"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shutters. Up the road came Araminta—may the saints preserve us!—with a man! Miss Mehitable quickly placed him as that blackmailing play-doctor who now should never have his four dollars and a half unless he collected it by law. Only in the last ditch ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... course, that these men are afraid of bombast and Scott was not. A man will not reach eloquence if he is afraid of bombast, just as a man will not jump a hedge if he is afraid of a ditch. As the object of all eloquence is to find the least common denominator of men's souls, to fall just within the natural comprehension, it cannot obviously have any chance with a literary ambition which aims at falling just outside it. It is quite right to invent subtle analyses and detached ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 your Canadian ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... 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 ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... having this scope to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying his own divine essence. But when, by the balance of experience, it was found that the astronomer, looking to the stars, might fall in a ditch; that the enquiring philosopher might be blind in himself; and the mathematician might draw forth a straight line with a crooked heart; then lo! did proof, the over-ruler of opinions, make manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... siege to it. They knew beforehand that French arms and gunpowder were rather formidable opponents, especially if they should happen to meet another de Maisonneuve, and, as usual, had recourse to concealment. They formed their ambuscade in a ditch which they dug on the very ground that now forms the garden of the Congregation convent. There they lay hid, reconnoitering the strength of the place, and having matured their plans, commenced hurlling stones and shooting poisoned arrows against ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Granta-brygge; and this name, or something very like it, it retained when the great survey was made as the Norman Conqueror's reign was drawing to its close. By this time the town had moved across to the right bank of the river, and had become a town surrounded by a ditch and defended by walls and gates. Already it contained at least four hundred houses, and on the site of the old mound the Norman raised a new castle, and in doing that he laid some ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... which skirt it meeting overhead. Every day I gallop down that avenue, which they call by my name, on Midnight, my black horse, and I always clear the gate at a bound. I like such things, and there is not a fence or a ditch in the neighborhood which I cannot take. Hoidenish, do you call me? Well, perhaps I am, but I am a pretty nice girl, too, and I love you and want you to come here at once and be happy. Sir Jack has told me how different your life has been from ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... see in the pictures in Punch. The 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 here the Historical ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... too steep to be practicable for an enemy. On the fourth side there is a more gradual declivity, up which the fortress could be approached by means of a winding roadway. At the foot of this roadway was the town. The access to the castle from the town was defended by a ditch and draw-bridge, with strong towers on each side of the gateway to defend the approach. There was a beautiful stream of water which meandered along through the valley, near the town, and, after passing it, it disappeared, winding around the foot of the precipice ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... was made on a train near Ogallala Station in September, 1868. The ends of two opposite rails were raised so as to penetrate the cylinders, the engine going over into the ditch and the cars piling up on top of it. The fireman was caught in the wreck and burned to death, the engineer and forward brakeman, riding on the engine, escaped unhurt. The train crew and passengers being armed, defended the train, keeping the Indians off until a wrecking ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... I could be in any other, but 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 ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the sheathes of the minute corollas that I can no longer see. Tenderly I try to raise these petals, but they resist me and I only succeed in murdering the plant. Fool! Why could I not let these flowers live on the edge of their ditch? There they would have felt the fresh shrivelling of drinking in the sun, a bird would have touched them lightly, the proboscis of the mosquitoes would have sucked up their pollen, and they would have died gently by the side of ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... steam-engine, the mysteries of the printing-press, or the feats that may be performed with a bicycle,—of which "taking a header," or the method by which the rider learns to fly off the machine head foremost into a ditch with impunity, appeared to be the most desirable. Her patience in this respect was rewarded by that most precious possession to ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... was really a test of strength between industrial autocracy and militant unionism. The former was determined to restore the palmy days of peonage for all time to come, the latter to fight to the last ditch in spite of hell and high water. The lumber trust sought to break the strike of the loggers and destroy their organization. In the ensuing fracas the lumber barons came out only second best—and they were ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... the case may be, splits in two. Then there are two amoebae or vorticellae. In this way the necessity of the family, that middle-class institution so abhorrent to the artistic mind, is avoided. In my friend's drop of ditch-water, as in heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. There are no waste parents, which should appeal to the scholastic mind, and the simple protozoon has none of that fitful fever of falling in love, that distressingly tender state ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... family sat in a tea-shop at a little table, gay chatter and the perfume of women all about him. Through it he saw the trench where he had been bombarded for twenty-six days on end, unable to stir from the sticky ditch full of corpses which rose around him like a wall.... His mother laid her hand on his, he woke, saw the affectionate questioning glances of his people, and self-reproached for making them uneasy, he smiled and began to look about and talk gaily. His boyish high spirits ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... applies as well to motors. 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 time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... squatted in front of me. 'You're hard to kill, and oily as a bean,' said she. 'You've only to lie quiet in the sun like a handsome gentleman; I'm sure you couldn't wish for more. Air and water's the doctor for such as you. You've got the bound in you to jump the ditch: don't you fret at it, or you'll lose your spring, my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... What a detestable time that was in Scotland when such a man as William Gordon was fined, and fined, and fined; hunted out of his house and banished, till at last he was shot by the soldiers of the Crown and thrown into a ditch as if he had been ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... another present for you. The proverb says, 'Little kindnesses strengthen the bonds of friendship.' And this will be the smallest of gifts I could possibly make you. The handsome young man who gave me this ring, and is betrothed to me—or thinks he is—lies somewhere yonder in a ditch. His horse took fright at the tumult, and threw him so that he broke his ankle. His fleeing troops left him lying there; they stumbled over him and ran on; no one offered to help him up. They all hate ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... born on Sandy Island the first year of the Civil War, a visitor at Uncle Ben's: "Yes sir. All them rice field been nothing but swamp. Slavery people cut kennel (canal) and dig ditch through the raw swamp. All these fields been thick woods. Ditching man ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... far beyond its path by now; while you shall endure the whole visitation; and if you try to proceed, pass the night in a flea-pestered post-house, or in a ditch of water." ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... city walls, the old belt of forts and the new enceinture of the fortified camps, which have been advanced far outside of the reach of the old forts. The main wall, ten meters (33 feet) high, consists of ninety-four bastions and is surrounded by a ditch fifteen meters wide. Behind the wall a ringroad and a belt line run ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... of his dungeon at Olmutz were six feet thick and the air was admitted through openings two feet square secured at each end by massive iron bars. Before these loopholes was situated a broad ditch, which was filled with water only when it rained; at other times it was a stagnant marsh continually emitting disease; beyond this were the outer walls of the castle, so that the slightest breeze could never refresh the inmate. ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... had heard that the company assembled in the meadow to tell the pleasantest tales imaginable, and being fonder of pleasure than of their prayers, they had gone and hidden themselves in a ditch, where they lay flat on their bellies behind a very thick hedge; and they had there listened so eagerly to the stories that they had not heard the ringing of the monastery bell, as was soon clearly shown, for they returned in such great haste that they almost lacked ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... necessary to provide for one's own life, but even to do so at the sacrifice of the dearest friend. Often I noticed a dead body tied on a plank which a single porter carried on his back; at other times the object would be concealed within a bag, and then the grave was a ditch common to all, into which the porter would shake off his load and return for another. No priest or Imam there presided over the funeral scene; few or none were the prayers that were said over the remains: ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... attack to fear from lurking foes, for an act of Edward the First was still in force, by which every highway leading from one market-town to another was always to be kept clear, for two hundred feet on each side, of every ditch, tree, or bush in which a man might lurk to do harm; while, as any ill that happened to travellers was made payable by the township in which it occurred, there was a strong personal interest on the part of the inhabitants to suppress plundering bands in ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... destined to be held by this foot for many long days. He explained to his brother who the lady was whom he had taken up the hill, why he himself had first happened to be with her, and that he had slipped with one foot in a roadside ditch, and, thinking to catch her up, had run across a field and so missed the lane in the darkness. This was told in the meagre, prosaic way that left no hint of ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... first, largely because he was afraid of nothing, absolutely desperate, and willing to take any chance. He wasn't a hop-head, yet they all looked at him as sort of queer; though ready to follow him to the last ditch, yet some way they thought him off his head. And Swanson believes that his career of crime started after he reached Seattle, not before—that he hadn't grown up to crime like most of the men in his gang. He didn't know anything about ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... done if I'd been one, and this 'most makes me feel I am, just cryin': 'Child lost! Boy lost! Girl lost!' and a couple the neighborin' men j'inin' in the search, with our lanterns lit, sence we didn't know what sort of a hole or ditch you might fell into—" ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Balin came within the castle's gate the portcullis fell down at his back, and there fell many men about the damosel, and would have slain her. When Balin saw that, he was sore aggrieved, for he might not help the damosel. Then he went up into the tower, and leapt over walls into the ditch, and hurt him not; and anon he pulled out his sword and would have foughten with them. And they all said nay, they would not fight with him, for they did nothing but the old custom of the castle; and told him how their lady was sick, and had lain many years, and she might not ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... 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 ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... begin to tell stories, or to argue, or to lean on their elbows, order the beguine to make them rise and take away their table, for the common folk have a saying 'when a varlet holds forth at table and a horse grazes in the ditch, it is time to take them away, for they have had ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Quintius, the sole hope of the Roman 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 to the commands of the senate, (with wishes) ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... 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 ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... quantities of hurdles and fascines being made; which, as I hear, are to be employed in one of two different plans. The first plan is, To attack the French retrenchment generally; the ditch which is before it, and the morass which lies on our left wing, to be made passable with these fascines. The other plan is, To amuse the Enemy by a false attack, and throw succor into the Town.—One thing is certain, in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... glad of it!" snapped the farmer's wife. "Nuthin' could please me better. Las' time I went to town one o' them plagued nuisances come hootin' erlong an' made the old mare back us clean inter the ditch—an' I broke a dozen an' a ha'f of aigs right in the lap of my new bombazeen dress. Drat ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... foolish than anythin' else, because, if Michael Cassily should ever lay hands upon the man who stole his belongings, he'd shoot at him the way you'd shoot at a rabbit in a ditch and kill him as dead as one ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... you lost your senses?" thought the marionette. "I certainly will not ride on a bull. How long have bulls been used as horses? This beast will hurl me into the first ditch we come to. A fine regard you have for your emperor! I almost begin to believe that you want to get rid of me and ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... attacks of Uncle Roger and his sheep. On one side was a sort of precipice, where the chalk had been dug away, and a rather extensive old chalk pit formed a tolerable pond, by the assistance of the ditch at the foot of a hedge. On the glassy surface already marked by many a sharply traced circular line, the Sutton Leigh boys were careering, the younger ones with those extraordinary bends, twists, and contortions ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who put both you & us in mind to send each to other, for verily had he rune on in that desperate & chargable course one year more, we had not been able to suport him; nay, both he and we must have lyen in y^e ditch, and sunck under y^e burthen, &c. Had ther been an orderly course taken, and your bussines better managed, assuredly (by y^e blessing of God) you had been y^e ablest plantation that, as we think, or know, hath ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... listening; I'm inclined to think it's my normal state," Foster answered with a smile. "The greasy thing cost forty guineas, and I wouldn't trust it to Jenkins after young Jimmy dropped it in a ditch. Jenkins can rear pheasants with any keeper I've met, but he's no ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... as great as that of St. Peter's in Rome, and a quarter of a million people could stand within it. It consists in the first place of a rampart of earth roughly circular in form and with a diameter of about 1200 feet. Within this is a ditch, and close on the inner edge of this was a circle of about a hundred upright stones. Within this circle were two pairs of concentric circles with their centres slightly east of the north-and-south diameter of the great ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... a walled city from the time of the deys until the close of the 19th century. The French, after their occupation of the city (1830), built a rampart, parapet and ditch, with two terminal forts, Bab Azoun to the south and Bab-el-Oued to the north. The forts and part of the ramparts were demolished at the beginning of the 20th century, when a line of forts occupying the heights of Bu Zarea ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 the ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... preferable to avoid it, and have recourse to substances which increase the bulk of the heap sufficiently to make it retain the whole of the liquid. For this purpose, clay, or still better, the vegetable refuse of the farm, such as weeds, ditch cleanings, leaves, and, in short, any porous matters, may be used. But by far the best substance, when it can be obtained, is dry peat, which not only absorbs the fluid, but fixes the ammonia, by converting it more or less completely into humate. ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... take my eyes off the sea, even for a moment. If you have ever been driven at sixty miles an hour over a bad road, and felt that if you looked away the car would go into the ditch, and if you will multiply that by the exact number of German submarines and then add the British Army, you will know how ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said, "we'll reach the caribou grounds, and see the Indians yet. George and I will go with you to the last ditch; you can count on us ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... action. His plots are of the simplest, and betray indubitably a numbness or imperfect development of the inventive faculties of the brain. People who read novels for the denouement, who ride a steeple chase through them, leaping a five-page fence here, a ditch of a chapter there, and anon clearing at a mighty bound a rasper of some score or more paragraphs, resolute simply to be in at the death in the last chapter, anxious to see the wedding torches extinguished, and the printer ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you kicked out of Wilkinson's house and starve in the ditch, I suppose? But now, if you can control your fine feelings for one moment, will you listen to me? I have never blamed you in the matter at all, and don't blame ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... mild-faced little man, more like a school-teacher than a soldier—and it was decided that, as the trenches were not under fire at the moment, we might go into them. He led the way into the communication trench—a straight-sided winding ditch, shoulder-deep, and just wide enough to walk in comfortably. Yellow clay was piled up overhead on either side, and there was a wooden sidewalk. The ditch twisted constantly as the trenches themselves do, so as not to be swept by enfilading fire, and after some hundreds of ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... the populace. Although the young 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 ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the head of his innumerable cavalry, descended year after year on the rice-fields of Bengal. Even the European factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Calcutta against the horsemen of Berar, and the name of the Mahratta ditch still preserves ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the distance; and the boy saw or heard no more. Bill Sikes had him on his back scudding like the wind. Oliver's head hung down, and he was deadly cold. The pursuers were close upon Sikes' heels. He dropped the boy in a ditch and fled. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... he broke into an explanation. "I can go out here without expecting to be fired at from some hedge or ditch around the next corner, monsieur. You did not know those rascals as I knew them. They nearly got you once; but they tried a dozen times, and would have succeeded too, if Stampoff had not been too sharp ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... 