"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not push on without stopping, and trust to the animals to keep up their strength to the last?" asked Berthold. "They are both good nags and sound in wind, and can manage a pretty broad ditch when pressed at it." ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... ditch when he was dyin', dying in sight of his home. Mine was the only hand that wiped away his tears. I can see only HIS ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... damp and mice seemed to her! After wandering for some time through the most solitary parts of the wood, she absently made her way to the meadows; there she went along until she came to a certain spot where there were some workmen making a ditch to drain the land. She knew without inquiring that the count after inspecting the work for some time had gone off. She waited for a little while to divert attention, and then she went on with a slow step dragging her parasol along ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... invitations to settle in Charleston and Pittsburg, and he had an opportunity to become the president of a college by subscribing to the doctrinal tests required, which he would not do; for "he would sooner die in a ditch than submit to human authority in matters of faith."[45] In June, 1784, he preached in the Brattle Street Church of Boston, and he anticipated becoming its minister; but his pronounced doctrinal position seems to have made that impossible. He also preached in Hingham, and some of the people there ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... to be pounded, and one of the road-makers, with his sledge-hammer in his hand, stops the horse at the last; but my Lady Rackrent was all kilt[21] and smashed, and they lifted her into a cabin hard by, and the maid was found after, where she had been thrown, in the gripe of the ditch, her cap and bonnet all full of bog water, and they say my lady can't live any way.' Thady, pray now is it true what I'm told for sartain, that Sir Condy has made over all to your son Jason?" "All," says I. "All entirely?" says she again. "All entirely," says I. "Then," says she, "that's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... to where the road goes up by the king's summer palace. They were under great hanging beeches and limes. There was a high gray wall, and over it the blossoming fruit boughs hung. In a ditch full of long grass little kids bleated by their mothers. Away on the left went the green fields of colza, and beetroot, and trefoil, with big forest trees here and there in their midst, and, against the blue low line of the far horizon, red mill-sails, ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... Ananda, but a half-brother of Siddhartha), coming that way, saw the carcase lying on the road, and pulled it on one side; but the Bodhisattva, seeing it there, took it by the tail, and tossed it over seven fences and ditches, when the force of its fall made a great ditch. I suspect that the characters in the column have been disarranged, and that we should read {.} {.} {.} {.}, {.} {.}, {.} {.}. Buddha, that is Siddhartha, was at this time ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... staggers on, and gathers up all his courage and strength, and gets close to the dry land, but stumbles withal, and falls head-foremost in such wise, that he cast her on to the bank, but fell into the ditch up to his armpits, and therewithal as he lay there caught at the goodwife, and gat no firm hold of her clothes, but set his miry hand on her knee right ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... brew-house; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and, without any pause or staggering, take this basket on your shoulders: that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in Datchet-Mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch close by ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... did not confine themselves to the conventionally noble and elevated subjects of speculation. They addressed themselves to worms and ditch water in preference to metaphysical subtleties. They agreed with Bacon that the mean and even filthy things deserve study. All this was naturally scorned by the university professors, and the universities consequently played little or no part in the advance of natural ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... garment was an old mantle which the bishop's gardener had lent him at his master's request. They stripped it from him, and throwing him into a ditch full of snow, "There is your place, poor herald of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... to his mouth as he saw the man he was following stop abruptly and begin to climb the bank. He was too close behind to be able to turn back. All he could do was to crouch down in the ditch and "lie low." He heard Jeffreys as he gained the top of the bank sigh wearily; then he seemed to be moving as if in search of a particular spot; and then the lurker's hair stood on end as he heard the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... the danger; but he had no time this year, he said, to complete the fences: the men who tended his sheep might easily keep them from the plantation for this season, and the next spring he purposed to dig such a ditch round the whole as should secure it for ever. He was now extremely busy, making jackets for his sheep, providing willows for his decoy, and gorse and corn for his geese: the geese, of which he had a prodigious flock, were not yet turned ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... LAMACHUS 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 sight ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... "A ditch in the swamp running into the river might drain your piece some. Have to be some dig, but you could afford to do it on a thousand-acre proposition. It's something ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... tower in the middle. Round it are the gardens, and round the gardens, again, there is another line of buildings, which have smaller towers set here and there upon them at intervals. Circling round the outermost walls is a huge, deep ditch, as big and broad as a river. This was once a moat full of water. The water from the Thames ran into it and filled it, and it formed a strong barrier of defence for the Tower, and attacking forces would have found it a difficult matter to swim across that water ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... and New Town flowed an irrigating ditch, which the connecting street crossed by means of an old wooden bridge. The ditch was this night full of swift water, which tore at the button willows on the bank and gurgled against the bridge timbers. As they crossed it the idea came into Ramon's head that if ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... formed in States east of the Rocky Mountains. Imagine an extensive inclosure on the side of a mountain, with its barren-looking soil strewn with rocks of all sizes, from a pebble to a bowlder, cut across by an irrigating ditch or a mountain brook, dotted here and there by sage bushes, and patches of oak-brush, and wild roses, and one has a picture of a Salt Lake pasture. Closely examined, it has other peculiarities. There is no half way in its growths, no shading off, so to speak, as elsewhere; not an isolated shrub, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... but who did his duty with an intolerable mixture of pedantry and rigor*: I was seized with a nervous attack in the middle of the road, and they were obliged to lift me out of my carriage, and lay me down on the side of the ditch. This wretched commissary fancied that this was an occasion to take compassion on me, and without getting out of his carriage himself, he sent his servant to find me a glass of water. I cannot express how angry I felt ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... this time I kept up my lessons at the parsonage and made rapid progress. I surprised even my teacher, who thought me capable of doing anything. I learned to drive, and to leap a fence and ditch on horseback. I taxed every power, hoping some day to hear my father say: "Well, a girl is as good as a boy, after all." But he never said it. When the doctor came over to spend the evening with us, I would whisper in his ear: "Tell my father how fast ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... caprice commanded the bridegroom to appear in drawers at their castle, and plunge into a ditch of mud; and sometimes they were compelled to beat the waters of the ponds to hinder the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... there was a deserter who was three times faithless to his colours. Twice had he undergone the punishment due to desertion; the third time he knew he was face to face with death. So he resolved to flee by night and hide himself by day in some ditch or thicket, for he was afraid that in the daylight he ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... a spiritual gray wafer, fainted in the red wind of a summer morning as the two men leaped a ditch soft with mud. The wall was not high, the escape an easy one. Crouching, their clothes the colour of clay, they trod cautiously the trench, until opposite a wood whose trees blackened the slow dawn. Then, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... I always said that he was sure, sooner or later, to land in the family ditch. He has a right to, of course; the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... law, the bad name that your sister will be having over the head of being in a breach of promise, and all the expenses of solicitors and lawyers. Then, after that, trying to get the money out of us, and, mind you, we will fight you to the last ditch. Won't we, John? ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... inhabited by a lanerly woman, and the door being open he darted in, passing through to the yard behind, where he found himself in an enclosed place, out of which he saw no other means of escape but through a ditch full of water. The depth of it at the time he did not think of, but plunging in, he found himself up to the chin; at that moment he heard the soldiers at hand; so the thought struck him to remain where he ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... other side of the field there was a deep, dry ditch under great curtains of blackberry bushes, which in autumn bore luscious fruit. And by Katie's door, if she would sit in the sun, was a primrose bank, about which the hens stalked and clucked with their long-legged chickens or much prettier ducklings. Katie did not want for playmates. ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... hitherto have been held to comprise the following: a privately owned water supply system formerly operated under contract with the municipality effecting the taking;[640] a right of way across a neighbor's land for the enlargement of an irrigation ditch therein to enable the taker to obtain water for irrigating land that would otherwise remain valueless;[641] a right of way across a placer mining claim for the aerial bucket line of a mining corporation;[642] land, water, and water rights ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Queen's name, how many children 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, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... vigorously pursued. Led by their guide, they soon arrived at the fort. It presented a formidable aspect. In addition to the palisades, a hedge of fallen trees a rod in thickness surrounded the whole intrenchment; outside the hedge there was a ditch wide and deep. There was but one point of entrance, and that was over the long and slender trunk of a tree which had been felled across the ditch, and rested at its farther end upon a wall of logs three or four feet high. A block-house, at ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... interesting," said Monckton. "Mistress, I always like to hear the whole history of every place I stop at, especially from a sensible woman like you, that sees to the bottom of things. Do have another glass. Why, I should be as dull as ditch-water, now, if I had not ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... regions upon the Barwan. We next perceived at a distance, a cloud of dust raised by a numerous herd of cattle, and came upon a water-course, or branch of the Gwydir, called, I believe, the "Meei." As I wanted to cross the Gwydir, I crossed this and continued; met with another deep ditch or channel, four miles beyond the Meei; and, at three miles beyond that, another: none of these resembling the Gwydir I had formerly seen. I had ridden twenty-five miles, and hastened back to meet the carts, and encamped them just ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... name rather of the island of which we have spoken before—but Tinakonk. It lies on the west side of the river, and is separated from the west shore, not as he said, by a wide running branch of the river, as wide as the Eemster, near Amsterdam, but by a small creek, as wide as a large ditch, running through a meadow. It is long and covered with bushes, and inside somewhat marshy. It is about two miles long, or a little more, and a mile and a half wide. Although there are not less miles ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... and at the moment I didn't care greatly where he landed. I was vaguely conscious that he collided head-on with the row of milk-cans, but my main anxiety was to shut off my power, set the brake, point the auto into the ditch, and jump. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... know, is open country. They look; and suddenly down the mountain-side from the big village comes a man of some sort; such a strange man, with such a wonderful head ... that all scream: "Oy, Trishka is coming! Oy, Trishka is coming!" and all run in all directions! Our elder crawled into a ditch; his wife stumbled on the door-board and screamed with all her might; she terrified her yard-dog, so that he broke away from his chain and over the hedge and into the forest; and Kuzka's father, Dorofyitch, ran into the oats, lay down there, and began to cry like a quail. 'Perhaps' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... beautiful. "But that's not what you think of when you see her," they would tell you. "You think, 'What a good sort! She must be great fun!'" And there were some few who would add: "Katie is the kind you would expect to find doing splendid service in that last ditch." ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... place was like so much tinder. There was an easterly breeze too. You can imagine the blaze! We hadn't the faintest chance. Poor, old Iles lost his head completely, and sat down with his feet in a dry ditch and wept. There must be over two hundred acres of it. It's a dreadful eyesore, perfectly barren and useless, but for a little sour grass even a gipsy's donkey has to be hard up before he cares to eat!"—Miss St. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... early we began to steam slowly up the long ditch called the Canal, and at last to the far east we caught a gladdening glimpse of the desert—the wild, waterless Wilderness of Sur, with its waves and pyramids of sand catching the morning rays, with it shadows of mauve, rose pink, and lightest blue, with its plains and rain-sinks, bearing ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... He talks of 'Devolution,' of the concession of a kind of self-government for Ireland. He will struggle for a while against the designation Home Rule, because not so long ago he was declaring that he would die in the last ditch for the union of the three kingdoms, but he will soon be reconciled to it. It will not be very long till the former landlords, whose chief interests lie in Ireland, have ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... that the wealthy mill-owner had killed one of the employees who had gone to see him peaceably and arrange matters for the men. He had thrown him out of the office into one of the new mill excavations and left him there to die like a dog in a ditch. So the story ran all through the tenement district, and in an incredibly swift time the worst elements in Milton were surging toward Mr. Winter's house with murder in their hearts, and the means of accomplishing it in ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... sweet-smelling wild honeysuckle I saw a covey of young quails. These hedgerows of locust and cedar are broken now, but along the old road to the mill and Pohick Church and between fields the scattered trees and now and then a bordering ditch are evidences ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... deserts as individuals regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, or any other consideration which has nothing to do with the individual's merits. One of his favorite figures was that "one cannot hold another in a ditch without himself staying in the ditch." There is not a single right for which he contended for his people which if won would not directly or indirectly benefit all other people. Were they in all the States admitted to the franchise on equal ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... Then, as the furious storm continued, the very seams of the ship seemed to open like pores, to let in the sea, which was knocking and raging without for admittance, till at length the hold became like a ditch, which we rats could ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... and you know it. I just don't want her to know she's being followed. If she can't ditch her shadow, she's likely to try to talk to him and pull out all the stops convincing him that he should ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... forest which covers it, consisting chiefly of white-cedar, black-ash, and other trees that live in excessive moisture, is now decayed and death-struck by the partial draining of the swamp into the great ditch of the canal. Sometimes, indeed, our lights were reflected from pools of stagnant water which stretched far in among the trunks of the trees, beneath dense masses of dark foliage. But generally ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... formerly two outlets from the pond into Vineyard Sound, and some of the old deeds refer to the East and West rivers. There was also a ditch across the marsh, probably through the land now owned ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... government to seize upon, leaving the other three to support the family of the man whose labour had produced them. But what are the facts?—the landlord and the government sweep all away, and the peasant and his family starve by the ditch sides. As an illustration of this condition of things, he quotes from a southern paper an account of an inquest held on the body of a man named Boland, and on the bodies of his two daughters, who, as the verdict declared, had "died of cold ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... unusual in a prospective clergyman, had never heard of the Thirty-nine Articles. He was struck with the architecture of the colleges, and much surprised at the meanness of the houses that surrounded them. He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the Cherwell 'a ditch.' The brilliant dare-devil from Italy despised alike the raw, limitary, reputable, priggish undergraduates and the dull, snuffling, smug-looking, fussy dons. The torpor of academic dulness, indeed, was as irksome ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... 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 ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Bladud met with a single creature to show him the slightest compassion. At length, he was so fortunate as to encounter a shepherd-boy, who appeared in scarcely less distress than himself; for one of the sheep belonging to his flock had fallen into a ditch, the sides of which were so steep that he was unable to ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... 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, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... laws of princes, without making a free trial and examining of the equity of the same, then we could not be punished for doing, unwillingly and in ignorance, things unlawful prescribed by them. Whereas every soul that sinneth shall die; and when the blind leads the blind, he who is lead falls in the ditch ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... no better course for you to take than to dig a deep ditch all around the trees, say three feet wide and as many deep, and just within the outer reach of the limbs, and fill this in with half the earth removed and the other half made up of vegetable matter, ashes, road dirt, and such manure from the barn and stable as you can spare. ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... little jerks, as though his legs were beyond his control. We came then on to the high road, which was so white and clear in the moonlight that it seemed as though the whole Austrian army must instantly whisper to themselves: "Ah, there they are!" and fire. The ditch to our right, as far as I could see, was lined with soldiers, hidden by the hedge behind them, their rifles just pointing on to the white surface of the land. Our guide asked them their division and was answered in a whisper. The soldiers were ghosts: there was no one, save ourselves, alive ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... as all men lie. The truth is that the fox is utterly wearied, that he is at the end of his breath and his courage, ready to fall into the ditch, and that if the greyhound makes ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... now and Armitage sent his horse across the rough ditch at the roadside to get his bearings. The fog seemed at the point of breaking, and the mass about them shifted and drifted ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... by, (p. 423) And there they made a doleful cry; And all they cried at once then, 'Have mercy on us, ye English men!' Our men gave them some of their bread, Though they to us were now so quede.[309] Harm to them we did none, But made them again to the ditch gone: And there we kept them all abache, Because they should not see our watch: Many one said they would liefer be slain, Than turn to the city of Rouen again. They went forth with a strong murmuration, And ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Bridewell all descend, (As morning pray'r and flagellation end) To where Fleet-ditch, with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dykes! than whom, no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin, And who the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... result of its geographical features. The position was of both tactical and strategic importance. In Roman times, however, its tactical value decreased when the great wall was built that stretched with its lines of mound, ditch, stone-rampart, and road, and its series of camps and forts, from near the mouth of the Tyne to Solway Firth. Henceforth the wall marked the debatable frontier, but York never lost its strategic value. It was thus used by the Romans, William I., Edward I., ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... lady nodded her head in assent. "Nurse, I once saw a robin's nest when I was in England; it was in the side of a mossy ditch, with primroses growing close beside it; it was made of green moss, and lined with white wool and hair; it was a pretty nest, with nice eggs in it, much better than your ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... is to be one of the new cards; they say it will please the city,' said Lord Eskdale. 'I suppose they will pick out of hedge and ditch everything that has ever ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... painful efforts she succeeded in forcing herself through the aperture; but her nerves were so much shaken by this unlucky circumstance, that when she had reached the platform, whence a second ladder was to conduct her to the ditch of the fortress, she declared her utter inability to descend it; and she was ultimately folded in a thick cloak, and cautiously lowered down by the joint exertions of her attendants. The Comte de Brienne and M. du Plessis then supported her ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... that the river Paglion should be turned into a new channel, so as to surround the town to the north, and fall into the harbour; that where the Paglion now runs to the westward of the city walls, there should be a deep ditch to be filled with sea-water; and that a fortress should be built to the westward of this fosse. These particulars might be executed at no very great expence; but, I apprehend, they would be ineffectual, as the town is commanded by every hill in the neighbourhood; and the exhalations ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... domain where once the cowboy reigned supreme have been turned into farms by the irrigator's ditch or by the dry-farmer's plan. The farmer in overalls is in many instances his own stockman today. On the ranges of Arizona, Wyoming, and Texas and parts of Nevada we may find the cowboy, it is true, even today: but he is no longer the Homeric figure ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... actually knock a chip off a wall. That was the sole damage done to the Republican position; the damage to the Carlist must have been less. Two of the Miqueletes ventured stealthily down a road leading towards the point from which the nearest jets of smoke curled, following the ditch by the side, stooping and peering through the bushes. There was a volley from afar. They hesitated and stood, as if undecided whether ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... can tell you that in a few words. I have had very little success with the Serbians. They are loyal to their cause and seem determined to fight to the last ditch. But I did get close enough to one man—a member of the general staff—to learn that in the event of reverses to Serbian arms, the Serbian ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... feet deep to be sunk, it has been calculated that this would only be effectual for draining a circle of about 100 yards, the water running down an incline of about 5 to 1; for it was found in the course of draining the bog, that a ditch 3 feet deep only served to drain a space of less than 5 yards on each side, and two ditches of this depth, 10 yards apart, left a portion of the Moss between them scarcely ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... hangman was to give the rope to five fellows, the most popular and devil-may-care rakes and roysterers in the whole town. Beppo was up very early that morning, and at the first streak of light had dropped himself over the wall into the town ditch, and was away for the open country and the free air of the hills; for he knew that neither at home nor in the streets would life be worth living for a week after, because of all the vengeances that would ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... air, as does one at the dentist's. "I hope that you're not afraid I shall run you into a ditch?" I asked, laughing. "I don't believe, after all, it can be any worse than steering a toboggan down a good run, or driving a four-in-hand with one's eyes shut, as I did once for a wager on a road I knew as I knew my ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... lowlands, where I have the pleasure of seeing my cattle, horses, and colts. Exuberant grass replenishes all my fields, the best representative of our wealth; in the middle of that tract I have cut a ditch eight feet wide, the banks of which nature adorns every spring with the wild salendine, and other flowering weeds, which on these luxuriant grounds shoot up to a great height. Over this ditch I have erected a bridge, capable of bearing ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... when all at once I saw before me an abrupt, narrow, deep gully into which the wheels on one side were just upon the point of going down. It flashed across me in an instant that, if I could throw the horse down into the ditch, the wheels of the wagon might, perhaps, rest equipoised on each side, and, perhaps, break the horse ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... assault. They advanced with their usual gallantry, but when they had got within thirty yards of the strong and lofty towers, a destructive fire was opened on them from a crenelated outwork, with a deep ditch in front. In vain the commanding officers looked for some part of the castle which might prove practicable; the muzzles of the enemy's muskets were alone visible through the loop-holes. As the men were falling rapidly without a prospect of success, it became necessary to draw ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... eventually gave old goody Liu a tug on the sly and plied her with minute questions as to who the girl was. The old dame was placed under the necessity of fabricating something for his benefit. "The truth is," she said, "that there stands on the north bank of the ditch in our village a small ancestral hall, in which offerings are made, but not to spirits or gods. There was in former days some official ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was moving along rapidly when they came to a ditch which seemed to divide the rice-field in half. A short pause followed, when along came the cry of "Down!" and every man dropped, and none too soon, for the insurgents had opened up unexpectedly from ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... Cambridge—never was a prettier race seen at Newmarket—Dick must have beat hollow, but a d——d fat alderman who was inside, and felt alarmed at the velocity of the vehicle, moved to the other end of the seat: this destroyed the equilibrium—over they went, into a four-feet ditch, and Joe lost his match. However, he had the satisfaction of hearing afterwards, that the old cormorant who occasioned his loss, had nearly burst himself by ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Manila—fishermen, canoemen, day labourers, etc.—live principally in the ward of Tondo, where dwellings with thatched roofs were allowed to be constructed. In the wet season the part of this ward nearest to the city was simply a mass of pollution. The only drainage was a ditch cut around the mud-plots on which the huts were erected. Many of these huts had pools of stagnant water under them for months, hence it was there that the mortality from fever was at its maximum ratio in the dry season when evaporation commenced. Half ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... complete. How Protestant England ousted Catholic Spain from the command of the ocean, and made it Britannia's realm, was a story which he loved to tell. "The young King," Henry VIII., "like a wise man, turned his first attention to the broad ditch, as he called the British Channel, which formed the natural defence of the kingdom." It was "the secret determined policy of Spain to destroy the English fleet, pilots, masters, and sailors, by means of the Inquisition." ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... under such conditions, and while the more advanced skaters cut figures, or even essayed a game of hockey, the spectators circled round and round, looking admiringly at their exploits. At one end of the field was a slight ditch, or rather undulation in the ground, which when frozen over afforded a source of unending amusement, being as good as a switchback itself. Daring skaters went at it with a dash which brought them safely up the incline ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... they suggested motoring, and after a meal I started on what seemed a first rate car. But we had a breakdown lasting an hour, a dozen miles out of Glasgow, and then, running down Garelochside in the face of the storm, we smashed into the ditch. After making sure that the car was hopeless, I left the man at a wayside cottage and tramped the rest of the way. Hence my late arrival, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... 