"Dike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The general formation up there is limestone, I know—I've noticed it frequently—but I expect it is crossed somewhere—probably on the line of the belt of trees—by a porphyry dike. Put the specimens into your pocket, Joe; we must keep them to show to Connor. It's a very important find. And now let us ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... being submerged every spring by the freshets in the river. Colonel Colt bought this meadow for a nominal sum, and, to the astonishment of the good people of Hartford, proceeded to surround it with a strong dike, or embankment. This embankment was two miles in length, one hundred and fifty feet wide at the base, from thirty to sixty feet wide at the top, and from ten to twenty-five feet high. Its strength ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Surupamana and Uirapuri. When the dikes, or natural dams, are only two or three feet high, the Indians venture to descend them in boats. In going up the river, they swim on before, and if, after many vain efforts, they succeed in fixing a rope to one of the points of rock that crown the dike, they then, by means of that rope, draw the bark to the top of the raudal. The bark, during this arduous task, often fills with water; at other times it is stove against the rocks, and the Indians, their bodies ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... answered Leonard, then went on: "we must get between the hut, there is only one, and the low wall that borders the canal separating the Nest from the slave camp, and, if the drawbridge is up and no other means can be found, we must swim the dike, dispose of the sentry there also and gain the slave camp. Then we must try to free some of the slaves and send them round through the garden into the morass to fire the reeds, should the wind blow strong enough. Meanwhile I propose to walk boldly into the camp, salute Pereira, pass myself ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... drop into the foul gulf of vice. With the blind egotism of selfishness, they wish merely to gratify their present inclinations, ignoring the consequences. They are like children who think it would be sport to see a little cataract falling over a Holland dike. Therefore, when the tide is in they open a small channel, but are soon aghast to find that the deep sea is overwhelming ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... earth the painefull Pyoners raise With the walls equall, close vpon the Dike, To passe by which the Souldier that assayes, On Planks thrust ouer, one him downe doth strike: Him with a mall a second English payes, A second French transpearc'd him with a Pyke: That from ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... was known as Sackville's Mill-dike. The hand of man had curbed the free course of the wild forest stream, and made it subservient to his will, but could not destroy the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... material prosperity, general cultivation and luxury, flourished, while the weapons dropped nervelessly from their palsied arms. The genius of Caesar, in his Gallic and Germanic campaigns, built up an outside barrier, which, like a dike, for centuries postponed the inevitable end, but which also, like every artificial barrier, gave way when the strong masculine impulse which first created it had degenerated into that worship of comfort, wealth, and general softness, which is the ideal of ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Portugal," intended to expel from that country, if not to annihilate, the English leader and his small but resolute band, who, undismayed, awaited the coming storm. In the ever-memorable lines of Torres Vedras, the legions of Buonaparte met a stern and effectual dike to their torrent of headlong aggression. Upon the happy selection and able defence of those celebrated positions, were based the salvation of the Peninsula and the subsequent glorious progress of the British arms. Whilst referring to them, Mr Grattan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... been like to burn a hole i' my pouch sin' ever they were turned for your admittance. Tak them again, an' gie them to wha you will, and muckle gude may he get o' them. Auld John may dee a beggar in a hay barn, or at the back of a dike, but he sall aye be master o' his ain thoughts an' gie them vent ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... "Us 'ud dike out in spick an' span clean clothes come Sund'ys. Ever'body wore homespun clo'es den. De mistis an' de res' o' de ladies in de Big House made mos' of 'em. De cullud wimmins wore some kin' o' dress wid white aprons an' de mens wore overalls ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... eh?" answered the old soldier. "You shall give me satisfaction to-morrow morning. If you had made war in the Valteline, you would not talk like that; and if you had seen his Eminence marching upon the dike at Rochelle, with the old Marquis de Spinola, while volleys of cannonshot were sent after him, you would have nothing to say ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... disturbance of 1467 and the general exodus of the samurai from the capital at that time. At this time the military nobles came to the city only to fight, and the city's population melted away. All was disorder. The city was flooded and the dike which was built to check the flooded rivers came to be thought a fine residence place in comparison with lower parts ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... against any sudden surprise, he constructed the celebrated Julius Portus on the coast of Campania, near Baiae, by connecting the inland Lake Avernus, by means of a canal, with the Lake Lucrinus, and by strengthening the latter lake against the sea, by an artificial dike or dam. While he was engaged in these great works, Antony sailed to Taventum, in B.C. 37, with 300 ships. Maecenas hastened thither from Rome, and succeeded once more in concluding an amicable arrangement. He was accompanied on this occasion ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... which still surround and conceal the island, it is now a complete model farm. Surrounded by a dike, it is protected from any floods, and is intersected by canals, provided with water by a ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... it is only necessary to open a dike, which allows the tide to flood the land again and leave a fresh ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... rose, here and there, the bleak spire of a ghostly and perishing Lombardy poplar. This is the tree of all least suited to those wind-beaten regions, but none other will the country people plant. Close up to the road, at one point, curved a massive sweep of red dike, and further to the right stretched the miles on miles of naked marsh, till they lost themselves in the lonely, shifting ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... whom it could easily be succored, the recovery of that place by France was considered as totally desperate. But Coligny had remarked, that as the town of Calais was surrounded with marshes, which during the winter were impassable, except over a dike guarded by two castles, St. Agatha and Newnam Bridge, the English were of late accustomed, on account of the lowness of their finances, to dismiss a great part of the garrison at the end of autumn, and to recall them ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... fertile and agreeable. Several of these torrents are so large and deep, such as those of Santa, Baranca, and others, that without the assistance of the Indians, who break and diminish for a short time the force of the current, by means of piles and branches forming a temporary wear or dike, the Spaniards would be unable to pass. In these hazardous passages, it was necessary to get over with all possible expedition, to avoid the violence of the stream, which often rolled down very large ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... of Abercorn, on the Forth, a space of nearly thirty-seven miles, defended by twelve or thirteen forts. These are supposed to have been on the site of those of Agricola. This wall is usually called Graham's dike; and some parts of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... single week Wad mak a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart out owre a dike, My horses in a miry, O! I wear my stockings white an' blue, My love's sae fierce an' fiery, O! I drill the land that I should pleugh, An' pleugh the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... freshness, and how marvellous the sleep in which once again you become enfolded! A jolt!—and for the last time you return to consciousness. By now the sun is high in the heavens, and you hear a voice cry "gently, gently!" as a farm waggon issues from a by-road. Below, enclosed within an ample dike, stretches a sheet of water which glistens like copper in the sunlight. Beyond, on the side of a slope, lie some scattered peasants' huts, a manor house, and, flanking the latter, a village church with its cross flashing like ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and thereto dike and delve, For Christe's sake, for every poore wight, Withouten hire, if ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... but an ugly trench of reddish mud gashed across the face of the marsh, with a thread of half-fluid slime lazily crawling along the bottom; but at high tide it was filled to the brim with an opaque torrent that would have overflowed, but for the dikes thrown up to confine it. Behind the dike on the farther bank stood the seeming officer, waving his flag in sign that he desired a parley. He was in reality no officer, but one of Le Loutre's Indians in disguise, Etienne Le Batard, or, as others say, the great chief, Jean-Baptiste Cope. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... across the common a wide dike had recently been cut and the earth from the cutting cast up roughly on the other side. Surely this would stop them! But no; scarcely pausing, Lizzie took the leap, stumbled among the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... filled by materials poured into them at some period of eruption when the melted masses within the earth were thrown out and flowed like water into any inequality or depression of the surface around. The walls that inclose such a dike are often found to be completely altered by contact with its burning contents, and to have assumed a character quite different from the rocks of which they make a part; while the mass itself which fills the fissure shows by the character of its crystallization that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... some time since from Mr. Riddoch, of Falkirk, a sort of iron mallet, said to have been found in the ruins of Grame's Dike; there it was reclaimed about three months since by the gentleman on whose lands it was found, a Doctor—by a very polite letter from his man of business. Having unluckily mislaid his letter, and being totally unable either to recollect the name of the proprietor or the professional ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... basin is covered with from 2 to 5 ft. of good clay, except where it is punctured by a dike, or washed down to the underlying sandstone by a few gullies. These punctures or washes were covered or filled with clay from 1 to 4 ft. deep. During the first season the leakage, above the 6-ft. contour, was at the rate of ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... dangled upside-down between parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden platforms,—splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy dike, soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall, guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy dike, the town was pretty well ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... worker Living in peace and perfect charity. God loved he beste with all his heart At alle times, were it gain or smart*, *pain, loss And then his neighebour right as himselve. He woulde thresh, and thereto dike*, and delve, *dig ditches For Christe's sake, for every poore wight, Withouten hire, if it lay in his might. His tithes payed he full fair and well, Both of his *proper swink*, and his chattel** *his own labour* **goods In a tabard* he ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... His plan was soon made. In the midst of that great harbor of La Rochelle he sank sixty hulks of vessels filled with stone; then, across the harbor,—nearly a mile wide, and, in places, more than eight hundred feet deep,—he began building over these sunken ships a great dike and wall,—thoroughly fortified, carefully engineered, faced with sloping layers of hewn stone. His own men scolded at the magnitude of the work,—the men in La Rochelle laughed at it. Worse than that, the Ocean sometimes laughed and scolded at it. Sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... a time, but he does not know it from a potato. When he came in that dreadful night to supper, he handed the watch to me and told me to take good care of it until he asked for it again. Just as he opened his lips to say more, Broom Klatterboost came flying in with word that the dike was in danger. Ah! The waters were terrible that Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... sat us down on the sunny dike, Where the white pond-lilies teeter, And I went to fishing like quaint old Ike, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... was at the base of it, bubbling out of red clay. Above it the red dirt led a hundred feet to a dike of granite and stopped. He hurried up the hillside that was rapidly whitening with snow and ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... Krafft, explain the significance of the brain-parasite to him. Try to get him to talk to Hys about the last raid. Try to get him to hold off the attack. I'll keep the radio with me and as soon as I know anything I'll call in. This is all last resort, finger in the dike kind of stuff, but it is all we can do. Because if we do nothing, it means the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... I saw that the whole side of the structure had fallen, littering the road with its fragments. Scattered prone among these were men and horses; others staggered, screaming. On the farther side of this stony dike our pursuers were held like rushing waters behind a sudden ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... a Voice call: "Brothers! The dike is breaking! The River comes! Link arms, brothers; with the dike of our bodies we will save our home! Sisters, behind us, link arms! Close in the crevices, children! The River!" And all that multitude, whom I had seen ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the gods to rule, and one who will "prove himself a god." These divinely-appointed rulers were regarded as the ministers of God, the visible representatives of the unseen Power which really governs all. The divine government must also have its invisible agents—its Nemesis, and Themis, and Dike, the ministers of law, of justice, and of retribution; and its Jupiter, and Juno, and Neptune, and Pluto, ruling, with delegated powers, in the heavens, the air, the sea, and the nethermost regions. So that, in fact, there exists no nation, no commonwealth, no history without a Theophany, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the dike which enclosed the main deposit, we descended to the cistern, filled our cups, and swallowed the contents without taking a breath. When we dipped up a second, Tom Clary looked into the depths of his ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... 221.).—On the 14th May, 1491 (6 Henry VII.), one Master William Burton, the schoolmaster of St. Leonard's Hospital, in the city of York, was accused before the magistrates of having said that "King Richard was an hypocrite, a crocheback, and buried in a dike like a dog." This circumstance is recorded in a contemporary document of unquestionable authenticity (vide extracts from York Records in the Fifteenth Century, p. 220.); and must remove all doubt as to the fact of Richard's bodily deformity. The conjecture of Dr. Wallis, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... Roy. These roches moutonnees may very fairly be compared with those of the Grimsel, and exhibit all the characteristic features of the Alpine ones. One of them, lying on the western side of the valley where it opens into Glen Spean, is crossed by a trap-dike. The general surface of the hill, consisting of rather soft mica, has been slightly worn down by atmospheric agencies, so that the dike stands out some three-quarters of an inch above it. On the dike, however, the glacier-marks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Gooch and Connie, pushed back her short black veil impatiently. The hours she had fought through since midnight seemed as nothing compared to this eternity of waiting. Since entering the room she had not once looked at Donald. She dared not open even a tiny sluice in the dike that held back the sea of her love. But in every fiber of her being she felt him sitting there under suspicion, his future in the hands of twelve men who had the power of making him suffer the penalty of a crime which he had not committed. It was unjust, cruel, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... no conception what an ugly place Plaistow is. The land isn't actual fen now, but it was once. And it's quite flat. And there is a great dike, twenty feet wide, oozing through it just oozing, you know; and lots of little dikes, at right angles with the big one. And the fields are all square. And there are no hedges and hardly a tree to be seen in ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... downs, into the wide plains of wet mud, this was the old classical way of going up to the Mont. Surely, what had been found good enough as a pathway for kings and saints and pilgrims should be good enough for two lovers of old-time methods. The dike yonder was built for those who believe in the devil of haste, and for those who also serve ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... district town of China, in the province of Cheh-kiang, at the mouth of the Yung-kiang, 12 m. N.E. of Ningpo, in 29 deg. 58' N., 121 deg. 45' E. It lies at the foot of a hill on a tongue of land, and is partly protected from the sea on the N. by a dike about 3 m. long, composed entirely of large blocks of hewn granite. The walls are 20 ft. high and 3 m. in circumference. The defences were formerly of considerable strength, and included a well-built but now dismantled citadel on a precipitous cliff, 250 ft. high, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... sentence, and that a judgment must affirm a Custom or punish its breach, it seems quite certain that the historical order of the ideas is that in which I have placed them. The Homeric word for a custom in the embryo is sometimes "Themis" in the singular—more often "Dike," the meaning of which visibly fluctuates between a "judgment" and a "custom" or "usage." [Greek: Nomos], a Law, so great and famous a term in the political vocabulary of the later Greek society, does not occur ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... sections of the sky were clear, and thinly studded with stars that looked dim and watery, as did indeed the whole firmament; for in some places black clouds were still visible, threatening a continuance of tempestuous weather. The road appeared washed and gravelly; every dike was full of yellow water; and every little rivulet and larger stream dashed its hoarse murmur into our ears; every blast, too, was cold, fierce, and wintry, sometimes driving us back to a standstill, and again, when a turn ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... slew, and led some away. Then an army from all parts of England was gathered very nigh; (78) and they came to Gloucester: whence they sallied not far out against the Welsh, and there lay some time. And Earl Harold caused the dike to be dug about the town the while. Meantime men began to speak of peace; and Earl Harold and those who were with him came to Bilsley, where amity and friendship were established between them. The sentence of outlawry against Earl Elgar was reversed; and they gave him all ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... told of a child finding a little leak in the dike that shuts off the sea from Holland, and stopping it with his hand till help could come, staying there all the night, holding back the floods with his little hand. It was but a tiny, trickling stream that he held back; yet if he had not done it, it would soon have ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... entrenchments for the besieging army the burghers bade him wait till he won the town before he began digging round it. "Kynge Edward," they shouted, "waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest geten, dike thee." But the stockade was stormed with the loss of a single knight, nearly eight thousand of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who held the town-hall stoutly against all assailants ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... divorced women to be met with here, especially among the more affluent classes, exceeds any moderate calculation. Nothing can more clearly manifest the necessity of erecting some dike against the torrent of immorality, which has almost inundated this capital, and threatens to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... not readily fall down. The folk of that generation walked in and out of the doorways of many of them, although the roofs for the most part are now covered with tiles or rough slates in place of reeds from the dike. The parish wells also, fitted with iron pumps that have superseded the old rollers and buckets, still serve the place with drinking-water as they have done since the days of the first Edward, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... causeway they came upon the fort of Xoloc. Here a massive stone wall, twelve feet high, crossed the dike, and stretched out on to the lake on either side. Towers were erected at its angles and, properly defended, it could have resisted the ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... heroes, tempt the fearless toil, Enrich your nations with the nurturing spoil; O'er my vast vales let yellow harvests wave, Quay the calm ports and dike the lawns I lave. Win from the waters every stagnant fen, Where truant rills escape my conscious ken; And break those remnant rocks that still impede My current crowding thro ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... and dike" are earth and stone wall. The proverb means that heavy or important undertakings ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop |
