"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Ditch-water!" she replied. "The world is all asleep, grown grey in slumber; I do not remember any waking movement since quite an eternity; and the last thing in the nature of a sensation was the last time my governess was allowed to box my ears. But ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... and your water-drinking! If you had had no water to drink or wash with for two years but that—that," pointing to the foul ditch below—"if you had emptied the slops in there with one hand, and filled your kettle with ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... suffering man whispers a single word into his ear; that word, like a torch lighted in a mine, reveals to him a Science. All human ideas, arrayed in every attractive form which Mystery can invent surrounded a blind man seated in a wayside ditch. Three worlds, the Natural, the Spiritual, the Divine, with all their spheres, opened their portals to a Florentine exile; he walked attended by the Happy and the Unhappy; by those who prayed and those who moaned; by angels and by souls in hell. When the Sent of ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... grasped the pommel of my saddle, mechanically winding the lines about my wrist, and clung with the tenacity of sin clutching the world. Some soldiers looked wonderingly from the wayside, but did not heed my shriek of "stop him, for God's sake!" A ditch crossed the lane,—deep and wide,—and I felt that my moment had come: with a spring that seemed to break thew and sinew, the blue roan cleared it, pitching upon his knees, but recovered directly and darted onward again. I knew that I should fall headlong now, to be ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... houses having been originally built on the ditch of Hatta fort.) A section of Beldar Sonkars ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Ultrajectum of the Romans, selected for its site a long raised spur running out from the solid ground of older and higher land into the water-soaked alluvium of the Netherlands. It was the most important town of all this region before the arts of civilization began the conquest by dike and ditch of the amphibian coastal belt which now comprises one-fourth of the area and holds one-half the population of the Netherlands.[413] So ancient London marked the solid ground at the inner edge of the tidal flats and desolate marshes which lined the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the side. Souse went the sheep into a murky, muddy pool and disappeared. But suddenly its head came up and then its shoulders. And it began half to walk and half swim down what appeared to be a narrow boxlike ditch that contained other floundering sheep. Then Carley saw men on each side of this ditch bending over with poles that had crooks at the end, and their work was to press and pull the sheep along to the end of the ditch, and drive them up a boarded incline into another ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... she had, and the mode of succession; then, when fully satisfied, led the way to show me what his father Dagara had done when wishing to know of what the centre of the earth was composed. At the back of the palace a deep ditch was cut, several yards long, the end of which was carried by a subterranean passage into the palace, where it was ended off with a cavern led into by a very small aperture. It then appeared that Dagara, having failed, in his own opinion, to arrive any nearer to the object in view, gave the excavating ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... consequences, saying to him: "I take no pleasure in the destruction of sinners, but if thou are bound to go to thy destruction, do so! Whosoever leads righteous men astray upon an evil way, will fall into the ditch of his own digging!" Balaam was misled by God's behavior toward him, and thus plunged into destruction. When God first appeared to him and asked him, "What men are these with thee?" this blasphemer thought: "God know them not. It seems ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... closely-trimmed trees and a high hedge, the residence of the cattle gate-keeper, whose duty it was in former years to prevent the straying of animals from the parish of Barnes into that of Putney. The gate has been removed, but the place marks the London boundary, which follows the line of the big ditch due south across the Lower to the ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... method is employed: the water is taken out of the stream in an artificial channel dug in the earth. But in order to get the water at a sufficient height to make it flow over the fields, it is necessary to start a ditch or canal at a favorable point some distance up the stream, perhaps miles from ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... higher than the tallest ladders, and so thick that fire could not heat them from without, nor battering-ram loosen a single block in a single course; and many assaults were repelled, and many a brave soldier fell writhing and broken into the deep ditch ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... then either because he had reached the end of his journey, or because, before attempting that forbidding, sombre pass which is called the Thermopylae of Provence, he wished to enjoy the magnificent view which spread to the southern horizon a little longer, he went and sat down on the edge of the ditch which bordered the road, turning his back on the mountains which rise like an amphitheatre to the north of the town, and having at his feet a rich plain covered with tropical vegetation, exotics of a conservatory, trees and flowers quite unknown in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... recklessly dominant males of the white. "He enters a world in which there was no place prepared for him." His father was about as sensible of his parental obligations towards him as a toad towards its spawn in the next ditch. To him he "was a broken wineglass from last night's feast." "Often without a family, always without a nation or race, without education or moral training, and despised by the society in which he was born," is it any wonder that the half-caste is the curse of the community in ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... chiefly in Patiala and the Karnal and Hissar districts. It is joined by the Umla torrent in Karnal and lower down the Sarusti unites with it in Patiala just beyond the Karnal border. It is hard to believe that the Sarusti of to-day is the famous Sarasvati of the Vedas, though the little ditch-like channel that bears the name certainly passes beside the sacred sites of Thanesar and Pehowa. A small sandy torrent bearing the same name rises in the low hills in the north-east of the Ambala district, but it is doubtful if its waters, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the road," said Charlotte. "He'll be crouching in the ditch when we get there, and he's going to be a grizzly bear and spring out on us, only you mustn't say I told you, 'cos it's to be ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... in ditch and swamp, And torn by thorn and thicket, The dancing-girls of Merry Mount Came dragging ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... no strength whatever: it simply calls the powers that be into increased action, at their own expense. Seeking real strength in stimulus is as wise as an attempt to lift yourself up by your boot-straps. You may gather yourself to leap the ditch, and you clear it; but no such muscular energy can be sustained: exhaustion speedily renders further expenditure impossible. But now suppose a very powerful mental impression be made, say the circumstance of a succession of ditches in front, ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... return home. To-night the harbor looks like only a dark and sinister rent, which the moonbeams can not fathom—a yawning crevasse opening into the very bowels of the earth, at the bottom of which lie faint, small glimmers, an assembly of glowworms in a ditch—the lights of the different ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... consequently?) a greenish tinge pervaded the water, speedily increasing in depth and opacity. In five days, no object could be discerned six inches from the glass, and my beautiful Aquarium was transformed to an unsightly ditch. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... chasms our walls and our poor palisades, Rifleman, true is your heart, but be sure that your hand be as true! Sharp is the fire of assault, better aimed are your flank fusillades— Twice do we hurl them to earth from the ladders to which they had clung, Twice from the ditch where they shelter, we drive them with hand- grenades; And ever upon our topmost roof our banner of ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... George Manners, of Beckfield. When Mr. Manners saw me he seemed much excited, and called out, "Quick! help! Mr. Lascelles has been murdered." I said, "Good God! who did it?" He said, "I don't know; I found him in the ditch; help me to carry him in." By this time I had come up and saw Mr. Lascelles on the ground, lying on his side. I said, "How do you know he's dead?" He said, "I fear there's very little hope; he has bled so profusely. I am covered with blood." I was examining the body, and as I turned it ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Johnnie's old straw hat and his grandmother's sunbonnet bobbing from side to side, and up and down, and backwards and forwards, as the wagon jolted over ruts and stones and thank-you-ma'ams—which were small ridges built across the road, to turn the water into the ditch ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Slaves of Lamachus! Water, water in a little pot! Make it warm, get ready cloths, cerate greasy wool and bandages for his ankle. In leaping a ditch, the master has hurt himself against a stake; he has dislocated and twisted his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his Gorgon shot far away from his buckler. His mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the ground; at this ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... built of logs, seventy-five feet long by fifty broad, and a ditch dug surrounding it; the quarter-deck guns were mounted, the colours hoisted, and it was formally christened Fort Dundas, under a royal salute ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... distillery, and windmill. The mansion is generally on an elevated spot, commanding a view of the estate and surrounding country. The cane fields presented a novel appearance—being without fences of any description. Even those fields which lie bordering on the highways, are wholly unprotected by hedge, ditch, or rails. This is from necessity. Wooden fences they cannot have, for lack of timber. Hedges are not used, because they are found to withdraw the moisture from the canes. To prevent depredations, there ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... existence of some great marvel. That he had seen the lady was beyond question. That she had vanished the next moment was also beyond question. That she had hidden behind a tree or gone crouching in a ditch was inconceivable, to say the least of it; so fair and gracious a person would scarcely descend to such undignified manoeuvres, worthy only of a hoydenish peasant girl. And yet, what could possibly have become of her? ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... "Ah, ditch that!" says I. "I caught you actin' like a suspicious character. Now, if you can account for yourself, I may turn you loose; but if you don't, it's a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... resisting as Saragossa hath resisted during her two sieges, the whole of the military power of the adversary would melt away. Without any advantages of natural situation; without fortifications; without even a ditch to protect them; with nothing better than a mud wall; with not more than two hundred regular troops; with a slender stock of arms and ammunition; with a leader inexperienced in war;—the Citizens of Saragossa ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the fortifications, in modern fashion, at the weakest part of the wall. Without drawing from my royal treasury, he had commenced the work four months before, and hoped to have it finished in two more. The ditch was being opened effectively at the same time, and to reduce the number of posts for the defense of this city, and that it might be better fortified, all the redoubts which disturbed the communication between the cavaliers were to be destroyed, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... my name. It can always be said: "What does Lord Elgin know of India? He has never been out of Calcutta. He is acquainted only with Bengal civilians and other dwellers in (what is irreverently styled) 'the ditch.'" Indeed, I fear that I am exposed to the same reproach in your circle. I see no remedy for this evil, if I ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... VILLAINS," &c. &c. Rascals as yet unknown! perhaps you, too, may read these words, and may be induced to pause in your fatal intention. Take the advice of a sincere friend, and keep off. To find a man writhing in my man-trap, another mayhap impaled in my ditch, to pick off another from my tree (scoundrel! as though he were a pear) will give me no pleasure; but such things may happen. Be warned in time, villains! Or, if you MUST pursue your calling as cracksmen, have the goodness to try some other shutters. Enough! subside into your darkness, children ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... under their feet there came a protesting grind that nearly drowned their efforts at conversation. Not that that mattered, though, for they were going too fast to talk, anyway. At first they were a bit uneasy, but presently when they found that the car did not jump into a ditch or vault a fence, they got over their nervousness and thoroughly enjoyed the well-nigh breathless sensation. The driver lolled back on his spine with a nonchalance that aroused Clint's admiration and envy. He wondered whether he would ever own a car and be able to go ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of what the news meant to her, but that night pride and love fought in the last ditch. It seemed to Becky that with Dalton at King's Crest the agony of ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the boys. The salt fish made us always thirsty, but no other drink than water was ever allowed. However thirsty a slave may be, he is not allowed to leave his employment for a moment to get water; he can only have it when the hands in working have reached the ditch, at the end of the rows. The overseer stood with his watch in his hand, to give us just an hour; when he said, 'Rise,' we had to rise and go to work again. The women who had children laid them down by the hedge-row, and gave them straws and other trifles to play with; ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... childish steps, with his little hand tightly clasped in his father's, carry away? What did they bury in that hole, from which an odor of freshly dug earth was emitted—in that hole surrounded by men in black, and from which his father turned away his head in horror? What was it that they hid in this ditch, in this garden full of crosses and stone urns, where the newly budded trees shone in the March sun after the shower, large drops of water still falling from their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 and many ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... thereof, not for that must the sun be blamed, or scorned by others: still less shall the glory of his brightness be dishonoured through their silliness. But while they, self-deprived of light, grope like blind men along a wall, and fall into many a ditch, and scratch out their eyes on many a bramble bush, the sun, firmly established on his own glory, shall illuminate them that gaze upon his beams with unveiled face. Even so shineth the light of Christ ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... through a field observed a cow showing many symptoms of uneasiness, stamping with her feet and looking earnestly at him. At first he feared to approach her, but afterward went toward her, which seemed to please her much. She then guided him to a ditch where her calf was lying helpless; and he was just in time to save it from death, to the no small delight of the cow. Some days after, when passing through the same field, the cow came up to him as if to thank him for his kindness. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Spaniards, Alonzo de Monroy, found means to send a messenger to inform Valdivia of his situation; and the governor accordingly hastened to the aid of the besieged with all possible expedition, and found the ditch almost filled with dead bodies, while the enemy, notwithstanding the heavy loss they had sustained, were preparing to renew the assault. Drawing out its infantry from the fort to join the cavalry he had along with him, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... experts verified Robert's most sanguine views after a very brief examination of the deposit. Hardly any preliminary work was needed. In twenty-four hours a small concentrating plant was erected, and a ditch made to drain off the carbonic anhydride in the valley. After dusk a party of coolies cleared the quarry of its former occupants. Towards the close of the following day, when the great steamer once more slowly turned her head to the north-west, Iris could hear the steady ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... "Dead as ditch-water," replied his lordship. "I heard it at the club. There was a lawyer fellow there dining with somebody there, and they got talking about Bingham, when the lawyer said, 'Oh, he's Sir Geoffrey Bingham now. Old Sir Robert's heir is dead. I saw the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... will, and is minded to help the Trojans, verily then I too would desire that even instantly this might be, that the Achaians should perish here nameless far from Argos: but and if they turn again, and we flee back from among the ships, and rush into the delved ditch, then methinks that not even one from among us to bear the tidings will win back to the city before the force of the Achaians when they rally. But come as I declare, let us all obey. Let our squires hold the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... know—for he had not seen it happen—that in that moment the slippery, leather-covered note-book had slid from his lolling coat pocket and had fallen with a sharp slap on the white macadam, skidded along and come to rest in the ditch. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... the submerged bowlders, while twenty feet below them the irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim, sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled up the opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creede looked back and laughed merrily ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the 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 meets ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... hauled up there taking two-thirds of the road, and started to light his pipe. I was in a hurry to get along, and thought I could just squeeze by; but I made a mistake, and my wagon got upset in the ditch. He went on, grinning at my trouble, and never offering to raise a ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... fight, each man according to his temperament, swearing or laughing, sobbing or singing comic songs, until the case looks grim. Then, though, the same thrill runs through the whole of them, the same fire blazes in their eyes, and the last ditch that they line has been known to be a grave ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Carberry was one of his father's patients, and Dr. Bird esteemed her very highly, Frank had postponed the reckoning just as long as he could endure the insults of the bully. But he believed the last ditch had been reached, and was determined to no longer raise a hand to ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... inspections and etc. and telling us how to behave when we get up there in the front row and not to stick our head over the top in the day time and you would think we was the home guards or something and at that I guess the home guards is seeing as much of the war as we are in this old ditch but they say it will be different when we get up in front and believe me I hope so and they can't send us there to ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... Palel for some hours a start was made, at eleven o'clock at night; and at daybreak we came upon some villages, each house in which was standing alone in a large enclosure, surrounded by a wall, ditch, and hedge. We went at them and carried them, one by one, without any great loss to ourselves. Issuing on the other side, we came upon a plain about a thousand yards across. Beyond this was a bridge, on fire. The enemy were strongly posted in ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... 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, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... all descend, (As morning prayer, and flagellation end)[325] 270 To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dikes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... his end, and that it was against his uncle by blood (whom I was to see presently) that he rebelled later, and by his uncle that he was condemned; and it is yet more piteous to think how he met that end, crying and cringing for fear of his life, both in the ditch in which he was discovered, and afterward in prison. He looked very kindly on me as he passed, lifting his hand to his hat; but I think he would not have so looked if he had known all about me; for he was as venomous against ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... ditch match stretch pitch latch thatch stitch patch sketch fetch hitch scratch match ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... in my dream, so far as this valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep ditch; that ditch is it, into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold, on the left hand there was a very dangerous quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he finds ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... as suddenly as her companion. Directly facing them was a large bull: it had been feeding in the ditch when they entered the field, and thus they had not perceived its presence; but now it had walked across, and was standing exactly opposite the gate, completely cutting off ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of a severe fit of the gout; and I sat with him till near nine o'clock. He gave me a Tatler(9) he had written out, as blind as he is, for little Harrison. It is about a scoundrel that was grown rich, and went and bought a coat of arms at the Herald's, and a set of ancestors at Fleet Ditch; 'tis well enough, and shall be printed in two or three days, and if you read those kind of things, this will divert you. It is now between ten and eleven, and I ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... boy they knew never was used to such things, and they were indifferent, as to what his fare chanced to be. He generally managed to satisfy the cravings of hunger on the coarse food given him, but that was all. About this time it happened that the farmer was digging a ditch, and as he was afraid winter would set in before it was completed, Johnny and himself were at work upon it early and late, notwithstanding the wind whistled, and it was so cold they could hardly handle the tools. While thus employed, it chanced that ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... line is given by the gateway, Por Episcopi, which once spanned the passage—now an open space—on the east side of the Archbishop's Palace (plan 17 B). That gateway stood between the Via Teatina and the next street to the north, the Via dei Cerretani, and the Roman north wall and ditch apparently ran along the intervals between these two modern streets—as indeed the lines of certain mediaeval lanes suggest. On the east the 'colonia' is supposed to have stretched to the Via del Proconsolo and the old Por S. Piero, probably the ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... lady—a Mrs. Maginley—arose and expressed her opinions. She had confidence in Mr. Lincoln, but denounced Gen. Banks, who, she said, was a hero in one place and a slave-driver in another. As next President, we may get a ditch-digger—(Mrs. M. evidently intended this as a sly allusion to a distinguished military chieftain)—and then what are we to do? She wished to know who, loving the black man, could ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Ass on account of his greater abundance of food, said, "How shamefully you are treated: at one time grinding in the mill, and at another carrying heavy burdens;" and he further advised him to pretend to be epileptic and fall into a ditch and so obtain rest. The Ass listened to his words, and falling into a ditch, was very much bruised. His master, sending for a leech, asked his advice. He bade him pour upon the wounds the lungs of a Goat. They at once killed the Goat, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... a ditch, then, for you?" said the Vicar, whose feeling against the ironmonger was much stronger than it had been against the farmer. He could say nothing further, so he turned upon his heel and marched down the length of the shop, while the obsequious tradesman followed him,—again bowing ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... inevitable gaps in the children's minds in connection with the world of living things, such pictures as the following should be in every town school: a pine wood, a rabbit warren, a natural pond, a ditch and hedge, a hayfield in June, a wild daffodil patch, a sheet of bluebells, a cornfield at different stages, an orchard in spring and in autumn, and many others. These must be constantly used when they are needed, and not misused in the artificial ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... gave him a certain likeness to the German emperor, and when he sat down, he took care to show his hands, by placing them prominently on his knees, in order that everyone might appreciate their vigorous hugeness, the prominent veins, and the strong fingers, all this with the naive satisfaction of a ditch-digger. His conversation always turned on feats of strength and before the two artists he strutted as if he belonged to another race, talking of his prowess as a fencer, of his triumphs in the bouts, of the weights he could lift with the slightest effort, of the number of chairs he could jump ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... experience before you take it upon yourselves to shove a veteran into the ditch," said Marcy loftily. "I've been in the service ever since President Davis issued his call for privateers. You've heard of the Osprey, haven't you? ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... votaries could endure; but all must yield, or rather, all must accumulate, ere our conceptions can approach to the German. America and the British colonies round off the picture, adding Cherokees, Redmen and Mongolians ad libitum. The Jew whether in Hounds ditch, Paris Hamburgh, or Constantinople, ever inhales the choicest growths, and the Mussulman's 'keyf' is proverbial. India and Persia dispute with us the palm of refinement and intensity, but the philosopher of Australia is embarrassed when he ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... place I have seen here. The multitude of small gardens and orangeries, among the huge masses of fortifications, many of them seeming almost as thick as the gardens inclosed by them are broad. Pomegranate in (beautiful secicle) flower. Under a bridge over a dry ditch saw the largest prickly pear. Elkhorns for trunk, and then its leaves—but go and look and look.—(Hard rain.) We sheltered in the Botanic Garden; ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... valley bottom, led us up to the high road on the ridge; and there, peering out cautiously, I spied the backs of a rebel company posted across it, a bare two hundred yards away towards Lostwithiel. Their ranks parted and I had time enough, and no more, to push Margery into the ditch and fling myself beside her among the brambles before a team of horses swept by at a gallop, with a cannon bumping on its carriage behind them and dragging a long cloud ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... each homestead, follows in such rapid succession as to give it a continuous line, in appearance, to the passers-by on the steamer. These, denuded of timber to the last tree, the immense fields, only separated by a ditch, or fence, which spread along the river—all greened with the luxuriant sugar-cane, and other crops, growing so vigorously as at once to satisfy the mind that the richness of the soil is supreme—and this scene extending for one hundred and fifty miles, makes it unapproachable by any other cultivated ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... storming with a troop of horse a camp intrenched behind logs and brushwood. He was no doubt amazed at the stupidity of General Howe in issuing such an order, but he attempted to carry it out with his usual courage. He did succeed in floundering over the logs with his troops, but he came to a ditch that was too wide for his horses to leap, and too deep to be ridden through. At this moment he and his men were saluted with a heavy fire from the enemy, and they were compelled to retire in confusion. In this attempt Elijah Clarke was shot through ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the interstices between the upright bamboos; the ends being fixed firmly in the ground inside, while the sharpened points projected like a row of bayonets, at a height of some two feet above the edge of the ditch. ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... speech on divorce and then, to quote Miss Anthony's own words, "As usual when she had fired her gun she went home and left me to finish the battle." In this case it lasted several days, but Mrs. Stanton knew she could count upon her friend to defend her to the last ditch. Miss Anthony was always on the skirmish line. She would interview the married women who could not leave home and children, get their approval of her plans and then go to the front. Once or twice a year she would gather her hosts for a big battle, but the rest of the time she did ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... C's camp was, on the left side of the road as you faced the works, we soon after began the construction of a fort, called Fort Warren. It was four hundred feet square, strongly and carefully constructed. When finished, the ditch must have been twelve feet deep. The rebels did not get the range of our position at first, but annoyed us a good deal at times by pitching shells around at a venture. In a few days they would strike the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... 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
... instinct to the highest exercise of reason,—from apes and baboons to Bacons and Newtons. The blind lead the blind;—the unseeing law operates on the unperceiving creatures; and they go, not together into the ditch, but direct onwards, straight as an arrow, and higher and higher ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... He clenched his fists, and made for his adversary, head down, in the futile Italian fashion. The Englishman stepped aside, landed a left-handed blow behind his ear, and followed it up with a tremendous kick, which sent the fellow upon his face in the ditch under the rocks. Clare looked on, and her eyes brightened singularly, for she had fighting blood in her veins. The man seemed stunned, and lay still where he had fallen. Johnstone turned to the fallen mule, which lay ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... space, our leader bade us in a low voice be careful and follow him closely. We did so and crossed in this way and in single file a narrow plank or wooden bridge; but whether water ran below or a dry ditch only, I could not determine. My mind was taken up at the moment with the discovery which I had just made, that the dark building, looming huge and black before us with a single light twinkling here and there at great heights, was the ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... thing as belief, and one uses up one's heart, one's body, one's beauty, little by little; one is feared like a beast of prey, scorned like a pariah, surrounded by people who always take more than they give; and one fine day one dies like a dog in a ditch, after having ruined ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... always tumbles into the ditch himself Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed She declined to be ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... told them that he was Lord of the Sabbath day. Here he shows too, that he was with his [38]disciples passing to the synagogue to teach; they ask him if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath day. He asks them if they had a sheep fall into the ditch on the Sabbath, if they would not haul him out? How much better then is a man than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days; and immediately healed the man with a withered hand. Matt. ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... excused herself by saying it was natural to be frightened for any human creature. But, on the other hand, Tom Isdall was a human creature, and she had seen him last week actually thrown from his horse, and had not felt much concern. But then he was not a friend; and he fell into a soft ditch: and there was something ridiculous in it which prevented people from caring about it. With such nice casuistry she went on pretty well; and besides, she was so innocent—so ignorant, that it was easy for her to be deceived. She went on, telling herself that she loved ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... outlying settlements against Indians is a ditch six feet wide and as much deep; but a ditch of this width can be easily leapt, both by men on horseback and on foot. The ditch, too, would itself serve as a shelter, as active men could have no difficulty in getting out of it, and could surround the house by creeping along the bottom of the ditch, ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... having caught one of the Waldenses, bit his right ear off, saying, I will carry this member of that wicked heretic with me into my own country, and preserve it as a rarity. He then stabbed the man and threw him into a ditch. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... approach an unpleasant task in much the same condition as a runner who begins his start such a long distance away that by the time he reaches his objective point—the ditch or the stream which is to test his agility—he is too exhausted to jump across. Worry not only saps vitality and wastes energy, but it also seriously affects the quality of one's work. It cuts down ability. A man can not get the highest quality of efficiency into his ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... talked loudly and rudely, and, so far as Hugh could hear, both coarsely and unamusingly. They laughed boisterously, they made offensive remarks about humble people who passed them. It was the height of humour to push each other unexpectedly into the ditch at the side of the road, and then their laughter became uproarious. It was harmless enough, but it was all so ugly and insolent, that Hugh thought that he had seldom seen anything which was so singularly and supremely unattractive. The performance seemed to have no merit ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... light open buggies whirled 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 ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... light compared with that which the Nationalists would have on hands. I am aware that, at the time when we were all talking at concert pitch on the Irish Question, a good deal was said about dying in the last ditch by men who at the threat of any real trouble would be found more discreetly perched upon the first fence. But those who know the temper and fighting qualities of the working-men opponents of Home Rule in the North are under no ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... and her father had been as far as the fields that lay around the town; it was early spring, and she had gathered some of the hedge and ditch flowers, dog-violets, lesser celandines, and the like, with an unspoken lament in her heart for the sweet profusion of the South. Her father had left her to go into Milton upon some business; and on the road home she met her humble friends. The girl looked ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the Sugar Loaf to attack the Forts that are on that side of the Entrance into the Bay, the first of which is Seated under the foot of the Sugar Loaf on a low Isthmus which joyns the Peninsula or point of the Bay with the Land of the Sugar Loaf. It appears to be a square of Stone Work without a Ditch, with Bastions and furnished with Cannon. A little within this fort are 2 battrys of 5 or 6 Guns each. They are designed to play upon Shipping, but neither these battrys or the Fort are out of ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... of that deep, intense emerald hue, which denotes the presence of stagnant water, surrounded by willows at regular distances, and like the garden, separated from the common by a wide, moat-like ditch. That is the parish workhouse. All about it is solid, substantial, useful;—but so dreary! so cold! so dark! There are children in the court, and yet all is silent. I always hurry past that place as if it were a prison. Restraint, sickness, age, extreme poverty, misery, which I have no power to ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... with easy-going manners which would have made the threatened deluge seem of no consequence. "We shall have a first-rate run. A pity you didn't go with us. Have you ever tried your little chestnut at a ditch? you ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... at the total, some may think that the cost of the Industrial Canal is large. So it is—compared with the cost of an irrigation ditch through a 20-acre farm. But comparing the cost with the wealth it is invested to produce—has already begun to produce—it dwindles to a mere percentage. And a comparison of construction costs on the Industrial Canal with similar work done elsewhere during ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... at the offender, her lips rounded into a long-drawn "s-o," the light of anticipated revenge danced in her eyes. At last she knew what to do, O most honorable but very ugly cat! She would throw her into the ditch, where great crawling frogs with popping eyes would stick out long tongues; where flying things would sting, and creeping things would bite; where the great tide would come later and take her out to the big, ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... the gentleman addressed as Luke Sturgis. "And show me the man as ain't cur'ous" he said, with a wink, "and I'll show you the man as is good at a plough and inwalable at a ditch, and wery near worth his weight in gold at gapping a hedge, and mucking up a horse-midden, and catching them nasty moles wot ruin the county worse nor ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... admitted the bolting Senator, "but my back is to the wall and I'll die in the last ditch, going down with flags flying, and from the mountain top of Democracy, hurling defiance at the foe, soar on the wings of triumph, regardless of the party lash that barks at ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Once we met four young elephants, and an old one that played with them, lifting them up with her trunk; they grew enraged on a sudden, and ran upon us: we had no way of securing ourselves but by flight, which, however, would have been fruitless, had not our pursuers been stopped by a deep ditch. The elephants of AEthiopia are of so stupendous a size, that when I was mounted on a large mule I could not reach with my hand within two spans of the top of their backs. In Abyssinia is likewise found the rhinoceros, a mortal enemy to the elephant. In the province of Agaus has been seen the ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... 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 ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of China in this middle period of its existence. His description of the great palace of Kublai, near his capital city of Kambalu, much the largest royal residence in the world, is of sufficient interest to be given in epitome. The palace grounds included a great park, enclosed by a wall and ditch eight miles square, with an entrance gate midway of each side. Within this great enclosure of sixty-four square miles was an open space a mile broad, in which the troops were stationed, it being bounded on the interior by a second wall six miles square. This space, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... concealed moisture. By sinking a shallow well only a few feet deep among the willows, water was struck as it flowed through coarse gravel over a buried ledge of rock that forced the water up nearly to the surface only to sink again in the sand without being seen. A ditch was dug to the well from below and an iron pipe laid in the trench, through which the water is conducted into a reservoir ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... Old Man Wisner—that's the reason," says he. "You see, it's his money that they are working with now," says he. "Their new ditch has cost them more than four times what the engineer said it would—a ditch always does. They've been wasting the water, like grangers always do, and they're fighting among themselves. These States people has to learn how to farm all over again when they go out into that sort of country. ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... luxuriously one against the other. But his plans required more than this, for he had read enough to know that in the United States one is often taken at one's own estimate, and that if he wasn't to find a job as a ditch-digger, he must make a good appearance. And so it was now time to make use of the one Grand Ducal possession remaining to him, a gold ring set with a gorgeous ruby that had once belonged to his father. This ring he had always worn and had removed from his finger at Ushan, in the fear that its magnificence ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... the meantime had gone back to Galway, and Mr. Robert Morris had been murdered. Soon after the death of Mr. Morris the man had been killed as he was mending the ditch, and Captain Clayton found that the tone of the people was varied in the answers which they made to his inquiries. They were astounded, and, as it were, struck dumb with surprise. Nobody knew anything, nobody had heard anything, nobody ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... when the trees wave their arms and shake themselves so violently they are saying to each other something like this: 'See how these good-for-nothing children go in good-for-nothing boats over this good-for-nothing ditch.'" ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... different achievements. What should be the result of such a course? When a horse has run away, and the two flustered people in the gig have each possessed themselves of a rein, we know the end of that conveyance will be in the ditch. So, when I see a raw youth and a green girl, fluted and fiddled in a dancing measure into that most serious contract, and setting out upon life's journey with ideas so monstrously divergent, I am not surprised that some make shipwreck, but ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was in my thirteenth year monitor of the playground, when one Dillon, a scion of a titled family, hunted and killed a stray dog there, and much to their credit for humanity a number of other boys hunted and pelted him into a dry ditch or vallum, dug for the leaping-pole under a Captain Clias who taught us athletics. I was technically responsible for this open insult offered to Hibernian nobility, however well disposed to look another way ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... small redoubts, facing west. The fort contained ample barracks for the garrison of three hundred men who occupied it, with bomb proofs in which they could take refuge, in the event of a siege. Beyond the moat, a glacis sloped down to another ditch. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... diameter. These are equally strong, with the peculiarity that if you fire cannon at them the bamboos yield, admit the shot, and then close again. If these stockades are not close to the river side, they usually have a deep ditch round them, and are further protected by what was more serious to us than the escalading, which were abbatis of pointed bamboos, stuck in a slanting direction in the ground. The slight wounds made by these bamboos brought on lock-jaw, and too often terminated fatally. In the attacks ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... 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 ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... out a little car a short time ago. But, alas! it had not been chosen with judgment, and is no use. It has been rather a bother to me, and now it must go back. Mr. Carlile drove it up from Dunkirk, and it broke down six times, and then had to be left in a ditch while he got another car to tow it home. Since then it has ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... class of foods. He is not to ask his servant, the stomach, whether it is willing to do the work of transformation. He is to give it the work to do. The stomach will do it, unless that particular digestive function is lost. It is claimed by some who know more about ditch-digging than about physiology, that alcoholic beverages ruin the lining of the stomach, creating ulcers, and other disorders. This kind of teaching reminds me of a conundrum. 'Why is a scientific temperance man like a dead man in his coffin?' Who ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... cannot tell; Nor do I know his name. Or poor, or rich? I don't mind which; Or learning Latin, or digging ditch; I love ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... as Wherstead! in which Parish my Family resided from about 1822 to 1835, at a large Square House on the hill opposite to the Vicarage. I know no more of Mr. Zincke than his Books, which are very good, I think: there is a bit concerning Hodge the English Labourer's inward thoughts as he works in a ditch through a Winter's Day, that is—a piece of Shakespeare. It is one of my few recital pieces: and I was quoting it the other day to two People, who wondered they had never observed it in the Book it came from, which is 'Egypt under the Pharaohs,' ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch and surveyed the dog with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... of it. At last we came again within sound of the sea. There was moonlight, though not much; and by this I could see the three huge towers and broken battlements of Tantallon, that old chief place of the Red Douglases. The horse was picketed in the bottom of the ditch to graze, and I was led within, and forth into the court, and thence into a tumble-down stone hall. Here my conductors built a brisk fire in the midst of the pavement, for there was a chill in the night. My hands were loosed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so that he could pick at the ear and get the corn. Guido watched the sparrow clear the ear, then he moved, and the sparrows flew back to the copse, where they chattered at him for disturbing them. There was a ditch between the corn and the copse, and a streamlet; he picked up a stone and threw it in, and the splash frightened a rabbit, who slipped over the bank and into a hole. The boughs of an oak reached out across to the corn, and made so pleasant a shade that ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... jingalls and muskets. As the enemy's shot were flying somewhat thickly about us, it would never have done to halt. Captain Tarleton, therefore, having found a native, who, for a bribe, undertook to show the way, pushed on along the causeway till the city ditch was reached. Here it was seen that, on one side of the gateway, part of the wall had tumbled down. Halting for an instant to gain breath, Captain Tarleton singing out, 'On, my lads!' away all hands dashed right up to the wall, and, scrambling over it like cats, jumped down inside, to the great astonishment ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... seventh resolves, this last-ditch effort made no difference. The public printer, conservative Joseph Royle of the Virginia Gazette, refused to publish the resolves at all. What went into print outside the colonies were the four true resolves, plus the three spurious ones, often made more radical in tone as they ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... to find ourselves reposing in a ditch before the day is over,' retorted Bessie. 'I hope you—or the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... women, I saw the old buffalo trails where these great beasts used to march in single file, each walking in the footsteps of the other until they had worn deep their trail. The snows of many winters have cut the trail deep like an irrigating ditch, and when I thought of the buffalo I cried in my heart. I have taken these great chiefs by the hand, I have been glad to meet them; I must now say farewell forever, and my heart is more lonely than when I ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... 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 ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the Poor Boy's sister hid themselves in a ditch near the palace, that the dragon might not see them; but the Poor Boy stationed himself a little behind the gate and waited for the dragon to hurl his club, in order to get near him, for when he no longer had a club he would be obliged ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... had seized him, but to his horror he saw something approach him that made his hair stand on end. He could not at first make it out, but he soon clearly saw that it was a horse that was madly dashing towards him. He had only just time to step on to the ditch, when, horrible to relate, a headless white horse rushed past him. His limbs shook and the perspiration stood out like beads on his forehead. This terrible spectre he saw when close to Tan'rallt, but he dared not turn into the house, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... boy," 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... her House ready to die in the last Ditch rather than yield to the advocates of Immersion. After viewing the Problem in all its Aspects, he and Honey compromised by deciding that the Bairns ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... on his travels to-night," he said, in a low tone. "Easy served with a bed, that lad be; six foot o' dry peat or heath, or a nook in a dry ditch. That lad hasn't slept once in a house this twenty year, and ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... early in the afternoon before Cerignola, a small town on an eminence about sixteen miles from Barleta, where the nature of the ground afforded the Spanish general a favorable position for his camp. The sloping sides of the hill were covered with vineyards, and its base was protected by a ditch of considerable depth. Gonsalvo saw at once the advantages of the ground. His men were jaded by the march; but there was no time to lose, as the French, who, on his departure from Barleta, had been drawn up under the walls of Canosa, were now rapidly ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... while this work was going on, in pulling the briers out of his clothes and flesh, and being thirsty, he went down to a ditch that was near, and drank, taking up the water in his hands. As he drank, he groaned out, "Oh, can it be that ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Vautr. edit. "into the foule sea;" in MS. G, "fowsie;" that is, the fosse, or ditch, which extended round the Castle, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... garrison as might be. About one 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 were erected, so as to ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... all parts of the island, that Knox says, not the running streams alone, but the reservoirs and ponds, "nay, every ditch and little plash of water but ankle deep hath fish in it."[1] But many of these reservoirs and tanks are, twice in each year, liable to be evaporated to dryness till the mud of the bottom is converted into dust, and the clay cleft by the heat into gaping apertures; yet ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... round. In order to give a classical turn to the conversation, the dominie mentioned the name of Isaac Walton and referred to his poor opinion of the chub in the river Lea. "I know the Lea like a book," said Mr. Bigglethorpe, "and a dirty, muddy ditch it has got to be since old Isaac's time. When I was a schoolboy I went there fishing one afternoon with some companions, and caught not a single fish, hardly got a nibble. We were going home disappointed, when we saw a man at the reservoir above the river, near the Lea ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow and unfilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy.... His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English. His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Butterick has been regarded as one of the most promising northern varieties. Reports which seem to be fairly well authenticated are to the effect that this fine tree has since partially died because of having its roots cut in the digging of a ditch. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... Mandarin or City-god. Every fortified city or town in China is surrounded by a wall, ch'eng, composed usually of two battlemented walls, the space between which is filled with earth. This earth is dug from the ground outside, making a ditch, or huang, running parallel with the ch'eng. The Ch'eng-huang is the spiritual official of the city or town. All the numerous Ch'eng-huang constitute a celestial Ministry of Justice, presided over by ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... as France, with so powerful a population. This seems even to be one of the provisions of Providence against ambition, that an invasion of a populous country is the most difficult operation in the world, unless the people welcome the invader. It gives every ditch the character of a fortress, and every man the spirit of a soldier. I recollect no instance in European history, where an established kingdom was conquered by invasion. They all stand at this hour, as they stood a thousand years ago. In France, we found the people without leaders, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... dug in an amazingly short time. It was rough work, but effective, the ditch, about two feet deep and seven or eight feet wide, extending for nearly two hundred feet. On the side of this furthest from the fire Durland now lined up the Scouts, each armed with a branch covered with ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... gaily. After a while he thought he should like to go rather quicker, and so he cried, "Gee up! gee up!" as the man had told him. The horse soon set off at a hard trot, and, before Hans knew what he was about, he was thrown over head and heels into a ditch which divided the fields from the road. The horse, having accomplished this feat, would have bolted off if he had not been stopped by a Peasant who was coming that way, driving a cow before him. Hans soon picked himself up on ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... images that then filled the goldsmith's busy brain, impressed him so pleasantly that he turned, and saw that the damsel was holding a cow by a tether, while it was browsing the rank grass that grew upon the borders of a ditch. ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... here," I said, as I lazily swam to one end, where there were tufts of water weeds, and a kind of natural ditch took off the surplus water into a pool of similar size, a hundred yards away among the trees—a black-looking, overhung place, suggestive of reptiles, and depth, and dead tree-trunks with snaggy boughs ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... Lash, cage, race, buffalo, echo, canto, volcano, portfolio, ally, money, solo, memento, mosquito, bamboo, ditch, chimney, man, Norman,[17] Mussulman, city, negro, baby, calf, man-of-war, attorney, goose-quill, canon, quail, mystery, turkey, wife, body, snipe, knight-errant,[17] donkey, spoonful, aide-de-camp, Ottoman, commander-in-chief, major-general, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... marriage, when he was with his old 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 friend for trial. Tom's only chance is to prove that it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... slopes of the left bank, is surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high, eighteen thick, three thousand fathoms in length, and defended by twenty-nine massive towers, a miserable earthen citadel of five bastions, which commands the Orcha road, and a wide ditch, which serves as a covered way. Some outworks and the suburbs intercept the view of the approaches to the Mohilef and Dnieper gates; they are defended by a ravine, which, after encompassing a great part of the town, becomes deeper ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... said the bishop; "there is a weakness of heart of which you remind me. You are right, too, for that, indeed, is an immense obstacle. The horse afraid of the ditch, leaps into the middle of it, and is killed! The man who trembling crosses his sword with that of another leaves loopholes whereby his enemy has him in ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Lamb, reading this entry in a dolorous tone of voice, "he may well say that. I paid Hoby three guineas for a pair that tore like blotting paper, when I was leaping a ditch to escape a farmer that pursued me with a pitch-fork for trespassing. But why should W. wear boots in Westmoreland? Pray, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... shepherd-physician, who has regard to nothing but pleasing, and his own advantage—since, not to forfeit it, he refrains from using the knife of justice or the fire of ardent charity! But such men do as Christ says: for if one blind man guide the other, both fall into the ditch. Sick man and physician fall into hell. Such a man is a right hireling shepherd, for, far from dragging his sheep from the hands of the wolf, he devours them himself. The cause of all this is, that he ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... edge of this thicket there was a broad ditch, with more mud and dead fern in it than water, a ditch strongly suspected of snakes, and beyond the ditch the fence that enclosed Squire Tempest's domain—an old manor house in the heart of the New Forest. It had been an abbey before the Reformation, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon |
