named occupied it early in the twelfth century, and that they afterwards left it and went to Furness Abbey. On the south-west of Tulketh Hall the remains of a fosse (ditch or moat) were, up to recent times, visible; some old ruins adjoining could also be seen; and it has been supposed by some persons that there was once a Roman stronghold or castle here. Tulketh Hall has been occupied by several ancient families, and was once the seat of the Heskeths, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... said the other. "Belike you think me a sorry dog not to make fight of this. But the old knight, look you, is not come-at-able. I threw one of his varlets into a thorn hedge, and another into a water-butt, and a third landed head-first into a ditch. But I couldn't ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... taking as deliberate aim as if it had been they, not their enemies, who were behind breastworks. The troops of Tholouse fired wildly, precipitately, quite over the heads of the assailants. Many of the defenders were slain as fast as they showed themselves above their bulwarks. The ditch was crossed, the breastwork carried at, a single determined charge. The rebels made little resistance, but fled as soon as the enemy entered their fort. It was a hunt, not a battle. Hundreds were stretched dead in the camp; hundreds were driven into the Scheld; six or eight hundred ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... much light. They were deceived, however: buckets of water came down the chimneys and extinguished the fires; and the candles were blown out, they knew not how. Some of the servants who had betaken themselves to bed were drenched with putrid ditch-water as they lay, and arose in great fright, muttering incoherent prayers, and exposing to the wondering eyes of the commissioners their linen all dripping with green moisture, and their knuckles red ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... would take it, or bid any thing at all for it: so then it fell to him a cheap bargain. Oh, the tricks of them! who knows 'em, if I don't?" Presently, Lord Colambre's attention was roused again, by seeing a man running, as if for his life, across a bog, near the roadside: he leaped over the ditch, and was upon the road in an instant. He seemed startled at first, at the sight of the carriage; but, looking at the postilion, Larry nodded, and he smiled and said, "All's safe!" "Pray, my good friend, may I ask what ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... child was found by a magician, who brought him up, and from whom he afterwards escaped. He went to the court of the king, his father, and won the hand of the princess (his own sister) by leaping his horse over a broad ditch. At the marriage banquet the king handed his son a glass of wine, and the latter recognized him and exclaimed: "Behold, the father serves the son." The marriage was of course given up and the previous aversion of the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... on the bank of the Agueda. The fortifications were fairly strong, and being protected by a very high glacis, it was difficult to effect a breach in them. The glacis is the smooth ground outside the ditch. In well-constructed works the walls of the fortification rise but very little above the ground beyond, from which they are separated by a broad and deep ditch. Thus the ground beyond the ditch, that is, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... word ends in a letter which cannot add -s and be pronounced. Such are box, cross, ditch, glass, lens, quartz, etc. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... as stone. He said in a low, harsh voice: 'M'sieu' le Baron, you are a common thief, a wolf, a snake. Such men as you come lower than Judas. As God has an eye to see, you shall pay all one day. I do not fear you nor your men nor your gallows. You are a jackal, and the woman has a filthy heart—a ditch of shame.' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... good groaning," said the vizier's son. "I will climb to the window, and see whether there are any means of escape. Yes! yes!" he whispered, when he had reached the window-hole. "Below there is a ditch surrounded by a high wall. I will jump down and reconnoitre. You stay here, and wait till ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... quite a week," said Townsend; "and now that we're started I hope we'll stick together and make a real, honest-to-goodness patrol. Joe is with us to the last ditch—out for the second ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the houses and dark corners saluted our ears, and I thought of the night-arrival of Don Quixote and his squire at Tobosa, and their vain search amongst the deserted streets for the palace of Dulcinea. At length we saw light and heard voices in a cottage at the further side of a kind of ditch. Leading the horses over, we called at the door, which was opened by an aged man, who appeared by his dress to be a baker, as indeed he proved, which accounted for his being up at so late an hour. On begging him to show us the way into ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... defence, according to Greek tactics. Its deep foss is cut in the solid rock, and furnished with subterranean magazines for the storage of provisions. The three piles of solid masonry on which the drawbridge rested, still stand in the centre of this ditch. The oblique grand entrance to the foss descends by a flight of well-cut steps. The rock itself over which the fort was raised is honeycombed with excavated passages for infantry and cavalry, of different width and height, so that one sort can be assigned ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... towards it, each striving to seize and carry it to his own goal. In this contest, when any individual having possession of the ball found himself overpowered or outrun by his opponents, he hurled it to one of his own side, if near enough, or if not into some pool, ditch, furze, brake, garden, house, or other place of concealment, to prevent his adversaries getting hold of it before his own company could arrive." It is clear that hurling somewhat resembled football as anciently played in England and Scotland between parish and parish. In old times the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain —— regretfully, "but we brought a Boche down here yesterday, just ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is joined by the Umla torrent in Karnal and lower down the Sarusti unites with it in Patiala just beyond the Karnal border. It is hard to believe that the Sarusti of to-day is the famous Sarasvati of the Vedas, though the little ditch-like channel that bears the name certainly passes beside the sacred sites of Thanesar and Pehowa. A small sandy torrent bearing the same name rises in the low hills in the north-east of the Ambala district, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... with these reflections came the reflection that I had seen him with my childish eyes to be a desperately violent man; that I had heard that other convict reiterate that he had tried to murder him; that I had seen him down in the ditch tearing and fighting like a wild beast. Out of such remembrances I brought into the light of the fire a half-formed terror that it might not be safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild solitary night. This dilated until it filled the room, and impelled me to take ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the van were seen. Then, as a cloud of starlings or of daws Fly screaming, as they see the hawk approach, To lesser birds the messenger of death; So before Hector and AEneas fled, Screaming, forgetful of their warlike fame, The sons of Greece; and scatter'd here and there Around the ditch lay store of goodly arms, By Greeks abandon'd in their hasty flight. Yet still, unintermitted, rag'd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and who will play a practical trick on the friend he most respects is always a delight. It is he that keeps the crowd in good humor, who is generally deepest and most abiding in his affection, and who at the drop of the hat would fight to the last ditch for his friend. To handle him rightly does not require a six-foot rod, or a half-inch rule. But the Teacher must keep him so busy doing the things that he likes that he will have no dull moments in which to vent his ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... building a fortress began at once. Within ten days the Fortress of Navidad was completed. It stood on a hill and was surrounded with a broad, deep ditch for protection against natives and animals, and was to be the home of those of the company who remained in the New World, for the Nina was too small to convey all hands across the ocean to Spain, and nothing had been heard of the Pinta. Leaving ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... the heroes of antiquity in his untimely end, and in the cause of it—a woman. Thus Achilles was shot in the heel; Ulysses was killed, though not very prematurely, by his son; AEneas was drowned like a dog in a ditch; and Alexander was poisoned. Then as to the cause: Sampson (though to be sure the polite reader will call that fabulous, and think me a fool for quoting such an old wife's tale) owed his death to a woman; Agamemnon ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... and out, and we sank lower and lower in kut-i-kut till we were in a slimy ditch with four feet of bank on each side. The turns and twists grew narrower, and the difficulty of steering our long baroto around these grew greater. The men got but and waded, pushing the baroto lightly over the soft ooze. But finally this failed. It was eight o'clock, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... we shall never get our wounded horses there to-morrow." I put two more companies right, then came across a little body of men who were vainly trying to get a horse attached to a S.A.A. limber out of the ditch. It was a pitch-black night, and they were bravely endeavouring to do it without catching a glimpse of the horse. I gave them the benefit of my lamp until they had got the brute out. Two more bodies of stragglers I directed, and then pushed ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... him, but to his horror he saw something approach him that made his hair stand on end. He could not at first make it out, but he soon clearly saw that it was a horse that was madly dashing towards him. He had only just time to step on to the ditch, when, horrible to relate, a headless white horse rushed past him. His limbs shook and the perspiration stood out like beads on his forehead. This terrible spectre he saw when close to Tan'rallt, but he dared not turn into the house, as he was travelling ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... dangerous, within range of the German guns as they were, and, too, they might be seen by a Hun observer in an aeroplane. So, in a little while the advancing squad, of which Ned, Bob and Jerry formed a part, found itself in a communicating trench. This was a ditch dug at right-angles to the front-line trenches, and through this the relief passed, and food and ammunition ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... the less humorous. It is said, for instance, that in some places newly married couples were compelled to vault the wall of the churchyard, and that on certain nights the peasants were obliged to beat the castle ditch in order to rest the lord's family from the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... perchance, a pallid suffering man whispers a single word into his ear; that word, like a torch lighted in a mine, reveals to him a Science. All human ideas, arrayed in every attractive form which Mystery can invent surrounded a blind man seated in a wayside ditch. Three worlds, the Natural, the Spiritual, the Divine, with all their spheres, opened their portals to a Florentine exile; he walked attended by the Happy and the Unhappy; by those who prayed and those who moaned; by angels and by souls in hell. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... back, as it was very doubtful whether I would find my money. Yet it contained all I possessed, save a few copper coins I had in my pocket. I paid my small bill, and, deeply grieved at my loss, continued my journey towards Seraval. I was within three miles of that place when, in jumping over a ditch, I sprained my ankle, and was compelled to sit down on one side of the road, and to wait until someone should come to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... dwellings, mere dolls' houses in comparison. So modest, however, is the chartographer's standard, that a flowery Latin inscription assures the men of Cambridge they need but divert Trumpington Brook into Clare Ditch to render their town as elegant as any in the universe. Sheep and swine perambulate the environs, and green spaces are interspersed among the colleges, sparsely set with trees, so pollarded as to justify Milton's taunt when in an ill-humour with ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... goes!" whispered Glenville to me, "broken her knees over the first metaphor. She will be plunging wildly in the ditch directly, and never fairly get out of it for about an hour and a half. Let us escape while we can." We rose and left Mrs. Delamere explaining to Thornton how darling Florence and dearest Beatrix were all that a fond and intellectual ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... deep sea, and every year, in the course of the summer, flocks of young ones, known as elvers, ascend the rivers in enormous quantities, like a vast army under numberless leaders. At each tributary or affluent, be it river, brook, stream, or ditch, a proportionate detachment of the main body is given off to explore the various branches, while the central force wriggles its way up the chief channel, regardless of obstacles, with undiminished vigour. When the young elvers come to a weir, a wall, a floodgate, or a ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... carriages, they travelled via Dover, Calais, Turin, Milan, Florence, and Rome to Naples. Here a nephew of Mr Amschel Rothschild assisted them in obtaining a vessel to take them to Malta, where they visited the plantations of the Silk Company on the ditch of Porto Reale. There were about 5000 mulberry trees at this place, as well as about 400 at Sal Marson, "all looking healthy. We were present," says Mrs Montefiore, "at a dinner given by us in the Palace to the men, women, ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... the spring of '62, and I was one of a party of four, coming up from O'Neill's, when we had been snowed up. It was awful weather; the snow had changed to sleet and rain after we crossed the divide, and the water was out everywhere; every ditch was a creek, every creek a river. We had lost two horses on the North Fork, we were dead beat, off the trail, and sloshing round, with night coming on, and the level hail like shot in our faces. Things were looking bleak and scary ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... be possible?" cried Raikes, in mock surprise. "On my soul, you astonish me!" At this the Captain screeched with laughter again, yet he broke off in the middle to curse instead, as his horse floundered into the ditch. ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... therefore only notice two points, which were previously omitted, as they looked suspiciously technical. As the night firing is sometimes varied by more serious attacks, and even actual assaults and sword rushes, it is thought advisable to have the ditch of the entrenchment towards the enemy. Modern weapons notwithstanding, the ultimate appeal is to the bayonet, and the advantage of being on the higher ground ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... only a dark and sinister rent, which the moonbeams can not fathom—a yawning crevasse opening into the very bowels of the earth, at the bottom of which lie faint, small glimmers, an assembly of glowworms in a ditch—the lights of the different vessels lying ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... howling blast," he prolonged the "Oh!" into a hideous yell, and thrust his blazing face close to the window so suddenly that the boy let go his hold, fell backwards, and rolled head over heels into a ditch, out of which he scrambled with violent haste, and ran with the utmost possible precipitancy to his native home ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... friend, would you like to give your horse a breathing with us?' Poor Hans was so alarmed that it never entered into his head for a single moment to refuse the invitation, and instantly he was galloping by the side of the Wild Huntsman. Away they flew! away! away! away! over bog, and over mere; over ditch, and over hedge; away! away! away! and the Ranger's horse never failed, but kept by the side of the Wild Spirit without the least distress; and yet it is very singular that Hans was about to sell this very beast only a day before, for a matter of five crowns: you ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... last ditch of desperation, Jim Duff now strode over to where Tom stood. No one opposed him, ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... Chateauroux both died as young as myself: it is a species of fatality which strikes all those who have loved the king. What I regret least is life,—I am weary of flatteries and insults, of friendships and hatreds; but I own to you that I am terrified at the idea of being cast into some ditch or other, whether it be by the clergy, by Monseigneur the Dauphin, or by ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hastens to the town named Noviodunum. Having attempted to take it by storm on his march, because he heard that it was destitute of [sufficient] defenders, he was not able to carry it by assault, on account of the breadth of the ditch and the height of the wall, though few were defending it. Therefore, having fortified the camp, he began to bring up the vineae, and to provide whatever things were necessary for the storm. In the meantime, the whole body of the Suessiones, after their flight, came the next night ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... perpendicular rock the boy stopped, leaned his rifle against a tree, and stepped aside into the bushes. A moment later he reappeared with a small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and entered the narrow mouth of a deep, freshly dug ditch. Ten feet farther on he was halted by a tall black column solidly wedged in the narrow passage, at the base of which was a bench of yellow dirt extending not more than two feet from the foot of the column and above the floor of the ditch. There had ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... God bless his honest heart for it!" said Hereward, with more downright heartiness than formal respect. "I'll drink to his health in what I put next to my lips that quenches thirst, whether it may be ale, wine, or ditch-water." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... is smaller, and on it stands a house. Don't know what it is used for now; at that time it was the infirmary. You can still see there the roof of the gymnasium as you pass by; then next to the infirmary was the principal outdoor gymnasium. In it was a jumping ditch and a climbing apparatus and every other possible thing—now it has all gone. From the infirmary a door led out into the gymnasium, but it was always kept locked. When one wanted to go into the infirmary, one had to cross the court and ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... Campian: but as he spoke, up from the ditch close beside him, as if rising out of the earth, burst through the furze-bushes an ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... that he had been! Blind fool! To have run away instead of fighting to the last ditch for his happiness! The Desimone woman was right: it had taken him a long time to come to the conclusion that she had done him an ill turn. And during all these weary months he had drawn a melancholy picture ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... seven miles further, taking four days' rations, and Ruger's was to follow on the 7th. On this march I found that for five miles beyond Core Creek the railway had only been capsized, ties and rails together, and was lying in the ditch by the roadside. [Footnote: Id., pp. 706-708.] Relying on the more rapid construction this would enable Colonel Wright to make, I ordered a still further advance for the 7th, hoping to reach Southwest Creek. There we must expect to halt for several days, for the total destruction of the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... reply when suddenly the earthquake which wrought such dire results to the two of whom they were speaking shook the ground. The two men were thrown against each other and both went in a heap to the bottom of the ditch. The breath was knocked out of their bodies, and every thought was driven from their minds except the instinctive desire to remain alive ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... was moving along rapidly when they came to a ditch which seemed to divide the rice-field in half. A short pause followed, when along came the cry of "Down!" and every man dropped, and none too soon, for the insurgents had opened up unexpectedly from ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... does not plunge against the rein, Nor take a ditch nor clear a rail. He does not toss his flowing mane, He does not even switch his tail. Oh, well, he does his best, of course; He's nothing but ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... paling, balustrade, rail, railing, quickset hedge, park paling, circumvallation[obs3], enceinte, ring fence. barrier, barricade; gate, gateway; bent, dingle [U.S.]; door, hatch, cordon; prison &c. 752. dike, dyke, ditch, fosse[obs3], moat. V. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... form. Oh, what a number of wild beasts did I see in the way! Oh, what a number of powers were there that inflicted punishment upon me! And it came to pass that when I had been cast into the outer darkness, I saw a great ditch which was more than two hundred cubits deep, and it was filled with reptiles; each reptile had seven heads, and the body of each was like unto that of a scorpion. In this place also lived the Great Worm, the mere ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... hang 'em! It's about Robin Frost, sir. What on earth have come to him I can't conceive. This last few nights he have took to prowling out with a gun. He lays himself down in the copse, or a ditch, or the open field—no matter where—and there he stops, on the watch, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... me at one, who is in a scrape. At half-past two, cher, cher Armine, we will talk more. In the meantime, enjoy your flower; and rest assured that it is your own fault if you do not fling the good Montfort in a very fine ditch.' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... and around St. Florent, men, women, and children; the old and infirm, the maimed and sick, the mutilated and the dying. Poor wretches who had gotten themselves dragged thither from the hospitals, in which they feared to remain, were lying in every ditch, and under every wall, filling the air with their groans. Everything was in confusion; no staff existed competent to arrange their affairs, and to husband the poor means at their disposal. Food was wasted by some, while hundreds were starving. Some houses in the town were ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... knew that they would fight to the last ditch for their hero should he come to claim the crown. Yet how would they fight—to which side would they cleave, were he to attempt to frustrate the design of the Regent to seize the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Old Sarum is situated about two miles from the present city of Salisbury on the plain. It was built on the top of an enormous circular mound of earth several hundred yards in diameter, and was supposed to have been surrounded by the usual fosse and ditch. Roman, Saxon and Norman remains have been, and are still being, found, as the stonework of walls and buildings is being uncovered. It is supposed that much of the original stone was used in the 12th century to build the ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... in mining law, and am not prepared to say that your claim is not legal. It may be, and it may not be—we'll waive that discussion. The point is this—from all I can learn of Westcott, he is the kind who will fight to the last ditch. Perhaps he hasn't any chance, but if he ever does learn how we got hold of his letters and discovered the location of that vein of ore, he's going to turn this whole affair inside out, and catch us red-handed. You made a ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... It is clear, then, that its compilers were not so ignorant as that consequential tailor, Francis Place, represented them. Their chief mistake lay in concluding that Bonaparte intended to "leap the ditch." As we now know, his tour on the northern coast was intended merely to satisfy the Directors and encourage the English and Irish malcontents to risk their necks, while he made ready his armada at Toulon for the Levant.[490] Meanwhile the United Britons and United Irishmen sought ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... The building is not seen till a close approach, as there is rising ground betwixt it and the land. The circuit is of large extent, fenced upon three sides by the precipice which overhangs the sea, and on the fourth by a double ditch and very strong outworks. Tantallon was a principal castle of the Douglas family, and when the Earl of Angus was banished, in 1527, it continued to hold out against James V. The King went in person against it, and for its reduction, borrowed from the Castle of Dunbar, then belonging to ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... large well, or underground cistern, was dug under the mill house, which was fed by copious springs, and promised to furnish an abundant supply of water. To furnish water for the numerous mills about Mountain City and in Nevada gulch a large ditch had been dug, which started up in the mountains near the Snowy range, and wound like a huge serpent around promontories and the sides and heads of numerous gulches, with a slight incline, for some fifteen miles. It passed around the hills which bordered Leavenworth gulch, a few ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... nutty. The first thing he said was: "Say I, pronounce your name, and repeat after me," and then he said: "I promise and swear that I will never reveal the secrets of this degree," and then the conductor pulled pa's leg and said: "Crawl out of the window, old man, 'cause the train is in the ditch, the car is afire, and if you don't get out in about a minute with the other freaks, you ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... be. Knowing this, the expert also knows more. If the timber is being destroyed by the Trametes, he knows that the ravaging agent can travel from tree to tree by means of roots in contact, and he at once cuts a ditch around the diseased area, taking care to include the recently infected and neighboring trees. Then the diseased timber is cut, because it will get worse the longer it stands, and the diseased parts burnt. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... could bode him no good. So he pretended to be still asleep, watching them carefully all the while; and when Seibei went up to him, brandishing his dirk, the beggar, avoiding the blow, seized Seibei's arm, and twisting it round, flung him into the ditch below. Gompachi, seeing his companion's discomfiture, attacked the beggar, who, drawing a sword from his staff, made such lightning-swift passes that, crippled though he was, and unable to move his legs freely, Gompachi could not overpower him; and although Seibei crawled out of the ditch ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... forest, through the brushwood. 'Twas half-dark below; but, above the bushes, the sun was playing as through a green curtain. I went on and on. The bushes here grew thick now and the tiny path was lost. After long creeping and stumbling, I leapt across a ditch and entered the wide drove. It did not seem strange to me that 'twas even darker here and that the light, instead of from above, came streaming low down from between the trunks of the trees. The vault was closed leaf-tight ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... into the Guadiana, and in the angle formed by their junction stands Badajos, oval in shape, girdled with elaborate defences, with the Guadiana 500 yards wide as its defence to the north, the Rivillas serving as a wet ditch to the east, and no less than five great fortified outposts—Saint Roque, Christoval, Picurina, Pardaleras, and a fortified bridge-head across the Guadiana—as the outer zone of its defences. Twice the English had already ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Where White's Lots is now laid out, And the old crick narries down To the ditch that splits the town—, Kingry's Mill stood. Hardly see Where the old dam ust to be; Shallor, long, dry trought o' grass Where the old race ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... Pomp isn't here," I said, as I lazily swam to one end, where there were tufts of water weeds, and a kind of natural ditch took off the surplus water into a pool of similar size, a hundred yards away among the trees—a black-looking, overhung place, suggestive of reptiles, and depth, and dead tree-trunks with snaggy boughs ready to remove a swimmer's skin, though possibly if the trees ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... along a side street where a number of men were at work digging a long and deep ditch in which to ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... involves the player in a somewhat tricky piece of cross-country work. There is a nasty ditch to be negotiated. Many an optimist has been reduced to blank pessimism by that ditch. "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," might be written on a notice ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... boy. We cut over the fields at the back, with him between us—straight as the crow flies—through hedge and ditch. They gave chase. Damme! the whole country was awake, and the dogs ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... woman, how like a child, how typical of the outsider's shallow view of any struggle! As if all one had to do—was stand up and fight! Mere fighting—that was easy; but to fight to the last ditch only to find yourself beaten! That gave a fellow pause about bucking the challenge ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... it secret, retired, and dug up the ground, and disclosed, in a low voice, what kind of ears he had beheld on his master, and whispered it to the earth cast up. And {then} he buried this discovery of his voice with the earth thrown in again, and, having covered up the ditch, departed in silence. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... objected to the improvements at the top of Lord-street, who clung pertinaciously to the old Potato Market, and the block of buildings called Castle Hill. The houses that were erected upon the site of Castle Ditch had the floors of some of their rooms greatly inclined in consequence of the subsidence of the soil. There was a joke current at the time that these apartments ought to be devoted to dining purposes, as the gravy would always run to one ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... French cavalry are close upon them. But see the Highlanders in the ditch. Hark! there—they give them a volley. Down tumble the horsemen!—look! they are in a heap on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... getting straightened out, and the line once more formed, the order to charge was countermanded and we had to lay up there in that fearful hot sun all day. I was taken sick and had to rest for awhile but I soon got better and joined the regiment. At about 10 P.M. we were ordered down into the outer ditch of the breastworks. We were there but a short time, when we were ordered to the right to our old position in the rifle-pits, which we reached ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... is that we should commit suicide with a good grace?" remarked Vane. "Really, Mr. Ramage, it won't do. . . . I, personally, if I owned property, would go into the last ditch in defence of what was mine." Into his mind there flashed Joan's words. . . . "It's ours. I tell you, ours," and he smiled grimly. "Why, in the name of fortune, I should give what I possess to a crowd of scally wags who haven't made good, is more than ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... that I'm dealin' out to 'em, God knows! And yet, it's they that are masters of the situation, only they don't know it! There's the pity! They've no leaders, except such as waste their money and leave 'em in the ditch! The world's social schemes, Miss Carmen, don't reach such as these. They're only sops. And they've got the contempt ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and struggling with her cough.] Harry, you take the tin and fill it at the ditch and give I to drink. 'Tis all live coals within ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... hotel they suggested motoring, and after a meal I started on what seemed a first rate car. But we had a breakdown lasting an hour, a dozen miles out of Glasgow, and then, running down Garelochside in the face of the storm, we smashed into the ditch. After making sure that the car was hopeless, I left the man at a wayside cottage and tramped the rest of the way. Hence my late arrival, and ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... you escape?" asked the slave. "It is not possible through the palace—guards are at every entrance; and you would also fall into the hands of the watchmen in the city. You cannot fly over the garden wall, for on the other side is a deep ditch, full of mud and water. If you jumped over, you would be ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... really? I must be in good form to-day. One really never can tell, you know. An opening that is a scream with some people falls as flat as ditch-water with others." She looked at him pensively for a moment or two, tapping her small white teeth with a ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... elaborate preparations for the capture of this job lot of phantoms upon the next anniversary of the fight. Hard by the fatal ditch which engulfed Napoleon's cavalry I stationed a corps of able assistants provided with rapid-fire extinguishers ready to enfilade the famous sunken road. I stationed myself with a No. 4 model magazine-hose, with a four-inch nozzle, directly in the path which I knew would ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... he was at breakfast in this coffee-house that he was seized with one of his painful delusions. A letter he read in a paper he interpreted as a satire on himself, and he threw the paper down and rushed from the room with a resolve either to find some house in which to die or some ditch where ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... of the dark wood a band of robbers pounced on him. "Who are you?" they cried. "I am the herald of the great King!" answered Francis. So they stripped him of his habit, and threw him in a ditch ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... those days, though there were for the defence of the city those two walls, yet they stood a little distance each from other, and had a ditch between them, which was to signify that though then they had the wall of salvation about them, with reference to their eternal state, yet the wall of God's providence and special protection was not yet so nearly joined thereto but that they might, for their foolishness, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... An outer ditch was dug on a grand scale, and gates and towers were built with no walls to join them and no dwellings within many furlongs of their site. But to those who laughed at the magnificent plan on which the young city had been laid out, the founder declared ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... useless. A project was conceived in his mind. He made the inhabitants believe that he intended to reduce the city by famine. To this end he caused a line of circumvallation to be drawn quite around the city with a large and deep ditch; and, that his troops might not be over-fatigued, he divided his army into twelve bodies, and assigned to each of them its month of guarding the trenches. The great ditch was completed, but the reveling Babylonians little thought of ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... are those that do belong to their Idols, wherein stand their Dewals or Temples. They do not care to make Streets by building their Houses together in rowes, but each man lives by himself in his own Plantation, having an hedg it may be and a ditch round about him to keep out Cattel. Their Towns are always placed some distance from the High-ways, for they care not that their Towns should be a thorough-fair for all people, but onely for those that have business with ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... inevitable gaps in the children's minds in connection with the world of living things, such pictures as the following should be in every town school: a pine wood, a rabbit warren, a natural pond, a ditch and hedge, a hayfield in June, a wild daffodil patch, a sheet of bluebells, a cornfield at different stages, an orchard in spring and in autumn, and many others. These must be constantly used when they are needed, and not misused in the ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... the expense of the law, the bad name that your sister will be having over the head of being in a breach of promise, and all the expenses of solicitors and lawyers. Then, after that, trying to get the money out of us, and, mind you, we will fight you to the last ditch. Won't we, John? ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... moving to the attack "in line of battle, as if on parade, in the face of a severe fire of artillery and small-arms." Subsequently, the description proceeds, "a company of my regiment had been separated from the regiment by a thickly-hedged ditch," and marched in the adjoining field in line with the main body. Not being aware of the separation of that company, the Colonel states that, therefore, "upon seeing among the breaks in the hedge the glistening ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... left hind axle snapped at the hub. Thereupon some two hundred dozen ears of early green-corn were strewn along the flinty face of the highway, while Uncle Enoch was hurled, seat and all, accompanied by four dozen eggs and ten pounds of Aunt Henrietta's best butter, into the ditch. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... situated on the edge of an extensive tract of marsh,—lagoon would be a more descriptive word for it, perhaps,—a splashy, ditch-divided district, extending along the borders of a lake for miles. Snipe-shooting was my motive there; and dull work it was in those dark, Novembry, October days, with "the low rain falling" half ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... smile was exasperating. "I've seen Bland Halliday fly—and fall, too, once. Because he was drunk, they said. I've seen him drunk, and trying to do figure eights with a car on Wilshire Boulevard. He almost put me in the ditch, trying to dodge him. He was arrested for that, and his car was taken away from him. And I've heard—oh, all kinds of scandal about him. I was awfully surprised at your taking up with him. You ought to be ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... determination, and threw, for several days, a shower of bombs into the Swedish camp, which cost the king many of his bravest soldiers. But notwithstanding, the Swedes continually gained ground, and had at last advanced so close to the ditch that they prepared seriously for storming the place. The courage of the besieged now began to droop. They trembled before the furious impetuosity of the Swedish soldiers, of which Marienberg, in Wuertzburg, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... in the morning in a field, near a farmyard, in a ditch. Their horses even were found lying on the roads with their throats cut by a saber stroke. These murders seemed to have been accomplished by the same men, who could not ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... of a mile to north of Nissr's position, one of the small watercourses or irrigating ditches that cut the plain glimmered through a grove of Sayhani dates.[1] To this ditch the Master sent two men in search of the largest stone they could find there. When they returned with a rock some foot in diameter, he ordered it placed half-way between Nissr and ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... but only where outside the wall there is high ground from which an assault on the fortifications may be made over a level space lying between. In places of this kind we must first make very wide, deep ditches; next sink foundations for a wall in the bed of the ditch and build them thick enough to support ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... they all had been told to keep away from the ditch at the bottom of the field; but, notwithstanding this injunction, one little urchin, of the name of Jarvis, seeing a flower in the hedge on the opposite bank, which he wished to gather, crept nearer and nearer ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... to examine. The river, a mere ditch, eight or ten yards in breadth, wandered through a level mead at the base of the valley, separated from the gardens by a wide path. Between Scarnham Bridge, at the foot of Cornmarket and the corner of Joseph Chestermarke's big garden, and the end of Cordmaker's ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... Mexican straw hats, and scarlet blankets depending from their shoulders, stalk through the street, or issue from ill-smelling pulque shops, whose singularly-painted exteriors arrest the attention. Gaunt dogs prowl about and lap the water of the open acequias, or ditch-gutters, between the road and the footpath, fighting for some stray morsel thrown into the street from the open doors of the shops aforesaid. Of stone or of adobe—generally the latter—according to the geology of the particular neighbourhood, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... with vengeance gleaming from the eyes, and the resolute mouth close shut in implacable sternness, was sufficient to show Gualtier that his career was nearly run. He had a sudden feeling that all was lost. With a wild leap he bounded over the ditch by the roadside, and tore over the fields with the frantic speed of one ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... continued Serge, pointing to a hill standing by itself; "that's just the sort of place my old officer would have picked out for his next halting camp, lead his men right to the top, mark out their places, and have them all at work before sundown, busy as bees digging out a ditch and throwing up a wall of earth in front for our men to fight behind, in ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... down into the hold! Then, as the furious storm continued, the very seams of the ship seemed to open like pores, to let in the sea, which was knocking and raging without for admittance, till at length the hold became like a ditch, which we rats could not cross but ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... collision, and a volley of oaths, together with a clashing of lanterns and a clatter of broken windows. If the horses got too far out of the way, the carriage would first of all tilt towards the sideway, slope more and more, and frequently end by turning over gently into the ditch. Then a clamour would rise from the menagerie, everybody first feeling themselves all over, and then laughing, while the great machine was being lifted up, preparatory to a fresh start. A little farther on, it might be, another accident would occur. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... not meant for a sportsman. On a very warm August morning, as he and I squatted "a l'affut" at the end of a long straight ditch outside a thicket which the bassets were hunting, we saw a hare running full tilt at us along the ditch, and we both fired together. The hare shrieked, and turned a big somersault and fell on its back and kicked convulsively—its legs still galloping—and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... operate. It had never been systematically surveyed, and the existing maps had been constructed for agricultural rather than for campaigning purposes, and could not be trusted. The Tugela formed the ditch of a natural fortress covering Ladysmith. On its left bank rose an almost continuous ridge or rampart from which the easy open ground on the right bank could be watched for miles, and reconnaissances kept at ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no more than order it to be flung into a ditch ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... or dead. The young Englishman had taken part in a wretched piece of treachery, and for the sake of the country, and as a warning to traitors, Washington would not spare him. He would never have ordered a political prisoner to be taken out and shot in a ditch, after the fashion of Napoleon; nor would he have dealt with any people as the Duke of Cumberland dealt with the clansmen after Culloden. Such performances would have seemed to him wanton as well as cruel, and he was too wise and too humane a man to be either. Indian atrocities, ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... I understand everything, but you don't understand. Why won't you believe that the reason I won't tell you my trouble is that it's best you shouldn't know? You're a young girl; you don't know life; you haven't seen it as I've seen it—in the sewage, in the ditch, on the road, on the mountain and in the bog. I want you to keep faith with your old friend who doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks, but who wants your confidence. Trust me—don't condemn me. Believe me, I haven't been ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the voice, "I wouldn't just stay there. They generally send over four of 'em. That's only the third. I find this ditch very convenient, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... ground-squirrel into a hole when we first arrived at this spot, and had subsequently torn up enough leaves and dirt to fill a moderate-size grave in his efforts to dislodge his quarry. He did not know that I was watching him, and his antics were therefore perfectly natural. He had dug a slanting ditch perhaps a foot deep in the soft loam, and when my eyes fell upon him had stopped for a moment to get his wind. He stood planted firmly on his four short legs, his tail vibrating incessantly, like the pendulum of a clock. His muzzle was ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... after several painful efforts she succeeded in forcing herself through the aperture; but her nerves were so much shaken by this unlucky circumstance, that when she had reached the platform, whence a second ladder was to conduct her to the ditch of the fortress, she declared her utter inability to descend it; and she was ultimately folded in a thick cloak, and cautiously lowered down by the joint exertions of her attendants. The Comte de Brienne and M. du Plessis then supported her to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... neither grew in syke nor ditch, Nor yet in ony sheugh; But at the gates o' Paradise That birk grew fair eneugh. ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Malagash Lagoon, an inlet of the sea. It penetrates to at least two hundred and fifty yards of the sea behind or south of Shangani Point. Were these two hundred and fifty yards cut through by a ten foot ditch, and the inlet deepened slightly, Zanzibar would become an island of itself, and what wonders would it not effect as to health and salubrity! I have never heard this suggestion made, but it struck me that the foreign consuls resident at Zanzibar might ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... and New Town flowed an irrigating ditch, which the connecting street crossed by means of an old wooden bridge. The ditch was this night full of swift water, which tore at the button willows on the bank and gurgled against the bridge timbers. As they crossed it the idea came into Ramon's ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... thee, forsooth? Marry, but that's as good a jest as I heard this year! I lack thee to tell me that. For what ails me at thee, that were other matter, and I can give thee to wit, an' thou wilt. Thou art as heavy as lead, and as dull as ditch-water, and as flat as dowled [flat] ale. I would I were but mine own master, and I'd mount my horse, and ride away from the whole ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... of Singara [60a] retired on the approach of Sapor, who passed the Tigris over three bridges, and occupied near the village of Hilleh an advantageous camp, which, by the labor of his numerous pioneers, he surrounded in one day with a deep ditch and a lofty rampart. His formidable host, when it was drawn out in order of battle, covered the banks of the river, the adjacent heights, and the whole extent of a plain of above twelve miles, which separated the two armies. Both were alike impatient to engage; but the Barbarians, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Patricians: why You graue, but wreaklesse Senators, haue you thus Giuen Hidra heere to choose an Officer, That with his peremptory Shall, being but The horne, and noise o'th' Monsters, wants not spirit To say, hee'l turne your Current in a ditch, And make your Channell his? If he haue power, Then vale your Ignorance: If none, awake Your dangerous Lenity: If you are Learn'd, Be not as common Fooles; if you are not, Let them haue Cushions by you. You are Plebeians, If they be Senators: and they are no lesse, When both your voices ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... desire, but who did his duty with an intolerable mixture of pedantry and rigor*: I was seized with a nervous attack in the middle of the road, and they were obliged to lift me out of my carriage, and lay me down on the side of the ditch. This wretched commissary fancied that this was an occasion to take compassion on me, and without getting out of his carriage himself, he sent his servant to find me a glass of water. I cannot ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... in your blood somewhere, I'll take an oath. Hands and feet, neck and head, tell the story. There was love and a young countess and a hot-brained troubadour went to the making of you, my little lady. A ditch-full of witches could not bring such tokens to a villein. Galors, my dear friend, if I owed nothing to Master le Gai, I doubt if I should help you to this. 'Tis too much, my friend, with an earldom. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... with shell-holes as though it had been mutilated with small-pox. There's not a leaf or a blade of grass in sight. Every house has either been leveled or is in ruins. No bird sings. Nothing stirs. The only live sound is at night—the scurry of rats. You enter a kind of ditch, called a trench; it leads on to another and another in an unjoyful maze. From the sides feet stick out, and arms and faces—the dead of previous encounters. "One of our chaps," you say casually, recognising him by his boots ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... enough to ride has a horse; for the Hawaiians can not well live without horses. Some of the people live on the shore and make salt, which you see stored up in pandanus bags under the shelter of lava bubbles. When I was there a number were engaged in digging a ditch in which to lay an iron pipe, intended to convey fresh water to the ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... the knots, the Wind grew high, insomuch that the Boy used all his strength to hold back the cord; but his strength failing him, he was with a furious blast snatcht up by the Kite from the ground, and presently after let fall again into a pretty deep ditch, where the poor ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... Chauntry Farm, Withyham, perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the hedge in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair of broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the ditch, he caught sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, which proved to be a note-book with detachable leaves, some of which had come loose and were fluttering along the base of the hedge. These he collected, but some, including ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a little nod of determination, as one who, for good or ill, casts a die, and he crossed the road. There was a deep ditch, and he had to climb down into it and up its farther side, for it was too broad to be jumped. So he came into the shelter of the young poplars and elms and oaks. The underbrush caught at his clothes, and the dead leaves of past seasons crackled underfoot; but after a little space he came to somewhat ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... pitched an' caper'd, only ez a mule kin pitch, Tel he flung Sam clean f'om off him, landed him squar' in a ditch. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... surface of a ditch for the footpath, and only found his mistake when he was up to his waist in water. The rain came on heavily again, and added to his troubles. After wandering through muddy fields for some time, he came to a cottage, where he succeeded in securing a ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... lieutenant, born in Africa: to his credit be it said, there was not a ranche between the Colorado and Buenos Ayres in nearly such neat order as his. He had a little room for strangers, and a small corral for the horses, all made of sticks and reeds; he had also dug a ditch round his house as a defence in case of being attacked. This would, however, have been of little avail, if the Indians had come; but his chief comfort seemed to rest in the thought of selling his life dearly. A short time before, a body of Indians had travelled past in the night; if they had been ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... highest part of the tree whence they could see over the fence. They craned their necks. The dusty road was flowing very swiftly, and like a river it had risen. Never before had it been so easily visible. They saw the ruts the carts had made, the hedge upon the opposite bank, the grassy ditch where the hemlock grew in feathery quantities. They even saw loose flints upon the edge. But the actual road was higher than before. It ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... impregnably secured by the Laws. Of such Force is the Genius of a Nation in regulating our Manners, and forming our Customs. I assure you, dear Tom, I could name Crowds of our Irish Gentlemen, that wou'd double their Estates, if they would live on them, and ditch them, and drain them, and build them, and plant them, with half the Skill and Application of a rich sensible Farmer in England; nay, I know some of them that are so situated, that they would quadruple their Rents in some Years, if they wou'd build Towns, and set up Manufactures on ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... their whistle suddenly shrieked, the air-brakes were set with a clamp that jolted the whole train, and they slowed down just enough not to knock into flinders a hand-car that was sailing ahead of them, down-grade. "The pilot hit it a lick that tossed it into the ditch," No. 4's crew had explained, and ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... follow it in amazement, which was soon exchanged for horror. At the corner of a lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now withdrawn, held in its place by ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the day drew near. Mark, before dawn, rode out to the place where he held pleas and judgment. He ordered a ditch to be dug in the earth and knotty vine-shoots and thorns to be ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... upon as a treat for the "brickies." I have often vowed and said many times that I would, if spared, try to find out what "gipsying" really was. It was a puzzle I was always anxious to solve. Many times I have been like the horse that shies at them as they camp in the ditch bank, half frightened out of my wits, and felt anxious to know either more or less of them. From the days when carrying clay and loading canal-boats was my toil and "gipsying" my song, scarcely a week has passed without ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... a quarrel broke out. Each man felt the others must be in some way responsible for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Hall and accusations flew back and forth. One of the men threw a heavy stone that ran down along the tracks and jumped into a ditch filled with dry weeds. It made a heavy crashing sound. Hugh heard heavy footsteps running. He was afraid the men were going to attack him, and climbed over a fence, crossed a barnyard, and got into an empty street. As ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... when exhumed in Orange County, New York; and you may see for yourself the vegetable fiber found in its teeth in his museum in Boston.[127] Does any one believe that the vegetable fiber and maple twigs have kept their shape one hundred thousand years? The mammoth found in the ditch of the Tezcucoco road must have fallen in after the Incas had dug that ditch. The Indians have a tradition that their fathers hunted a huge deer with a hand on his face, which slept leaning against the trees. And there is good geological reason for believing ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... asking a contractor who was building a sewer in the city why he had only Italians in his employ, he replied, 'Because they are the best workmen, and there are enough of them. If an Italian down in that ditch has a shovelful of earth half way up when the whistle blows for dinner, he will not drop it; he will throw it up; the Irishman and the French-Canadian will drop it. And when the lunch hour is over, when the clock strikes the Italian will be leaning on his shovel ready to go to work, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... into perilous chasms our walls and our poor palisades, Rifleman, true is your heart, but be sure that your hand be as true! Sharp is the fire of assault, better aimed are your flank fusillades— Twice do we hurl them to earth from the ladders to which they had clung, Twice from the ditch where they shelter, we drive them with hand- grenades; And ever upon our topmost roof our banner ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... the inside, and hastily erected a barricade under an arch leading to the apartments of the abbe. Just as these preparations were complete, Esprit Seguier caught sight of a heavy beam of wood lying in a ditch; this was raised by a dozen men and used as a battering-ram to force in the gate, which soon showed a breach. Thus encouraged, the workers, cheered by the chants of their comrades, soon got the gate off the hinges, and thus the outside court ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Me, I wanta stay bei der place; seven yahr I hef stay. Mist'r Derrick, he doand want dot I should be ge-sacked. Who, den, will der ditch ge-tend? Say, you tell 'um Bismarck hef gotta sure stay bei der place. Say, you hef der pull mit der Governor. You speak der gut word ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... shabbiness. He told me in 1909 that he had only bought one suit in the last five years. I have seen him, when gardening at Hare Street, wear a pair of shoes such as might have been picked up in a ditch after a tramp's encampment. At the same time he took a pleasure of a boyish kind in robes of state. He liked his Monsignor's purple, his red-edged cassock and crimson cincture, as a soldier likes his uniform. He was in no way ascetic; and though ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Aristomache his countrywoman, and Doris of Locris, he never visited them at night before everything had been well searched and examined. And as he had surrounded the place where his bed was with a broad ditch, and made a way over it with a wooden bridge, he drew that bridge over after shutting his bedchamber door. And as he did not dare to stand on the ordinary pulpits from which they usually harangued the people, he generally addressed them from a high tower. And it is said, that when he ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... vapory haze of early morning, but a tinted, ethereal haze, the visible effluence of the summer, the nimbus of its power and glory. From tall cord grasses arching over the side of the road, drawing water from the ditch in which their feet were bathed and breathing it into the air with the scent of their own greenness; from the transpiration of the trees, shrubs and vines, flowers and mosses and ferns, from billions of pores in acres of leaves it came streaming ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... previous night, Salvat had suddenly escaped from the detectives by bounding into the Bois de Boulogne, it had occurred to him to slip round to the Dauphine gate and there descend into the deep ditch* of the city ramparts. He remembered days of enforced idleness which he had spent there, in nooks where, for his own part, he had never met a living soul. Nowhere, indeed, could one find more secret places of retreat, hedged round ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... passenger shall quit the side-walk, except at certain authorised crossings. In country lanes and places where there is no side-walk the ditch shall be considered ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... away, and solid buttresses of masonry supported the high gates. The opening in the outer bank was not opposite to the gate in the inner, being fifty yards away, so that any who entered by it would have for that distance to follow the ditch between the two banks, exposed to the missiles of those on the wall before ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... means of its accomplishment, we could find no other than his descending from my window, which was on the second story and opened to the ditch, for the gates were so closely watched that it was impossible to pass them, the face of everyone going out of the Louvre being curiously examined. He begged of me, therefore, to procure for him a rope of sufficient strength and long ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... marked with a ditch or trench; so called from the rough condition of the cap. The pileus is from one to three inches broad, corky, convex, then plane, sometimes slightly depressed; tough in texture, rusty-brown; the surface ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... Tom has not above four or five couple at his heels. This number being a trifle, Tom runs his prad at a gap in the fence by the wood-side; the old nag goes well at it, but stops short at the critical moment, and, instead of taking the ditch, bolts and wheels round. Tom, however, who is "large in the boiling pieces," as they say at Whitechapel, is prevented by his weight from being shaken out of his saddle; and, being resolved to take no denial, he lays the crop ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... their enemies, who were behind breastworks. The troops of Tholouse fired wildly, precipitately, quite over the heads of the assailants. Many of the defenders were slain as fast as they showed themselves above their bulwarks. The ditch was crossed, the breastwork carried at, a single determined charge. The rebels made little resistance, but fled as soon as the enemy entered their fort. It was a hunt, not a battle. Hundreds were stretched dead in the camp; hundreds were driven into the Scheld; six or eight hundred ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... force of hands and burning out some isolated squatter roosting in a wagon," Harris said. "I've filed on water out of the Crazy Loop to cover the section I bought in the flats. We can pick men and give them a job with the Three Bar between spells of doing prove-up work. We can put in a company ditch to cover all the filings, pay them for working on it and charge their pro-rata share of improvements up against each man's final settlement. When they've made final proof we can buy out those who ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... such results as had ensued. In rear of the line of works captured by the Federals were batteries Mahone and Gregg, but neither had guns mounted nor men assigned them. Mahone was unfinished, and was simply an embrasured battery of three guns. Gregg was a large fort, with a deep ditch in front, and its sally-ports protected in rear, and was embrasured for six guns. These two forts were all that now prevented the enemy from completely cutting the Confederate lines in two to the Appomattox, and dividing A. P. Hill and Longstreet's forces, on ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... few rods of walk and planted a few trees to trap the possible purchaser into thinking the place "improved." But the cement walks were crumbling, the trees had died, and rank thorny weeds choked about their roots. The cross streets were merely lined out, a deep ditch on either ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... passed by, and asked him what he was doing there. The knight was so puffed up that he did not answer them civilly after his manner, but gave them rude words, for which in return he received buffets. In the end, the men dragged him away from the tree and flung him into a ditch that was full of water, and his armour weighed him down, so that he could not get out. Then at last he remembered his clue, and felt for it, but it was not there, and his pride broke down, and he saw that he had brought his ruin on himself. And in despair he lifted up his voice and ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... two large vehicles containing his wife, the necessary theatrical paraphernalia, and the members of the company. Well, soon after passing Chatelaudren, he perceived something white lying by the roadside, near the edge of a ditch. 'I must go and see what that is,' he said to his wife. He stopped the horses, alighted from the vehicle he was in, went to the ditch, picked up the object he had noticed, and uttered a cry of surprise. You will ask me what he had found? Ah! good heavens! A mere trifle. He ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... waved their flags in each other's faces, clinched and fought, hand to hand, like devils. Two soldiers on top of the trench, their ammunition spent, choked each other to death and rolled down the embankment among the mangled bodies that filled the ditch. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... we may, we shall never be in the same camp. You will always be on one side of the ditch, I on the other. We can nod, shake hands, exchange a word or two; but the ditch is always there. You will always be, Holmlock Shears, detective, and I Arsene Lupin, burglar. And Holmlock Shears will always, ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... of Naples. After he had been raised by mob favour to a height of power more despotic than monarch ever wielded, he was shot by the same populace in the streets, as if he had been a mad dog. His headless trunk was dragged through the mire for several hours, and cast at night-fall into the city ditch. On the morrow the tide of popular feeling turned once more in his favour. His corpse was sought, arrayed in royal robes, and buried magnificently by torch-light in the cathedral, ten thousand armed men, and as many mourners, attending at the ceremony. The fisherman's dress which he had worn was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... nothing more. Then the husband will explain that they found the poor lad half dead in a ditch by the side of the road, and that they took him home, and did what they could for him; and will add, this was in the beginning of September, 1856. You will offer to read him your description of the lad, but he will volunteer his own, which you will find exactly to tally with the one ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... street of the old town, and across the river, and quite out to the chalk hill[44] out of which the citadel is half quarried—half walled;—and walk to the top of that, and look down into the citadel's dry 'ditch,'—or, more truly, dry valley of death, which is about as deep as a glen in Derbyshire, (or, more precisely, the upper part of the 'Happy Valley' at Oxford, above Lower Hincksey,) and thence across to the cathedral and ascending slopes ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the watch had been employed on ropes and sails as the wind made necessary, and, when running under steam as well as sail, hoisting ashes up the two shoots from the ash-pits of the furnaces to the deck, whence they went into the ditch. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... walls was very large; and as in modern times many new buildings and ranges of buildings have been erected within, with streets and courts between them, the place has now the appearance of being a little town enclosed by walls, and surrounded by a ditch with bridges, and standing in the midst of a ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... you a hand, and you now in the last ditch, with Dolliver riding on you and me all the time. It don't go. You hear me, it don't go. Dolliver couldn't cough up eleven dollars to save you. Let him get off and walk, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you the railway nickels for four days—that's forty ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... smiled. "Not that I don't admire your courage. I do. But the other day, now, when you lost a tire and went into the ditch—" ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... rod. "You can do nothing with your hands; I—I can do anything." And he drew up with a bantam's vanity. He moved off. The torn book was in his path. He kicked it before him like a football until he reached the ditch beside the hunting road, and there he left it. A little later Gilian saw him in a distant vista of the trees as an old hunter of the wood, with a gun in his hand and his spoil upon his back, breasting the brae with long strides, a figure ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... be as dull as ditch-water, Middlebrook," he retorted with a grin. "You're tempting me! But those Quicks—I'll tell you in what fashion there is a connection between their murder and ourselves, and one that would need some explanation. Bear in mind that I've kept myself posted in those murders through the ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... contours can be drawn by anyone having a knowledge of the principles of topography. Never plot unimportant details. Prominent buildings and farm houses are of value for locating oneself. Woods and orchards are shown for tactical reasons but no one can expect to show every fence, ditch or bit of cover ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... these was the Taurobolia. The devotee, clad in a white robe with ornaments of gold, takes his place in the bottom of a ditch which is covered by a platform pierced with holes. A bull is led over this platform, the priest kills him and his blood runs through the holes of the platform upon the garments, the face, and the hair of the worshipper. It was believed that this "baptism of blood" ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... upon a little island or inaccessible rock, the pah was merely a fortified village. The natives most frequently add to the natural defences by fortifications, which render the approach still more perilous. Many were defended by a double ditch, the inner one having a parapet and double palisade. The second ditch was at least eighty feet in depth. On the inside of the palisade, at the height of twenty feet, was a raised platform forty feet long by six wide. Supported ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "From the ditch," was Ed's laughing answer, as he looked down at his splattered garments. "I just got but ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... come on," said Sam, and showed the way, which was decidedly uncertain. At one point there was a wide ditch to cross, and Tom had his hands ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... does," Chester answered. "This ditch was cut by water, and the water had to find ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... quite possible to misinterpret an obscure passage in a picture, which a less earnest observer would never have tried to interpret. But mistakes of this kind—honest, enthusiastic mistakes—are never harmful; because they are always made in a true direction,—falls forward on the road, not into the ditch beside it; and they are sure to be corrected by the next comer. But the blunt and dead mistakes made by too many other writers on art—the mistakes of sheer inattention, and want of sympathy—are mortal. The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... understand clearly this important process, we may compare the embryo to a fortress with its surrounding rampart and trench. The ditch consists of the outer part of the germinative area, and comes to an end at the point where the area passes into the vesicle. The important fold of the middle germinal layer that brings about the formation of the body-cavity spreads beyond the borders of the embryo over the whole ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... people, cultivated a farm of four acres, at the other side of the Tiber, which are called the Quintian meadows, opposite to the very place where the dock-yard now is. There, whether leaning on a stake in a ditch which he was digging, or in the employment of ploughing, engaged at least on some rural work, as is certain, after mutual salutations had passed, being requested by the ambassadors to put on his gown, and listen ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... soak in water; the oldest women were sitting on the ground, weaving baskets. There were not many men in the village now; two large bands were away at work,—one at the autumn sheep-shearing, and one working on a large irrigating ditch at San Bernardino. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... instant he is in the street, flying from the scene of his imprisonment like the wind. The streets are cleared, the open fields are gained and the broad, wide country lies before him. Onward he dashes in the midst of darkness, over hedge and ditch, through mud and pool, bounding from spot to spot with a speed and lightness, astonishing even to himself. At length he pauses; he must be safe from pursuit now; he will stretch himself on that bank and sleep ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... because I saw Pat in her last ditch, and presently turned out of it with nowhere else to go unless she married for money. She was in such a state of rapture at recovering Larry after all her fears, that I thought she would cheerfully consent to anything he advised, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... came in, an' got him away. Then he'd carry tales to his father, and one day old Westall beat Jim within an inch of 'is life, with a strap end, because of a lie George told 'im. The poor chap lay in a ditch under Disley Wood all day, because he was that knocked about he couldn't walk, and at night he crawled home on his hands and knees. He's shown me the place many a time! Then he told his father, and next morning he told me, as he couldn't ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the Y.M.C.A. They need no encomium of mine, but I am prepared to stand by them to the last ditch. They were doing, not talking, and were wise enough to use even those agents whom they knew to be imperfect, as God Himself does when He uses us. The folly of judging for all cases by one standard is common and human, but it is not God's way. This conviction was brought home to me ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... dictator was no exception to the race of autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding, ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in their proper seasons. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery hoop to the lives ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... now that the pigeons have got used to our presence, they should still be wheeling in and out of one particular tree. Don't point to it, please! I mean the tree beyond the ditch, and to the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... up their hair afresh, and the swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made a dead point. ''Tis the pipe and tambourine,' said I—'I never will argue a point with one of your family as long as I live;' so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch and t'other into that, 'I'll take a dance,' said I, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Houghton, to a moral; and do you stick to me. They generally go straight away to Thrupp's larches. You see the little wood. There's an old earth there, but that's stopped. There is only one fence between this and that, a biggish ditch, with a bit of a hedge on this side, but it's nothing to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Villefleur's telling me—he commanded here a while—that the ranks of the Zephyrs and Zouaves were full of well-born men, utterly good-for-nothing, the handsomest scoundrels possible; who had every gift and every grace, and yet come to no better end than a pistol-shot in a ditch or a mortal thrust from Bedouin steel. I dare say your ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... every tie between the tank and that little ditch under the track. The entire stretch has been ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the berry, pale and sharp, Springs on some ditch's counterscarp In our ungenial, native north— You put your frosted wildings forth, And on the heath, afar from man, A strong and bitter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frosty, exhilarating morning, and we felt our minds, as well as our nerves, braced by the elasticity of the pure air. Our walk to the lake was delightful, or at least the difficulties were only such as diverted us, a slippery descent for instance, or a frozen ditch to cross, which made Hazlewood's assistance absolutely necessary. I don't think Lucy liked her walk the less for ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... from the authorities already quoted ignorance ought to be odious to priests. Since, if in ignorance of their own blindness they undertake to lead others, both fall into the ditch. Wherefore in the Psalm it is said: "Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back always." For when those who go ahead are darkened, they who follow are easily inclined to bear the burdens of sinners. Therefore ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... ran to the left. In front of them was a patch of lilac bushes, behind which no one ran, but Katiousha, turning toward Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the bushes. But here was a ditch overgrown with nettles, whose presence was unknown to Nekhludoff. He stumbled and fell, stinging and wetting his hands in the evening dew that was now falling, but, laughing, he straightened himself ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... land, that's all. Don't you realize you're an old fuss budget with your steam and your boiler and your fire and what not? You're tied to your rails and if everything about your old tracks isn't kept just so you tumble over into a ditch or do some fool thing. Now I'm the one that can endure real hardships. Sparks and gasoline! you just sit right there, you baby, you railclinger, and watch me take that hill! Honk, honk!" And he was off ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... the "Diary of a Lord Mayor,—that day-book, or blotter, as it may be commercially termed, of a gigantic mind? Who has ever perused the autobiography of the Lama of Guildhall, Cham of Cripplegate, Admiral of Fleet Ditch, Great Turtle-hunter and Herod of Michaelmas geese? We will take upon ourselves to answer—not one! It was reserved for PUNCH to give to his dear friends, the public, the first and only extract which has ever been made from the genuine diary of a late Lord Mayor of London, or, as that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... great Modern Critick. [4] I do not find in any of our Chronicles, that Edward the Third ever reconnoitred the Enemy, tho' he often discovered the Posture of the French, and as often vanquished them in Battel. The Black Prince passed many a River without the help of Pontoons, and filled a Ditch with Faggots as successfully as the Generals of our Times do it with Fascines. Our Commanders lose half their Praise, and our People half their Joy, by means of those hard Words and dark Expressions in which our News Papers do so much abound. I have seen many a prudent ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the farmyard, came readily enough for a walk, and before three o'clock they had set out. The boy's face was badly scratched from his morning battle, but pain had ceased, and his injuries only served as an object of great interest to Timothy. Where water in ditch or puddle made a looking-glass he would stop to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... surrounded by a wall of two yards in height, above which may still be seen the holes where gratings and thick iron bars were inserted as a precaution against the bounds of the panthers. In the large amphitheatres a ditch was dug around this rampart and filled with water to intimidate the elephants, as the ancients believed them to have ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... the Purse, and the whole Man, till he becomes as poor and despicable as Negative Nature can leave him, abandon'd of his Sense, his Manners, his Modesty, and what's worse, his Money, having nothing left but his Poetry, dies in a Ditch, or a Garret, A-la-mode de Tom Brown, uttering Rhymes and Nonsence to ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... invisible, because covered with a film of brown pitch-dust, and so letting in the unwary walker over his shoes. The pitch in the gutter-bank is in its native place, and as it spues slowly out of the soil into the ditch in odd wreaths and lumps, we could watch, in little, the process which has produced the whole deposit—probably the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... that the river Paglion should be turned into a new channel, so as to surround the town to the north, and fall into the harbour; that where the Paglion now runs to the westward of the city walls, there should be a deep ditch to be filled with sea-water; and that a fortress should be built to the westward of this fosse. These particulars might be executed at no very great expence; but, I apprehend, they would be ineffectual, as the town is commanded by every hill in the neighbourhood; and the exhalations ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... lived in the flesh, preached oftener in the desart, and upon the sea-side, than in the temple of Jerusalem." Upon this the people were appeased, and went with him to the edge of a muir on the south-west side of Mauchlin, where having placed himself upon a ditch-dyke, he preached to a great multitude who resorted to him; he continued speaking for more than three hours, God working wondrously by him, insomuch that Laurence Rankin the laird of Sheld, a very profane person, was converted by his means; the tears ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... hedge, hedge row; espalier; fence &c. (defense) 717; pale, paling, balustrade, rail, railing, quickset hedge, park paling, circumvallation[obs3], enceinte, ring fence. barrier, barricade; gate, gateway; bent, dingle [U.S.]; door, hatch, cordon; prison &c. 752. dike, dyke, ditch, fosse[obs3], moat. V. inclose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... him not a knave and a liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we step on it!—Let the Hero rest. It was not to men's judgment that he appealed; nor have men judged ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Gods fauour in the well ordering of things for the administration in the common wealth, he sought first to appease his wrath, and also to make amends to saint Edmund for his fathers offense committed (as was thought) against him: insomuch [Sidenote: S. Edmunds ditch.] that after he had obteined the kingdome, he caused a great ditch to be cast round about the land of saint Edmund, and granted manie freedoms to the inhabitants, acquiting them of certeine taskes and paiments, vnto the which other of their neighbours were contributarie. ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... he began again from the doorway. "Drive me out into a ditch to starve for a joke. I could see he thought it was a damned good joke. A man like me! Look here! Some of the highest in the world got to thank me for walking on their two legs to this day. That's the man you've ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Goodie She trots betimes Over the meadows To Farmer Grimes. And never was queen With jewelry rich As those same hedges From twig to ditch; Like Dutchmen's coffers, Fruit, thorn, and flower - They shone like William And Mary's bower. And be sure Old Goodie Went back to Weep, So tired with her basket ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... the aid of the rope, the end of which was held by two of the party, while Theller with his wounded leg slipped down over a piece of cedar post which had been accidentally placed against the wall of the ditch. Culver followed, then Hall held the rope alone for Dodge, and afterwards descended himself as all had done on the first leap, caught as he came to the ground, however, by the rest of the party. Dodge, in saving Hall from ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... marshy ground intersected with ditches, which were filled, or partially so, with water. Over some of the narrower of these Pierce leaped his horse. When the brigade had advanced about a mile, however, it found itself impeded by a ditch ten or twelve feet wide, and six or eight feet deep. It being impossible to leap it, General Pierce was lifted from his saddle, and in some incomprehensible way, hurt as he was, contrived to wade or scramble across this obstacle, leaving his horse on the hither side. The ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the gateway and look, and then with a wild howl throw himself into the outer ditch for safety, and the camp roared with the alarm, and the dim white figures flocked to the rampart, and through a storm of ill-aimed arrows we rode through the unguarded gate and were ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... was named by the Greeks Bleekon and Gleekon, being often used by them as a condiment for seasoning different viands. Formerly it was known in England as "Lurk in ditch," and "Run by the ground," from its creeping nature, arid love of a damp soil. Its first titles were "Puliall Royall," and "Hop Marjoram." A chaplet of Pennyroyal was considered admirable for clearing the brain. Treadwell says, the Pennyroyal was especially put ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... learn anything from their deities or to argue about them. They only wish to love and be loved in return, reserving to themselves the right to punish them, when they deserve it. Countless cases are on record where (pictures or statues of) Madonnas and saints have been thrown into a ditch for not doing what they were told, or for not keeping their share of a bargain. During the Vesuvius eruption of 1906 a good number were subjected to this "punishment," because they neglected to protect their worshippers from the calamity according to contract (so many ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... alight on a field which appeared to him, as he was high above it, to be level as a billiard table, a pilot has found, when it is too late, that the ground has sloped so steeply that his machine, after landing, has run on downhill and ended by crashing into a fence or ditch. ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... 'scape the rout, Their steeds they soundly switch; Some are thrown in, and some thrown out, And some thrown in the ditch. Yet a-hunting ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Gabarus Bay, where the admiral allowed the captains of the former to land their men, being sickly, on a small peninsula, which they engaged to defend from the enemy. Four or five hundred people, therefore, immediately set to work, and cut a ditch, six feet wide and four feet deep, quite across the peninsula, as a protection against the Indians; they planted cannon, and also placed several swivels on the stumps of trees cut down for the purpose. Huts were next erected, gardens made, and the whole ground cleared and converted into ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... see high bastions, a wall and a ditch, but there was nothing at Belogorsk but a little village, surrounded by a wooden palisade. An old iron cannon was near the gateway, the streets were narrow and crooked, and the commandant's house to which I had been driven ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... see how he can blame us," said Dave. "We simply couldn't pass him on the left. If we had tried, we'd have gone in the ditch sure. And the scraping we did to his buggy amounts to ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... principles, but because you have been the party heretofore to extend the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought most valiantly for the removal of the "property qualification" from all white men, and thereby placed the poorest ditch-digger on a political level with the proudest millionaire. This one act of justice to workingmen has perpetuated your power, with but few interruptions, from that time until the war. And now you have an opportunity to confer a similar boon on the women of the country, and thus possess yourselves ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... they were going the waiting promised to be long. But after another half-hour had been killed, the headlights of a westward-driven car appeared in the road ahead. Blount pulled quickly into the ditch and jumped out to flag the oncoming machine; did flag it, and was able to borrow a set of batteries. With the new equipment the remainder of the drive was accomplished swiftly, but not swiftly enough. At the Inter-Mountain they found that ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... we moved on, walking side by side with the lantern-bearing leader, who ran ahead now and then to make sure of the road. The night was the blackest we had ever seen. Suddenly one of the camels disappeared in a ditch, and rolled over with a groan. Fortunately, no bones were broken, and the load was replaced. But we were off the road, and a search was begun with lights to find the beaten path. Footsore and hungry, with an almost intolerable thirst, we trudged along till morning, to the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... that afternoon came a new clue. A pair of ladies' shoes, mud-stained and worn, had been discovered in a ditch on the Hertford road, four miles from the house where the latest murder had been committed. This news came by telephone from the Chief of the Hertford Constabulary, with the further information that the shoes had been despatched to Scotland ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... be ever so much obliged," echoed the two ladies, whose shoes were all muddy from having jumped out of the automobile down into the ditch. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... closer they came to the fort, till, when only about fifty paces distant, the column wavered. We could see the officers rushing about among their men, and in another instant the whole mass broke into disorder and ran pell-mell in hundreds towards the ditch which surrounded ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... on further examination it was found that he had cut through the thick plank flooring of his cell, under the bed, and tunnelled under the wall into the yard of the prison. He had replaced the planks when he left, and passing over the ramparts without difficulty, dropped into the ditch, and departed without bidding any one good by. All attempts to find him were unsuccessful, and it was believed that he ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... illustrations. One has but to look about him in this unsettled country of ours. The other day in front of my door the perennial ditch was being dug for some gas-pipe or other. Two of the gentlemen who had consented to do this labor wore frock-coats and top hats—or what had once been those articles of attire—instead of comfortable and appropriate overalls. Why? Because, like the stable- boy, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... his sentence, 'rasees a la hauteur de l'infamie,' and remain now cut down to half their original height. Luynes stands finely, crowning a knoll overlooking the Loire. It is square, with twelve towers, two on each side and four in the corners, and a vast ditch, and must have been strong. Nearly a mile from it are the remains of a Roman aqueduct, of which about thirty piers and six perfect arches remain. It is of stone, except the arches, which have a mixture of brick. The peasants, by digging under the ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... it must, ere many days, succumb to the storm of missiles hurled against it. D'Aubusson lost no time in making preparations to avert the danger. He ordered all the houses in rear of the wall to be levelled; a deep semicircular ditch was then dug, and behind this a new wall, constructed of the stones and bricks from the houses destroyed, was built, and backed with an earthen rampart ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... flood of flame sprang west; expelled from the tottering structure by some inward impulse, perhaps by an explosion of smothered air, this sheet of heat and flame, of unburned and burning gases, leaped Tremont Street as a rabbit leaps a ditch. Simultaneously the Tremont Street face of the old Park Street Church burst into flame, and along the rear of the buildings which fringed the ancient burial ground the fire crept. Under the eaves of these buildings it ran, and a moment later the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... from the line of hills, and three hundred south of the ravine just described, commences another of a more singular nature; with its steep sides, almost exactly perpendicular, it perfectly resembles a ditch cut for purposes of defence. Rising near the middle of the second bottom, it runs westwardly to the upper edge of the first, with a depth at its head of four or five feet, increasing as it descends, and a width of eight or ten. A century ago its channel was overhung and completely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... is here in the South. I have no other country; and I shall stand by it to the last ditch, wherein I am ready to cast all that I have and all that I am. If you thought it possible for me to desert the cause of the South, you strangely misjudged me; and I do not feel at all complimented by the formation of your opinion of me," said Homer, with ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... contumelies of speech. To the persons so abusing them they might coolly reply, "Now really you are inconsiderately wasting your labor. Don't you know, that on the account of this same business we have sustained the battery of stones, brickbats, and the contents of the ditch? And can you believe we can much care for mere words of insult, after that? Albeit the opprobrious phrases have the fetid coarseness befitting the bluster of property without education, or the more highly ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... to disturb you," Conners said, pushing back his battered felt hat. "I know it's your restin' week and all, but there's something damned funny in the ditch." ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... with the risk always before me, if I cannot charm the wild beast of Philistinism while I am trying to convert him, of being torn in pieces by him, and, even if I succeed to the utmost and convert him, of dying in a ditch or a workhouse at the end ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... says Mr. G. T. Clark, "in a remarkable degree the features of a well-known class of earthworks found both in England and in Normandy. This kind of fortification by mound, bank and ditch was in use in the ninth, tenth, and even in the eleventh centuries, before masonry was general. {13} The mound was crowned with a strong circular house of timber, such as in the Bayeaux tapestry the soldiers ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... may serve to give a notion Of the high talents of this new Vauban: But the town ditch below was deep as ocean, The rampart higher than you 'd wish to hang: But then there was a great want of precaution (Prithee, excuse this engineering slang), Nor work advanced, nor cover'd way was there, To hint at ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... leave the strongest invading army comparatively helpless. Before six cities, resisting as Saragossa hath resisted during her two sieges, the whole of the military power of the adversary would melt away. Without any advantages of natural situation; without fortifications; without even a ditch to protect them; with nothing better than a mud wall; with not more than two hundred regular troops; with a slender stock of arms and ammunition; with a leader inexperienced in war;—the Citizens of Saragossa began the contest. Enough of what was needful—was produced and created; and—by courage, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... well laid down by Dalrymple. The small Dutch fort, or intrenchment, stands rather on the eastern bight of the bay, and is composed of a few huts, surrounded by a ditch and green bank. Two guns at each corner compose its strength, and the garrison consists of about thirty Dutchmen and a few Javanese soldiers. We were cordially and hospitably received by the officers, and, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... which I did survey from a distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his spade. I refer to him only as the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... persuade an artist who happened to be in camp to make a sketch from that window. The artist shrank from the task. The far background was well enough, trees on the side of a hill; but the objects in the middle distance were a railway line and a ditch full of muddy water. In the foreground there were two incinerators, a dump of old tins, and a Salvation Army hut. I dare say the artist was right in shrinking from ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... breast, staggered forward, carried on by the impetus he had acquired, and fell, with his rider partly under him. Before Herrera could extricate himself, the sound of hoofs was heard, and another horseman galloped down the lane. Again Baltasar rode at the ditch, but his steed, discouraged and cowed by his violent treatment, made no effort to cross it. With a fierce execration, Baltasar threw the woman violently to the ground, and driving the point of his sword an inch or more into his horse's crupper, the animal, relieved of part of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... be thrown on the right—a little slanting—just as you are at this moment. Moreover, when you have started, never draw bridle till you have reached the house of Don Mariano de Silva. If you meet a ditch, or brake, or ravine, cross them in a direct line, and don't attempt to ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... only you must mind in getting them that you don't fall into the ditch, or you will be ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... accomplished a long march, hastens to the town named Noviodunum. Having attempted to take it by storm on his march, because he heard that it was destitute of [sufficient] defenders, he was not able to carry it by assault, on account of the breadth of the ditch and the height of the wall, though few were defending it. Therefore, having fortified the camp, he began to bring up the vineae, and to provide whatever things were necessary for the storm. In the meantime, the ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... But he had asked for it to be kept secret. Only the four of us knew. And while I sewed my cheap holokus on that crazy machine, he bought land with the money—the upper Nahala lands, you know—a bit at a time, each purchase a hard-driven bargain, his face the very face of poverty. To-day the Nahala Ditch alone pays me ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... with a light step, my head full of sonorous phrases, and my mind haunted by delightful visions. It was night, the dead of night, and so dark that I could hardly distinguish the broad highway, and consequently I stumbled into the ditch more than once. From the custom-house, at the barriers, to my house, was about a mile, perhaps a little more—a leisurely walk of about twenty minutes. It was one o'clock in the morning, one o'clock or maybe half-past one; the sky had by this time cleared somewhat and the crescent appeared, the gloomy ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... match to it. Mrs. Wrottesley had been married too long not to know that whatever at the moment engaged her husband's mind required an audience. Her sons also had expected her to watch and applaud them did they in infancy so much as jump a small ditch, and she knew that it was the maternal duty, and admitted, also, that it was the maternal pleasure to watch and applaud until such time as the several wives of her five ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... placed, the branches of one extending over the trunks of the one in front, so as to make the abatis 5 feet high and as wide as desired. It is better to place the abatis in a natural depression or a ditch, for concealment and protection from fire. If exposed to artillery, an abatis must be protected either as above or else by raising a glacis in front of it. Fig. 1 shows a typical form of abatis with a glacis in front. An abatis formed by felling trees toward ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... and tried to make him smoke. I tried to make him talk about his travels. Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off." "What did he say? Did he say anything?" "But little." "Anything? Mary, confess He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me." "Warren!" "But did he? I just want to know." "Of course he did. What would you have him say? Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man Some humble way to save his self-respect. He added, if you really care to know, He meant to clear the upper pasture, too. That sounds ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... VIII came to the throne in 1509 his first thought was for the "Broade Ditch," as he called the English Channel. In 1546, only a little before he died, he appointed a Navy Board, which answered its purpose so well that it looked after the pay, food, stores, docks, and ships of the Royal Navy for nearly ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... I have seen here. The multitude of small gardens and orangeries, among the huge masses of fortifications, many of them seeming almost as thick as the gardens inclosed by them are broad. Pomegranate in (beautiful secicle) flower. Under a bridge over a dry ditch saw the largest prickly pear. Elkhorns for trunk, and then its leaves—but go and look and look.—(Hard rain.) We sheltered in the Botanic Garden; ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... walnut and butternut seedlings. I have no acreage of nut trees. I grow seedlings and plant them wherever I find a place protected from the stock and within reach of moisture from the irrigation ditch, as this is a desert, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... rider had come to the wide irrigating ditch which, since Judith Sanford had lived here, had been constructed to carry the water of Blue Lake River down to the alfalfa-fields. She saw it when she ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... threw down a match, I suppose. There had been nearly a month's drought, and the whole place was like so much tinder. There was an easterly breeze too. You can imagine the blaze! We hadn't the faintest chance. Poor, old Iles lost his head completely, and sat down with his feet in a dry ditch and wept. There must be over two hundred acres of it. It's a dreadful eyesore, perfectly barren and useless, but for a little sour grass even a gipsy's donkey has to be hard up before he cares to eat!"—Miss St. Quentin ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... describe here the forts and weapons which they possessed. The two principal forts were square in form, with ten or twelve culverins on each side, some of them moderately large and others very small. Each fort had a wall two estados high, and was surrounded by a ditch two and one-half brazas in depth, filled with water. The small weapons used by these natives are badly tempered iron lances, which become blunt upon striking a fairly good coat of mail, a kind of broad dagger, and arrows—which are weapons of little value. Other lances are also used which are made ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... woman was found to be much hurt: she had been thrown from the top of the coach into a ditch, which had stones at the bottom of it. She had not been able to make herself heard by any body, whilst the ladies' loud complaints continued; nor had she been able long to call for any assistance, for she had been stunned ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... passing? Did you ever see anything more beautiful than the river? Pretty soon we'll come to the Highlands and to West Point and I want to say to you right now, Soc, that I would rather know about these things than I would to hear about a ditch that is one hundred feet wide and twenty-five feet deep and eight miles long. What's the ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... once, he bade me tell the others that the British must have witnessed our surrender. "See," said he, "what a bombardment they have begun again. That is in the hope of slaying you. That is out of revenge because you dared surrender instead of dying like rats in a ditch to feed their pride!" It was true that a bombardment had begun again. It had begun that minute. Those truly had been ranging shells. If we had stayed five minutes longer before surrendering we should have been blown to pieces; but we were ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... day or two, during which the ark was left open for inspection, and was visited by many thousands, Cosmo Versal announced that no more visitors would be admitted. He placed sentinels at all entrances, and began the construction of a shallow ditch, entirely inclosing the grounds. Public curiosity was intensely excited by this singular proceeding, especially when it became known that the workmen were stringing copper wires the whole ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... on the sly and plied her with minute questions as to who the girl was. The old dame was placed under the necessity of fabricating something for his benefit. "The truth is," she said, "that there stands on the north bank of the ditch in our village a small ancestral hall, in which offerings are made, but not to spirits or gods. There was in former ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of the American position, General Howe halted, and sent back for further re-enforcements. The Americans improved the time thus given them by forming a breastwork in front of an old ditch. Here there was a post-and-rail fence. They ran up another by the side of this and filled the space between the two with the new-mown hay, which, cut only the day before, lay ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... Macdonald could trace them round, identify the six gateways, and generally confirm Roy's plan, apart from its hill-shading. The ramparts proved to be of two kinds: part was built solidly of earth, with a deep ditch of Roman shape strengthened in places with clay, in front of it, while part was roughly piled with stones and defended only by a shallow rounded ditch. This difference seemed due to the differing nature of the ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... Tann knew that they would fight to the last ditch for their hero should he come to claim the crown. Yet how would they fight—to which side would they cleave, were he to attempt to frustrate the design of the Regent to seize ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shook his head. 'It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!' he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch. ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... the depth of twenty inches, and four or five feet square, for an ordinary-sized tree. This, however, will not do on a heavy clay subsoil, for it would form a basin to hold water and injure the tree. A ditch, as low as the bottom of the holes, should extend from tree to tree, and running out of the orchard, constructed in the usual method of drains, and, whatever be the subsoil, the trees will flourish. The usual compost to manure the trees in transplanting will be found elsewhere. In the ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... and sometimes men who are hailed as saviors in their day are afterward found to be sham saviors—to wit, charlatans. Conservation is a plan of Nature. To keep the good is to conserve. A Conservative is a man who puts on the brakes when he thinks Progress is going to land Civilization in the ditch and wreck the ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... at every corner; Dr. Castleton piloted me safely through one expedition; but on the next, we had to part company, and I passed through a crowd of at least fifty, alone. They were playing cards in the ditch, and swearing dreadfully, these pious Yankees; many were marching up and down, some sleeping on the pavement, others—picking odious bugs out of each other's heads! I thought of the guerrillas, yellow fever, and all, and wished they were all ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... imagination "a striking emblem of the troubled and uncertain prospect which his undertaking afforded." He remained, however, unshaken; and at length they reached the spot at which they had agreed to separate. A small ditch divided the moor from the road, and, in going over it, Park's horse stumbled, and nearly fell. "I am afraid, Mungo," said the Sheriff, "that is a bad omen." To which he answered, smiling, "Freits (omens) follow those who look to them." With this expression ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... lady—a Mrs. Maginley—arose and expressed her opinions. She had confidence in Mr. Lincoln, but denounced Gen. Banks, who, she said, was a hero in one place and a slave-driver in another. As next President, we may get a ditch-digger—(Mrs. M. evidently intended this as a sly allusion to a distinguished military chieftain)—and then what are we to do? She wished to know who, loving the black man, could ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of October, accordingly, the siege, which had lasted seven weeks, was raised, and Don Frederic rejoined his father in Amsterdam. Ready to die in the last ditch, and to overwhelm both themselves and their foes in a common catastrophe the Hollanders had at last compelled their haughty enemy to fly from a position which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Your dad, Tom Cameron, is mighty riled up over your bein' hurt. I heered him say that he'd give a ten-dollar note ter know who it was drove by ye that night and crowded ye inter the ditch. Would you give more than that not ter have it known ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... I not so?— Their hearts are hardened by the Lord of hosts. [Musketry in the distance.] [To an officer entering.] Did you not hear me when I said "Bring up the fascines?" How shall we cross the ditch? Do ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... Think of the mother and the babe at her breast, think of the father and son, Think of the lover and the loved one too, think of them doomed every one To fall (as it were by your very hand) into yon fathomless ditch, Murdered by one who should guard them from harm, who now ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... woman and her child, dying of it. When the Tower was free from the Plague it was still an unsuitable lodging for one of Ralegh's constitution. Moisture oozed constantly into the walls from the wide muddy ditch. The cells were bitterly cold, and Ralegh was chilled and benumbed. 'Every second or third night,' he reiterated to Cecil in 1605, 'I am in danger either of sudden death, or of the loss of my limbs and senses, being sometimes two hours without feeling a motion of my hand and whole ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... be the "Gibraltar of America." Louisbourg, on Cape Breton, was fortified by the French, after the peace of Utrecht, at an expense of $5,500,000. The fortifications consisted of a rampart of stone, nearly 36 feet in height, and a ditch eighty feet wide. There were six bastions, and three batteries, with embrasures for 148 cannon and 6 mortars. On an island at the entrance of the harbor was another battery of 30 cannon, carrying 28 pound shot, and at the bottom of the harbour, opposite the entrance, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... went to the parson to get this thing fixed up. As I came on the marsh to the selfsame place where I saw that Poor-customer the first time, there was somebody lying at one edge of the bog, on his back in the heather and with his legs in the ditch. I knew him well enough. 'Why are you lying here alone?' said I: 'is anything the matter with you?' 'I think I am dying,' said he, but he gasped so I could hardly understand him. 'Where are those women,' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... made out of the ruins. "If they send us peas," said Guise, "we will give them back beans" ("we will give them at least as good as they bring "). On the 26th of November the old wall was battered by a formidable artillery; and, breached in three places, it crumbled down on the 28th into the ditch, "at the same time making it difficult to climb for to come to the assault." The assailants uttered shouts of joy; but, when the cloud of dust had cleared off, they saw a fresh rampart eight feet in height above the breach, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... descending from the level arable land, dips suddenly into the narrow and winding pass of Tubberneering. The sides of the pass were lined with a bushy shrubbery, and the roadway at the bottom embanked with ditch and dike. On came the confident Walpole, never dreaming that these silent thickets were so soon to re-echo the cries of the onslaught. The 4th dragoon guards, the Ancient Britons, under Sir Watkyn Wynne, the Antrim militia, under Colonel Cope, had all entered ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to me in the handwriting of the condemned man. This voix d'outre tombe, I rejoice to say, confides to me the secret of that incomparable sauce of his, a secret which I feared might be buried with Narcisse in the prison ditch." ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... indeed a strong one. Fronting us to the north we had a large and rapid river; on the south we were Banked by a ditch forty feet broad and ten feet deep, which isolated the building from a fine open ground, without my bush, tree, or cover; the two wings were formed by small brick towers twenty feet high, with loop-holes, and a door ten feet from the ground; the ladder to which, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... a yellow sandy mound beyond the marsh on the road to the city. At the edge, which descended perpendicularly to the ditch, from which sand was being taken, stood Pavel singing softly and sonorously ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... or rather fell, down the wall on to a mass of prickly-pear bush, which broke the shock but tore them so sorely in a score of places that they could have shrieked with the pain. Somehow they freed themselves, and, bleeding all over, broke from that accursed bush, struggling up the bank of the ditch in which it grew, ran for the road, ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... observed an immense, dark, moving mass, the nature of which they could not divine, but it threatened to annihilate every thing that opposed it. While gazing at this additional source of danger, the horses, blinded by the surrounding light, plunged into a deep ditch that the rain had washed in the rich soil. Neither men nor horses, fortunately, were injured; and after several ineffectual efforts to extricate themselves, they here resolved to await the coming of the fire. Ringwood and Jowler whined ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... city from the north gate, after crossing the ditch that separates the walls from, the French Concession, we find ourselves in close and extremely narrow streets, with shops opening upon them, neither glass nor any partition separating them from passers by. The same arrangement is quite common in our own streets for fruit-sellers' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... againe: I had else beene perfect; Whole as the Marble, founded as the Rocke, As broad, and generall, as the casing Ayre: But now I am cabin'd, crib'd, confin'd, bound in To sawcy doubts, and feares. But Banquo's safe? Mur. I, my good Lord: safe in a ditch he bides, With twenty trenched gashes on his head; The ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... by a packet brought me my first grief. She came up behind us with her horses at the full trot. Their boat was down the canal a hundred yards or so at the end of the tow-line; and just before the boat itself drew even with ours she was laid over by her steersman to the opposite side of the ditch, her horses were checked so as to let her line so slacken as to drop down under our boat, her horses were whipped up by a sneering boy on a tall bay steed, her team went outside ours on the tow-path, and the passage was made. They made, as was always the case, a moving loop ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... of a great fox-cover; a flat wilderness of low leafless oaks fortified by a long, dreary, thorn capped clay ditch, with sour red water oozing out at every yard; a broken gate leading into a straight wood ride, ragged with dead grasses and black with fallen leaves, the centre mashed into a quagmire by innumerable horsehoofs; some forty red coats and some four black; a sprinkling of young- farmers, resplendent ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
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