"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... days, perhaps, many of those light-hearted boys would be lying in the trenches, or in some ditch, stark and dead, or in some hospital maimed and crippled ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... I went to the parson to get this thing fixed up. As I came on the marsh to the selfsame place where I saw that Poor-customer the first time, there was somebody lying at one edge of the bog, on his back in the heather and with his legs in the ditch. I knew him well enough. 'Why are you lying here alone?' said I: 'is anything the matter with you?' 'I think I am dying,' said he, but he gasped so I could hardly understand him. 'Where are those women,' said I, 'that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... compelled to resign his profession. He died shortly after, but the authorities would not even allow his corpse to be buried in the family vault. They demolished his place of interment, and threw his body into a ditch by the side ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... indeed, 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 breath to begin ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... deliberately imposing upon the credulity of the public. Some—perhaps all of them, are men of sincerity and probity; but, deluded themselves, they help to delude others. Their vision is imperfect; and 'if the blind lead the blind,' we may expect to find them in the same ditch together. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Molino del Rey was occupied by a brigade of the National Guards, under General Leon. These were re-enforced on the morning of the 7th by a brigade under General Rangel. The Casta Mata, a large storehouse surrounded by a wide ditch and inclosed by a bastioned fort, was occupied by the brigade of General Perez, and between these two positions was posted General Ramirez's brigade with six pieces of artillery. In the rear occupying some woods ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... tortuousness began to decrease—a sure indication that the country was rising—we soon made another six miles. But after this the boats could no further proceed—the inlet, in short, having become a mere ditch at low-water. The head of a large alligator was found on the bank near the upper part; where might be seen an occasional acacia mingled with the mangroves. Behind, the country was very open, consisting of plains covered with coarse grass, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... pen, and leads it astray. Characters expand; incidents multiply; the story lingers while the materials increase; Bailie Jarvie or Dugald Dalgetty leads him astray, and he goes many a weary mile from the regular road and has to leap hedge and ditch to get back. If he resists the temptation, his imagination flags and he becomes prosy and dull. No one can read his best novels without seeing the truth of this description. 'Waverley' made an immense success as a description of new scenes and social conditions: the story of Waverley himself ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... another direction, to have his master's chariot ready for him, at some distance on the north road. Who then was there to drive home the glass-coach? Nobody. So they turned the horses' heads towards the city, and set them off by themselves; and the coach was found next day in a ditch. Still there was another meeting to take place. At the hamlet of Bondy they were to meet the two waiting-women, with their luggage in the new chaise, and postilions with fresh horses. There they were at Bondy, while every one else was asleep. They had been waiting ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... lined with houses as it is today, only at that time they were crude adobe structures. Surrounding these was a wall fourteen feet high, made of huge upright and horizontal saplings plastered with mud, and as a further means of protection, a wide ditch was dug on the outside. Here Luis Argueello was Comandante for ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... Peel-fell, is upwards of forty five miles. The most entire parts of it show that it was originally a broad and deep fosse; having on each side a rampart, which was formed of the natural soil, that was thrown from the ditch, intermixed with some stones. Its dimensions vary in different places, which may be owing to its remains being more or less perfect. In those parts where it is pretty entire, the fosse is twenty seven, twenty ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... paddles, and Dick pushed with an oar, while Ned used a pole which he had brought along for use with a harpoon. As the trail grew dryer, it became impossible to pole the canoe, and Ned took the painter and, stepping into the nearly dry ditch in front of the canoe, dragged the craft, while Billy got overboard and pushed from behind. Sometimes Ned stopped to kick something out of his path, and at last Dick ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... mind up to shoot no more that time, we were returning briskly toward Rome. Calling to my dog by his name, Barucco, and not seeing him in front of me, I turned round and noticed that the well-trained animal was pointing at some geese which had settled in a ditch. I therefore dismounted at once, got my fowling-piece ready, and at a very long range brought two of them down with a single ball. I never used to shoot with more than one ball, and was usually ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... dignity to his figure, and I am not sure but that his very physical condition impressed them as a kind of regal unbending and large condescension. Howbeit, when this unexpected Hector arose from the ditch, York's myrmidons trembled. ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... upon the flesh and blood of boyhood in the fighting-lines. These old men, these fat men, were breathing out fire and fury against the Hun, and vowing by all their gods that they would see their last son die in the last ditch rather than agree to any peace except that of destruction. There were "fug committees" (it was Lord Kitchener's word) at the War Office, the Board of Trade, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Ministry of Munitions, the Ministry ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... advance towards the sound. Something white comes lumbering through the darkness. An asthmatic sheep! Dead, as I judge, by this time. Leaving Frank to guard him, I took Andrew with me, and went all round the monument, and down into the ditch, and examined the field well, thinking it likely that somebody might be taking advantage of the sheep to frighten the village. Drama ends with discovery of no one, and triumphant return ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... and porpoises have a more masculine assurance that God is on their side than ever visits the breast of antelope or jelly-fish. This assurance, when put to the test in adventurous living, becomes in a strong and high-bred creature a refusal to be defeated, a gallant determination to hold the last ditch and hope for the best in spite of appearances. It is a part of Protestantism to be austere, energetic, unwearied in some laborious task. The end and profit are not so much regarded as the mere habit of self-control and practical devotion and steadiness. The point is to accomplish ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Thought Waves. Begin with your WORLD, what is it? The kitchen or the school-room? The ditch or the mayor's chair? The field or as superintendent of a railroad? A brickyard or a bank? A bench or a pulpit? A loom or grand opera? A pick or a pen? Take a look at your world, what is it? Now plan it, then breathe ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... number of Saracen knights, all of whom Sir Isumbras successively overthrew. So dreadful was the stroke of his spear, that many were killed at the first encounter; some escaped with a few broken bones; others were thrown headlong into the castle ditch, but the greater number consulted their safety by a timely flight; while the queen contemplated with pleasure and astonishment the unparalleled exploits of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the riding of English and American women. The Spanish riding horse is a pacer rather than a trotter, and this cradle-like motion is certainly better suited to the Spanish women. Few, if any, of them aspire to follow the hounds, a ditch or a gate would present difficulties which would be truly insurmountable, and they never acquire the ease and grace in this exercise which are the mark of an ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... they labored far into the night until the camp on the knoll was a hard nut to crack, with its surrounding ditch and palisade of logs behind which a man could lie and shoot. Now and then it might have been noted that Jack Cockrell and Joe Hawkridge conferred with their heads together as though something private were in the wind. As soon as they were relieved from duty, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... (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
... running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again. And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch? The disciple is not above his master; but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... 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
... hindrance. He had torn off jacket, skirt, hat and wig. The frightened cabman saw his fare—changed now into an athletic young man, attired in shirt and trousers, the latter rolled up to his knees—spring from the vehicle and vault over a ditch by the roadside. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... to be enthusiastic on a wild-goose chase like this?" commented Brenchfield. "I've been on the run these last three weeks, dancing all this evening, and now the delightful prospect of lying in a ditch till morning, and nothing at all at the end of it but the possibility of a rheumatic fever. You juvenile bath-tub pirates and Sherlock Holmeses give ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... fourteen to throw earth out of a ditch so deep, that it requires the full strength of a grown man, and loses flesh and health under the exertion; he is twice blown up with his own blast in quarrying, and left for dead, recovers slowly, maimed and scarred, with the loss of an eye. John, when not thirteen, is set to stone-breaking on ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... that your shadow may be thrown on the right—a little slanting—just as you are at this moment. Moreover, when you have started, never draw bridle till you have reached the house of Don Mariano de Silva. If you meet a ditch, or brake, or ravine, cross them in a direct line, and don't attempt to go ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... evening of the Lord-mayor's day. The first book passed in that night; the next morning the games begin in the Strand; thence along Fleet Street (places inhabited by booksellers); then they proceed by Bridewell towards Fleet-ditch; and, lastly, through Ludgate to the City and the temple ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... out in the end. It's a cinch, with everything on her side. Anyway, the next thing I knows about their plans is when I finds their names in the sailin' list, bound for the Big Ditch, with most everyone else that could get away. And I makes my discovery about three hours ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... on one side. The Rats, which, as every one knows, never turn out of their road, but always go straight forward, through field and wood, over hedge and ditch, gnawing their way through stick and stone, fell without ado upon the chests and boxes. The fresh young pine-wood boards were a welcome prize to their sharp teeth, and so too the strong hempen ropes. Speedily off fell the box-lids, one here, one ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... work held well. At times, when three or four broadsides struck together, the merlons shook so that Moultrie feared they would come bodily in; but they withstood, and the small loss inflicted was chiefly through the embrasures. The flagstaff being shot away, falling outside into the ditch, a young sergeant, named Jasper, distinguished himself by jumping after it, fetching back and rehoisting the colours under a ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... from Christ Church to Main's is metalled for about four and a half miles; there are fences and fields on both sides, either laid down in English grass or sown with grain; the fences are chiefly low ditch and bank planted with gorse, rarely with quick, the scarcity of which detracts from the resemblance to English scenery which would otherwise prevail. The copy, however, is slatternly compared with the original; the scarcity of timber, the high price of ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... not destined to be a long one. The mule ran along the highway, leaped a roadside ditch, and then stopped short in front of a grassy bank. So sudden was the halt that Mr. Bunn shot over the animal's head, his hold around the neck being broken, and he was thus neatly upset, coming down amid the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... to the Athenians, to demand earth and water, which denoted submission. The Athenians threw them into a ditch and told them, there was earth ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... gentleman walked out into the garden, Mr. Pickwick had run down the lane as fast as he could, to convey a false alarm that somebody was coming that way; occasionally drawing back the slide of the dark lantern to keep himself from the ditch. The alarm was no sooner given, than Mr. Winkle scrambled back over the wall, and Arabella ran into the house; the garden gate was shut, and the three adventurers were making the best of their way down the lane, when they were startled by ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... 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 ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... man vaulted clean over the gate, tore a pitchfork out of a heap of dung that luckily stood in the corner, and boldly confronted the raging bull just in time; for at that moment Zoe lost heart, and crouched, screaming, in the side ditch, with ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... chief, Msalala, came selling from Sakuma on the north—a jocular man, always a favourite with the ladies. He offered a hoe as a token of friendship, but I bought it, as we are, I hope, soon going off, and it clears the tent floor and ditch round it ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... steps to their level. He would lift from below. He would get by the side of the man lowest down. It was clear evidence at the start that He was the true Messiah, the King. He was their Brother. He would get down alongside, and pull up with them side by side out of the ditch of sticky mud up to ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... the settlement there are faint traces of what may have been an irrigating ditch, but the topography is such that water could not be brought on top of the mesa from the river itself. At the southern end of the settlement, northeast of the point shown in the illustration, there are traces of a structure that may have been a storage reservoir. The surface of the mesa dips ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... petals of the flowers curve in to cover and protect 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 ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... but all, one and other, 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 end in themselves, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... found of value when I came to be pursued by mounted military police, who suspected me of being a spy at some manoeuvres abroad. After a rare chase I scrambled over a wall and dropped into an orchard of low fruit trees. Here squatting in a ditch, I watched the legs of the gendarmes' horses while they quartered the plantation, and when they drew away from me I crept to the bank of a deep water channel which formed one of the boundaries of the enclosure. Here I found a small plank bridge ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... way to a village which closes the horizon with several masts and hulls of ships in profile against a sky where the sun is veiled; to the right, a nursery-garden of shrubs and rose-trees separated from the road by a wide ditch full of water; then, in the middle distance, the buildings of a farm; to the left, a clump of trees and another ditch, and further back the spire of a church; a huntsman, with a gun on his shoulder and preceded by his dog, is walking on the road, and two peasants—a man and a woman—have stopped ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... 