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 took refuge ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with confidence; but Hob was outrageously ambitious, and mystery was delightful. He went to work in the Indian manner, and what with occasionally taking the cover, now of a bush, now of a pine tree, and now of a convenient hillock, Hob had got himself very comfortably lodged in the recess of an old ditch, originally cut to carry off a body of water which rested on what was now in part the public mall. Becoming interested in the proceedings, and hearing of the departure of Ralph, to whom he had been despatched, his head gradually assumed a more elevated position—he soon forgot his precaution, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... he drinks. He came to dinner here once, and I'm afraid he must have come intoxicated. He took me in; his little eyes quite burned me up. He drove his dog cart into a ditch on the way home. That sort of thing gets about so. It's such a pity. He's quite ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the inlet, it was pleasant to listen to the roar of the breakers on the bar, but not so cheerful was the thought of facing the high waves seaward. Therefore the plan suggested itself of sufficiently deepening a ditch that led through the marshes from New River to Bogue Sound, to let us through; thence we could sail inland the rest of the voyage without obstruction or hindrance of any kind. To this end we set about contrivances to heave the canoe over the ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... and the latter being held back for a time. Major Gilbraith and Colonel Burke's troops, being unable to cross the creek, passed over the bridge that spans it by the left flank, the former's companies having previously occupied a sheltered place in a ditch parallel to and to the right of the main road. About this time the advance-guard, one of the companies of which (Penrose's) had previously held for a short time a knoll on the left of the road, moved forward and crossed ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... Capt. Lossier and bade him take fifty men and advance to the right and post himself in an advantageous ditch and to maintain his ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you, he will always speak good of you in every company, ever and anon purchase new creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a shift by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and with other folk's earth fill up his ditch. When of old, in the region of the Gauls, by the institution of the Druids, the servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the funerals and obsequies of their lords and masters, had not they fear enough, think you, that their lords and masters should die? For, perforce, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... down in the Globe, which knows best what the military one is worth. There is nothing remarkable in his speech, except the fuss which he makes about national honour. He may find it lying in the ditch, much ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... were his own. Instead of being hundreds of miles ahead in the lead of the year's drive, as he expected, he now found himself in charge of a camp of cripples. What few trains belonging to his herd had escaped the ditch were used in filling up other unfortunate ones, the injured cattle from the other ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... whining about?' said Ugo, contemptuously, 'who fears numbers! Let them come, though they were as many, as the Signor's castle could hold; I would shew the knaves what fighting is. For you—I would lay you quietly in a dry ditch, where you might peep out, and see me put the rogues to flight.—Who ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... celerity that scarcely allowed him an exclamation; and before he had recovered his self-possession, the horses taking fright (and their fright being skilfully taken advantage of by the highwaymen), the carriage was fairly whirled into a ditch on the right side of the road, and upset. Meanwhile Smoothson had leaped from his station in the front; and having fired, though without effect, at the third robber, who approached menacingly towards him, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... A Quaker, fixing his eyes on Mr. Patten, and seeing his black dress, remarked, "Friend, thou hast been the trumpeter of rebellion to those men,—thou must answer for them." The moralizer was touched by a grenadier with the butt end of his musket, so that the "spirit fell into the ditch." But the Quaker was not rebuffed. "Friend," he said to the soldier, "thou art, I fear, no true friend ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... and women, his horse began to act up, and some one yelled, "Tally-ho," and that is something about fox hunting, not a coach, and the horse jumped a fence and dad rolled off over the bowsprit and went into a ditch of dirty water. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... citie oughte to cause to be ordained all the saide things: and moreover aboute the walle, there woulde not bee suffered any grounde to be tilled, within a myle thereof, nor any wall made, but shoulde be all champaine, where should be neither ditch nor banck, neither tree nor house, which might let the fighte, and make defence ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... proposed canal. By leading 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... of an outlying fort, three breaches were made in the walls, and on the night of April 6, under the cover of thick darkness, two divisions of British troops descended into the ditch, many carrying ladders or sacks of hay, and advanced to the foot of the glacis. Here they were almost overwhelmed with a hurricane of fiery missiles, and in mounting the breaches they had to face not only hand-grenades, trains of powder, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of Saratoga by a sulky and careless driver, for a station on the top of the canal-packet. The weather was the finest imaginable; the air that blew over the fields was sweet with the odor of clover blossoms, and of shrubs in flower. A canal, they say, is but a ditch; but this was as unlike a ditch as possible; it was rather a gentle stream, winding in the most apparently natural meanders. Goldsmith could find no more picturesque epithet for the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... was dammed up by a freak of nature, and the crews of thirty vessels had been occupied five weeks in cutting a ditch through the obstruction, wide enough to ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... Get high enough up upon the hill, and the hedges between the fields are barely perceptible. Live on the elevation to which the Gospel of Jesus Christ lifts men, and you look down upon a great prairie, without a fence or a ditch or a division. So my text comes with profound significance, 'Let us do good to all,' because all are included in the sweep of that great purpose of love, and in the redeeming possibilities of that great death on ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... considerable space separated them, continued it as they passed, and added polite questions as they drifted steadily apart. Williams's mind seemed to be a balloon. He had been so inflated that he had not noticed that Paterson had definitely shied into the dry ditch as they came to the point ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... 