"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those of to-morrow. Not one of them has the head required for war. In this cursed Vendee a general is needed who would be a lawyer as well as a leader. He must harass the enemy, dispute every bush, ditch, and stone; he must force unlucky quarrels upon him, and take advantage of everything; vigilant and pitiless, he must watch incessantly, slaughter freely, and make examples. Now, in this army of peasants there are heroes, but no captains. D'Elbee is ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the S.E. The ditch is completely blocked up with vegetation: thus we made only 250 yards. Before us, as usual, is the hopeless sea of high grass, along which is a dark streak which marks the course of the ditch through which we slowly clear a passage. How many days or ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... pieces in the streets; others climbed the walls, and threw themselves head foremost into the moat. Many were drowned, and but a very few effected their escape. Justinus de Nassau. sprang over the parapet, and succeeded in swimming the ditch. Kleerhagen, driven into the Holy Cross tower, ascended to its .roof, leaped, all accoutred as he was, into the river, and with the assistance of a Scotch soldier, came safe to land. Ferdinand Truchsess, brother of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... selfishness, so there were disagreements and bitter quarrels over the water. Lawsuits followed and sometimes even fighting and murders. The remedy for this state of things was found to be in a company ditch, flume, or reservoir, with the use of ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... ground, a mounted cavalryman was riding rapidly toward me, the wind blowing back his cape so as to make conspicuous its bright yellow lining. For the moment his lowered head prevented recognition, but as he cleared the ditch and came up smiling, I ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... tangled mass of bramble arched over the dry ditch; it was possible to see some distance down the bank, for nothing grew on the top itself, the bushes all rising from either side—a peculiarity of clay mounds. This narrow space was a favourite promenade of the rabbits; they usually ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... 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 Yard by ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... yellowish leaves, and contained one solid kernel of about the size of an almond, enclosed entirely in a sort of spongy material, very palatable to the taste, and resembling more the inside of roasted maize than any other familiar vegetable. As I emerged entirely from the grove, I came upon a ditch about twice as broad as deep. On Earth I certainly could not have leaped it; but since landing on Mars, I had forgotten the weightless life of the Astronaut, and felt as if on Earth, but enjoying great increase ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... 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, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... route, thanks to the floods which have been very bad this year and are still out enormously—the upper floors of two-storied houses only being visible in many places,—was most intricate. We had to be pioneered over a ditch into a wood, supposed to be cleared, with the stumps of trees left sticking about six inches out of the ground for your wheels to pass over, on to a track, and then through a ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... Dilsey, an' all of yer—I've got er letter from Lord Burgoyne, an' he'll be here to-morrow, an' I want you all to go right into the kitchen an' make pies an' cakes." And so the whole party adjourned to a little ditch where mud and water were plentiful (and which on that account had been selected as the kitchen), and began at once to prepare an ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... negotiate with Tippo in order to avoid a conflict at the time when the State was not sufficiently armed to undertake such a task but since then, Arab rule has been entirely driven from Central Africa. Almost opposite the Falls, a fort is being constructed with a ditch all round. When finished, it will be capable of holding the whole garrison and supplies for eighteen months. It is of course, only constructed as a defence against native attacks and is not built strong enough to resist ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... The carriage set itself again in motion, but at the very moment when the horses passed the heap, they shyed so violently that the carriage was backed into a ditch and overturned. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... men, by the ditches, maguey plant, etc. I ordered my men to separate, to shelter themselves as much as possible, [and] to keep within supporting distance of me. I proceeded about two hundred yards. I ordered every man to shelter himself in a small ditch which was fortunately near us; immediately after I heard the fire of Taylor's battery passing directly over my head. [When that fire commenced we were] in the corn-field, about half-way between Taylor's battery and the enemy. Requiring my command to lie close, with Lieutenant Foster, I made my way ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... to the horses, while several passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily over ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... when his ashes have been placed in the casket, is laid in a [Greek: kapetos], a ditch or trench (Iliad, XV. 356; XVIII. 564); but here (XXIV. 797) [Greek: kapetos] is a chamber covered with great stones, within the howe, the casket being swathed with purple robes, and this was the end. The ghost of Hector would not revisit the sun, as ghosts do freely in the Cyclic poems, a proof ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... started up, entreating leave to tell his last night's dream. Some laughing at him, he observed, that "kingdoms had been saved by dreams!" Allowed to proceed, he said, "he saw two good pastures; a flock of sheep was in the one, and a bell-wether alone in the other; a great ditch was between them, and a narrow ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Gipsies, another is tracing their language, another treats upon our English Gipsies in a kind of "milk-and-watery" fashion that will neither do them good nor harm—he pleases his readers, but leaves the Gipsies where he found them, viz., in the ditch. Another went to work on the principle of praying and believing for them; but, I am sorry to say, in his circumscribed sphere his faith and works fell flat, on account, no doubt, of this dear, good man ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in the form of a triangle; and, from the noble volunteer to the meanest artisan, all lent a hand to complete it. On the river side the defences were a palisade of timber. On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth, and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine. Within was a spacious parade, and around it various buildings for lodging and storage. A large house with covered galleries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... by dark 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, he thought. ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch and surveyed the dog ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... is the home of the unmarried women. This, and the rooms for their work, open on a separate square where there is shade from orange and fig trees and a bathing pond supplied by the zanja, or water ditch. Here square-figured, heavy-featured Indian girls are busy spinning and weaving thread into cloth. Others are cutting out and sewing garments. Some, squatted on the ground, are grinding corn into a coarse meal for the atole, ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... jaws shut on the word like a steel trap. "The scarp's thirty feet high, and the ditch accordin'. The last on the west side it will be—over by the river. I know it like your face, and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... into stony silence. Well, Mahaffy could sneer—he would show him! This was the last ditch and he proposed to descend into it, it was something to be able to demand the final word of fate—but he instantly recalled that he had been playing at hide-and-seek with inevitable consequences for something like a quarter of a century; it had ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... are next to the Remi, and having 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 whole body of the ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... soon be better. If I had fifty thousand for a month, though, the strain would be over. She'd be nagging me to take a lot of her money, and I'd see Wall Street sunk first. Well, well, Wildmere and I may land together in the same ditch." ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... out. To her astonishment, it ran on before her, turning continually, and apparently delighted that it had gained its object, until they had gone some distance. Here the cat left her, and darted forward, when, to her surprise, she saw her youngest child stuck fast in the mud of a ditch, unable to move. ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... 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, circumscribe ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Miss Combs opened her ditch-gate for the tide of mine water which came in a flume across the arroyo, she saw the doctor and Mr. Keene approaching. They had an absorbed air, and as she opened the door for them the doctor said, ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... was wheeling His wife by a ditch, Then the barrow turned over, And in she did pitch. Says Jack, "She'll be drown'd!" But Joan did reply, "I don't think I shall, For the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... fare,—you, the rank and file, the thousand unnoticed ones, who have left warm fires, dear wives, loving little children, without even the hope of glory or fame,—without even the hope of doing anything remarkable or perceptible for the cause you love,—resigned only to fill the ditch or bridge the chasm over which your country shall walk to peace and joy! Good men and true, brave unknown hearts, we salute you, and feel that we, in our soft peace and security, are not worthy of you! When we think ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of that domain where once the cowboy reigned supreme have been turned into farms by the irrigator's ditch or by the dry-farmer's plan. The farmer in overalls is in many instances his own stockman today. On the ranges of Arizona, Wyoming, and Texas and parts of Nevada we may find the cowboy, it is true, even today: but he is no longer the Homeric ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... 136, consisted of four ribs spaced 3 ft. on centers. Each rib consists of two side posts and an arch piece. The side posts on each side are connected at the bottoms by a sill and at the top by a cap. Jacks between the sill and a mud sill laid on the concrete invert or in the ditch held the center in place during arch construction. Lowering these jacks dropped the center onto trucks traveling on the mud sills. Thus the center was moved along as the work progressed. As will be noted from Figs. 134 and 135, the side ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... 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 you know ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... John Larkin, a broad smile on his face, looking at the disconsolate Turner and saying: "He digged a pit, and is fallen into the ditch which he made." ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... 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 by her ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant Extracts'—mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch—'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the king'—he having a claim on such a prize, by ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... 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
... dissxuti. Distribute (to share) disdoni. District kvartalo. Distrust malfidi. Distrust malfido. Distrustful malfidema. Disturb interrompi. Disturbance tumulto. Disunite disigi. Disunion disigxo. Ditch defluilo. Ditto sama, idemo. Ditty kanteto. Dive subakvigxi. Diver (bird) kolimbo. Diverge malkonvergi. Divers (various) diversa. Diverse diversa. Diversity diverseco. Divert amuzi. Divest senvestigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a hundred and eight feet [90] in length, with two wings of sixty feet each, having small towers at the four corners. In front and on the borders of the river a platform was erected, on which were placed cannon, while the whole was surrounded by a ditch spanned ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... a tree. hist, hush! bowl, a vessel. hissed, did hiss. boll, a pod. paws, the feet of beasts. nose, part of the face. pause, a stop. knows, does know. faun, a sylvan god. mote, a particle. fawn, a young deer. moat, a ditch. pride, vanity. toled, allured. pried, did pry. told, did tell. wain, a wagon. tolled, did toll. wane, to decrease. rein, part of a bridle. see, to behold. rain, falling water. sea, a body of water. reign, to rule. si, a term ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... of Ambohipotsy to witness the execution. Pushing to the front with breathless anxiety, they were just in time to see Rasalama led forward by two men armed with spears. In front of them was a shallow ditch, and a little further on the brow of the precipice, from which was seen a magnificent prospect of the surrounding country. But no prospect, however sublime, could have attracted the eyes of the three friends just then, for in front of them stood two crosses supporting ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the 23d of August, 1382, the Tartars appeared before the gates of the city. Some of the chiefs rode slowly around the ramparts, examining the ditch, the walls, the height of the towers, and selected the most favorable spot for commencing the assault. The Tartars did not appear in such overwhelming numbers as report had taught the Russians to expect, and they felt quite sanguine ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... "Are ye sure?" he said to Gueldmar. "Are ye sure that wee chap kens whaur he's gaun? He'll no lead us into a ditch an' leave us there, mistakin' it for ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Harefoot was crowned and resided here; and one of Alfred's sons struck money here. Hearne has likewise identified this fact by the very ancient and original arms of Oxford, which have a castle represented, with a large ditch and bridge. Upon the same authority we learn that Offa "built walls at Oxford," and by him, therefore, a Saxon castle was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... 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 in ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and stared into the moon-broken gloom on his left. Something was there, fifty feet away, that drew him down through the muck which lay knee deep in the right-of-way ditch. It was what was left of the cutter's cabin, a clutter of burned logs, a wind scattered heap of ash. Even there, within arm's reach of the railroad, there had been ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... for the last six weeks?" he asked her. "And haven't I been thankful to sleep in a ditch? And wasn't I campaigning before that? I tell you I couldn't sleep in a bed. It's ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... in weighted with an extra bundle. Tenderly unwrapping the covering she disclosed a half-starved baby. That day she had gone to a distant part of the city to assist in organizing a soup kitchen, and a Bible class. On her way home she heard a feeble cry coming from a ditch. She located a bundle of rags, and found a bit of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... That is the actual state of the case, there is the truth. Did you hear much about this at school? Did you ever learn there that George III had a fake Parliament, largely elected by fake votes, which did not represent the English people; that this fake Parliament was autocracy's last ditch in England; that it choked for a time the English democracy which, after the setback given it by the excesses of the French Revolution, went forward again until to-day the King of England has less power than the President of the United States? I suppose everybody in the world who knows ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... he decided to take one more ride and then start for the station. But on that ride an accident occurred. The bobs on which the boys were seated collapsed midway of the descent, and threw the coasters into a heap in the ditch. None of them was seriously hurt, though the loose stones among which they were thrown were not sufficiently cushioned by the snow to prevent some bruises, and abrasions of the skin. Of course there was much confusion and excitement. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... the cart-wheel flew off, and down went the cart, and Belinda and the boy were tumbled into a ditch, whence they scrambled out and rolled down a grassy slope, on and on and on, such a distance ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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, ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... clean, that we defy you to make them bona fide dirty. You may as well drive down a duck into a dirty puddle, and expect lasting stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the same thing of swans—that is, Poets—when speaking of Aaron Hill diving into the ditch,— ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... vilyans want shtandin' up to, an' they'll rispict ye. I had no further trouble. That was the last o' thim. 'Tis the wake an' difinceless people they bate an' murther. I heerd there was talk o' shootin' me from the back iv a ditch; an' that one said, 'But av ye missed?' says he. 'What thin?' ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a rice field and between field and waste land stood a fence; there was doubtless a ditch on the other side ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... but would not hand him the chicken, holding out for her original price. He jumped ashore, intending to take the chicken. She had a few yards' start and made the most of it. In and out they chased, over hedge and ditch, down the bank and up again. Several times he almost had her. She never for a moment ceased screeching—an operation which seemed to affect her wind not a particle. At the end of fifteen minutes the Indian gave up amid the ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... to swing his pick. In a few moments the Empire State Express came whirling along. Thomas threw down his pick and started up the track ahead of the train as fast as he could run. The train overtook him and tossed him into a ditch. Badly shaken up he was taken to the hospital, where the foreman ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... building of elaborate defenses, and there was practically nothing worthy the name of a castle. Watch-towers had been built and roofs and walls were sometimes protected by putting nails in the building points outward,—a sort of chevaux de frise. But a system of outlying defenses, ditch, earthen wall and wooden palisade, was all that was used so long as fighting was either hand-to-hand or with missiles no more penetrating than arrows. But when fire-arms were introduced in 1542, massively constructed castles began to be built. These were ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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 ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... 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 other ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... are already,' says Micky, 'so come up behind me, for God's sake,' says he, 'an' don't waste time;' an' with that he brought the horse up beside the ditch, an' Jim Soolivan mounted up behind Micky, an' they rode off; an' tin good miles it was iv a road, an' at the other side iv Keeper intirely; an' it was snowin' so fast that the ould baste could hardly go an at all at all, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... objects that has been found is an earthenware baking oven, which was unearthed in an old ditch near the site of the May-Hartwell House. Restored from over 200 fragments, the oven was probably used between 1650 and 1690. It may have been made at Jamestown, molded of native clay and fired in a pottery kiln. In use, heated stones were placed inside the oven and left until ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... above high-water mark, but an old Mahometan gentleman having told me that, when he was a little boy, he recollected the water once rising higher than the hill, I took the precaution of keeping a canoe in a small ditch close at hand. ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous
... been aground in a narrow ditch of a canal ever since last evening, and it is now past nine in the morning. I spent the night in a corner of the crowded deck, more dead than alive. I had asked the steward to fry some luchis for my dinner, and he brought me some nondescript slabs of fried ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... The forest which covers it, consisting chiefly of white-cedar, black-ash, and other trees that live in excessive moisture, is now decayed and death-struck by the partial draining of the swamp into the great ditch of the canal. Sometimes, indeed, our lights were reflected from pools of stagnant water which stretched far in among the trunks of the trees, beneath dense masses of dark foliage. But generally the tall stems and intermingled branches were naked, and brought into ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cried peremptorily, stopping him. And then in a quieter tone, "And what about Carlier? Is he also in the ditch?" ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was originally a ditch 4 feet deep, 40 feet wide, and 363 miles long. The chief promoter was De Witt Clinton. The opponents of the canal therefore called it in derision "Clinton's big ditch," and declared that it could never be ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... there is a flat, square kind of gingerbread which we boys used to know as "parliament." I cannot ever see that without thinking of going to school on sunny mornings, and stopping by one particular ditch to bang the wasps with my school-bag, swung round by its string. It was only the seniors who sported a strap for their books; and in those days my legs, from the bottom of my drawers to the top of my white socks, were bare, and my unprotected knees ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... to steal away at night to have church on de ditch bank, and crawl home on de belly. Once overseers heered us prayin', give us one day each ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... orbilium, ut uxorem duceret, Epistola hortativa." Subscribed "Kent, Lady-day, 1835"—are Alsop's. He took the degree of M.A. in 1696, and of B.D. in 1706, and, by favour of the Bishop of Winchester, got a prebend in his cathedral, and the rectory of Brightwell, Berks. He was accidentally drowned in a ditch leading to his garden gate, in 1726. There is good reason to believe that a MS. life of him is to be found among the Rawlinson MSS., which it may ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... expect a girl, brought up as I have been, to believe that society is upside down, and would be better if it were tipped over the other way and run by a lot of hod-carriers and ditch-diggers and cooks. Can ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the morning of the next day, November 7, 1914. Encouraged by the unexpected successes of the night, the Japanese commander gave the order for a final grand assault. Nobody was more surprised than the Japanese themselves. They had expected a last-ditch resistance and feared they would have to sacrifice a thousand men before gaining these positions commanding the city. But the Germans, their ammunition almost gone, stunned by the continuous ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... whole fish, they got but a portion from some neighbor. For this reason the woman was angry, and told Aiai to go to the brook and get some oopus fit to eat, as well as opae. Aiai listened to the voice of his wife. He dug a ditch and constructed a dam so as to lead the water of the brook into some pits, and thus be able to catch the oopu and opae. He labored some days at this work, and the fish and shrimps ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... worshipped as Deities. The Atheists are the vanguard of the army of Freethought, on whom falls the brunt of the battle, and are shivered the hardest of the blows; their feet trample down the thorns that others may tread unwounded; their bodies fill up the ditch that, by the bridge thus made, others may pass to victory. Honour to the pioneers of progress, honour to the vanguard of Liberty's army, honour to those who to improve earth have forgotten heaven, and who in their zeal ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... been described in Belgium. We are told, "They are generally established on points overhanging valleys, on a mass of rocks forming a kind of headland, which is united to the rest of the country by a narrow neck of land. A wide ditch was dug across this narrow tongue of land, and the whole camp was surrounded by a thick wall of stone, simply piled one upon another, without either mortar or cement." "One of these walls, when described, was ten feet thick, and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... beauty of these people; one feels they have been eating and drinking, and befouling the earth and the streets with the excrements of themselves and their lives, love-making and begetting, and suffering stolidly all through the centuries, and one wonders why? as one wonders before a ditch full of tadpoles. Low mass was going on at a side altar, and the canon's mass in the beautiful marble choir, behind the ambones, behind those delicate marble railings and seats, which, with their inclusion, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Souse went the sheep into a murky, muddy pool and disappeared. But suddenly its head came up and then its shoulders. And it began half to walk and half swim down what appeared to be a narrow boxlike ditch that contained other floundering sheep. Then Carley saw men on each side of this ditch bending over with poles that had crooks at the end, and their work was to press and pull the sheep along to the end of the ditch, and drive them up a boarded incline into another corral where ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... shallow and narrow; and the breastworks varied in altitude from three to eight feet. They sometimes had one, and sometimes two entrances, as was to be inferred from there being no ditches at those places. When the works were protected by a deep ravine, or large stream of water, no ditch was to be seen. The areas of these forts varied from two to six acres; and the form was in general an irregular ellipsis; in some of them, fragments of earthenware and pulverized substances, supposed to have been originally human bones, were to ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... scientifically. Scientifically it's a delightful subject. You think death's natural. Well, it isnt. You read Weismann. There wasnt any death to start with. You go look in any ditch outside and youll find swimming about there as fresh as paint some of the identical little live cells that Adam christened in the Garden of Eden. But if big things like us didnt die, we'd crowd one ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... fast, that the sentries did not perceive us; indeed, it was no fault of theirs, for it was impossible to have made us out. It was some time before O'Brien could find out the point exactly above the drawbridge of the first ditch; at last he did—he fixed his crow-bar in, and lowered down the rope. "Now, Peter, I had better go first again; when I shake the rope from below, all's right." O'Brien descended, and in a few minutes the rope again shook; I followed him, and found myself received ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... by grafting and budding upon their own pear-stocks raised from the kernels in the same manner as for apples. Standard quinces, designed as fruit trees, may be stationed in the garden or orchard, and some by the sides of any water, pond, watery ditch, &c. as they ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... The roaring of the great water-organ grew louder and louder. He knew every step of the way to the shore—across the fields and over fences and stiles. He turned this way and that, to avoid here a ditch, there a deep sandy patch. And still the music grew louder and louder—and at length came in his face the driving spray: it was the flying touch of the wings on which the tones went hurrying past into the depths of awful distance! His feet were now wading through the bent-tufted sand, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... no possible introduction could have stood you more in stead than your own extensive knowledge of transatlantic ornithology. Swammerdam passed his life, it is said, in a ditch. That was a base, earthy solitude,—and a prison. But you and Audubon have passed your lives in the heavenly solitudes of forests and savannahs; and such solitude as this is no prison, but infinite liberty. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... (amends, vengeance) upon him!" So saying, he took the offensive vehicle, awkward burden as it was, in his two arms, and carrying it to the back of the cornyard, shoved it over the low wall into the dry ditch at its foot, where he heaped dirty straw ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... daughter of the sun, instead of crystallising slowly here into ice, amid countenances rigid with respectability, sharpened by the lust of gain; without taste, without emotion, without even sorrow! Let who will be the stagnant mill-head, crawling in its ugly spade-cut ditch to turn the mill. Let me be the wild mountain brook, which foams and flashes over the rocks—what if they tear it?—it leaps them nevertheless, and goes laughing on its way. Let me go thus, for weal or woe! And if I sleep awhile, let it be like the brook, beneath ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... she looked about, while she thought, from the well-known mountains that bounded her world to the familiar arches of the distant aqueduct, from the dry ditch opposite to the burning sky above and the greyish green hillocks below Tivoli. But by and by she looked straight before her, with a steady, concentrated stare, as if she saw something happening and was watching to see how it ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... made a 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 ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Memorialls, rode his horse into a river at night, and did not arrive at the opposite bank. Every effort was made to find his body in the stream, which was searched as far as the sea. The corpse was at last discovered in a ditch, two miles away, shamefully mutilated. The money of the laird, and other objects of value, were still in his pockets. This was regarded as the work of fiends, but there is a more plausible explanation. Nobody ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the establishments output may be regularized by taking orders in advance; by producing various products successively in the same factory; by overcoming weather conditions as has been done successfully in brick and tile making, ditch digging, and building operations; by transferring workers from one department of an establishment to another; by improving the employment departments so as to build up a more stable force, thus reducing the great expense of "hiring and firing" and the loss through training ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... 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 through thick and thin, And who the most ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... one roll of it, but the bacon's the butter for us. Now for the butcher-knives. We must ditch our tent." ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was sealed and inscribed. The mellow splendor of the August moon, pouring over the crest of Olivet, since termed the Mount of Offence, brought the lettering boldly out; and he read, and was filled with rage. All he could do was to wrench the board from its nailing, and hurl it into the ditch. Then he sat upon the step, and prayed for the New King, and that his coming might be hastened. As his blood cooled, insensibly he yielded to the fatigue of long travel in the summer heat, and sank down lower, and, at ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... his wits, which, though he has lost so often, you know he always recovers, and as fresh as ever. Lord Egmont despairs of the commonwealth; and I am going to fortify my castle of Strawberry, according to an old charter I should have had for embattling and making a deep ditch. But here am I laughing when I really ought to cry, both with my public eye and my private one. I have told you what I think ought to sluice my public eye; and your private eye too will moisten, when I tell you that poor Miss Harriet Montagu is dead. She died about a fortnight ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... was one of the forty men, who, headed by our gallant leader, jumped into the turbid waters of the ditch, swam across, and, scaling the walls, opened ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... home to me that we were 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 ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... human body. We speak of the head, shoulder, back, or foot of a mountain, of an arm of the sea, a tongue of land, the mouth of a sea-port, of a cave, or crater. So again we ascribe teeth to mountains, a front (fronte, forehead) to a house; there is the eye-brow (ciglio) of a ditch, the eye of heaven, a vein of metal, the entrails of a mountain. The Alps are bald or bare, the soil is wrinkled, objects are sinister or the reverse (sinistra, destra),[24] and a mountain ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... and very damp. I knew my way to the Battery, for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch when I saw the man sitting before me—with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... their enthusiasm was seasoned. It grew under fire, or practically so, in the presence of the danger. There is always an abundance of the green article of enthusiasm, but it's not worth much for steady ditch-work. There is a sort of wood enthusiasm, apple-wood. You know how apple-wood burns in a fire. It catches quickly, throws out a good many sparks, makes a loud crackling noise, but ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... march upon the city, and beholds Fast barred the gate-ways, while in arms the youths Stand on the battlements. Hard by the walls A hillock rose, upon the further side Expanding in a plain of gentle slope, Fit (as he deemed it) for a camp with ditch And mound encircling. To a lofty height The nearest portion of the city rose, While intervening valleys lay between. These summits with a mighty trench to bind The chief resolves, gigantic though ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... England the control of the sea, and relieved her from all danger of a French invasion. Even the "wet ditch," as Napoleon was wont contemptuously to call the English Channel, was henceforth an impassable gulf to his ambition. He might rule the continent, but the sovereignty of the ocean and its ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... his service his leg was affected, fails to show a continuous disability from that cause. It is stated that about five years ago, while the claimant was gathering dandelions, in stepping across a ditch his leg broke. The doctor who attended him states that the leg was about four weeks longer in uniting than is usual, but he is not represented as giving an opinion that the fracture had anything to do with his ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Babylon was less a city than a fortified camp. The walls equipped with towers and pierced by a hundred gates of brass were so thick that a chariot might be driven on them. All around the wall was a large, deep ditch full of water, with its sides lined with brick. The houses of the city were constructed of three or four stories. The streets intersected at right angles. The bridge and docks of the Euphrates excited admiration; the fortified palace also, and the hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... There is not one of them that has understanding enough to direct the feet of his neighbour in the path he should go—it would be the blind leading the blind, and together would they fall into the ditch. What more would the bear do, if he were made ruler, than train his subjects to perform great feats of strength, or to climb a tree, or to suck their paws through the long nights of winter?—The panther would teach them savage cruelty and a speedy step, and the deer would counsel them ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... 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 the east ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... 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 the first, were never recovered, and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Ditch chafed up from under us against its banks with a smell that enabled me to hide the emotions Mrs. Morgan evoked behind my handkerchief. The pale desert was pictorial with the drifting, deepening purple shadows of clouds, and in the midst a blue glimmer of the Bitter Lakes, with a white ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... 'arf of your 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 for the young British soldier. Fight, fight, fight for the soldier ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... upon the roadside bushes, the half-breed announced that there had been that morning a scuffle in a gang of negroes; that a small man had been thrown heavily to the earth, and a large man had made off across a low ditch into the woods; that the overseer had parted the combatants, and that some one's back had bled. No sooner was this piece of clairvoyance aired than he was vexed that he had shown a hall-mark of the savage, and hastily explained ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... position; the damage to the Carlist must have been less. Two of the Miqueletes ventured stealthily down a road leading towards the point from which the nearest jets of smoke curled, following the ditch by the side, stooping and peering through the bushes. There was a volley from afar. They hesitated and stood, as if ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... 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 ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... was in China. (No, not Neuville-St.-Vaast; China, China, place where they eat birds'-nests and puppy-dogs' tails.) There were coolies from some salvage company all over the place, perched on heaps of broken masonry, squatting along the ditch side, banked ten-deep in the road—tall villainous-looking devils, very intently watching something. I pulled up, partly to avoid killing them and partly to see what it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... "I will turn out of the road, for there is a treacherous pitch on the other side, and for me to let them topple into the ditch might be profitable, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... when corporal of the guard, I had a little misunderstanding one night with the sentinel on post along Fort Clinton ditch, which was then nearly filled by a growth of bushes. The sentinel tore the breast of my shell-jacket with the point of his bayonet, and I tumbled him over backward into the ditch and ruined his musket. But I quickly helped him out, and gave him my musket in place of his, with ample ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... meeting a strange cat, took her by the top of the back, and shook her for a considerable period with some earnestness. Then depositing her in a ditch, he remarked ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Leaping the ditch that skirted the road, the youth soon crossed the belt of furze and heather that lay between him and the river, about which he and his host had been conversing. Being unaccustomed to the nature of the Western Isles, he was a little ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... says: If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand! And thus says Job, 9, 28: I was afraid of all my works (Engl. vers., sorrows). Likewise chap. 9, 30: If I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch. And Prov. 20, 9: Who can say, I have made my heart clean? And 1 John 1, 8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And in the Lord's Prayer the saints ask for the forgiveness of sins. Therefore even the saints have guilt and sins. Again ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... the town in the narrow forest-valley was well secured, a wall and ditch enclosed it; only the houses on the edge of the ravine were unprotected. True, the mouth of the pass was covered by the field pieces on the city wall, and the strong tower beside the gate, but it was not incumbent on the citizens to provide for the safety of the row of houses up ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... deal uprightly in this matter, as thou dost regard thine own life; for here are as many English left alive, notwithstanding the slaughter of to-day, as may well suffice to fling the Flemish bull-frogs into the castle-ditch, should they have cause to think thou meanest falsely, in the keeping of this castle, and the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... next visited what is called Demosthenes's Lantern, situated close to a ruined house, formerly the Franciscan convent. Mr. Finlay and some others have cleared away the rubbish and masses of fallen masonry from about the Lantern: they have also dug a ditch around it, to prevent the devastation committed by visitors who attempt to break and carry away the ornaments: they ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... men just as good for the price—but I want him to understand so he won't forget it that he's taking his orders from me. Now I happen to know that our dear friend Stoddard is out to get control of this mine and the very man that is liable to ditch us is this same efficient Mr. Jepson. Don't ever make the mistake of giving these financiers the credit of being on the level. You can't grab that much money in the short time they've been gathering without gouging every man ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... Neewa were in a swamp country when the fifth of August came. In the lowland it was sweltering. Neewa's tongue hung from his mouth, and Miki was panting as they made their way along a black and sluggish stream that was like a great ditch and as dead as the day itself. There was no visible sun, but a red and lurid glow filled the sky—the sun struggling to fight its way through the smothering film that had grown thicker over the earth. ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... ATTEMPT AT BURGLARY—HEROIC VICTORY OVER THE VILLAINS," &c. &c. Rascals as yet unknown! perhaps you, too, may read these words, and may be induced to pause in your fatal intention. Take the advice of a sincere friend, and keep off. To find a man writhing in my man-trap, another mayhap impaled in my ditch, to pick off another from my tree (scoundrel! as though he were a pear) will give me no pleasure; but such things may happen. Be warned in time, villains! Or, if you MUST pursue your calling as cracksmen, have the goodness to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beginning to curl back. Then she went round by the edge of the brook which keeps damp one side of the orchard, where she found some single stems of forget-me-nots, shining in the dusk like beaded turquoise. She pulled some from the bottom of the half-dry ditch, and setting the pale moss-rosebud in the middle, she bound the whole together with a striped yellow and green withe. Then snipping the stacks with her pocket scissors, she brought the posy to Saunders, with instructions to wrap it in a dock-leaf and never to let his hands ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... abode of Ishtar. As they rise to height after height the eagle describes the appearance of the world lying stretched out beneath: at first it rises like a huge mountain out of the sea; then the ocean appears as a girdle encircling the land, and finally but as a ditch a gardener digs to irrigate his land. When they have risen so high that the earth is scarcely visible, Etana cries to the eagle to stop; so he does, but his strength is exhausted, and bird and man ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Gheluvelt. It was pouring with rain as we ate our meal of cold rations; we could not even enjoy a comforting smoke, as the lighting of a match would have been certain to draw the fire of our vigilant foe. Mr. Jaffray and I both agreed that a night's lodging in a damp ditch was hardly consonant with our wishes, and therefore we set out for the hamlet of Halte, where the railway crosses the road, in hopes that we might find cover of ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... started again and we followed him. Presently a steeple rose among the trees; we crossed a stubble-field, climbed to the top of a ditch and caught a glimpse of a few of dwellings: the village of Pomelin. A rough road constitutes the main street and the village consists of several houses separated by yards. What tranquillity! or rather what forlornness! The thresholds are deserted; ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... mountain roe More fleet, the verdant carpet skim; thick clouds Snorting they breathe; their shining hoofs scarce print The grass unbruised; when emulation fired, They strain, to lead the field, top the barred gate, O'er the deep ditch exulting bound, and brush The thorny-twining hedge; the riders bend O'er their arched necks; with steady hands, by turns Indulge their speed, or moderate their rage. Where are their sorrows, disappointments, wrongs, Vexations, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum |
