"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something? It wasn't Sexty's fault nigh so much as it was his. I wouldn't say it to you if it wasn't for starving. I wouldn't say it to you if it wasn't for the children. I'd lie in the ditch and die if it was only myself, because—because I know what your feelings is. But what wouldn't you do, and what wouldn't you say, if you had five children at home as hadn't a loaf of bread among ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... d'Enghien was shot on the night of the 21st of March, 1804, in the wood or in the ditch of the castle at Vincennes, is admitted even by Government; but who really were his assassins is still unknown. Some assert that he was shot by the grenadiers of Bonaparte's Italian guard; others say, by a ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to be true, the smallest thing in rivers he had ever seen, and he had had to restrain himself from affecting a marked accent and accosting some passer-by with the question, "Say! But is this little wet ditch here ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... memories, to some of us, of refreshing droughts of pure water, and of delicious cream and butter rolls, which the moss-covered stone shelves far down the well held securely from possible taint. Back of the house ran the babbling brook and emptied into "the ditch," which was often broad and deep enough to merit a more comely name, and was the favorite resort of the young in winter for skating and sledding. But this ancestral home, with all its charms, had passed from view, like man others, ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... daunt the courage of old and well-tried veterans, but these soldiers of a few weeks seemed but impatient to take the odds, and to make light of impossibilities. A slightly rising ground, raked by a murderous fire, to within a little distance of the battery; a ditch holding three feet of water; a straight lift of parapet, thirty feet high; an impregnable position, held by ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... the playground, beyond the swings, broke into a patch of tangled thicket, beyond which again a little ditch separated the grounds of Stonebridge House from ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... you must mind in getting them that you don't fall into the ditch, or you will be over ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... was hot in the sky, and the paving, than which nothing on earth is more tiring, seemed rougher and harder than usual; motor lorries, or cars containing generals, seemed, at every moment, to compel us to take to the ditch, and we were hot and footsore when we tramped through the Grande Place to the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... the former of whom laid siege to it in 1629, and the latter in 1649. It is surrounded by an earthen rampart of twenty-one feet thick, faced on the outside with stone, and strengthened by twenty-two bastions, the whole environed by a ditch forty-five yards wide, and quite full of water, especially in spring-tides. All the approaches to the town are defended by several detached forts, all of which are well furnished with excellent brass cannon. Six of these are so considerable as to deserve being particularly mentioned, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... have the advantage of me," I said. "I know the Welland Canal, however, though I am trying to forget that ditch." ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... advantages, but in general, it is preferable to avoid it, and have recourse to substances which increase the bulk of the heap sufficiently to make it retain the whole of the liquid. For this purpose, clay, or still better, the vegetable refuse of the farm, such as weeds, ditch cleanings, leaves, and, in short, any porous matters, may be used. But by far the best substance, when it can be obtained, is dry peat, which not only absorbs the fluid, but fixes the ammonia, by converting it more or less completely into humate. Reference has been already made to ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... river three hundred yards wide with the hind legs tied together.] but can neither trot nor gallop; their only pace is a walk, which may be Increased to a shuffle of fifteen miles an hour for a very short distance; they cannot leap, and a ditch eight by eight ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... immediately as distant rifle-fire. Morning broke, cheerless and wet. I asked if any one had heard firing during the night, but no one near me had. Shivering and breakfastless, save for a morsel of biscuit and a sip of muddy water, we saddle our dripping horses and fall in. A Tommy sitting in the ditch, the picture of misery; cold, and hungry, with the rain trickling from his sodden helmet on to his face; breaks into a hymn, of which the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... in the first flight of the Quorn, One who never turned his gallant head aside From bank or ditch, from double rail or thorn, Or from any brook however deep and wide; I know the love your owner on you spent; I know the price he put upon your speed; And I know he gave you freely, well content, When his country called upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... her a new pair o' shoes an' the stuff fer a dress, an' sometimes my cal'lations went as fur 's a gold breastpin; but I never wanted to see none o' the rest on 'em, an' fer that matter, I never did. Yes, sir, the old ditch was better to me than the place I was borned in, an', as you say, I wa'n't nobody's slave, an' I wa'n't scairt to death the hull time. Some o' the men was rough, but they wa'n't cruel, as a rule, an' as I growed up a little ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the dull gray sky, here and there, like some transformed prophetess raising her gaunt arms in appeal or malediction; an occasional five-barred gate marked the entrance to some by-road to the farm; on one side of the way a deep black-looking ditch lay under the scanty shelter of the low hedge, and hinted at possible water rats to the traveller from cities who might happen to entertain a fastidious aversion to ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the 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 ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Conde had taken up her residence, was a breach in the city wall by which it was easy to descend into the moat; and it was decided that the Princess should effect her escape from this point during the night. Saddled horses were to be prepared for herself and her retinue near the outer bank of the ditch, and nothing remained undecided save the moment of her evasion. She was to proceed at all speed to Pontarme, where a relay of fresh horses and an armed escort were to await her arrival, and similar arrangements were to be made throughout the whole of the route to Rocroy. Finally, the precise night ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... crowd were engaged in digging a ditch for the oil that Ralph's shot had let out, in order that it should not be set on fire by that which was already blazing, the young student ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... rows of these pickets enclosed the desired space, which embraced the cabins of the inhabitants. A block-house or more, of superior care and strength, commanding the sides of the fort, with or without a ditch, completed the fortifications or Stations, as they were called. Generally the sides of the interior cabins formed the sides of the fort. Slight as this advance was in the art of war, it was more than ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... opposing, through the Moffitt papers, the legislative waste of the people's money; on the question of selling a local canal to the railroad company, which killed that fine old State work, and let the dry ditch grow up to grass, he might have gone to the Legislature, but he contented himself with defeating the Moffitt member who had voted for the job. If he opposed some measures for the general good, like high schools ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 and let lynch-law take its course. Accordingly, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and furnished with artillery, whereunto the city is joined directly towards the north with a brick wall; the walls also of the castle are built with brick, and are in breadth or thickness eighteen feet. This castle hath on the one side a dry ditch, and on the other side the river Volga, whereby it is made almost impregnable. The same Volga, trending towards the east, doth admit into it the company ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... Salisbury. They were stationed side by side in advance of him on ground lower than that held by him, but higher than that of the enemy, and beset with bushes and vineyards which sloped down on the left towards the marshes of the Miausson. Some distance in front of their position, a long hedge and ditch divided the upland, on which the "battles" of Warwick and Salisbury were stationed, from the fields in which the French were arrayed. At its upper end, remote from the Miausson, where Salisbury's command lay, the hedge was broken by a gap through which ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... me 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 ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... yards distant. This was the easternmost point of defence, and formed part of the San Antonio causeway leading to the city. It was a work constructed with the greatest skill—bastions, curtain, and wet ditch, everything was complete and perfect—four guns were mounted in embrasure and barbette, and as many men as the place would hold were stationed there. The reserves occupied the causeway behind Churubusco. Independently of his defences, Santa Anna's numbers—nearly five to one—should ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... very softly, and Lisbeth came towards us down the path, whereupon the Imp immediately "took cover" in the ditch. ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... we all for do here, when you leff? 'speck ebbery ting be dull, wuss nor ditch-water. No more fun—no more shuffle-foot. Old maussa no like de fiddle, and nebber hab party and jollication like udder people. Don't tink I can stay here, Mass Ra'ph, after you gone; 'spose, you no 'jection, I go 'long wid you? You leff me, I take to de ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the straits of Royd Lane they accordingly defiled. It was very narrow—so narrow that only two could walk abreast without falling into the ditch which ran along each side. They had gained the middle of it, when excitement became obvious in the clerical commanders. Boultby's spectacles and Helstone's Rehoboam were agitated; the curates nudged each other; Mr. Hall turned to the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... it was 1692 or 3. He died suddenly in October. [Several lines describing his unpleasant habits and reputed delinquencies are omitted.] Having seen him in such topping spirits the night before, Mr. Casbury was amaz'd when he learn'd the death. He was found in the town ditch, the hair as was said pluck'd clean off his head. Most bells in Oxford rung out for him, being a nobleman, and he was buried next night in St. Peter's in the East. But two years after, being to be moved to his country estate ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... Tom's head; but in a moment it was spinning harmlessly in the air, and Jonas himself lay sprawling in the ditch. In the momentary struggle for the stick, Tom had brought it into violent contact with his opponent's forehead; and the blood welled out profusely from a deep cut on the temple. Tom was first apprised of this by seeing that he pressed his handkerchief ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Umbrella, he leaped with it from a window forty feet above the ground, but being a very heavy man, it did not prove sufficient to let him down in safety. He struck against an opposite wall, fell into a ditch and broke his leg, and, worse than all, was carried ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... a ditch that they seem near To find, and round your shallow trough Drop the big shells that you can hear Coming a half ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... Hainault, who had mounted on it a knight called Sir John de Fusselles, that bore his banner. The horse ran off with him and forced its way through the English army, and, when about to return, stumbled and fell into a ditch and severely wounded him. He would have been dead if his page had not followed him round the battalions and found him unable to rise. He had not, however, any other hinderance than from his horse; for the English did not quit the ranks that day to make prisoners. The page alighted and raised him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... said, Lichfield. Immediately the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being come to the house we were going to, I wished the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of whither I was to go. As soon as they were gone I stept away, and went by my eye over hedge and ditch till I came within a mile of Lichfield where, in a great field, shepherds were keeping their sheep. Then was I commanded by the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I put off my shoes and left them with the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... living, please your honour." The gentleman did not precisely understand the meaning of the expression, and had he directly asked for an explanation, would probably have died in ignorance; but the boy, proud of his cow, encouraged an exhibition of her talents: she was made to jump across the ditch several times, and this adroitness in breaking through fences, was termed "getting her own living." As soon as the cow's education is finished, she may be sent loose into the world to provide for herself; turned to graze in the poorest pasture, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... was not so easy. As Ivo pushed his horse through the crowd, careless of whom he crushed, he saw a long lean figure flying through the air seven feet aloft, with his heels higher than his head, on the further side of a deep broad ditch; and on the nearer side of the same one of his best men lying stark, with ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... realize you're an old fuss budget with your steam and your boiler and your fire and what not? You're tied to your rails and if everything about your old tracks isn't kept just so you tumble over into a ditch or do some fool thing. Now I'm the one that can endure real hardships. Sparks and gasoline! you just sit right there, you baby, you railclinger, and watch me take that hill! Honk, honk!" And he was ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... spending his last week in school when he met Wabigoon. Necessity had become his grim master, and the following week he was going to work. As the boy described the situation to his Indian friend, his mother "had fought to the last ditch to keep him in school, but now his time was up." Wabi seized upon the white youth as an oasis in a vast desert. After a little the two became almost inseparable, and their friendship culminated in Wabi's ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... 'arf of your bullets fly wide in the ditch, Don't call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch; She's human as you are—you treat her as sich, An' she'll fight for the young ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... uxorem duceret, Epistola hortativa." Subscribed "Kent, Lady-day, 1835"—are Alsop's. He took the degree of M.A. in 1696, and of B.D. in 1706, and, by favour of the Bishop of Winchester, got a prebend in his cathedral, and the rectory of Brightwell, Berks. He was accidentally drowned in a ditch leading to his garden gate, in 1726. There is good reason to believe that a MS. life of him is to be found among the Rawlinson MSS., which it may be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... which were perforated for the discharge of musketry. They were formed of the hardest and most knotted pines that could be procured; the sharp points of which were seasoned by fire until they acquired nearly the durability and consistency of iron. Beyond these firmly imbedded pickets was a ditch, encircling the fort, of about twenty feet in width, and of proportionate depth, the only communication over which to and from the garrison was by means of a drawbridge, protected by a strong chevaux-de-frise. The only gate with which the fortress ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... sent a few of the men to the back of the house, that they might try at least to keep off the foe from climbing the stockade and so falling on them in the rear. But the timbers were high, and the ditch outside them full of water, and as it happened there was ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... examination of these revealed the objects of our search. At the bottom of the arroyas, which have certainly formed subsequent to the occupation of the village, we found portions of human remains, and following up the walls of the ditch soon had the pleasure of discovering several skeletons in situ. The first found was in the eastern arroya, and the grave in depth was nearly 8 feet below the surface of the mesa. The body had been placed in the grave face downward, the head pointing to ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... westward to Saint Giles's Pound, and so along the Tyburn-road. Saint Andrew's, Holborn, was next infected; and as this was a much more populous parish than the former, the deaths were more numerous within it. For a while, the disease was checked by Fleet Ditch; it then leaped this narrow boundary, and ascending the opposite hill, carried fearful devastation into Saint James's, Clerkenwell. At the same time, it attacked Saint Bride's; thinned the ranks of the thievish horde haunting Whitefriars, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... came a new clue. A pair of ladies' shoes, mud-stained and worn, had been discovered in a ditch on the Hertford road, four miles from the house where the latest murder had been committed. This news came by telephone from the Chief of the Hertford Constabulary, with the further information that the shoes had been despatched to Scotland ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... of building a fortress began at once. Within ten days the Fortress of Navidad was completed. It stood on a hill and was surrounded with a broad, deep ditch for protection against natives and animals, and was to be the home of those of the company who remained in the New World, for the Nina was too small to convey all hands across the ocean to Spain, and nothing had been heard of the Pinta. Leaving biscuits ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... get over the ground very quickly, and for such cumbersome animals are very nimble-footed. It is almost ludicrous to see the huge beasts picking their way along a narrow "bund" or crossing some ditch by a bridge of fallen logs, but ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... commanded respect. Everything he did had a certain sweep. He was not penurious or mean in his wars. On the contrary, he despised the small revenges; but in a strife with his equals he was inexorable—he pushed his adversaries to the last ditch, and into it, remorseless as ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... had been nearly a month's drought, and the whole 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. Quentin shifted her position with a certain impatience. "I can't bear ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... with despair, but she laughed a cold, bitter laugh and passed on. Googly-Goo caught at her arm, as if to restrain her, but she whirled and dealt him a blow that sent him reeling into a ditch beside the path. Here he lay for a long time, half covered by muddy water, ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... muttered 'The devil is come among you!' and vanished. The road which connected Nightmare Abbey with the civilised world, was artificially raised above the level of the fens, and ran through them in a straight line as far as the eye could reach, with a ditch on each side, of which the water was rendered invisible by the aquatic vegetation that covered the surface. Into one of these ditches the sudden action of a shy horse, which took fright at a windmill, had precipitated the travelling chariot of Mr Toobad, who had been reduced ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... "Ah, ditch the sarcasm," says I, "and spring your game! What is it this trip, a wire-tappin' scheme, or just ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... special occasion,' remarked Miss Anne, with grave patronage. 'If you will get up early tomorrow, I will take you to a place, not more than four miles off, where you will find any quantity of hart's-tongue fern. It is a deep ditch, I suppose a quarter of a mile long, and the banks are covered. Of course I don't want any one to know, for it is so near Brighton it would be harried for the shops; but I will show you the place, as you will soon be going away now; and we can ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... morning the search recommenced, and Buyse was found. He owned that he had parted from the Duke only a few hours before. The corn and copsewood were now beaten with more care than ever. At length a gaunt figure was discovered hidden in a ditch. The pursuers sprang on their prey. Some of them were about to fire; but Portman forbade all violence. The prisoner's dress was that of a shepherd; his beard, prematurely grey, was of several days' growth. He trembled greatly, and was unable to speak. ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... is, however, a fallacy to assume, as is nearly always done, that the ordinary farm labourer, at all events of the old type, is unskilled. A good man, who can plough well, thatch, hedge, ditch, and do the innumerable tasks required on a farm efficiently, is a much more skilled worker than many who are so called in ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... till at last Hugh had to beg her to go more quietly, for Harry's sake. She drew up alongside of them at once, and made her mare stand as still as she could, while Harry made his first essay upon a little ditch. After crossing it two or three times, he gathered courage; and setting his pony at a larger one beyond, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... which of itself suggested the 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, and on his proposing to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... visit the site he had chosen for his projected fort. It was half a league below the camp, on a little hill, or knoll, two hundred yards from the southern bank. On either side was a deep ravine, and, in front, a low ground, overflowed at high water. Thither, then, the party was removed. They dug a ditch behind the hill, connecting the two ravines, and thus completely isolating it. The hill was nearly square in form. An embankment of earth was thrown up on every side: its declivities were sloped steeply down to the bottom ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... Beyond the hedge they found themselves in a plowed field. The ground was soft and damp. Moving slowly now, because they sunk in to their boot tops, the boys crossed the field and came to a canal. Stan could see murky water in the ditch. He judged the canal was about fifteen ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... she had set a gang of men to clear the woods in a belt behind the third ditch; a young growth of hemlock was being sacrificed, and the forest rang with axe-strokes, the cries of men, the splintering crash ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... 