"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... garrison, commanded by Memnon, and the strength of the defenses, aided by the Persian fleet. But his soldiers, "protected from missiles by movable pent-houses, called tortoises, gradually filled up the deep and wide ditch round the town, so as to open a level road for his engines (rolling towers of wood) to come up close to the walls." Then the battering-rams overthrew the towers of the city wall, and made a breach in ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... following day, as Miss Combs opened her ditch-gate for the tide of mine water which came in a flume across the arroyo, she saw the doctor and Mr. Keene approaching. They had an absorbed air, and as she opened the door for them the doctor said, "Miss Combs, we want you to agree to a plan of ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... the work completed, from his camp on the old Asometon promontory he reconnoitred the country up to the ditch of Constantinople, and on the first of September betook himself ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... ouer, hauing the maine sea on the side of it, and the harbour water or inner sea (as you may tearme it) on the other side, vvhich in this plot is plainely shewed. This straight was fortified cleane ouer with a stone vvall and a ditch without it, the saide wall being as orderly built vvith flanking in euery part, as can be set dovvne. There vvas onely so much of this straight vnvvalled, as might serue for the issuing of the horsemen, or the passing of carriage in time of neede: but this vnvvalled part ...
— A Svmmarie and Trve Discovrse of Sir Frances Drakes VVest Indian Voyage • Richard Field
... the fence. They craned their necks. The dusty road was flowing very swiftly, and like a river it had risen. Never before had it been so easily visible. They saw the ruts the carts had made, the hedge upon the opposite bank, the grassy ditch where the hemlock grew in feathery quantities. They even saw loose flints upon the edge. But the actual road was higher than before. It ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... spy! Get down—" George did not give him time to finish the phrase, but with a well-measured blow, sent him sprawling in the brambled ditch and we beat a hasty retreat ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... The shower just past, though brief, had been heavy enough to turn a thick layer of white dust into a greasy, grey paste of mud. On our left was a sudden drop into the rushing river, on the right a deep ditch, and the road between was as round-shouldered as a hunchback. Seeing this natural phenomenon, and feeling the slightly uncertain step of our fat tyres as they waddled through the pasty mud, the pleasant smile of the proud motor-proprietor ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Santiago—that was what Phyllis had read. The Spaniard had a good muster-roll of regulars and aid from Cervera's fleet; was well armed, and had plenty of time to intrench and otherwise prepare himself for a bloody fight in the last ditch. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... and who will play a practical trick on the friend he most respects is always a delight. It is he that keeps the crowd in good humor, who is generally deepest and most abiding in his affection, and who at the drop of the hat would fight to the last ditch for his friend. To handle him rightly does not require a six-foot rod, or a half-inch rule. But the Teacher must keep him so busy doing the things that he likes that he will have no dull moments in which to vent his inborn sense ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... 1, Camera Square, Chelsea. Blanchard had dined with a friend at Hammersmith, and left him to return home about six in the evening of Tuesday. On the following morning, at three o'clock, poor Blanchard was found lying in a ditch by the roadside, having been, as is supposed, seized by a fit; in the course of the evening he was visited by another attack, which was succeeded by one more violent on the Thursday, and on the following day ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... last!" groaned the fear-stricken man. "Heaven be merciful to me, the greatest of sinners! And must I die in a ditch, after ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... 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, interspersed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... father the sexton. Now, how he and Tom manage their matters, I don't know; but Tom gave him a lick on the head with a stick, which killed him on the spot. As the devil would have it, all this was seen by two people, a laborer working in a ditch hard by, and Scantling's son, a boy of ten years old. The end of it is, Tom was instantly pursued, and apprehended; your good uncle, Sir John, was called to take the depositions, and without any remand whatever, committed our good ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... were just one hundred feet of ditch to fill with dirt, the task was completed, and that quite thoroughly, long ere the close of the day. The pounding down of the earth consumed more time, and was much more laborious than the mere tumbling of the earth back ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... themselves off wooden platforms,—splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy dike, soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall, guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy dike, the town was ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... stony silence. Well, Mahaffy could sneer—he would show him! This was the last ditch and he proposed to descend into it, it was something to be able to demand the final word of fate—but he instantly recalled that he had been playing at hide-and-seek with inevitable consequences for something like ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the flank of the men serving the gun on the road, and with no obstruction between us and them. When we reached the south-west corner of the enclosure before described, I saw some United States troops pushing north through a shallow ditch near by, who had come up since my reconnaissance. This was the company of Captain Horace Brooks, of the artillery, acting as infantry. I explained to Brooks briefly what I had discovered and what I was about to do. He said, as I knew the ground and he did not, I might go ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... are: maister, well overtane, I thought we two should never meete againe: You went so fast that I to follow thee Slipt over hedge and ditch ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... anything, you mount a guard quite close to it, and place a sentry, if possible, standing on top of it. The place picked out by me also had the river circling round three sides of it in a regular horseshoe bend, which formed a kind of ditch, or, as the book says, "a natural obstacle." I was indeed lucky to have such an ideal place close at hand; nothing could ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... look! Bob's in the seat—you'll win your money now. Well, Bob Gayner, afther that you'll never live till you're drowned! Come away to the double ditch; that's where they'll show what they're made of—the mare'll be cooled now, and she'll run as easy ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... the last yellow in the sky is fading—I have no words with which to praise the music of these people. Or listen to the chuckling of a string of soft young ducks, as they glide single- file beside a ditch under a hedgerow, so close together that they look like some long brown serpent, and say what sound can ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... far to the right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and was ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... As some attention had previously been bestowed on the fortifications of the crater, that place was justly deemed the citadel of the Reef. Some thought the ship would be the most easily defended, on account of the size of the crater, and because it had a natural ditch around it, but so much property was accumulated in and around the crater that it could not be abandoned without a loss to which the governor had no idea of submitting. The gate of the crater was nothing in the way of defence, it is true; but ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... turned to address a young artillery-officer in the road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain —— regretfully, "but we brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there faithfully, as a friend that waited his return. He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comradeship, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless picaresque, a geste of innocent rogue-errantry; ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... troops, from the bridge quite to the end of Ligny. On the left in the distance the Prussians were shooting from the windows again, while we did not reply. The shout rose—"The Guard! the Guard!" I do not know how that mass of men passed the muddy ditch, probably by means of plank thrown across, but in a moment they were on ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... point at the lower end of the yard, on the opposite side from the garden, and left him. But he was inclined to give trouble when they both reappeared with a gun, and in a whisper announced that they must march first up the ditch which ran by the spring around ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... trees; past cottages and burns, and people going home from work. Yoho, past donkey chaises, drawn aside into the ditch, and empty carts with rampant horses, whipped up at a bound upon the little watercourse, and held by struggling carters close to the five-barred gate, until the coach had passed the narrow turning on the road. Yoho, by churches dropped ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... your way out here, and navigated that ewer safely! The boys find it surpassingly attractive,—as a coal mine, or a canal in Mars, or the Panama ditch. I've tried to induce Mr. Jorgesson, the contractor, to hang out a lantern or two at night. But he evidently thinks well of the caution and sobriety of the Johnston family and prefers to take his chances of a suit for damages. So far ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and granaries. A big bell hung on cross poles at the entrance to one of the avenues leading to what was once the rolling prairie, now fields of grain—six hundred acres, without a fence, stump, or ditch to mar the effect. The clear line of the horizon was broken only by another farmhouse, owned by a brother-in-law, whose farm lay beyond. The man told us he had emigrated six years before to Manitoba, and had gone as ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... dunce-head!" exclaimed his sister; "that was last night when you played tag, and you tumbled over into the ditch and bellered like the big baby ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... in 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 dwell? I cannot tell; Nor do I know his name. Or poor, or rich? I don't mind which; Or learning Latin, or digging ditch; I ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... Moll Brown, look, see, just past! I wish the ugly sly old witch Would tumble over in the ditch; I wouldn't pick her out not very fast. I don't think she's belied, 'tis clear's the sun That she's a witch if ever there was one. Yes, I do know just hereabout of two Or three folk that have learnt what Moll can do. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... noticed that when young fellows of your sort prefer their own haste to the Lord's leisure there's a Lord's haste that hurries on before 'em, so as to be all ready to meet 'em when they come a cropper in the ditch." ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... and repeat after me," and then he said: "I promise and swear that I will never reveal the secrets of this degree," and then the conductor pulled pa's leg and said: "Crawl out of the window, old man, 'cause the train is in the ditch, the car is afire, and if you don't get out in about a minute with the other freaks, you will be ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... groaning," said the vizier's son. "I will climb to the window, and see whether there are any means of escape. Yes! yes!" he whispered, when he had reached the window-hole. "Below there is a ditch surrounded by a high wall. I will jump down and reconnoitre. You stay here, and wait ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... skidded. It skidded all over the place, as if it were drunk, and, aided by Marigold, described a series of ghastly half-circles. At last he performed various convulsive feats of jugglery, with the result that the car, which was nosing steadily for the ditch, came to a stand-still. Then Marigold informed me in unemotional tones that ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... think credit, respect, power, and authority the concomitants of their birth and fortune, yet they will find all these still carried away from them by men of lower condition, who surpass them in knowledge. They who are blind will always be led by those that see, or else fall into the ditch: and he is certainly the most subjected, the most enslaved, who is so in his understanding. In the foregoing instances some of the causes have been shown of wrong assent, and how it comes to pass, that probable ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... reasons were sound enough, as will be seen later. But as a piece of scientific tactics it was as though an engineer besieging a fortress, instead of drawing his lines of approach diagonally, were to make them at right angles to the ditch. When the greatest of the admirals apparently (but only apparently) confused the two antagonistic conceptions of breaking the line, there is much excuse for civilian ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... enough, for then everything is frozen; but, in the beginning of spring, when frozen nature undergoes the process of thawing, then it is that one wishes to be deprived of his nose. At the entrance of each house a stone slab is thrown across to the doorway so as to cover the ditch. Only the foundations of the town houses are made of solid stone, well cemented, but in the case of country dwellings these are extended upwards so as to make up one-half of the whole height, the upper part being of mud, stuck on to a rough matting ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... enjoyable in this awful weather was to have some nice hot coffee in the middle of the day. The workwomen had no cause for complaint. The mistress made it very strong and without a grain of chicory. It was quite different to Madame Fauconnier's coffee, which was like ditch-water. Only whenever mother Coupeau undertook to make it, it was always an interminable time before it was ready, because she would fall asleep over the kettle. On these occasions, when the workwomen had finished their lunch, they would do a little ironing ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... their lives and unhurriedly pushing forward through the thickest of the fire to the spots where men had been seen to fall. At times they would creep on hands and knees: would always take advantage of a hedge or ditch, or any shelter that was afforded by the conformation of the ground, never exposing themselves unnecessarily out of bravado. When at last they reached the fallen men their painful task commenced, which was made more difficult and protracted by the fact ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... my blundering behavior, When fortune seems to follow at my heels; Now and then I play supremely in her favor, And she lets me pull the rankest sort of steals; She'll give to me the friendliest assistance, I'll jump a ditch at times when I should not, I'll top the ball and get a lot of distance— But I don't claim that's ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... him. There was a great snarling and growling, a clashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies. The dust of the road arose in a cloud and screened the battle. But at the end of several minutes two dogs were struggling in the dirt and the third was in full flight. He leaped a ditch, went through a rail fence, and fled across a field. White Fang followed, sliding over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf speed, swiftly and without noise, and in the centre of the field he dragged down ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... drive me distracted! I wonder if there is such a thing as a ditch or a horsepond ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... or adze, box, brush, cage, chaise, cross, ditch, face, gas, glass, hedge, horse, lash, lens, niche, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... are we?" said the stout huntsman, mopping his forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite to his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the ditch between them. ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... their ditches on the wrong side of their breastworks, and afforded the enemy an easy entrance into their fortress. But, "Let them alone; they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."[84] ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Inner Ward is defended by a wall, flanked by thirteen towers, the entrance to it being on the south side under the Bloody Tower. The Outer Ward is defended by a second wall, flanked by six towers on the river face (see Pl. IX, X and XI), and by three semicircular bastions on the north face. A Ditch or "Moat," now dry, encircles the whole, crossed at the south-western angle by a stone bridge, leading to the "Byward Tower" from the "Middle Tower," a gateway which had formerly an outwork, called the ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... car in the ditch, just outside the Park," Ronnie explained. "Don't know in the least how it happened. Suppose I was thinking of something else. Anyway, I've fairly piled her up, I'm afraid. I was coming back from the vicarage, you know. And then, of course, I walked up here, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... came along a side street where a number of men were at work digging a long and deep ditch in which to ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... the intimate secrets of matter; your Marconi employs the mysterious properties of the "jellied ether," but let a man seek to experiment with the laws of that singular electricity which connects you and me (though you be a millionaire and I a ditch-digger), and we think him a wild visionary, an academic person. I think sometimes that the science of humanity to-day is in about the state of darkness that the natural sciences were when Linneus ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... Plot" in 1678, one of the most prominent incidents being the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who is here shown (Fig. 11), carried on a horse, the day after his murder, to Primrose Hill, where the body was put into a ditch, the carrying on the horse and the discovery in the ditch being shown as coincident. They were produced, probably, as one of the means of inflaming the public mind against the Roman Catholics, which led to the execution, among others, of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... at West End is going to be attended to. There's been enough rubbers lost in that mudhole to about fill it, so it won't take much to fill it up. We're going to have a little bridge built over that ditch on Lane Avenue so's we women don't dislocate our joints jumping over it. But first the ditch is going to be deepened and cleaned so's it won't smell so unhealthy. When that's done the ladies aim to plant wild flowers along ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the straits of Royd Lane they accordingly defiled. It was very narrow—so narrow that only two could walk abreast without falling into the ditch which ran along each side. They had gained the middle of it, when excitement became obvious in the clerical commanders. Boultby's spectacles and Helstone's Rehoboam were agitated; the curates nudged each other; Mr. Hall turned to the ladies ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... could, taking care to waste none of it by random or careless shooting. The fort consisted, as all the border fortifications did, of a simple stockade, inside of which was a block-house for the protection of the women and children, and designed also as a sort of "last ditch," in which a desperate resistance could be made, even after the fort had been carried. The stockade was made of the trunks of pine-trees set on end in the ground, close together, but pierced at intervals with port-holes, through which the men of the garrison ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... a similar manner. I saw a woman, for example, tear whole handfuls of hair from her head, a murdering thief, guilty of more or fewer crimes, smash his head on the corner of a window, and a seventeen year old murderer throw himself into a ditch in the street, beat his head fiercely on the earth, and yell, "Hang me! Pull my ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... rather than lost her squareness, who showed her strength and hid her tenderness. He had rejoiced in several brushes with Kate Wilkes. There was a tang to them. A little sac of fiery acid had formed in her brain. It came from fighting the world to the last ditch, year after year. Her children played in the quick-passing columns of the periodicals—ambidextrous, untamable, shockingly rough in their games, these children, but shams slunk away from their shrill laughter. In tearing down, she prepared for ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... [1682]Jovius in elogiis. A grave and learned minister, and an ordinary preacher at Alcmar in Holland, was (one day as he walked in the fields for his recreation) suddenly taken with a lax or looseness, and thereupon compelled to retire to the next ditch; but being [1683]surprised at unawares, by some gentlewomen of his parish wandering that way, was so abashed, that he did never after show his head in public, or come into the pulpit, but pined away with melancholy: (Pet. Forestus med. observat. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... it, and Bill Hay had a bay half thoroughbred that could discount the major's mare 'cross country. All Frayne was out to see her start for her first ride with Beverly Field, and all Frayne reluctantly agreed that sweet Essie Dade could never sit a horse over ditch or hurdle with the superb grace and unconcern displayed by the daring, dashing girl who had so suddenly become the centre of garrison interest. For the first time in her life Mrs. Bill Hay knew what it ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... muttering to herself, "Nobody else"—that was the sin and guilt of it—by-and-by Mrs. Iden would circle round to where he had left his boots, and, suddenly seizing them, would fling them in the ditch. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... kind is connected with earthworks. So far as we can tell from recorded history the ditch round the Tower was not dug till the end of the twelfth century. Finally, there is this strong argument against the theory of a Roman origin to the Tower that had such a Roman fortress existed an extension of the town would almost ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... hundred soldiers with pickaxes and shovels rushed to the work. Some knocked out stones from the cliff; others threw them into the ditch and covered ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... that the bandbox had tumbled out of the window by some extraordinary chance, was going to pick it up, when Lord Ellenborough furiously called out, 'Drive on!' The bandbox, accordingly, was left by the ditch-side. Having reached the county town where he was to officiate as judge, Lord Ellenborough proceeded to array himself for his appearance in the court-house. 'Now,' said he, 'where's my wig?—where is my wig?' 'My lord,' replied his ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... where another grassy lane crossed at right angles the one down which he had been riding. It was a lonely spot, but yet was a thoroughfare from which the roads diverged to one or two large villages, and led in one direction ultimately to the market-town. Close to the ditch opposite the road down which Amos had come was a white finger- post, informing those who were capable of deciphering its bleared inscriptions whither they were going or might go. Amos hesitated; he had never been on this exact spot before, and he therefore rode close up ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... the Pahang River for a hundred and eighty miles, you come to a spot where the stream divides into two main branches, and where the name Pahang dies an ignominious death in a small ditch, which debouches at their point of junction. The right stream,—using the term in its topographical sense,—is the Jelai, and the left is the Tembeling. If you go up the latter, you come to rapids innumerable, a few gambir plantations, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... rising straight among the white blossoms reminded him again of his hunger, so, wiping the perspiration from his snow-burned face, he started on again, but when he came to the ditch which carried water from the stream through a hundred and fifty feet of sluice-boxes he stopped and examined with eager interest the methods used for saving fine gold, for, keen as was his hunger, the miner's instinct within him ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... 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
... figure of yourself! Sit down!" said her aunt, shortly, as she thrust a chair down on the hearth before the fire "I should have thought you'd have had wit enough at your age, to keep out of the ditch." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the largest objects that has been found is an earthenware baking oven, which was unearthed in an old ditch near the site of the May-Hartwell House. Restored from over 200 fragments, the oven was probably used between 1650 and 1690. It may have been made at Jamestown, molded of native clay and fired in a pottery kiln. ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... admit a feeling of disappointment in that first trench. I don't know what I expected to see, but what I did see was just a long, crooked ditch with a low step running along one side, and with sandbags on top. Here and there was a muddy, bedraggled Tommy half asleep, nursing a dirty and muddy rifle on "sentry go." Everything was very quiet at the moment—no rifles popping, as I had expected, no bullets flying, and, ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... did, jogging along, till he came to two labourers who had fallen into a ditch. The lad kept ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... eastward until it reached the point where a rocky region separates the basin of the Bagradas (Medjerda) from the plains of the Sahel; thence it ran to the neighbourhood of Aquae Regiae and thence, probably following the line of a ditch drawn between the two great depressions of Kairouan and El-Gharra, to its ultimate bourne at Thenae.[853] It is clear that the Romans did not look on their province as an end desirable in itself. They had left in the hands of their Numidian friends ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... 1885, Commisioner Sparks, of the United States General Land Office told (House Executive Documents, 1885-86, Vol. II) how, by 1885, the Portage Lake "canal" was only a worthless ditch and a complete fraud. What had the company done with its large land grant? Instead of accepting the grant as intended by Congress, it had, by means of fraudulent surveys, and doubtless by official corruption, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... what's coming. For a good many years I never did know, from one minute to another, and now I like to think that everything's cut-and-dried, and nothing unexpected can jump out at me like a tramp from a ditch." ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... on the outside with a vast ditch, full of water, and lined with bricks on both sides. The earth that was dug out of it made the bricks wherewith the walls were built; and therefore, from the vast height and breadth of the walls may be inferred ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... finger: and, in the next, Brian and Basil, in scrambling among the hedges in quest of straight twigs for arrows, met with their mishaps; for Brian got a thorn in his thumb, while Basil had a roll down the bank into a dry ditch. ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... "Down in the ditch; we passed them before I spoke. I see them on a blackberry-bush; they've got little brass buttons on ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... lifetime, the moral pressure of my wife and children, the example of society, and the force of superficial public opinion and expectation were spinning it round and round in the direction of least resistance. As well attempt to alter my course as to steer a locomotive off the track! I could not ditch the locomotive, for I had a trainload of ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... warningly. "Do you want to steer us into a ditch? Drop it, I say!" And he pushed ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... large sections the appearance of a forest. Near the centre of the plain, four hundred feet above the lake, stands the city of Oroomiah. It dates from a remote antiquity, and claims to be the birthplace of Zoroaster. It is built chiefly of unburnt brick, is surrounded by a high mud wall and a ditch, and has a population of twenty-five thousand, of whom the larger part are Mohammedans. The Nestorians of the plain were estimated ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... unusual and outrageous noise, while the smoke was so thick as to darken the very air. As the fugitives passed the crest of the hill, they saw the seaman, whom we formerly mentioned as a spectator, snugly reclining under cover of a dry ditch, where he managed so as to secure himself as far as possible from any accident. He could not, however, omit breaking his ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the experiment twice here in England, but without success. The first was in a slow running water with a muddy bottom. The second in a stagnant water at the bottom of a deep ditch. Being some time employed in stirring this water, I ascribed an intermitting fever, which seized me a few days after, to my breathing too much of that foul air which I stirred up from the bottom, and which I could ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... aneurism of the heart, was cautioned by his medical attendant never to use violent exercise; but, disregarding this, when he had nearly recovered, he went one day to visit a friend at the gaol in which he ought to have been confined, and in springing over a ditch near it, fell dead on the other side, and wholly unprepared to appear before that tribunal, to which he will one day or other be summoned, to answer for this ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... ground through which the mountaineers must have descended, although not of great extent, was impracticable in its character, being not only marshy but intersected with walls of dry stone, and traversed in its whole length by a very broad and deep ditch, circumstances which must have given the musketry of the regulars dreadful advantages before the mountaineers could have used their swords, on which they were taught to rely. The authority of the commanders was therefore interposed to curb the impetuosity of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... our land, and I've got a pigeon rig up there. But Bull Meadow Hill is higher and a good deal better. It belongs to Amos's folks. He has a pigeon rig and pole on it, and it will be all ready. Amos says Bull Meadow got its name because a bull was drowned in a ditch there nigh on to ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... besides! but who has ever heard of, or saw, the "Diary of a Lord Mayor,—that day-book, or blotter, as it may be commercially termed, of a gigantic mind? Who has ever perused the autobiography of the Lama of Guildhall, Cham of Cripplegate, Admiral of Fleet Ditch, Great Turtle-hunter and Herod of Michaelmas geese? We will take upon ourselves to answer—not one! It was reserved for PUNCH to give to his dear friends, the public, the first and only extract which has ever been made from the genuine diary of a late Lord Mayor of London, or, as that august ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... outsider might not understand, is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute that the whole concern is going over, a conviction which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly macadamized road comes in sight. Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to run into him; and he never finds himself ascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning to speculate upon his chances, supposing—as seems extremely probable—that the weak-kneed ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... in Africa situated by the seaside containeth seuen miles in circuite, and is enuironed with two walles one neere to the other with high towers, but the walles within be farre higher than those without, with a great ditch round about the same: yet is not this Citie very strong by reason of the great antiquitie, being almost halfe destroyed and ruinated. The greatnesse of this Citie is such, that if it were of double habitation, as it is compassed with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... day, the sheep broke from their pasture, when the thoughtless boy drove them back in great haste over a narrow and deep ditch. The leading sheep fell in, and the remainder, passing over them, smothered twenty-five sheep and forty lambs, the whole being ...
— Minnie's Pet Lamb • Madeline Leslie
... a long breath. "If that had happened on a culvert, we'd be in the ditch with the car on top of us. I simply can't control the thing. The whole top soil is loose, and there's nothing to hold to. That's Tommy Rice's place over there. We'd better get him to take us in for ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the most useless pauper that burdens the Alms-House—the most uncombed foreigner that delves in a ditch—the most abject creature that begs a morsel from door to door, is yet a man; and there is, not in theory only, but in the public sentiment, a sacredness of rights, which no man, except by stealth, can violate with impunity. There is no other law for the Governor of New-York or ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... Here in the ditch my bones I'll lay; Weak, wearied, old, the world I leave. "He's drunk," the passing crowd will say 'T is well, for none will need to grieve. Some turn their scornful heads away, Some fling an alms in hurrying by;— Haste,—'t is the village holyday! The aged beggar needs ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... irrigation water available in the foothills you can get a very satisfactory growth of red clover. We have seen it doing very well on sloping land in your county where water was allowed to spill over from a ditch on the ridge to moisten the slope below. Winter rye and other hardy stock feeds could also be grown in the winter time on the protected slopes with the rainfall. Some such plants are not good summer growers, owing to the drought. Rape is a good winter grower by rainfall, but not so satisfactory ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... whispers he, "this may be fun for you, but it's death to me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another five minutes, and then I shall go and drown myself in the island ditch. Feint him—use your legs! draw him about! he'll lose his wind then in no time, and you can go into him. Hit at his body too, we'll take care of his frontispiece by ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night from Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black trees, and heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!" Larry's natural surprise at this accounted for his being found next morning asleep in the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left life on November Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies or the plaything of ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... cruisers were soon busily engaged, for there is always plenty for all hands to do when pitching camp, what with the raising of the tent, the making of a fireplace upon which coffee pot and frying pan will rest cozily, the digging of a ditch on the higher ground back of the shelter, if there seems the slightest possible chance of rain before morning—well, every one who has been there knows how the opportunities for doing something open up to a willing campmate, so there is hardly any ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... certainly going. It had careened from the road, tilted itself down into a ditch and gone on across the fields, lights shooting from it ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... formed by rows of the maguey or century plant, growing at the side of a ditch. Here it reaches its greatest perfection, and adds materially to the fine appearance of the fields, and is seen every where upon the table-land. It grows wild upon the mountains, and springs up in uncultivated ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson |