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; yet reached ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... hath tumbled himself into some corner, Some ditch, to snore away his drunkenness Into the sober headache,—Nature's moral Against excess. Let the Great Seal be sent ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... party searching in the ditch of the fort in case any treasure should have been buried there, as he had ordered it should be in event of danger, and while this was going on he walked along the coast for a few miles to visit a spot which he thought might be suitable ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... thus addressed, replied, 'Because in getting up from the ditch thou hast opened the water-course, thenceforth shalt thou be called Uddalaka as a mark of thy preceptor's favour. And because my words have been obeyed by thee, thou shalt obtain good fortune. And all the Vedas shall shine in thee ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Our last stage was from Fire Hole Basin to Madison Valley, 45 m. It was hell. Didn't see the sun but once after Feb. 1, and it stormed insessant, making short sights necessary, and with each one we would have to dig a hole to the ground and often a ditch or a tunnel through the snow to look through. The snow was soft to the bottom and ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... less a city than a fortified camp. The walls equipped with towers and pierced by a hundred gates of brass were so thick that a chariot might be driven on them. All around the wall was a large, deep ditch full of water, with its sides lined with brick. The houses of the city were constructed of three or four stories. The streets intersected at right angles. The bridge and docks of the Euphrates excited admiration; the fortified palace also, and the hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... and, thinking to take it, he set a trap at the spot, tying it securely to a root and covering it over with dead leaves. On going to the place the next morning he could see nothing until his feet were on the very edge of the ditch, when with startling suddenness a big dog fox sprang up at him with a savage snarl. It was caught by a hind-leg, and had been lying concealed among the dead leaves close under the bank. Caleb, angered at ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... scent! At fault none losing heart!—but all at work! None leaving his task to another!—answering The watchful huntsman's cautions, check, or cheer. As steed his rider's rein! Away they go How close they keep together! What a pack! Nor turn, nor ditch, nor stream divides them—as They moved with one intelligence, act, will! And then the concert they keep up!—enough To make one tenant of the merry wood, To list their ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... was falling from above and sometimes rose from below. The horse was evidently exhausted, his hair had all curled up from sweat and was covered with hoar-frost, and he went at a walk. Suddenly he stumbled and sat down in a ditch or water-course. Vasili Andreevich wanted to stop, but ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... form of government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding, ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in their proper seasons. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... say much of the Y.M.C.A. They need no encomium of mine, but I am prepared to stand by them to the last ditch. They were doing, not talking, and were wise enough to use even those agents whom they knew to be imperfect, as God Himself does when He uses us. The folly of judging for all cases by one standard is common and human, but it is not God's way. This conviction ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... lending you a hand, and you now in the last ditch, with Dolliver riding on you and me all the time. It don't go. You hear me, it don't go. Dolliver couldn't cough up eleven dollars to save you. Let him get off and walk, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you the railway nickels for four days—that's ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... bravery of the 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 them, so ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... 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 ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... beasts who have their eyes deep in their head best see far off? A. Because the force and power by which we see is dispersed in them, and both go directly to the thing which is seen. Thus, when a man doth stand in a deep ditch or well, he doth see in the daytime the stars of the firmament; because then the power of the night and of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... it is today, only at that time they were crude adobe structures. Surrounding these was a wall fourteen feet high, made of huge upright and horizontal saplings plastered with mud, and as a further means of protection, a wide ditch was dug on the outside. Here Luis Argueello was Comandante ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... became lazy and stupid when lesson-time arrived, was destined to pay dearly for neglecting to imitate her parents. Lagging behind the rest of the family, as in single file they moved homeward after a long night's hunting in the fallow, she chanced to scent some carrion in the ditch, turned aside to taste it, and immediately was held fast in the teeth of an iron trap. Hearing her cries of pain and terror, the mother hastened to the spot, and, for a moment, was so bewildered with disappointment and anger that she chastised the cub unmercifully, though the little creature ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... knew. And while I sewed my cheap holokus on that crazy machine, he bought land with the money—the upper Nahala lands, you know—a bit at a time, each purchase a hard-driven bargain, his face the very face of poverty. To-day the Nahala Ditch alone pays me forty ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... strand of the St. Charles, from the great cliff called the Saut au Matelot to the palace of the intendant. At this latter point began the line of works constructed by Frontenac to protect the rear of the town. They consisted of palisades, strengthened by a ditch and an embankment, and flanked at frequent intervals by square towers of stone. Passing behind the garden of the Ursulines, they extended to a windmill on a hillock called Mt. Carmel, and thence to the brink of the cliffs in front. Here there was a battery of eight guns near the present Public ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... it was pleasant to listen to the roar of the breakers on the bar, but not so cheerful was the thought of facing the high waves seaward. Therefore the plan suggested itself of sufficiently deepening a ditch that led through the marshes from New River to Bogue Sound, to let us through; thence we could sail inland the rest of the voyage without obstruction or hindrance of any kind. To this end we set about contrivances to heave the canoe over the shoals, and borrowed a shovel from a friendly ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... saves a lot of wear and tear to know 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
... week. With two stone less and a Calyx-eyed saddle-bar, he would have shown up even better. Whenever the barometer goes up two points Catawampus must be remembered. He was foaled in a ditch on the old North Road, somewhere between London and York, and having remained there or thereabouts for a month, may be considered a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... are not surprised when we find men and women naturally vulgar going into transgression. We expect that people who live in the ditch shall have the manners of the ditch; but how shocking when we find sin appended to superior education and to the refinements of social life. The accomplishments of Mary Queen of Scots make her patronage of Darnley, the profligate, the more appalling. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... other side of the moat were two 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
... two o'clock in the afternoon. I had watched these beasts at their feverish exercises for nearly an hour before I perceived that they were gradually hemming me in. They seemed to be forming up, in ranks, on the garth. Only a ditch separated us—I was in the cloister-walk, a hundred-and-three gaunt, expectant, desperate cats facing me. Their famished pale eyes pierced me through and through; and two-hundred-and-two hungry eyes (four cats supported life in one apiece) is more than I can stand, though I am a married ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 steering ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... supporters of that statute are the words of David, in regard to some politician of his own day: "Behold he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate;" and then he adds, "I will praise the Lord." So also let the Christian bless and magnify HIM, who by his infinite wisdom ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... laid down by Dalrymple. The small Dutch fort, or intrenchment, stands rather on the eastern bight of the bay, and is composed of a few huts, surrounded by a ditch and green bank. Two guns at each corner compose its strength, and the garrison consists of about thirty Dutchmen and a few Javanese soldiers. We were cordially and hospitably received by the officers, and, after a great deal of trouble and many excuses, here procured ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... wire net. Every pasture was a square swamp with a ditch around, and a wire net. Yu've heard the mournful, mixed-up sound a big bunch of cattle will make? Well, seh, as yu' druv from the railroad to the Tulare frawg ranch yu' could hear 'em a mile. Springtime they'd sing like ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... a dead weight. Whenever Ranger quickened his gait or crossed a ditch she held on to the pommel to keep from falling off. Her mind harbored only sensations of misery, and a persistent thought—why did she ever leave home for the West? Her solicitude for Bo had been forgotten. Nevertheless, any marked change in the topography of the ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... very dark. Ferruccio had returned weary, muddy, with his jacket torn, and the livid mark of a stone on his forehead. He had engaged in a stone fight with his comrades; they had come to blows, as usual; and in addition he had gambled, and lost all his soldi, and left his cap in a ditch. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... undertaking, he set to work to build a wall across the isthmus; thus keeping his soldiers at once from idleness, and his foes from forage. This great and difficult work he perfected in a space of time short beyond all expectation, making a ditch from one sea to the other, over the neck of land, three hundred furlongs long, fifteen feet broad, and as much in depth, and above it built a wonderfully high and strong wall. All which Spartacus at first slighted and despised, but when provisions began to fail, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... place. The road bent round to the right, but they kept straight on over a broad grass path for twenty yards, and there in front of them was the green. A dry ditch, ten feet wide and six feet deep, surrounded it, except in the one place where the path went forward. Two or three grass steps led down to the green, on which there was a long wooden beach for the benefit ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... irritating if none the less humorous. It is said, for instance, that in some places newly married couples were compelled to vault the wall of the churchyard, and that on certain nights the peasants were obliged to beat the castle ditch in order to rest the lord's family from the dismal croaking ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Colambre's attention was roused again, by seeing a man running, as if for his life, across a bog, near the roadside; he leaped over the ditch, and was upon the road in an instant. He seemed startled at first, at the sight of the carriage; but, looking at the postillion, Larry nodded, and he smiled ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... souls to joy! See how their coursers, than the mountain roe More fleet, the verdant carpet skim; thick clouds Snorting they breathe; their shining hoofs scarce print The grass unbruised; when emulation fired, They strain, to lead the field, top the barred gate, O'er the deep ditch exulting bound, and brush The thorny-twining hedge; the riders bend O'er their arched necks; with steady hands, by turns Indulge their speed, or moderate their rage. Where are their sorrows, disappointments, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... sometimes on his box if I have him out too soon after lunch, and has upset me twice within the last year—once last winter out of a sleigh, and once this summer, when the horses shied at a bicycle, and bolted into the ditch on one side of the chaussee (German for high road), and the bicycle was so terrified at the horses shying that it shied too into the ditch on the other side, and the carriage was smashed, and the bicycle was smashed, and we were all ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... perverting the truth or deliberately imposing upon the credulity of the public. Some—perhaps all of them, are men of sincerity and probity; but, deluded themselves, they help to delude others. Their vision is imperfect; and 'if the blind lead the blind,' we may expect to find them in the same ditch together. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... miles from Moscow, was surrounded by a brick wall thirty feet high and eighteen feet thick at the base, with loopholed battlements. This wall formed a semicircle of about three miles and a half, the ends resting on the river. It was strengthened by thirty towers, and at its forts was a deep dry ditch. The town was largely built of wood. There were no heavy guns upon the walls, and the city, which was completely commanded by surrounding hills, was in no way defensible, but Barclay de Tolly felt ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... making detours, be careful always to keep the moon to your left, so that your shadow may be thrown on the right—a little slanting—just as you are at this moment. Moreover, when you have started, never draw bridle till you have reached the house of Don Mariano de Silva. If you meet a ditch, or brake, or ravine, cross them in a direct line, and don't attempt ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and purred down a lane. Billie reached out a hand and grabbed at the steering wheel. "Of course, if you want to smash up in a ditch!" said Sam, righting the car with ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... heed that. Rain and tempest affect him not; the glaring heat of summer, the bitter frost of winter are alike to him. He is built up like an oak. Believe it, the man that from his boyhood has stood ankle-deep in the chill water of the ditch, patiently labouring with axe and bill; who has trudged across the furrow, hand on plough, facing sleet and mist; who has swung the sickle under the summer sun—this is the man for the trenches. This is the man whom neither the snows of the North nor the sun of the South can vanquish; ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... exposed to Iroquois incursions. The fortifications of all this family of tribes were, like their dwellings, in essential points alike. A situation was chosen favorable to defence,—the bank of a lake, the crown of a difficult hill, or a high point of land in the fork of confluent rivers. A ditch, several feet deep, was dug around the village, and the earth thrown up on the inside. Trees were then felled by an alternate process of burning and hacking the burnt part with stone hatchets, and by similar means were cut into lengths to form ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? ["Go on!"] You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thee, beast, or in what roadside ditch Lord Tristram found thee as he fled away This morning through the Morois from a man Who called upon ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... my own opinions. The charge was not prudently chosen, since, of all men now obtaining any portion of popular regard, I am pretty well known to be precisely the one who cares least either for hedge or ditch, when he chooses to go across country. It is certainly true that I have not the least mind to pin my heart on my sleeve, for the daily daw, or nightly owl, to peck at; but the essential reason for my not telling ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... stopped at the side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass. Sam immediately rushed up, lay down at my feet, and lifted up my hand with his muzzle ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... "Now we must be very careful, for it is pitch dark and banisters are unknown in Uargla. Ah, now I know where the pathway comes from. It is a ditch which gets ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... that he thought that was only natural, and turned his attention to the more congenial task of passing a cart of hay; it was a matter of some difficulty, for the road was narrow, and there was a ditch ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... upon one another, and the great ditches which run on the plains and elsewhere so many miles, were (not unlikely) their boundaries, and withall served for defence against the incursion of their enemies, as the Picts' Wall, Offa's Ditch, and that in China; to compare small things to great. Their religion is at large described by Csesar; their priests were the Druids. Some of their temples I pretend to have restored; as Anbury, Stonehenge, &c., as also British sepulchres. Their ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... 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 ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... gaily to a herdsman visible in the distance, and joyously obedient to the girl's evidently familiar voice, the young fellow came running towards us, garrocha in hand. Between him and the hedge which separated the two properties, was a deep ditch which no bull, save in a state of fury, would care to jump. But not far away a long plank lay half hidden in rich grass, and the ganadero dragged it nearer, without a question, as if he knew already what was expected of him. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... new saddle-pad on the mare, the butts of the terrets would not have worked through the worn leather, and the old pad into the mare's withers, when she was coming home at two o'clock in the morning. She would not have reared, bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, and sent Platte flying over an aloe-hedge on to Mrs. Larkyn's well-kept lawn; and this tale would never have been written. But the mare did all these things, and while Platte was rolling over and over on the turf, like a shot rabbit, the watch and guard flew from his waistcoat—as ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Lesseps, the maker of the Suez Canal, had undertaken to excavate a similar one across the Isthmus of Panama, but the work was managed with such wild extravagance that vast sums were spent and the poor investors widely ruined, while the canal remained a half-dug ditch. At a later date this affair became a great scandal, dishonest bargains in connection with it were abundantly unearthed, bribery was shown to have been common in high places, and France was shaken to its center by the startling ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... obliged to crawl on his hands and feet to avoid being observed by the sentinels. In such a situation he was hindered and wounded by briers and thorns, and at last was obliged to hide himself in a dry ditch from his pursuers. They were, indeed, misled by the servants at the Castle, who, upon their inquiring for the fugitive, declared that he had gone away on horseback. The officers however on their return to Crieff, where they were quartered, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... you should ask leave now." Graham answered, "I would not, sir, only my brother is wounded, and he is in that out-building there, which has just caught fire." Laying down his musket, Graham ran to the blazing spot, lifted up his brother, and laid him in a ditch. Then he was back at his post, and was plying his musket against the French again, before his absence was noticed, except ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the bridge cost does not include the L5,830 spent in altering and filling up the Fleet Ditch, or the L2,167 the cost of the temporary wooden bridge. The piers, of bad Portland stone, were decorated by some columns of unequal sizes, and the line of parapet was low and curved. The approaches to the bridge were also designed by ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Buller was about to operate. It had never been systematically surveyed, and the existing maps had been constructed for agricultural rather than for campaigning purposes, and could not be trusted. The Tugela formed the ditch of a natural fortress covering Ladysmith. On its left bank rose an almost continuous ridge or rampart from which the easy open ground on the right bank could be watched for miles, and reconnaissances ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... unique; for while the toad tadpoles wriggled their way free from egg gelatine deposited in the water itself, the Redfins were literally rained down. Within a folded leaf the parents left the eggs—a leaf carefully chosen as overhanging a suitable ditch, or pit, or puddle. If all signs of weather and season failed and a sudden drought set in, sap would dry, leaf would shrivel, and the pitiful gamble for life of the little jungle frogs would be lost; the spoonful of froth would collapse bubble by bubble, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... remarkable preservation from danger. Our postillion being a little sleepy, had not sufficient care of the reins, and the horses suddenly turned off towards an inn, but missing the turn, instantly fell into a deep ditch, one horse quite down, and the other nearly so; the carriage wanted only a few inches further to go, and then it would have come upon the horses, so that a few plunges must have upset the whole concern. We sprang instantly out, and set the quiet animals free. The man was so frightened he ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... had been erected on each side of what was to be the main street of the camp. A ditching machine pantingly laboured on one side of the road and dug as much in a day as fifty men. In the ditch already made on the other side pipes had been laid ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... magnificent whip, and the accidents which happened to the kaiser, while out driving with him, were merely due to the fact that in each case the horses were too young, and not sufficiently broken in. On one occasion, the drag was upset into a ditch not far from Schlobitten, the kaiser and the count being severely bruised and shaken up; while at another time a splendid team got beyond the control of the count, smashed harnesses and pole, and dashed helter-skelter into the little town of Proeckelwitz, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... retired in disorder, some towards Gavardo, others towards the lake, hotly followed by the French. In the pursuit towards Gavardo, Bonaparte's old friend, Junot, distinguished himself by his dashing valour. He wounded a colonel, slew six troopers, and, covered with wounds, was finally overthrown into a ditch. Such is Bonaparte's own account. It is gratifying to know that the wounds neither singly nor collectively were dangerous, and did not long repress Junot's activity. A tinge of romance seems, indeed, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... rankled there like a ceaseless warning and prophecy. When she reached home that day she went down to the spring in the centre of the village, and stood a long time looking at the bubbling water. It was indeed a priceless treasure; a long irrigating ditch led from it down into the bottom, where lay the cultivated fields,—many acres in wheat, barley, and vegetables. Alessandro himself had fields there from which they would harvest all they needed for the horses and their cow all winter, in case pasturage failed. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... situated on the edge of an extensive tract of marsh,—lagoon would be a more descriptive word for it, perhaps,—a splashy, ditch-divided district, extending along the borders of a lake for miles. Snipe-shooting was my motive there; and dull work it was in those dark, Novembry, October days, with "the low rain falling" half the time, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... light except that of the public lamps was now showing. It fell sharply as he emerged into the open country, and then abruptly ceased. The odor of dust that has been partially moistened rose from the roadway; some dead leaves scurried in the ditch with a sound of small animals running for shelter; and he felt a heavy, tepid air upon his face, as if some large invisible person ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... heavy, steep steps slowly, three guards at his back and three in front of him. The priests would be gone from the Temple, but there might be one or two last-ditch defenders remaining, and they would be armed with the Weapons of Kor ... hand-weapons which shot dark beams that could disintegrate anything in their path. They would be dangerous. Well, there would be no temple-guards in the inner court; his own men could remain ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... government. The projects of the reclamation service now include practically all of the available waters of the Yakima valley for irrigating the lands therein. In Yakima county alone there are probably [Page 41] 260,000 acres now under ditch, and probably 50,000 more will be reclaimed this season. This is probably not more than half the lands in the county capable of irrigation. The fact that the general government is in control of these projects insures as wide and just ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... the Roman military system consisted in the use of fortified camps. Every time the army halted, if only for a single night, the legionaries intrenched themselves within a square inclosure. It was protected by a ditch, an earthen mound, and a palisade of stakes. This camp formed a little city with its streets, its four gates, a forum, and the headquarters of the general. Behind the walls of such a fortress an army was always at liberty to accept ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... had been nearly starved in a dungeon, walked out between his guards in broad daylight, when their backs were turned; how Andrew Beier and David Fritsch had stumbled against their prison door and found that the bolt was loose; how Hans Nitschmann, concealed in a ditch, heard his pursuers, a foot off, say, "This is the place, here he must be," and yet was not discovered after all. No wonder these wanderers felt that angels had screened them on their way. For the sake of their faith they had been imprisoned, beaten, thrust into filthy dungeons. For ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... moving forward in support of Major Gilbraith, and the latter being held back for a time. Major Gilbraith and Colonel Burke's troops, being unable to cross the creek, passed over the bridge that spans it by the left flank, the former's companies having previously occupied a sheltered place in a ditch parallel to and to the right of the main road. About this time the advance-guard, one of the companies of which (Penrose's) had previously held for a short time a knoll on the left of the road, moved forward and crossed ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... gone far when the moon rose, and from behind the clouds diminished the darkness a little. The first part of her journey lay along a narrow lane, with a small ditch, a rising bank, and a hedge on each side. About the middle of the lane was a farmyard, and a little way farther a cottage. Soon after passing the gate of the farmyard, she thought she heard steps behind her, seemingly soft and swift, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... and another over Belgium; and with the third he was standing by long ditches of water frozen fast, and over them glided hundreds upon hundreds of lads and maids. Outside each door stood a wee wooden shoe empty. Teig saw scores of them as he looked down the ditch of a street. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... uttered with sudden energy, she spurred her great horse, leaped the ditch, and burst through the dead hedge into the wood, and winded out of sight among ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we step on it!—Let the Hero rest. It was not to men's judgment that he appealed: nor have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... of a mile further, he pulled up, alighted with Murphy from the gig, unharnessed the little black mare, and then overturned the gig into the ditch. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Luckily, I was not; but, as I crushed the letters back into my pocket, I solemnly vowed that, rather than touch a penny of that man's money, at least whilst his state of mind remained what it then was, I would perish of starvation in a ditch. Then bewildered, stunned, and utterly crushed in spirit, I hastily excused myself to Courtenay upon the plea of having received distressing news from England, and, obeying the same impulse which impels a wounded animal to rush away and hide itself and its suffering in the deepest solitudes, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... a ditch 4 feet deep, 40 feet wide, and 363 miles long. The chief promoter was De Witt Clinton. The opponents of the canal therefore called it in derision "Clinton's big ditch," and declared that it could never be made ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... and the soles of his feet began to get sore from the shovel, he hit on a plan: he cut the bottom out of a tin can and stuck his toe into the cylinder. And the first evening when he came home from the ditch- digging. and was struggling to remove from himself that sticky clay which is peculiar to the soil of Manitoba, he could not help saying to his wife: It's really remarkable how filthy the mud ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... in my childhood I floated a paper boat in the ditch. It was a wet day of July; I was alone and happy over my play. I floated my paper boat ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... the church-going people collecting by the church gate. The men in dark Wadmel jackets with bright buttons, and the women with red ribands bound on their caps and knitted sleeves. The women left their wooden shoes in the dry ditch by the roadside, and put on leather shoes, and waited for the Pastor's arrival. Accuracy of time was not expected, and only when the Pastor appeared did the men throng into the church on one side and the women on the other. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... 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 never will while ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that I'm dealin' out to 'em, God knows! And yet, it's they that are masters of the situation, only they don't know it! There's the pity! They've no leaders, except such as waste their money and leave 'em in the ditch! The world's social schemes, Miss Carmen, don't reach such as these. They're only sops. And they've got the contempt ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... approximately a square with sides of about a hundred yards and bastions at the corners. The eastern front had not been completed, and was now left entirely open, as the northern face connected with the infantry trench. The ditch was twelve feet wide and about eight deep, and the parapet was about twelve feet high, making its crest about twenty feet above the bottom of the ditch. The berme usually left between the bottom of the parapet slope and the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox |