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 ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... bake and cake in the pots; rich, that the little plants may readily find ample nourishment; porous, that water may be soaked up readily, and any surplus drained off freely. A soil answering all these requirements is made as follows: cut from an old ditch or fence-side, thick sods, and stack them with the grass sides together to rot. This heap should be forked over several times, when it has begun to decompose. In dry weather, if within reach of the hose, a good soaking ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... and found herself hanging, bruised and breathless, across the back of the driving-seat. The automobile was bucking and bumping, as if the pavement had been turned into a corduroy road; then it came to a pause, half in the ditch. Merkle was jammed into an awkward coil on the floor of the tonneau, but raised himself, swearing softly. The other car held to its course, and whizzed onward, leaving in its wake a drunken shout ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... at the mountains on my left—the lower ridge of the Kapanja Sirt—and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and I thought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come out at last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch with the trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M—'s ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... had returned weary, muddy, with his jacket torn, and the livid mark of a stone on his forehead. He had engaged in a stone fight with his comrades; they had come to blows, as usual; and in addition he had gambled, and lost all his soldi, and left his cap in a ditch. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... present we two must be content with smaller things," Ferdinand went on. "And I don't mind admitting that laying out a bit of road, or a bit of railway, or bridging a ditch or so, isn't work that appeals to me tremendously. But if a man can get out into the wide world, there are things enough to be done that give him plenty of chance to develop what's in him—if there happens to be anything. I used to envy the great soldiers, ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... "Waters," old man!!! S'elp me never! yer don't kow wot nastyness is Till you've tried "Sulphur 'ot and strong," fasting. The Kissing Gin, taken a-fizz, Isn't wus than ditch-water and sherbet; but Sulphur!!! It's eased my game leg; But I go with my heart in my mouth, and I feel ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... struggle 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 bad losers. After the war-fever had died down—one year after the signing of the Armistice—they ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... the plain into this hollow way. There, as there will be no room for retiring, we shall come to close quarters." Almost quicker than the word, Claudius leaped into the hollow way. Taurea, bold in words more than in reality, said, "Never be the ass in the ditch;" an expression which from this circumstance became a common proverb among rustics. Claudius having rode up and down the way to a considerable distance, and again come up into the plain without meeting his antagonist, after reflecting in reproachful terms on the cowardice of the enemy, returned ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... the aged and sick, who aloft on the wagon, Heavy and thus overpacked, upon beds were sitting and swaying. Pressed at last from the rut and out to the edge of the highway, Slipped the creaking wheel; the cart lost its balance, and over Fell in the ditch. In the swing the people were flung to a distance, Far off into the field, with horrible screams; by good fortune Later the boxes were thrown and fell more near to the wagon. Verily all who had witnessed the fall, expected to see them Crushed into pieces beneath the ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... admit her promptly," said I, "it will take a little time to lower the bridge over the ditch. We may then ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... many brave actions must be expected to be performed without witness, for one that comes to some notice. A man is not always at the top of a breach, or at the head of an army in the sight of his general, as upon a platform. He is often surprised between the hedge and the ditch; he must run the hazard of his life against a hen-roost; he must dislodge four rascally musketeers out of a barn; he must pick out single from his party, as necessity arises, and meet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Now we must be very careful, for it is pitch dark and banisters are unknown in Uargla. Ah, now I know where the pathway comes from. It is a ditch which gets the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... master was well aware that he did read, and that it was possible to read and yet herd well. It was easy enough in this same meadow: on one side ran the Lorrie; on another was a stone wall; and on the third a ditch; only the cornfield lay virtually unprotected, and there he had to be himself the boundary. And now he sat leaning against the dyke, as if he held so a position of special defence; but he knew well enough that the dullest ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... 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 courtesy if ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... meant for a sportsman. On a very warm August morning, as he and I squatted "a l'affut" at the end of a long straight ditch outside a thicket which the bassets were hunting, we saw a hare running full tilt at us along the ditch, and we both fired together. The hare shrieked, and turned a big somersault and fell on its back and kicked convulsively—its legs still galloping—and its face ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... When irrigated, too much water will kill them. And this is true also of walnut and butternut seedlings. I have no acreage of nut trees. I grow seedlings and plant them wherever I find a place protected from the stock and within reach of moisture from the irrigation ditch, as this is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we step on it!—Let the Hero rest. It was not to men's judgment that he appealed: nor have men judged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... gruff Silas, with genuine Yankee intolerance of any intermission of toil, except on Sunday, the Fourth of July, the autumnal cattle-show, Thanksgiving, or the annual Fast,—"die in a ditch! I believe, in my conscience, you would, if there were no steadier means than your own labor to keep you ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... used—are small embankments, made by throwing up dirt from an excavation inside. They can be erected quickly, for it will be seen that those behind them have the advantage, not only of the height of the embankment, but also of the depth of the ditch. Thus an excavation of two feet would give a protection of four feet. This is the ordinary rifle pit, but when time permits it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... out once more on his wanderings. All day he walked, and in the evening he came to a peasant's house. While he was wondering whether he should knock and demand shelter for the night, he heard a great croaking of frogs in a ditch behind the house. Stepping to the back he saw a very strange sight. Four frogs were throwing a small bottle about from one to the other, making a great croaking as they did so. Bobino listened for a few minutes, and then knocked at the door of the house. It was opened by ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... work. There was a great clamour, the acrid smell of powder, the indescribable taste of battle. The flag was down; the red battle-flag with the blue cross in its place. There was a surge of the western regiment toward it, a battle around it that strewed the bank and the shallow ditch beneath with many a blue figure, many a grey. Step by step the grey pushed the blue back, away from the bank, back toward the wood arising, shadowy, from ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a plain, well-meaning carrot chanced to lift its leaves among the poppies, why, they were all the children of the same mother, and Miss Vilda was not the woman to root out the invader and fling it into the ditch. There was a bed of yellow tomatoes, where, in the season, a hundred tiny golden balls hung among the green leaves; and just beside them, in friendly equality, a tangle of pink sweet-williams, fragrant phlox, delicate bride's-tears, canterbury bells blue as the June sky, none-so-pretties, gay cockscombs, ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and to establish here a completely appointed woolen mill. Water was brought from a series of reservoirs built in a small valley several miles away, and was conducted to a point on the Moen-kopi knoll, near the end of the south row of houses, where the ditch terminated in a solidly constructed box of masonry. From this in turn the water was delivered through a large pipe to a turbine wheel, which furnished the motive power for the works. The ditch and masonry are shown on the ground plan ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... 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
... hundred yards in front of it felled trees were laid across the road, with their branches turned towards the town, forming what soldiers, in the language of their profession, term an abattis. Forty or fifty yards in rear of this a ditch was dug, and a breastwork thrown up, from behind which a party might do great execution upon any body of men struggling to force their way over that impediment. On each side of the highway again, where the ground rises into little eminences, redoubts and batteries ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... then the 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 fall ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... declared that indignant damsel. "Just because Mother's nervous and thinks I'm going to run her into the ditch! Wait till I've had my course of motoring lessons! I'll take the shine out of Bevis! ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... 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 or sense whatever, covered ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... hearts were faithful to it, were content to live by its grace—to die by its will. That was the sea before the time when the French mind set the Egyptian muscle in motion and produced a dismal but profitable ditch. Then a great pall of smoke sent out by countless steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the Infinite. The hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the terrible beauty in order that greedy and faithless landlubbers might pocket dividends. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... our college of Visitors could justifiably withdraw from this sacred duty, it would be myself, who quadragenis stipendiis jamdudum peractis, have neither vigor of body nor mind left to keep the field: but I will die in the last ditch, and so I hope you will, my friend, as well as our firm-breasted brothers and colleagues, Mr. Johnson and General Breckenridge. Nature will not give you a second life wherein to atone for the omissions of this. Pray then, dear and very dear Sir, do not think ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... graves you are sending them to. Think of the mother and the babe at her breast, think of the father and son, Think of the lover and the loved one too, think of them doomed every one To fall (as it were by your very hand) into yon fathomless ditch, Murdered by one who should guard them from harm, who now lies ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... surrounded by cavalry and brought in tied to the horses' tails. Many a knight, better accoutred than his fellows, was despatched in a more summary manner and stripped of his armor, after which his body was carelessly thrown into a ditch by the roadside.[829] La Renaudie was so fortunate as to escape this fate and the yet more cruel doom that awaited him at Amboise, by meeting a soldier's death, while courageously fighting against a party of Guisards who fell in with him. He had just slain his antagonist—one Pardaillan, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... and what was even more unusual in a prospective clergyman, had never heard of the Thirty-nine Articles. He was struck with the architecture of the colleges, and much surprised at the meanness of the houses that surrounded them. He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the Cherwell 'a ditch.' The brilliant dare-devil from Italy despised alike the raw, limitary, reputable, priggish undergraduates and the dull, snuffling, smug-looking, fussy dons. The torpor of academic dulness, indeed, was as irksome to Burton at Oxford as ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... shoes an' the stuff fer a dress, an' sometimes my cal'lations went as fur 's a gold breastpin; but I never wanted to see none o' the rest on 'em, an' fer that matter, I never did. Yes, sir, the old ditch was better to me than the place I was borned in, an', as you say, I wa'n't nobody's slave, an' I wa'n't scairt to death the hull time. Some o' the men was rough, but they wa'n't cruel, as a rule, an' as I growed up a little I was putty well able to look out fer myself—wa'al, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... instruction. 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 ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... a long and troublesome one, the Indians having a strong constitutional objection to anything in the nature of hard work; but Earle succeeded at length, and actually got them started on the work of cutting the drainage ditch, that scheme having been chosen as the one promising the quickest results and involving the least labour. By the time that this was done the invalids were all recovered from their sickness; and ten days after their arrival ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... brought upon the corps by his falling into old ways; old habits of drunkenness or uncleanness, fighting or thieving, or any other vulgar form of sin. The F.O. should consider the shame of the man himself, if he is permanently left to rot in the ditch of corruption, and the sorrows that burden the heart of His Master, for one for whom He has given ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... go forward whenever a gate is to be opened or an obstruction to be removed, and clear the way for the lady; he must leap first when there is a fence or ditch to be crossed; he must pay all tolls; must first test any dangerous-looking place, and must try to select the most ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... acknowledges a thousand imperfections in this discursive story. In all truth, it is a most garrulous and incoherent narrative. Like the automobile, part of the time the narrative moves, part of the time it does not; now it is in the road pursuing a straight course; then again it is in the ditch, or far afield, quite beyond control and out of reason. It is impossible to write coolly, calmly, logically, and coherently about the automobile; it is not a cool, calm, logical, or coherent beast, the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... white with green shutters, and sometimes little Dutch gardens. Many windmills, several pigeons always fluttering round each. A lorry in a ditch. A roadside canteen, with perhaps an A.S.C. camp near by. Fields and fields of corn and every other crop under the sun. I long to sketch, but feel slightly nervous of so doing so far from camp. I don't want to be arrested as a spy. We are practically ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... 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 that they should be able to defend the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... when from out the town they had got clear, The Sumner said, "Here dwelleth an old witch, That had as lief be tumbled in a ditch And break her neck, as part with an old penny. Nathless her twelve pence is as good as any, And I will have it, though she lose her wits; Or else I'll cite her with a score of writs: And yet, God wot, I know of her no vice. So learn of me, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Horn came over from Van Horn's early, Bradley told his hearers brokenly. They asked for Barb and he was down at the creek. Barb had sent Bradley about a mile below the house to repair a small break in the irrigation ditch and had ridden down to show him what he wanted done. After giving instructions, he had started back for the house. Before he got far, Stone and Van Horn met him. Bradley heard voices up the creek but paid no special attention to them, and busied himself with his job. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... his sledge-hammer in his hand, stops the horse at the last; but my Lady Rackrent was all kilt[21] and smashed, and they lifted her into a cabin hard by, and the maid was found after, where she had been thrown, in the gripe of the ditch, her cap and bonnet all full of bog water, and they say my lady can't live any way.' Thady, pray now is it true what I'm told for sartain, that Sir Condy has made over all to your son Jason?" "All," says ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... "Countess or bastard, you are a little beauty. And there is countess in your blood somewhere, I'll take an oath. Hands and feet, neck and head, tell the story. There was love and a young countess and a hot-brained troubadour went to the making of you, my little lady. A ditch-full of witches could not bring such tokens to a villein. Galors, my dear friend, if I owed nothing to Master le Gai, I doubt if I should help you to this. 'Tis too much, my friend, with an earldom. She needs ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts, the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha; and just as he was fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the ground went from under him, and—slap into the ditch went ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his rifle, deadened among the rocks, and finally saw him reappear, with a surly look that plainly betrayed his ill success. Again we moved forward down the long valley, when soon after we came full upon what seemed a wide and very shallow ditch, incrusted at the bottom with white clay, dried and cracked in the sun. Under this fair outside, Reynal's eye detected the signs of lurking mischief. He called me to stop, and then alighting, picked up a stone and threw it ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... river flows through the valley, and is crossed by a single bridge in the lower part of the village. This is the Trym,—an untidy Trym enough, nowadays,—opaque, muddy, and little better than a ditch. Yet it was a navigable river some centuries ago, and, according to tradition, was not unknown to trout. On leaving the village, it takes a southwesterly course through a pleasant bottom of meadow lands, and thence between wooded slopes and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... in a ditch, denotes degradation and personal loss; but if you jump over it, you will live ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... course. But do you suppose they're going to lie down just because an unknown and penniless inventor sues them? Bless you, no! They'll fight to the last ditch, they'll engage the best legal talent in the country. You'll have to carry the case to the Supreme Court of the United States if you want a winning decision. And that's going to cost you thousands—hundreds ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... you, sir; he has been the only 'Bid-stand' that ever kept New-market, Salisbury-plain, Hockley i' the Hole, Gadshill, and all the high places of any request: he has had his mares and his geldings, he, have been worth forty, threescore, a hundred pound a horse, would ha' sprung you over the hedge and ditch like your greyhound: he has done five hundred robberies in his time, more or less, I ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... columns, millions and millions of them. And when they come to a ditch, the front ones fall in, and more and more of them on top, till they fill up the ditch, and the rest cross over. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... for the unfinished work to be dropped would be, not as if a sculptor should go on 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
... and he himself, while he lived in the flesh, preached oftener in the desart, and upon the sea-side, than in the temple of Jerusalem." Upon this the people were appeased, and went with him to the edge of a muir on the south-west side of Mauchlin, where having placed himself upon a ditch-dyke, he preached to a great multitude who resorted to him; he continued speaking for more than three hours, God working wondrously by him, insomuch that Laurence Rankin the laird of Sheld, a very profane person, was converted by his means; the tears ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... on the scent! At fault none losing heart!—but all at work! None leaving his task to another!—answering The watchful huntsman's cautions, check, or cheer. As steed his rider's rein! Away they go How close they keep together! What a pack! Nor turn, nor ditch, nor stream divides them—as They moved with one intelligence, act, will! And then the concert they keep up!—enough To make one tenant of the merry wood, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... the darkness, seeking the way, lest ye fall into the ditch; but gather together, sustain one another, put your faith in your God and wait for the first ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... imprisonment of his friend Coleman had weighed heavily on his spirits. A terrible fear now taking possession of his relatives and friends, thorough search was made for him, which proved vain until the Thursday following his disappearance, when he was accidentally discovered lying in a ditch, a cloth knotted round his neck, and a sword passed through his body, "at or near a place called Primrose Hill, in the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... nothing but misery and unhappiness. We should dress for comfort, and we should have the courage to live in a youthful world where all may be happy. "If the blind lead the blind," so the Bible tells us, "both shall fall into the ditch." We need so to live and act that we shall not fail to be happy. Happiness really is what everybody is chasing, but how very far away from it most people are getting! Go back to the memories of your childhood. Be with children and play with them all you possibly can. If you are a mother, ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... word is spelt now with a final k and now with a final ch; out of this variation two different words have been formed; with, it may be, other slight differences superadded; thus is it with 'poke' and 'poach'; 'dyke' and 'ditch'; 'stink' and 'stench'; 'prick' and 'pritch' (now obsolete); 'break' and 'breach'; to which may be added 'broach'; 'lace' and 'latch'; 'stick' and 'stitch'; 'lurk' and 'lurch'; 'bank' and 'bench'; 'stark' and 'starch'; 'wake' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench |