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, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... up, it had only to be set going. It was bound not to fail, and nothing did fail. What would have been an abyss if the majority had done its duty, and had understood its joint responsibility with the Left, was not even a ditch. The inviolability had been demolished by those who were inviolable. The hand of gendarmes had become as accustomed to the collar of the Representatives as to the collar of thieves: the white tie of the statesman was not even rumpled in the grasp of the galley sergeants, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... infatuated with wine, had to be held from jumping overboard. The ramping and stamping, and roaring and scrambling for room to sit or lie, was horrific. At last the day dawned, when matters were not quite so bad; but we moved over our fifty miles of ditch-water to Atfeh in a manner the most uncomfortable any poor ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... rushed Big Ferre, still full of the rage of battle. Reaching the point where the English had planted their flag, he killed the bearer, seized the standard, and bade one of his followers to go and fling it into the ditch, at a point where the wall was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... When we awakened in the morning rain was pouring down. This in itself might not have prevented us from travelling, but the state of the trail did. It had been raining the greater part of the night and the trail was little more than a ditch of slimy, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... she made her way into the Park, and the rapid Foker made his dash forward. What to do? Just to get a nod of recognition from Miss Amory and her mother; to cross them a half-dozen times in the drive; to watch and ogle them from the other side of the ditch, where the horsemen assemble when the band plays in Kensington Gardens. What is the use of looking at a woman in a pink bonnet across a ditch? What is the earthly good to be got out of a nod of the head? Strange that men will be contented ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ordinary woman, I'm afraid, but so far, respectable. How d'you do, Mrs. Middle-ditch? Your husband? I think he's riding down to Annandale with Colonel Statters. Yes, isn't it divine after the rain? Guy, how long am I to be allowed to bow to Mrs. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... motoring to Lille to purchase whisky and other medical comforts, when the steering-gear of his 60-H.P. Rolls-Ford came away in his hands, with the result that he nose-dived into the rear of my ambulance at forty miles per hour. When I came to my senses my head was in the ditch and the rest of me in mid-air. Captain Scorcher, crawling out of the wreckage, said, 'Do you reverse?' and then asked me to be his wife. I said 'Yes,' meaning I reversed, and the marriage takes place as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... of "Colonel Dyer! Colonel Dyer!" answered by a guttural defiance of "Elderkin, too! Elderkin, too!" Next day the reason of it all came out: A pond having been emptied by drought, the frogs that had lived there emigrated by common consent to a ditch nearer the town, and on arriving there had apparently fought for its possession, for many lay dead on the bank. The night was still and the voices of the contestants sounded clearly into the village, the piping ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... he replied. "I have no idea. I was lying in a ditch inanimate. This is a degrading confession, sir; I can only say in self-defence that perhaps (in your good-nature) you have made yourself partly responsible for my shame. I am not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that I could only ride a short distance, but thought it 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 had to return ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... is used with reference to the progress of work on a wall or ditch from one end of it to ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... take off the saddles, bridles, and accouterments, throw them into a ditch together with the men's arms and pile a few bushes over them, then drive the horses across the fields till they reach some grazing ground near the river; the farmers there will doubtless appropriate them ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Beeston Castle, standing on a sandstone rock rising some three hundred and sixty feet from the flat country. It was built nearly seven hundred years ago by an Earl of Cheshire, then just returned from the Crusades. Standing in an irregular court covering about five acres, its thick walls and deep ditch made it a place of much strength. It was ruined prior to the time of Henry VIII., having been long contended for and finally dismantled in the Wars of the Roses. Being then rebuilt, it became a famous fortress in the Civil Wars, having ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... cheerfully. "So'll YOUR popper some day. I'm goin' to get mine to let YOUR popper into something—Ditch stocks and such. Yes! True, O King! Popper'll do anything for me," she added ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... among the upper classes of society, and their use has spread downward. They have broken down many barriers, and in many places, and under many and divers conditions, the pipe has followed triumphantly in their wake; but the last ditch of the old prejudice has been found in the convention, which, in certain places and at certain times, admits the cigar and cigarette of fashionable origin, but bars the entry of the plebeian pipe—the pipe which for two centuries was practically the only mode ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... was less inclined to resist it, and one glorious day of late April in its twelfth return he had wandered northward along to a little wood a couple of miles from the town. It was full of unnamed flowers and voices and mysteries. Every tree and thicket had a voice—a long ditch full of water had many that called to him. "Peep-peep-peep," they seemed to say in invitation for him to come and see. He crawled again and again to the ditch and watched and waited. The loud whistle would ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... his twin sister had been born in 1840, the little-prized children of an unmarried mother, who had vanished one day and left no trace. Probably she had died in a ditch. The children were taken into an orphanage, on leaving which the girl had gone to service, while the boy had become a soldier and climbed the ladder of promotion to the rank of sergeant, receiving the silver ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... contracting himself out of the obligations to be imposed on all other ecclesiastical dignitaries, he practically renounced any claim to set the policy of the Church. Henry may have aimed at digging an impassable ditch between the Pope and the German bishops. It was an impossible agreement; for neither bishops nor lay nobles would wish to see so large an addition to the King's resources, while Henry himself could not afford to surrender the right of investiture, since ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... 