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, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... not the men to give up the game until they were certainly in the last ditch. Though their issues had been slipped out of their hands; though for the moment at least, it was not good policy to fight the President on a principle; it might still be possible to recover their prestige on some other contention. The first of January was approaching. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... gates, and trees; past cottages, and barns, and people going home from work. Yo-ho! Past donkey chaises drawn aside into the ditch, and empty carts with rampant horses whipped up at a bound upon the little watercourse and held by struggling carters close to 5 the five-barred gate until the coach had passed the narrow turning in the road. Yo-ho! By churches dropped down by themselves in quiet nooks, with ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... smoking, like the beasts that perish' (speaking, we may presume, in a remotely analogical sense); and in some of the alehouse corners the drink was flavoured by a dingy kind of infidelity, something like rinsings of Tom Paine in ditch-water. A certain amount of religious excitement created by the popular preaching of Mr. Parry, Amos's predecessor, had nearly died out, and the religious life of Shepperton was falling back towards low-water mark. Here, you perceive, was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the Malakoff was won, and the tricolour was hoisted as a signal for our attack. Our men went forward well, losing apparently few, put the ladders in the ditch, and mounted on the salient of the Redan, but though they stayed there five minutes or more, they did not advance, and tremendous reserves coming up drove them out. They retired well and without disorder, losing in all 150 officers, 2400 men killed and wounded. We should have carried everything ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... demand a truce for burning the dead, the last of which only is agreed to by Agamemnon. When the funerals are performed, the Greeks, pursuant to the advice of Nestor, erect a fortification to protect their fleet and camp, flanked with towers, and defended by a ditch and palisades. Neptune testifies his jealousy at this work, but is pacified by a promise from Jupiter. Both armies pass the night in feasting, but Jupiter disheartens the Trojans with thunder and other signs ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... in the darkness, seeking the way, lest ye fall into the ditch; but gather together, sustain one another, put your faith in your God and wait for the first glimmer ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... and made for the middle 'un. He dodged all right. Then they started shootin' and a bloody bullet buggered the boike.... It was bein' born with a caul that saved me.... Oi picked myself up outer the ditch an lost 'em in the woods. Then Oi got to another bloody town and commandeered this old sweatin' machine.... How many kills is there to ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Verdun. And all day, calling at little villages upon the way, where he had business, she drove with the caution of the newcomer. It seemed to her that she had need for caution. She saw a Ford roll over, leave the road, and drop into the ditch. The wild American who had driven it to its death, pulled himself up upon the road, and limping, hailed a passing lorry, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... of our way to touch at a spring run in the edge of the woods, and are lucky to find a single scarlet lobelia lingering there. It seems almost to light up the gloom with its intense bit of color. Beside a ditch in a field beyond, we find the great blue lobelia, and near it, amid the weeds and wild grasses and purple asters, the most beautiful of our fall flowers, the fringed gentian. What a rare and delicate, almost ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... was 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 the yellow leaves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... victories and 2 defeats each, and a percentage of .862 at the close of the third week of the spring campaign. In the meantime Philadelphia had rallied and had pulled up to seventh place, and Detroit had overhauled Pittsburg, Indianapolis falling into the last ditch. By the end of May quite a change had been made in the relative position of the eight clubs, Chicago having gone to the front and Boston to second position, while Detroit had moved up to third place, and New York had fallen back to fourth; while Philadelphia had worked up well and ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... a rider and his horse both fall into a ditch they were trying to leap. Then came another, and over he went, all clear, as a ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... was "the field," a vast domain of four acres or thereabout, by the measurement of after years, bordered to the north by a fathomless chasm,—the ditch the base-ball players of the present era jump over; on the east by unexplored territory; on the south by a barren enclosure, where the red sorrel proclaimed liberty and equality under its drapeau rouge, and succeeded in establishing ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, the viceroy saved from impending destruction the town of Portici, and the valuable collection of antiquities then deposited there but since removed to Naples, by employing several thousand men to dig a ditch above the town, by which the lava current was carried off in another direction. [Footnote: Landgrebe, Naturgeschichte der ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... "Been for a walk? By Jove! you look ripping, Miss Grant! Been enjoying yourself, to judge by the look of you! I wish you would let me come with you; I might have enjoyed myself too. I'm pretty well bored stiff; there's nothing to do here, and the old place is dull as ditch-water; gives me the horrors. But I say, you'll be late for dinner. Hurry up and come and ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... a very good-natured woman, and ordinarily of a forgiving temper. She had lately remitted the trespass of a stage-coachman, who had overturned her post-chaise into a ditch; nay, she had even broken the law, in refusing to prosecute a highwayman who had robbed her, not only of a sum of money, but of her ear-rings; at the same time d—ning her, and saying, "Such handsome b—s as you don't want jewels ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... troops went forward courageously, and had even planted their standards three several times upon the breach, they were finally defeated in their attempt: the Affghans attacked them sword in hand, with energy too resolute to be resisted, and drove them with great slaughter across the ditch: nearly two thousand Persians were slain. This failure, however, had not the immediate effect of forcing the Shah ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... men under William Long in front of the castle, with orders to let none issue forth, and to shoot down any who might make the attempt, Harry marched out with the rest of his command. Crossing the ditch which had been dug, he led fifty forward, and posted them, as he had planned with Leslie; with twenty-five, he took up his own station behind the breastwork formed by the earth thrown out from the trench. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and find beggars inside. Is this fair? Besides, the laws are violated. Ah! vagabond with your vagabond child! Mischievous pick-pocket, evil-minded abortion, so you walk the streets after curfew? If our good king only knew it, would he not have you thrown into the bottom of a ditch, just to teach you better? My gentleman walks out at night with my lady, and with the glass at fifteen degrees of frost, bare-headed and bare-footed. Understand that such things are forbidden. There are rules and regulations, you lawless wretches. Vagabonds are punished, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... title of the King's Ward, the mixture of scents that arose from mundungus, tobacco, foul feet, dirty shirts, stinking breaths, and uncleanly carcases, poisoned our nostrils far worse than a Southwark ditch, a tanner's yard, or a tallow-chandler's melting-room. The ill-looking vermin, with long, rusty beards, swaddled up in rags, and their heads—some covered with thrum-caps, and others thrust into the tops of old stockings. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... as had arisen, viz., the capture of the fort by our troops. I therefore went with the colonel up to the fort to listen for the mining operations, and got the men who claimed to have heard the subterranean noises, down in the bottom of the ditch of the fort, which was ten feet deep, and at the angles formed a fairly good listening gallery, but nothing unusual could be heard. I therefore made arrangements to sink a line of pits in the bottom of the ditch, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... surrounded by a second wall, not quite so high as the one just described, and with a dry ditch, which is now half filled with ruined debris. The slope which leads from the wall to the trench has been used as a cemetery, and hundreds of sepulchres and tombs were scattered along some undulating ground just without the city. The space between the first and second walls is used as a market-place, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... three lives in your pocket, besides the one in your body, my lad, that you can afford to let your tongue run away with them at this rate? Come, come, I'll take care to keep you out of the Colonel's way; for, egad, you will not be five minutes with him before the next tree or the next ditch will be the word. So, come along to ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... up to 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 were ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... Jack, I felt his hot breath on my flank. I jumped the ditch, yes, I found power to jump that ditch where there was a rabbit run just by the trunk of a young oak. Jack jumped after me; we must both have been in the air at the same time. But I got through the rabbit run, whereas Jack hit his sharp nose against ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... looking back to ascertain whether her master was following. His friend now joined him, and the mare, finding that they were keeping close behind her, trotted on till the gate of the paddock was reached, where she waited for them. On its being opened, she led them across the field to a deep ditch on the farther side, when, what was their surprise to find that her colt had fallen into it, and was struggling on its back with its legs in the air, utterly unable to extricate itself. In a few minutes more probably it would have been dead. The mare, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... flagstone. She went to the door. Dan leaned against the doorpost, bent forward heavily; his chin dropped to his chest. Something slimy gleamed on his shoulder and hip. Wet mud of the ditch he had fallen in. She stiffened her muscles to his weight, to the pull and ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... rest. I went to sleep; and, when I awoke, it was already bright day. Gretchen was standing before the mirror arranging her little cap: she was more lovely than ever, and, when I departed, cordially pressed my hands. I crept home by a roundabout way; for, on the side towards the little /Stag-ditch/, my father had opened a sort of little peep-hole in the wall, not without the opposition of his neighbor. This side we avoided when we wanted not to be observed by him in coming home. My mother, whose mediation always came in well for us, had endeavored ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... ordered to pick up a hoe and a shovel, and then was marched along the water ditch toward the back ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... knight errant was lunging with his spear in all directions, the meek followers of the dead body became ensnared in their skirts and gowns and long white shirts, and fell head over heels wherever they happened to be, in ditch or field. Moans, groans, and prayers were intermingled, and they all were convinced that the procession had been interrupted by the devil himself, come to carry away the body of ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Here in the ditch my bones I'll lay; Weak, wearied, old, the world I leave. "He's drunk," the passing crowd will say 'T is well, for none will need to grieve. Some turn their scornful heads away, Some fling an alms in hurrying by;— Haste,—'t is the village holyday! ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... regarded Philip's exactions as intolerable, and rebelled. Against them marched the royal army of iron-clad knights; and the desperate citizens, meeting these with no better defence than stout leather jerkins, led them into a trap. At the battle of Courtrai the knights charged into an unsuspected ditch, and as they fell the burghers with huge clubs beat out such brains as they could find within the helmets. It was subtlety against stupidity, the merchant's shrewdness asserting itself along new lines. King Philip had to create for himself a fresh ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in the Southron's Fatherland Is that last ditch—his final stand? Is't where the James goes rolling by Used-up plantations worn and dry, Where planters lash and negroes breed, And folks on oyster memories feed? Oh! no, oh! no, oh! no, no, no! To find it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and nearly the whole division considered savage and unjustifiable, which was also the official view. It was the act of a very young subaltern, mistakenly interpreting an order. In the other case an Arab was caught red-handed, lurking in a ditch on our line of march, with one of their loaded knobkerries for any straggler. I do not know what happened, but have no ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... "wheelers" to the disselboom, or tongue, of the trek wagon. From this he lowered himself and fell between the legs of the oxen on his back in the road. In an instant the body of the wagon had passed over him, and while the dust still hung above the trail he rolled rapidly over into the ditch at the side of the road and ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... he started it, the mill did not run well. Marshall saw that he must dig a ditch below the great water wheel, to carry off the water. He hired wild Indians to ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... a circle and found themselves back on the beach again. However, at nightfall some had begun to dig a shallow line of trenches, well inland across the cliff. Single men and small groups of them, not finding any more Turks where they were, fell back into this ditch ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... dare him to fight, an' thrash him till the others came in, an' got him away. Then he'd carry tales to his father, and one day old Westall beat Jim within an inch of 'is life, with a strap end, because of a lie George told 'im. The poor chap lay in a ditch under Disley Wood all day, because he was that knocked about he couldn't walk, and at night he crawled home on his hands and knees. He's shown me the place many a time! Then he told his father, and next morning he told me, as he couldn't ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you would a magnetic needle and to subject it to the current from an induction coil in order to disturb its magnetism or diamagnetism appeared to me, I must confess, a curious notion, worthy of an imagination in the last ditch. I have but little confidence in our physics, when they pretend to explain life; nevertheless, my respect for the great man would have made me resort to the induction-coils, if I had possessed the necessary apparatus. But my village boasts no scientific resources: if I want an electric ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... along upright until it stopped, the track lying flush with the highway where the engine went off, and the fact that trains must slow up for this grade crossing. Had there been an embankment, or a big ditch, or the train under its usual headway the wreck would have been a horror, for every wheel, from the engine to the last coach, had ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... particular favourite. "Keep your spirits up as well as you can; I am not going to be like your wonderful nephews and nieces at Ashfield. I never saw such ignorant children; they did not know how to make dirt pies, nor could they jump across the ditch, or get up by the trees to the top of the garden wall. Harriett and I had such a beautiful race round that garden, and they ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... luck the highway was empty, for to think that any cart or carriage could be passed was absurd. Side by side the huge machines, scarlet, green, alive with shining brass, tore along with the roar of express trains between the ditch and the bank. The slightest swerve at such speed meant death. The chatter of the careless girls dwindled, the faces of the rival drivers ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... part, I should be ready to drink ditch-water," exclaimed Desmond; "I never felt so ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... followed her out. To her astonishment, it ran on before her, turning continually, and apparently delighted that it had gained its object, until they had gone some distance. Here the cat left her, and darted forward, when, to her surprise, she saw her youngest child stuck fast in the mud of a ditch, unable to move. ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... a small shed, he turned an electric switch, and a motor the size of a fruit box hummed into action. A five-inch stream of sparkling water splashed into the shallow main ditch of his irrigation system and flowed away across the orchard through ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... march nearly a month when they came to Turtle Creek, which flows into the Monongahela only eight miles from Fort Duquesne a strong fortress of logs with bastions, ravelins, ditch, glacis and covered ways, standing at the junction of the twin streams, the Monongahela and the Alleghany, that form the great Ohio. Here they made a little halt and the scouts who had been sent into the ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... whipping and many fervent asseverations on the part of the driver that all mules should be in Tophet, they conclude to start at all, they go as if determined to reach the place indicated without unnecessary delay. If a mud-hole, ditch, tree, or any other obstacle lies in the way, and the driver cries whoa, the mules redouble their speed, and rush forward as if they did not in the slightest degree consider themselves responsible either for the driver's neck or the traps with which ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... of the river was hastily repaired; and the six battles of the French formed their encampment against the front of the capital, the basis of the triangle which runs about four miles from the port to the Propontis. [65] On the edge of a broad ditch, at the foot of a lofty rampart, they had leisure to contemplate the difficulties of their enterprise. The gates to the right and left of their narrow camp poured forth frequent sallies of cavalry and light-infantry, which cut off their stragglers, swept the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... a sinner saved by grace who so wanted to make a noise as I wanted to make one when I got into my head what had happened. The relief from fear and the joyfulness of knowing I had been pulled out of another ditch made me dizzy for a moment, and down went my elbows into my lap and down my face into my hands, and not until Mr. Pepper said something to me did I lift my head and get up. Then I threw my riding-crop in the air, tossed ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... he will be lost and forgotten. It is no wonder that, between the labor of collecting food and following up the family to administer it, the mother becomes faded and draggled, and the father abandons his music, and goes about near the ground, grubbing like any ditch-digger. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... has entered the first enclosure, strong barricades are erected across the entrance; and as there is no ditch at this point, the hunters take advantage of the remarkable dread which the animal has of fire, to scare them from this most vulnerable part of the fortification. Fires are gradually lit all round the first enclosure, so that the only way of escape which is left is ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... 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, which finally disappear into the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the International Trench, still fluttering with rainbow rags—a shapeless trench which the confusion of torn stuffs invests with an air of a trench assassinated—to a place where the irregular and winding ditch forms an elbow. All the way along, as far as an earthwork barricade that blocks the way, German corpses are entangled and knotted as in a torrent of the damned, some of them emerging from muddy caves in the middle of a bewildering conglomerate of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... want of money, indeed!" 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 ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... job, an awfully bad job for us all! curse the eyes that aimed that shell!" growled practical Jim. "Here, take hold. We'll put him in that little dry ditch we just passed, and bury him after the fight, if still on our pins. We can't leave him here to ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close together and pierced, as ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... well 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 ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... later, however, he found that they had been reinforced, and as their position threatened his line of communications, he again advanced towards them. He found the enemy about two thousand strong, drawn up in a grove under cover of the guns of the fort. The grove was inclosed by a bank and ditch, and some fifty yards away was a dry tank, inclosed by a bank higher than that which surrounded the grove. In this the enemy could retire, when ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... buildings proper was shown in the last picture (Plate III); in the following (Plate IV), the north side of the same block is seen. The old University "schools" lay just inside the city wall, and Broad Street, which is there represented, occupies the site of the ditch, which ran on the north of the wall. This picture is a fitting supplement to the last, for the Sheldonian Theatre on the right of it and the Clarendon Building in the background may claim rank even with the Bodleian and the Radcliffe as ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... only clue they had, and there was something in the make-up of these sturdy young Americans that made them desperately unwilling to confess defeat. It was the "die-in-the-last-ditch" spirit that has made America great. Even Bill, although he relieved himself sometimes by grumbling, would not really have given up the search and when the pinch came he dug and hunted as eagerly as ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... vacant areas upon which the astronomer may pitch his secret pavilion. He may dedicate himself to the service of the Double Suns; he has my license to devote his whole time to the quadruple system of suns in Lyra. Swammerdam spent his life in a ditch watching frogs and tadpoles; why may not an astronomer give nine lives, if he had them, to the watching of that awful appearance in Hercules, which pretends to some rights over our own unoffending system? Why may he not mount guard with public approbation, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... luck to get near enough to it, between two embrasures, to be protected from the guns—they looked so unsubstantial that it seemed hardly worth while for the few infantrymen to go to work upon them with the bayonet and tumble them back into the ditch. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... with good beds. Strauss has a fine ranch along the creek, where he raises forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and his wife milks thirty-six cows and makes two hundred pounds of butter at a churning. Besides this, she cultivates a flower-garden, with many varieties of bloom, irrigated by a ditch ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... fire. About two hundred yards to his left, he saw the top of a small ditch. Using the ditch for cover, the Belderkans could sneak to the ...
— The Green Beret • Thomas Edward Purdom
... are horizontal beds, perpendicular spines, and detached blocks of felsitic porphyry and of rusty-red syenite, altered, broken, and burnt by plutonic heat. In places, where the trap has cut through the more modern formations, it has been degraded by time from a dyke to a ditch, the latter walled by the ruddy rocks, and sharply cut as a castle-moat. And already we could see, on the right of the Wady, those cones and crests of ghastly, glaring white gypsum, which we had called ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... will contund you as Thestylis did strong smelling herbs, in the quality whereof you do most gravely partake, as my nose beareth testimony, ill weed that you are. I will beat you to a jelly, and I will then roll you into the ditch, to lie till the constable ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... sixty feet from the flat country. It was built nearly seven hundred years ago by an Earl of Cheshire, then just returned from the Crusades. Standing in an irregular court covering about five acres, its thick walls and deep ditch made it a place of much strength. It was ruined prior to the time of Henry VIII., having been long contended for and finally dismantled in the Wars of the Roses. Being then rebuilt, it became a famous fortress in the Civil Wars, having been seized by the Roundheads, then surprised and taken by ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... formerly built of Timber, but now they build them of Brick, very strong and handsome, and neatly adorned; and when any Church is gone to Decay, or removed to a more convenient Place, they enclose the old one with a Ditch. ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... up by a freak of nature, and the crews of thirty vessels had been occupied five weeks in cutting a ditch through the obstruction, wide enough to admit ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... presents," says Mr. G. T. Clark, "in a remarkable degree the features of a well-known class of earthworks found both in England and in Normandy. This kind of fortification by mound, bank and ditch was in use in the ninth, tenth, and even in the eleventh centuries, before masonry was general. {13} The mound was crowned with a strong circular house of timber, such as in the Bayeaux tapestry the soldiers are attempting to set on fire. The ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... little city, long and narrow, and well walled and enclosed with a great ditch, and it was wont to be called Ephrata, as Holy Writ sayeth, 'Lo, we heard it at Ephrata.' And toward the end of the city toward the East, is a right fair church and a gracious. And it hath many towers, pinnacles and turrets full strongly made. And within that ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... fair in the Ditch, To risk the Overhang, or play back—which To do? Ah, Brother, let the Gallery go: Than tear the Web, better to drop ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. It showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. Not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. In the heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. There had been no obliteration, because ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... not to this, the matter being finished without a battle. The men of Alba first marched into the land of the Romans, having with them a very great army, and pitched their camp five miles from the city, digging about it a deep ditch. But while they lay in this camp their King Cluilius died, and a certain Mettus was made dictator in his room. Which when King Tullus heard, he became very bold, saying that the gods had smitten Cluilius for his wrong-doing, and would smite also the whole people of ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... intelligence. "I know; it's hell, Ardea. I've been frizzling in it for the past six months, more or less; ever since I came home with the one sole, single determination to climb out of the panic ditch if I had to make steps of dead bodies or lost souls. I'm doing it, and I'm paying the price. Sometimes I can find it in my heart to curse the mistaken mother-love that gave me to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... huts or caves. What are called castles in Cornwall are simple intrenchments, consisting of large and small stones piled up about ten or twelve feet high, and held together by their own weight, without any cement. There are everywhere traces of a ditch, then of a wall; sometimes, as at Chun Castle, of another ditch and another wall; and there is generally some contrivance for protecting the principal entrance by walls overlapping the ditches. Near these ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... 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 and starvation," ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... awakened in the morning rain was pouring down. This in itself might not have prevented us from travelling, but the state of the trail did. It had been raining the greater part of the night and the trail was little more than a ditch of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tr., to cast away, to fall down; daro langi si asidaro laona kilu, shall they not both fall into the ditch? ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens
... bare-foot upon Sands, that more than an hundred of them fell down altogether disabled, whereof a dozen dyed out-right, without any other Sickness. Secondly, as to the Cold, that the frost was so bitter, that 3 Souldiers dyed of it, A. 1665. the 2. of January, in passing a long Ditch: besides, that divers persons lost ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... is only leaping from a ditch into a quicksand. It is quite as hard to account for her dissimulation as for her sincerity. Why should she pretend to suspect you of so black a deed, or me ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... sides. At nine inches from the edge a trench a foot deep was dug. In the centre was an old flour barrel filled with earth. Upon this stood the tent-pole. The tent was brought down so as to extend six inches into the ditch, the nine-inch rim of earth standing inside serving as a shelf on which to put odds and ends. A wall of sods, two feet high, was erected round the outside of the little ditch. Thus a comfortable habitation was formed. The ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... a Nobleman, wishing to make a Fish-pond: to get more water for his Pond, he has a ditch dug, to draw into it the water from a small stream which drives a water-mill. Thereby the Miller loses his water, and cannot grind; or, at most, can only grind in the spring for the space of a fortnight, and late in the autumn, perhaps another fortnight. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... way responsible for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Hall and accusations flew back and forth. One of the men threw a heavy stone that ran down along the tracks and jumped into a ditch filled with dry weeds. It made a heavy crashing sound. Hugh heard heavy footsteps running. He was afraid the men were going to attack him, and climbed over a fence, crossed a barnyard, and got into an empty street. As he went along trying ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... those should be friends of kings. Ver. 14. As a harlot's allurements are like pits to catch men, so the allurements of wicked ungodly men, their power, policy, &c., and their fair speeches and flatteries, are a deep ditch to catch men in to this spiritual whoredom and fornication spoken of. Ezek. xxiii. And he whom God is provoked with, by former wickedness, falls into it, Eccl. vii. 26, Ver. 24, 25. "Make not friendship with an angry man and with a furious man thou shalt not go," ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the first discharge; but the remainder resolutely rushed on to the broad ditch in front of the bastion, and about a third of these got bravely through this obstruction, some fifty finally reaching ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... quiver'd low the reply. 'And "now"'s just a bit too late, so it's no use your piping your eye,' The farmer added bluffly: 'Old Lawyer Charlworth was rich; You followed his instructions in kicking Tom into the ditch. If you're such a dutiful daughter, that doesn't prove Tom is a fool. Forgive and forget's my motto! and here's my grog ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fell many men about the damosel, and would have slain her. When Balin saw that, he was sore aggrieved, for he might not help the damosel. Then he went up into the tower, and leapt over walls into the ditch, and hurt him not; and anon he pulled out his sword and would have foughten with them. And they all said nay, they would not fight with him, for they did nothing but the old custom of the castle; and told him how their lady was sick, and had lain ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... a fort to be called St. Andrews, and gave Captain Hugh MacKay orders to build it. The work commenced immediately, thirty Highlanders being employed in the labor. On March 26th Oglethorpe, visiting the place, was astonished to find the fort in such an advanced stage of completion; the ditch was dug, the parapet was raised with wood and earth on the land side, and the small wood was cleared fifty yards round the fort. This seemed to be the more extraordinary because MacKay had no engineer, nor any other assistance in that way, except ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Hank has done that surprises me. And it is not on him that the sorrow will fall. For she is good. She is very good. Do yu' remember little black Hank? From Texas he claims he is. He was working on the main ditch over at Sunk Creek last summer when that Em'ly hen was around. Well, seh, yu' would not have pleasured in his company. And this year Hank is placer-mining on Galena Creek, where we'll likely go for sheep. ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... some of his 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 ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... woods. At Christmas-tide, when we came to the eastern shore, we would gallop together through miles of country, the farmers and servants tipping and staring after her as she laid her silver-handled whip upon her pony. She knew not the meaning of fear, and would take a fence or a ditch that a man might pause at. And so I fell into the habit of leading her the easy way round, for dread ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bookbinder is one of these last. Wrapped up in selfishness, he lived alone and friendless, and he died as he had lived. His loss was neither mourned by any one, nor disarranged anything in the world; there was merely a ditch filled up in the graveyard, and an ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... of his shoes 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 is ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... protection' from the terrible fire, of canister and musketry pouring over us from the guns on the crest. At the rifle-pits there had been little use for the bayonet, for most of the Confederate troops, disconcerted by the sudden rush, lay close in the ditch and surrendered, though some few fled up the slope to the next line. The prisoners were directed to move out to our rear, and as their intrenchments had now come under fire from the crest, they went with alacrity, and without guard ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... occurred. Rupert was employed by his master on a secret mission to London, and there the Luck came again into his hands. Perhaps by murder. But he died miserably enough of a heavy cold got by lying in a ditch to escape Dutch ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... wine, had to be held from jumping overboard. The ramping and stamping, and roaring and scrambling for room to sit or lie, was horrific. At last the day dawned, when matters were not quite so bad; but we moved over our fifty miles of ditch-water to Atfeh in a manner the most uncomfortable ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... coachman or the majority of the passengers—the name of Turpin acting like magic upon them. One man jumped off behind, and was with difficulty afterwards recovered, having tumbled into a deep ditch at the roadside. An old gentleman with a cotton nightcap, who had popped out his head to swear at the coachman, drew it suddenly back. A faint scream in a female key issued from within, and there was a considerable hubbub on the roof. Amongst other ominous sounds, the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... illustrate this unaccountable omission by that which we know to have happened in the march of the younger Cyrus to Cunuxa against his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in preparation for this invasion, a broad and deep ditch (thirty feet wide and eight feet deep) from the wall of Media to the river Euphrates, a distance of twelve parasangs or forty-five English miles, leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close alongside ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... 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, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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
... there was a cabin on the other side of the creek crossed by the long flume, where she thought he still might be. Thither they crossed—a toilsome half-hour's walk—but in vain. They were returning by the ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the lights of the town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly, sharply, a quick report rang out on the clear night air. The echoes caught it, and carried it round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte |
