"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attack for several weeks. The lines were formed and fortified; breast works, with a ditch in front, were built, with here and there a small fort, or redoubt, in which a part of the field ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... Hank stood where they were, shaking as though in the last ditch of ague, while Halstead went forward, with the soft tread of a cat, to peer down into the motor room, the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... since Offa drove the Welsh to the Wye it had been set in order, with a stockade halfway down the steep earthwork round the hill crest, so that men on its top could use their weapons on those who were trying to scale it. The dry ditch was deep and steep sided, and, so far as I could see in the moonlight, on this side at least it would need a strong force to take it by storm, were it fairly manned by say two hundred men. The gate had been made afresh of heavy timber, narrow, and flanked on either side by overhanging ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... put it into your pocket, Jess, quick, or he'll throw it into the ditch!" nodded Diana. "So put it into your pocket and thank the pretty gentleman." This Jessamy did, after no little demur and with reiterated expressions ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... nothing, in fact, except live an innocent life away from the seat of Napoleon's power. The duke was brought to Paris under guard and put in the dungeons of Vincennes. He demanded to see Bonaparte. Bonaparte would not see him. He was tried by night, his grave being already dug in the castle ditch. That lovely young fellow—he was scarcely above thirty—was taken out to the ditch and shot ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... you're a spy! Get down—" George did not give him time to finish the phrase, but with a well-measured blow, sent him sprawling in the brambled ditch and we beat a ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... was unable to procure this further sum, and, in April 1849, Bhooree Khan had two of the boys, Khoda Buksh and Alla Buksh, tied to trees and shot to death with arrows, for the amusement of his gang. They were then hacked with swords, and their bodies were thrown into a ditch, whence he would not permit their friends to remove them for burial. Sirdar Khan became for a time deranged on hearing of the sufferings of his sons, and wandered about the country. Bhooree Khan, with his gang, again attacked the village, and burned it all down, and drove off ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... every step, the mago gave me a noose of rope to clutch, the rain fell in such torrents that I speculated on the chance of being washed off my saddle, when suddenly I saw a shower of sparks; I felt unutterable things; I was choked, bruised, stifled, and presently found myself being hauled out of a ditch by three men, and realised that the horse had tumbled down in going down a steepish hill, and that I had gone over his head. To climb again on the soaked futon was the work of a moment, and, with men running and horses stumbling and splashing, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... and I myself, had enriched, when their best resources were the flitches of bacon and measures of corn, out of which they wheedled poor serfs and bondsmen, in exchange for their prayers—the nest of foul ungrateful vipers—barley bread and ditch water to such a patron as I had been! I will smoke them out of their nest, though ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... carry it to his own goal. In this contest, when any individual having possession of the ball found himself overpowered or outrun by his opponents, he hurled it to one of his own side, if near enough, or if not into some pool, ditch, furze, brake, garden, house, or other place of concealment, to prevent his adversaries getting hold of it before his own company could arrive." It is clear that hurling somewhat resembled football as anciently played in England and Scotland between parish and parish. In old times the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... and hot, the Union lines reach the strong defences of Peachtree Creek. Here Confederate Gilmer's engineering skill has prepared ditch and fraise, abattis and chevaux-de-frise, with yawning graves for ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... their coursers, than the mountain roe 160 More fleet, the verdant carpet skim, thick clouds Snorting they breathe, their shining hoofs scarce print The grass unbruised; with 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, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Nevertheless he felt a chill and a degree of disillusion as he rode down the lane to the foot-bridge; and over it, and on as far as the first house of the village. Still he saw nothing of her; and he turned. Riding back his search was rewarded with a discovery. Beside the ditch, at the corner where the road and lane met, and lying in such a position that it was not visible from the highway, but only from the lower ground of the lane, lay a plain ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... ironclads, the Carondelet, Louisville, and Pittsburg, each armed with thirteen guns, advanced, followed by the wooden gunboats Tyler and Conestoga. The water-battery attacked was a mere trench twenty feet wide, sunk in the hill-side. The excavated earth thrown up outside the ditch made a rampart twelve feet through at the summit. Carefully laid sand-bags added to the height of the rampart, and left narrow spaces for embrasures; narrow, but sufficient there, where the channel of the river, straight ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... let him have it very easily, Annet. Set him a ditch or two to jump before he gets there. And let the thorns prick him a bit before he gathers the flower. You know my way ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... a ditch and plunged into the briars. Helen heard the rotten fence-rails smash and he vanished behind the thorny branches that closed across the gap. She was glad he had gone so quickly; partly because it was her wish, and partly because ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Ireland, or the Pale, as it was called, became gradually more restricted. The frantic efforts made by the Parliament held at Drogheda (1494, Poynings' Parliament) to protect the English territory from invasion by the erection "of a double ditch six feet high" is the best evidence that the conquest of the country still awaited completion.[1] In the early years of the reign of Henry VIII. the Pale embraced only portions of the present counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath and Kildare, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... longer the patent fact that Lucy Waring's sons were like his own old self, and sturdier, handsomer young fellows into the bargain than Lady Emily Kelmscott's boy Granville, whom he had made into the heir of the Tilgate manors. The moor, where the Greys were quartered that summer, was as dull as ditch-water. No society, no dances, no hunting, no sport; what wonder a man of his tastes, spoiling for want of a drawing-room to conquer, should have kept his hand in with pretty ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... their gasping population. Besides, air, water, light, and cleanliness are modern innovations. The nose seems to have acquired its sensitiveness within a hundred years,—the lungs their objection to foul air, and the palate its disgust at ditch-water like the Thames, within a more recent period. Honestly dirty, and robustly indifferent to what mortally offends our squeamish senses, our happy ancestors fattened on carbonic acid gas, and took the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... fortress; that the counterscarp was not yet taken, nor, on account of the rocky soil, could be taken, except by assault, which would cost the enemy a greater number than they had lost in their late attempt; that they could not attack the ditch, or batter in breach, before the counterscarp should be taken, and even then they must have recourse to galleries before they could pass the fosse, which was furnished with mines and countermines; finally, they suggested, that in all probability the British ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... however, because we find him so set down in the Globe, which knows best what the military one is worth. There is nothing remarkable in his speech, except the fuss which he makes about national honour. He may find it lying in the ditch, much ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... next morning in a field or in a ditch. Even their horses were found along the roads with their ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... precipitated among rocks, where her delicate limbs must be mangled and tore asunder; when he perceived, that, before he could ride round by the gate, the tragedy would be finished. The fence was so thick and high, flanked with a broad ditch on the outside, that he could not hope to clear it, although he was mounted on Scipio, bred out of Miss Cowslip, the sire Muley, and his grandsire the famous Arabian Mustapha.—Scipio was bred by my father, who would not have taken a hundred guineas for him, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the top of the rock that the boy wanted," mused Big Pete, and for a moment or so he stood in silent thought; at length he exclaimed, "Why, bless my corn-shucking soul, if I don't believe he's got a lariat staked out tha' an' crosses this ditch same as we-uns aimed to do!" With that he began raking and scraping the top of the opposite rock with the shepherd's crook, and presently there came tumbling and twisting like a snake down the face of the cliff, ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... shadow rose from the ditch where he had been crouching, and stood looking after them long after they had been lost in ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Birmingham and Wolverhampton Canal, proposing to make it 22 miles long; but he did not live to see it finished. The work was taken up by Smeaton and Telford; the latter of whom calling it "a crooked ditch" struck out a straight cut, reducing the length to 14 miles, increasing the width to 40 feet, the bridges having each a span of 52 feet. The "Summit" bridge was finished in 1879. The Fazeley Canal was completed in 1783, and so successfully was it worked that in nine years the shares were at ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... doubt they do at meal-time after sunset, but we are more used to flushing them amid dry bracken or in the course of some frozen ditch. Quite apart, however, from its exhilarating effect on the sportsman, the bird has quieter interests for the naturalist, since in its food, its breeding habits, its travels, and its appearance it combines more peculiarities than perhaps any other bird, certainly ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... can testify; and our work here unfortunately combined the whole three. We were engaged in rebuilding one of those old-fashioned walls of gentlemen's pleasure-grounds known as "ha has," that line the sides of deep ditches, and raise their tops to but the level of the sward; and as the ditch in this special instance was a wet one, and as we had to clear it of the old fallen materials, and to dig it out for our new line of foundation, while at the same time we had to furnish ourselves with additional ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... order from Damascus cannot——- The completed sentence would probably have run: cannot be executed, but the sound of the hooves of Joseph's horse checked the words on his lips and he had to squeeze himself against the ditch, to escape being trodden upon. Joseph sprang from the saddle. Father, I haven't hurt you, I hope? I was dreaming. Why, Joseph, it is you! You haven't hurt me, and I was dreaming too. But what a beautiful horse you are riding! Aren't you afraid he will run away? Up and down ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... but loss accruing from the undertaking. But meanwhile, as time passed on, “Mother Earth” was in labour. The water in the shaft gradually accumulated, eventually reaching the surface, and then overflowed, running down an adjoining ditch, which skirted what is now called “Coal-pit Wood.” This overflow naturally attracted attention. Such things as “Spas” were not unknown. There was one at Lincoln, not far from the present Arboretum, and the Woodhall water being found to be salt, as was ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... we came again within sound of the sea. There was moonlight, though not much; and by this I could see the three huge towers and broken battlements of Tantallon, that old chief place of the Red Douglases. The horse was picketed in the bottom of the ditch to graze, and I was led within, and forth into the court, and thence into a tumble-down stone hall. Here my conductors built a brisk fire in the midst of the pavement, for there was a chill in the night. My hands were loosed, I was set by the wall in the inner end, and (the Lowlander ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his own light and knowledge, to foist upon the reader as something generous and noble. I am not merely bringing this charge against that sort of fiction which is beneath literature and outside of it, "the shoreless lakes of ditch-water," whose miasms fill the air below the empyrean where the great ones sit; but I am accusing the work of some of the most famous, who have, in this instance or in that, sinned against the truth, which can ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... soldier of infantry who belonged to the first division of the seventh Army Corps. After the defeats of Wissenbourg and Froeschwiller, Picot, half dead with fatigue and slightly wounded, was left behind in a ditch with his comrade Coutard of the first corps. They were only able to rejoin the army at Rheims on 22nd August, 1870, arriving with their clothes worn out and covered with mud, and having more the appearance of bandits ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... pale, paling, balustrade, rail, railing, quickset hedge, park paling, circumvallation[obs3], enceinte, ring fence. barrier, barricade; gate, gateway; bent, dingle [U.S.]; door, hatch, cordon; prison &c. 752. dike, dyke, ditch, fosse[obs3], moat. V. inclose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... English miles a day. Between Oldendorf and Bueckeburg, we experienced a 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. ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... an infinite pleasure in Boisgobey, Montepin, and, of course, Gaboriau. There was nothing of the "cultured person" about him. Concerning a novel dear to culture, he said that he would die by my side, in the last ditch, proclaiming it the worst fiction in the world. I make haste to add that I have only known two men of letters as free as Mr. Stevenson, not only from literary jealousy, but from the writer's natural, if exaggerated, distaste for work which, though ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... vnto the very extremitie and borders of the said prouince northward, and there it is a narrow Isthmus or neck land, [Footnote: The Isthmus of Perekop.] hauing sea on the East and West sides therof, insomuch that there is a ditch made from one sea vnto the other. In the same plaine (before the Tartars sprang vp) were the Comanians wont to inhabite, who compelled the foresayd cities and castles to pay tribute vnto them. But when the Tartars came vpon them, the multitude of the Comanians entred into the foresaid prouince, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... she had with pales enclosed about, Some high, some low, and a dry ditch without. Within this homestead lived, without a peer For crowing loud, the noble Chanticleer; 40 So hight her cock, whose singing did surpass The merry notes of organs at the mass. More certain was the crowing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... dropped would be, not as if a sculptor should go on blocking out marble statues only to throw them away half finished, but as if he should take the living human frame for his subject, and should cut and gash and torture it for years, only to fling it into the ditch. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... on Larry whom I used to consider a lightweight. He is my last ditch, and then I'm off by the overhill and skyville route. In the meantime I'll make some manuscript memoirs ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... away with him," Trove continued. "His character is like a broken buggy; and his imagination—that's the unbroken colt. Every day, for a long time, the colt has run away with the wagon, tipping it over and dragging it in the ditch, until every bolt is loose, and every spoke rattling, and every wheel awry. I do ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... behind, and fondly hoped that we had taken a final leave; but unluckily our companions' wagon stuck so long in a deep muddy ditch that, before it was extricated, the van of the emigrant caravan appeared again, descending a ridge close at hand. Wagon after wagon plunged through the mud; and as it was nearly noon, and the place promised shade and water, we saw with much gratification that they were resolved to ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... this moment as I pen these lines, a certain ditch-bordered path leading to a narrow foot-bridge across a river in Norfolk. I can recall the indescribable sensations which the purple spikes of loosestrife and the tall willow-herb, growing with green rushes, produced in my mind on a certain misty morning ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... it, but the bacon's the butter for us. Now for the butcher-knives. We must ditch ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 pull ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... value when I came to be pursued by mounted military police, who suspected me of being a spy at some manoeuvres abroad. After a rare chase I scrambled over a wall and dropped into an orchard of low fruit trees. Here squatting in a ditch, I watched the legs of the gendarmes' horses while they quartered the plantation, and when they drew away from me I crept to the bank of a deep water channel which formed one of the boundaries of the enclosure. Here I found a small ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... Ghoree has great strength, being on a level with the adjacent country and surrounded by a wet ditch thirty feet wide and very deep; its stagnant water teemed with fish of a large size, but I had no opportunity of ascertaining their species. There was a rude drawbridge across the moat, and the dwellings around the fort were temporary hovels composed of ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... and wagon at will. If he were content merely to hold the reins, regardless of whether or no the team followed the road, the entire equipage—team, wagon, reins and driver—would soon be wrecked; the driver would be lying drowned in a ditch or a pool, or have his neck broken going over stumps and rocks. But if he dexterously regulates the movement of the outfit according to the road, observing where it is safe and where unsafe, he will proceed securely because wisely. Were he, in his egotism, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... unknown tongue." Paul got at the very root of the truth, for his remarks imply that no man can make a thought clear to the mind of another unless it be first clear to his own mind. "If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch together." ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... approached her destination, the cab passed—by merely crossing a road—from a spacious and beautiful Park, with its surrounding houses topped by statues and cupolas, to a row of cottages, hard by a stinking ditch miscalled a canal. The city of contrasts: north and south, east and west, the city ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... there might have been a grand smash there on the road, but Frank had caught the words "Run him down!" and he gave Nemo a light cut with the whip, at the same time pulling him still farther into the ditch. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... creatures, not able to build up organic matter from air, water, and salts, but devouring their neighbours. These units were not closed in with cellulose, but remained naked, with their living matter or protoplasm flowing out in changeful processes, such as we see in the Amoebae in the ditch or in our own white blood corpuscles and other amoeboid cells. These were the originators of the animal kingdom. Thus from very simple Protists the first animals and the first plants may have arisen. All were still very minute, and it is worth remembering that had ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... 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 ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... wrong side of their breastworks, and afforded the enemy an easy entrance into their fortress. But, "Let them alone; they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."[84] ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... again, quite plainly. The shadows were horsemen, softly riding along on both sides of the highway. He raised his torch and looked at the horsemen. There was quite a cavalcade of them. Now they crossed the ditch and took position across the road, thus preventing the carriages from passing on. The torch-bearer stood still and turned around in order to shout to the postilions to halt. But only an inarticulated, shrill cry escaped from his throat, for at the same moment ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... going back, as it was very doubtful whether I would find my money. Yet it contained all I possessed, save a few copper coins I had in my pocket. I paid my small bill, and, deeply grieved at my loss, continued my journey towards Seraval. I was within three miles of that place when, in jumping over a ditch, I sprained my ankle, and was compelled to sit down on one side of the road, and to wait until someone should come ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Washington, not only Head of the Department of Economics and Dean of the College of Commerce, and a power on the campus, but a power in the community as well. He was working under a President who backed him in everything to the last ditch, who was keenly interested in every ambition he had for making a big thing of his work. He at last could see Introductory Economics given as he wanted to have it given—realizing at the same time that his plans ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... pleased the people. For one thing, he brought about the custom of having merchants meet once a week at a bridge which crossed Broad Street at the present Exchange Place. There is no bridge there now, but in those days it was necessary, for Broad Street was a ditch which extended from the river almost to Wall Street. But though the ditch has been filled up, and the bridge is gone, the locality has ever since been one ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... the Crane, "my geography was as good as your arithmetic. It is all the same whether you fall into the ditch from this ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... through among the trees to the back of the steadings. "There is but one place where I deem that King Olaf will not think of seeking for such a man as you," she said; "and that is in the ditch under the pig sty." ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... horses in if they don't want to be held in, but he goes to sleep 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, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... himselfe: as if in times past they lived as the Cannibals, eating one another. Which they make more probable, because at this time they eate all kind of raw flesh, whatsoeuer it bee, euen the very carrion that lyeth in the ditch. But as the Samoits themselves will say, they were called Samoie, that is, of themselves, as though they were Indigenae, or people bred upon that very soyle that never changed their seate from one place to another, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... every available shelter to dodge a hailstorm of Mauser bullets, awaiting the order to advance. Captain O'Neill exposed himself and was instantly killed. How could he avoid it? How could it have been otherwise? What can keep an Irishman down in the ditch when bullets are flying in air, "murmuring dirges" and "shells are shrieking requiems?" You may readily imagine an Irishman on the firing line, poking his head above the ground, exclaiming: "Did yez see that? And where did that Dago pill come from now? Shure ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the three stood nearest him), by the collar of his boating jersey, shook him as he might have done a baby, and almost before he was aware, pitched him into the river. Instantly swinging round, he gave Lord Fitzurse a butt with his elbow, which sent his lordship tottering into the ditch on the other side, and while his wrath was still blazing, received in one eye a blow from Brogten's strong fist, which for an instant made ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... arrow has over the bullet. It performs its deadly mission without making any noise. The wily savages, unseen and unheard, crept near, and piercing him with their arrows he fell dead. They took his scalp, threw the body into a ditch, covering it with a few leaves, and fled. When they arrived at their village they very boastfully exhibited the scalp of the defenceless missionary, as that of an Iroquois warrior. To obtain this renown was ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... a nightmare tramp. The rain never ceased. By day we lay in icy misery, chilled to the bone in our sopping clothes, in some dank ditch or wet undergrowth, with aching bones and blistered feet, fearing detection, but fearing, even more, the coming of night and the resumption of our march. Yet we stuck to our programme like Spartans, and about eight ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... at this spot, and had subsequently torn up enough leaves and dirt to fill a moderate-size grave in his efforts to dislodge his quarry. He did not know that I was watching him, and his antics were therefore perfectly natural. He had dug a slanting ditch perhaps a foot deep in the soft loam, and when my eyes fell upon him had stopped for a moment to get his wind. He stood planted firmly on his four short legs, his tail vibrating incessantly, like the pendulum of a clock. His muzzle ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... metallic bars to which he clung. He was in the cage under the ball of St. Paul's. The dome rose but a little way above the general contour of the city, into the still twilight, and sloped away, shining greasily under a few distant lights, into a circumambient ditch ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... wept 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 ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of the last century, tells us that, wishing to preserve a field of good land from the roots of an avenue of elms which were exhausting it, he cut a ditch between the field and avenue to intercept the roots. But he saw with surprise those of the roots which had not been cut, go down behind the slope of the ditch to keep out of the light, go under the ditch, and into the field again." And the Swiss naturalist Bonnet said wittily, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... framed by dark hair lightly sprinkled with gray. The second that he looked into that woman's eyes taught him her character, absolutely, as finally as if he had grown up with her. One could trust her to the last ditch, he thought. ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... of it or no. Thus an angry man may wish to see him who has offended brought to public confession and shame: but a hater is well content to see his enemy spending his fortune foolishly, or dead drunk in a ditch on a lonely wayside. The man in anger feels grief and annoyance, not so the hater. At a certain point of suffering anger stops, and is appeased when full satisfaction seems to have been made: but an enemy is implacable and insatiate in his ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... believe the whole of it, or at any rate a great portion, has been paved with wood; but the boards have been worked into mud, and the ground under the boards has been worked into holes, till the street is more like the bottom of a filthy ditch than a road-way through one of the most thickly populated parts of a city. Had Quebec in Wolfe's time been as it is now, Wolfe would have stuck in the mud between the river and the rock before he ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... we had become as intimate as a litter of puppies. Pretty close stowing it was too—yet, considering the jolting, bumping, and rolling, that was an advantage. Oftentimes I feared that the coach would go over altogether into the ditch, when I was thankful that there was not any one outside except the coachman and guard, who are in a manner born to it, to break their necks. Still, notwithstanding all impediments, we accomplished thirty miles a day; that is fast going, you will allow, ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... hours;— In many a game he takes a noisy part, And shows the native gladness of his heart; But soon he hears, on pleasure all intent, The new suggestion and the quick assent; The grove invites, delight thrills every breast— To leap the ditch and seek the downy nest Away they start, leave balls and hoops behind, And one ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... "He'll be flung into the ditch." He turned abruptly to Frome. "Peter, take me to a room where I can talk to this young man. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... and peasants, but now grown 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 ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... seventh resolves, this last-ditch effort made no difference. The public printer, conservative Joseph Royle of the Virginia Gazette, refused to publish the resolves at all. What went into print outside the colonies were the four true resolves, plus the three spurious ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... to-night," he said, in a low tone. "Easy served with a bed, that lad be; six foot o' dry peat or heath, or a nook in a dry ditch. That lad hasn't slept once in a house this twenty year, and ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... "into the foule sea;" in MS. G, "fowsie;" that is, the fosse, or ditch, which extended round the Castle, except ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of the other, which a struggle to the bitter end alone could generate,—is a question for the political student. But it will always remain in doubt whether the practical exhaustion of the resources of the South was not a condition precedent to ending the war,—whether, in sooth, the "last ditch" was not actually reached when ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Pros. or Kitty Reid, her hair blowing about her face, happy with her daubs, messing about in the studio. Was I happier when I was like that? I would not go back to it! I would not barter my beauty for any other gift on earth. I shall fight and fight to the last ditch. I don't propose to be a pawn ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... You had better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the world. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... brutal-looking Cars with the swollen Wheels came along and tried to Ditch him. They showed him the same courteous consideration that would be lavished upon a Colored Republican Orator in ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... he's figuring on doing? Get water in the canal, sell land under a contract that lets him out if the ditch breaks, or something so he can't supply water at any time. And when them poor suckers gets their crops all in, and at the point where they've got to have water or lose out, something'll happen to the supply. Folks, I know! ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... wins out in the end. It's a cinch, with everything on her side. Anyway, the next thing I knows about their plans is when I finds their names in the sailin' list, bound for the Big Ditch, with most everyone else that could get away. And I makes my discovery about three hours after the ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... lost in thought, yet never missed pushing aside with a decided gesture of her foot every stone that lay in her way. There were many in that rocky path, but Becky left it smoother as she climbed, and paused now and then to send some especially sharp or large one spinning into the grassy ditch beside the road. ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Salvat had suddenly escaped from the detectives by bounding into the Bois de Boulogne, it had occurred to him to slip round to the Dauphine gate and there descend into the deep ditch* of the city ramparts. He remembered days of enforced idleness which he had spent there, in nooks where, for his own part, he had never met a living soul. Nowhere, indeed, could one find more secret places of retreat, hedged round by thicker bushes, or concealed from view by ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... containing his wife, the necessary theatrical paraphernalia, and the members of the company. Well, soon after passing Chatelaudren, he perceived something white lying by the roadside, near the edge of a ditch. 'I must go and see what that is,' he said to his wife. He stopped the horses, alighted from the vehicle he was in, went to the ditch, picked up the object he had noticed, and uttered a cry of surprise. You will ask me what he had found? Ah! good heavens! A mere trifle. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... unless where riches abound in great profusion." Lucius Quintius, the sole hope of the Roman people, cultivated a farm of four acres, at the other side of the Tiber, which are called the Quintian meadows, opposite to the very place where the dock-yard now is. There, whether leaning on a stake in a ditch which he was digging, or in the employment of ploughing, engaged at least on some rural work, as is certain, after mutual salutations had passed, being requested by the ambassadors to put on his gown, and listen to the commands of the senate, (with ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... surprised to find a high rampart in good repair, built on a scarped mound about thirty-five feet high, flanked by numerous towers, and surrounded by a fausse brayze and a wet ditch, whilst the height of the citadel covered the interior from the commanding fire of the hills from the north, rendering it nugatory. In addition to this, screen walls had been built before the gates, the ditch was filled with water, and ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... groaning," said the vizier's son. "I will climb to the window, and see whether there are any means of escape. Yes! yes!" he whispered, when he had reached the window-hole. "Below there is a ditch surrounded by a high wall. I will jump down and reconnoitre. You stay here, and ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... overshadowing either corner of the darkly shaded garden, his broad, brick walk leading down to the tall, brick-pillared gate, his square of bright, red pavement on the turf-covered sidewalk, and his railed platform spanning the draining-ditch, with a pair of green benches, one on each edge, facing each other crosswise of the gutter. There, any sunset hour, you were sure to find the householder sitting beside his cool-robed matron, two or three slave nurses in white turbans standing at hand, and an excited throng of fair children, nearly ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... 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. Yet, in spite of all this, it is pretended ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... grass two figures were still lying where they had been thrown out. Rowly, who had of course been on the off-side, had been thrown furthest. His head had struck the milestone that stood back on the waste ground before the ditch. There was no need for any one to tell that his neck had been broken. The way his head lay on one side, and the twisted, inert limbs, all told their ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... we must give the Spaniards another drubbing, you know; and if the Dutch do but join us, we shall blow up all the ports in Europe; for our ships are our bastions, and our ravelines, and our hornworks; and there's a devilish wide ditch for 'em to pass, which they can't fill up with things-Here Mr. Conway helped him to fascines. By this time I imagine you have laughed at him as much, and were as tired of him as we were; but he's gone. This is the day that Gray and I intended for the first of a southern ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... that she would outface me that this mad notion was a fine thing! I declare it is worse than Bertha's business; and you so much older! At least Hastings was a man of family, and this is a Yankee adventurer picked out of the back of a ditch by that young dog, Sandbrook. Only a Yankee could have had the impudence! I declare you are laughing all the time. What have you to say ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wooden one never kicks, while, to speak the truth, whenever I've got on a regular-built animal, he to a certainty has shied up his stern and sent me over his bows, sometimes right into a hedge, or a ditch, or a pond, or through a window, into a shop, or parlour, I happened to catch sight of a man standing at the end of an outlandish sort of a cart or a van, painted all over with red and yellow, and blue and gold, with a sort of a Chinaman's temple at one ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... danger would overcome the vividness of his anticipations. But those imagined hours before the beginnings of battles had their exact counterpart in the moments of waiting while the covers were drawn. At such times he had a map of the country-side before his eyes, with every ditch and fence and pit underlined and marked dangerous; and though he rode straight when the hounds were off, he rode straight with a fluttering heart. Thus he spent his youth. He passed into Woolwich and out of it with high honours; he went to India ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... 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 nobility ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... evening after a drizzling summer shower, to see the air filled throughout all its space with sportive organized creatures, the leaf, the branch, the bark of the tree, every mossy bank, the bare earth, the pool, the ditch, all teeming with animal life; and the mind that is ever framed for contemplation, must awaken now in viewing such a profusion and variety of existence. One of those poor little beings, the fragile gnat, becomes our object of attention, whether we regard its form or peculiar designation in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various |