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 and their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... the way of settlement at Allen's Camp, where the first plowing was on March 25, 1876, by John Bushman and Nathan Cheney. Jacob Morris immediately commenced the construction of a house. Two days later an irrigation ditch was surveyed and on the following day John Bushman got out the first logs for a diversion dam. April 3, Bushman sowed the first wheat. A temporary structure was built for protection and for storage. May 26 the name of Allen City was given the settlement, ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... nations are easily overcome by their enemies. 2. Germany is much larger than Gaul. 3. Were not the Romans the most powerful among the tribes of Italy? 4. On account of (his) wounds the soldier dragged his body from the ditch with the greatest difficulty. 5. He was able neither to run nor to fight. 6. Who saved him? A certain horseman boldly undertook the matter. 7. The rumors concerning the soldier's death ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... last ditch," writes Sir HENRY NEWBOLT in his New Study of English Poetry; "Latin is trembling at sight of the thin edge of the wedge." Still a hope of saving Latin—within limits—yet remains, if the appeal of "Kismet" in The Spectator ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... who could go down lowest in the ground. How the goose did flap about with its broad breast when it was once more on the land! How quickly the cock scratched a hole! The duck came off the worst of all, for she leapt into a ditch, but sprained her legs, and waddled away to a neighboring pond, crying, "Cheating, cheating!" The little bird without a name, however, sought out a mouse-hole, slipped down into it, and cried out of it with his small voice, "I am ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... sleeping till the rainy season returns. On the Upper Amazons, where the dry season is never excessive, it has not this habit, but is lively all the year round. It is scarcely exaggerating to say that the waters of the Solimoens are as well stocked with large alligators in the dry season, as a ditch in England is in summer with tadpoles. During a journey of five days which I once made in the Upper Amazons steamer, in November, alligators were seen along the coast almost every step of the way, and the passengers ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... and nearly the whole division considered savage and unjustifiable, which was also the official view. It was the act of a very young subaltern, mistakenly interpreting an order. In the other case an Arab was caught red-handed, lurking in a ditch on our line of march, with one of their loaded knobkerries for any straggler. I do not know what happened, but have no ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... talking about?" sneered Black. "Do you think I'm fool enough to ditch the train? No, sir! Don't believe it. I'm not running my neck into a noose of that kind. A cluster of red lights has been spread along the track before the blow-out. The engineer will see the signals and pull his train up—-he has to, by law! No one on the train will be ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... The sprightly affair should end by his inviting Edward to dinner. That should lead to their uninviting him in turn, and then he should have a word with Julia, and find out what houses she visited, and get introduced to their proprietors. Arrived at this point, his mind went over hedge and ditch faster than my poor pen can follow; as the crow flies, so flew he, and had reached the church-porch under a rain of nosegays with Julia—in imagination—by then he arrived at Albion Villa in the body. Yet he knocked timidly; his heart beat almost as ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... region represents the ancient Babylon and that the vast walls of Herodotus enclosed it all.[12] This view, however, cannot be accepted. Quite apart from the considerations urged above, the region in question is not square but rather triangular, and traces of wall and ditch surrounding it are altogether wanting, though city-walls have survived elsewhere in this neighbourhood and though nothing can wholly delete an ancient ditch. We have, in short, no good reason to believe that Babylon, in any form ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... levelled up a bit. If I git down on me knees an' scrub the floor, it's nuthin' thought of. But if a missionary does it, a great fuss is made. When Parson John is dug out of snow-banks every week, when his sleigh gits upsot an' throws 'im into the ditch, no one outside the parish ever hears of it. But let sich things happen to a furren missionary, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... the dark turf around with 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 had ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... wanting therefore the rich graminivorous variety which Nature gives its carpet, and having instead a braird of six days' growth—lean and hungry growth too—of ryegrass and clover. As for the rill, it stagnates in a deep square ditch, which silences its prattle, and restrains its meanders with a witness. The original scene was, of course, imprinted still deeper on Russell's mind than mine, and I was glad to see he was ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Southerner has appealed to force, and force he should have, until, by the laws of force, he is not only beaten, but compelled to admit the humiliating fact. That he is not disposed "to die in the last ditch," that he has none of the practical heroism of desperation, is proved by the actual results of battles. When defeated, and his means of escape are such as only desperation can surmount, he quickly surrenders, and is even disposed to take the oath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... jump," my father had shouted to me once, years ago, while I sat up in a Norfolk ditch and watched my horse disappear through a gap in the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... 18 Now behold, the Lamanites could not get into their forts of security by any other way save by the entrance, because of the highness of the bank which had been thrown up, and the depth of the ditch which had been dug round about, save it ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... year the scouring of that horse, as it is called, takes place, when men go and clear out the brown earth that has crumbled through frost and rain into the ditch-like lines which mark the horse's shape on the green hill-side, and make it stand out white and ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... 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 sight of which terrified him that looked thereat. In ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... and north of it. Indeed, a considerable number of trees have been felled within the southern part of the enclosure. In the mounds themselves trees are abundant, and there are many in the moat or ditch between. The stumps of those which have been cut down are so many chronological facts, from which the age of the fort may be conjectured with some approach to accuracy. A maple within the enclosure exhibits 242 rings of annual growth. It was probably the ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... stockade, after the traditional Indian style, it could have been taken with ease. But the Marylanders themselves had taught the Susquehannocks the art of fortification. So they had laid out a large square, raised embankments on all four sides, with an outer defence of palisades, and a ditch between. At each corner was a bastion, from which an attacking force could be enfiladed. Lacking artillery to batter down these works the three commanders decided to invest the fort and ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... phenomena: but it was too late. For the Twenty Squadrons are again dashing forward; sweeping down whatever is before them: in spite of cannon-volleys, they plunge deeper and deeper into the mist; come upon "a ditch twelve feet broad" (big swampy drain, such as are still found there, grass-green in summer-time); clear said ditch; forward still deeper into the mist: and after three hundred yards, come upon a second far worse "ditch;" plainly impassable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... we may affirm in general, our clergy is excellent, although this or that man be faulty. As if an army be constantly victorious, regular, &c. we may say, it is an excellent victorious army: But Tindal; to disparage it, would say, such a serjeant ran away; such an ensign hid himself in a ditch; nay, one colonel turned his back, therefore, it is a corrupt, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... along, loaded down with men. Horsemen galloped down the slopes in squadrons—and such horsemen!—cowboys from "Lost Park" and "the Animas." Prospectors like Casey and Kelly who were quite as much at home on a horse as with a pick in a ditch, and men like Marshal Haney and Grassi, who were all-round plainsmen, and by that same token born horsemen. Haney and Kelly rode with Reynolds and Mose, while Cora and Mrs. Reynolds followed in a rusty buggy drawn by a fleabitten gray cow pony, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... a soldier of Fortune. At first I was doubtful as to what path to glory and bread-and-butter I could carve out for myself. Hitherto I had been Fortune's darling instead of her mercenary, and she had most politely carved out my paths for me, until she had played her jade's trick and left me in the ditch. Now things were different. I stood alone, ironical, ambitionless, still questioning the utility of human effort, yet determined to play the game of life to its bitter end. What ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the enemy was gaining 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 ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... saw enough when we beheld the post the poor kids and goats are tied to, all messy and horrid from the last sacrifice. The priest who forbade us to enter, just to show there was no ill-feeling, hung wreaths of marigolds round our necks. Boggley, once we were out of sight, hid his in the ditch, but I, afraid they might find out and be offended, went about for the rest of the day decked like any ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... 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 of himself ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... 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. On the seaward side of this enclosure was what ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... on the gate intrusted to the care of the Spaniards and Auvergnese. But this success was merely temporary in that quarter; for the Ottomans were beaten back with such immense slaughter, that fifteen thousand of their choicest troops were cut to pieces in the breach and the ditch. But still the assault was prosecuted in every quarter and every point, and the Christian warriors acquitted themselves nobly in the defense of the city. The women of Rhodes manifested a courage and zeal which history has loved to record as most honorable to their sex. Some of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... among these be the Goorkhas who watched on the hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big ditch-grave for the dead under ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... brought to save them to Dur-Iakin, fortifying its walls. He summoned the tribes of Gambul, Pukud, Tamun, Ruhua, and Khindar, put them in this place, and prepared for battle. He calculated the extent of a plethrum[30] in front of the great wall. He constructed a ditch 200 spans[31] wide, and deep one fathom and a half.[32] The conduits of water, coming from the Euphrates, flowed out into this ditch; he had cut off the course of the river, and divided it into canals, he had surrounded the town, the place of his revolt, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... you!" he exclaimed; "don't worry over me or my aunt. I don't. I don't mind anything, with Holloway staked in the ditch. I can get along ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... following interesting account of how duck-snaring used to be managed in the Lincolnshire fens, was published some years ago, in a work entitled the "Feathered Tribes."—"In the lakes to which they resorted, their favourite haunts were observed, and in the most sequestered part of a haunt, a pipe or ditch was cut across the entrance, decreasing gradually in width from the entrance to the further end, which was not more than two feet wide. The ditch was of a circular form, but did not bend much for the first ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... is capable of great speed, it cannot jump, neither can it lift all four legs off the ground at the same time; this peculiarity renders it impossible to cross any ditch with hard perpendicular sides that will not crumble or yield to pressure, if such a ditch should be wider than the limit of the animal's extreme pace. If the limit of a pace should be 6 feet, a 7-foot ditch ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... blocking out marble statues only to throw them away half finished, but as if he should take the living human frame for his subject, and should cut and gash and torture it for years, only to fling it into the ditch. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... voice, "I wouldn't just stay there. They generally send over four of 'em. That's only the third. I find this ditch very ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Canals were built, the Lachine in 1821-25, the Welland around Niagara Falls in 1824-29, and the Rideau, as a military undertaking, in 1826-32, all in response to the stimulus given by De Witt Clinton, who had begun the "Erie Ditch" in 1817. On land, road making made slower progress. The blazed trail gave way to the corduroy road, and the pack horse to the oxcart or the stage. Upper Canada had the honor of inventing, in 1835, the plank road, which for some years thereafter became the fashion through the forested States to ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... 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 ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the Romans into despair and filled the minds of the Britons with joy. No effort was made by the soldiers for defence, no ditch was dug, no palisade erected, and the assault of the Britons found the colonists utterly unprepared. Taken by surprise, the Romans were overpowered, and the colony was laid waste with fire and sword. The fortified temple alone held out, but after ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of my own 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 ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... to Chopigni,[93] a pretty village a league from 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. It hath only one street, but that consisting of such magnifick stately ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... is nothing, wait until you get stuck in a mud-hole out west." Then our 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 potato garden ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... all 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 ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... and without the life's experience of humans which made the Professor's part so incredibly base, so gratuitously cruel and treacherous to Finn, would have given in long before. Finn fought with the courage of a brave man who has reached the last ditch, and with the ferocity that came to him out of the ancient days in which his warrior ancestors were never known either to give or ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... stick over Tom's head; but in a moment it was spinning harmlessly in the air, and Jonas himself lay sprawling in the ditch. In the momentary struggle for the stick, Tom had brought it into violent contact with his opponent's forehead; and the blood welled out profusely from a deep cut on the temple. Tom was first apprised of this by seeing that he pressed his handkerchief to the wounded part, and staggered ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the weather had cleared, and I went on towards Cagnicourt. On the journey I was delayed by a lorry which had gone into the ditch and completely blocked the road. Here in a field the 1st Field Ambulance had established themselves. Later on I managed to get to Cagnicourt and found my son's battery in the cellars of the Chateau. They were getting their ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... in the wood that day, and sending the team forward, I went to see the business—and a pretty piece of business it turned out. All the food was eaten, the drink swallowed to the last drop, the ship drawn about three roods, and then left in a deep ditch. By this time night was coming on, and the multitude went away, some drunk, some hungry for want of food, but the greater part laughing as if they would split their sides. The merchant cried like a child, bitterly lamenting his folly, and told me ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... same time the officers' quarters were being prepared, and the barracks as well; while plans were made to strengthen the fort, dig ditch, form glacis, and generally make the place tenable against ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Conditions were favorable for an approach to the pump-house itself, for two ridges of earth, perhaps eight feet high, thrown up like parallel furrows from a giant plow, marked the beginning of the irrigation ditch, and in the shadow of these the women worked their way forward, unobserved. They had nearly reached their goal when out into the clearing behind them, with metallic rattle and clang, burst another automobile, and Paloma ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... out of which three Galloway men had just drawn their horses. They cried to the captain, What would they do now! He answered them, What was the fray—he saw but three men coming upon them; and then caused his horse jump the ditch, and faced about with his sword drawn in his hand, stood still till the first, coming up, endeavoured to make his horse jump over also.—Upon which he, with his sword[208], clove his head in two, and his horse being marred, fell into the bog, with the other two men ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... ahead of his men and leaped to the abatis. For a half moment he stood alone on the parapet, then Fish reached him, and together they encouraged the rest to come on. Hamilton turned and sprang into the ditch, Fish following. The infantry was close behind, and surmounting the abatis, ditch, and palisades, leaped into the work. Hamilton had disappeared, and they feared he had fallen, but he was investigating; he suddenly reappeared, and formed the troops in the redoubt. It surrendered almost immediately. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... from the car into a ditch next the hillside in which the water was already a foot and a half deep and with the others climbed up the mountainside for our very lives. We had to do so as the water glided up after us like a huge serpent. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... favourite. "Keep your 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
... are very likely to find ourselves reposing in a ditch before the day is over,' retorted Bessie. 'I hope you—or the pony—will choose a ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in language almost plainer still. A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, vain, rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, died, and with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch (Bartsch, 1887, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... own men, English, Irish, and Scottish troops, went behind the Tanks, "laughing and cheering when they saw them get at the German wire and eat it up, and then head for the Hindenburg line, and cross it as though it were but a narrow ditch." ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
