"Ditch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... war were vain, for in most cases there was no chance of making out from what scrap of cover the shots had been despatched; while it became evident that, from sheer malignity, the undisciplined members of the enemy's force would crawl in the darkness to some clump of rocks, or into some ditch-like donga, or behind one of the many ant-hills, and lie there invisible, firing as he saw a chance, and only leaving it when the ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... as wilful as those of Mrs. Dombey's titled relative, and it is only by the strongest effort of mind over matter that I can prevent them carrying me beyond the reach of cannon-balls, bullets, and shells. I have a horrible vision of myself lying all night with a broken leg in a ditch, gradually freezing. On a warm summer's day I do not think very much of the courage of those who fight well; on a cold winter's day, however, any man who does not run away and take shelter by a fire deserves well ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the memory of his brother; that I had dishonored his name, disgraced his house and brought myself to shame; that I should leave the roof, leave the neighborhood and die as I deserved to die, in a ditch! I made no reply. I was crushed into silence under ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... water could only be crossed at some distance from the sea. The country through which the Cuckmere flowed had a melancholy picturesqueness. It was a great reach of level meadows, very marshy, with red-brown rushes growing in every ditch, and low trees in places, their trunks wrapped in bright yellow lichen; nor only their trunks, but the very smallest of their twigs was so clad. All over the flats were cows pasturing, black cows, contrasting with flocks of white sheep, which were gathered together, bleating. The coarse grass ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... 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
... 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
... other, having this scope to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying his own divine essence. But when, by the balance of experience, it was found that the astronomer, looking to the stars, might fall in a ditch; that the enquiring philosopher might be blind in himself; and the mathematician might draw forth a straight line with a crooked heart; then lo! did proof, the over-ruler of opinions, make manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private end ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... fall soberly to those thistles and be hunger-starv'd, than they will offer to break their bounds; whereas the lusty courser, if he be in a barren plot, and spy better grass in some pasture near adjoining, breaks over hedge and ditch, and to go, ere he will be pent in, and not have his bellyful. Peradventure, the horses lately sworn to be stolen,[31] carried that youthful mind, who, if they had been asses, would ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... within range of the enemy's rifle fire and heard spent bullets as they pinged and spluttered into the mud. We crossed a railway line, and marched or crawled the best way we could along the ditch parallel with it—truth to tell, cursing and swearing. We passed an old signal station, now just a pile of bricks, with one side wall still erect and one glass window intact. We had come to know well that wall and that window and the strewn bricks around, for we had passed ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... repeat it here, but only record such circumstances as have not appeared in these pages. On arriving at her grandfather's she encountered a storm of angry abuse, and was driven from the door with a stern command never to return, as she had forfeited all claims upon him, and might die in a ditch for all he cared. She managed to get about a mile from the house, and then overcome with fatigue and misery ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... which could possibly be imitated, was attempted. She had her bows and arrows, and by original fitness, as well as by constant practice, she became an excellent markswoman. She had her well-trained horse, and her vaulting bars, and made nothing of flying over a high fence or a wide ditch. But her last whim was the most eccentric of all. She had her lance. And, her favorite pastime was to have a small ring suspended from a crossbeam, and while riding at full speed, with her light lance balanced in her hand, to catch this ring and bear it off upon the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... play he organizes his activities, shuffles and reshuffles his ideas and experiences, looking for the new combinations we call "imaginations." The kitten in its play prepares to catch its prey later on; and the child digging in a ditch and making believe "this is a house" and "this is a river" is a symbol of Man the mighty changing the face of Nature. The running and catching games like "Tag" and "I spy," "Hide and go seek," "Rellevo" are really war games, with training in endurance, agility, cool-headedness, cooperation ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... had returned weary, muddy, with his jacket torn, and the livid mark of a stone on his forehead. He had engaged in a stone fight with his comrades; they had come to blows, as usual; and in addition he had gambled, and lost all his soldi, and left his cap in a ditch. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... Strong is my name, and I may tell you that it is good at the bottom of a cheque for any reasonable amount. Well, I'm here to go bail for that young man. I know nothing of him except that I put him on his back in a ditch in an argument we had one night last winter in the reading-room yonder. I don't know whether he infected the lady or whether he didn't, but I do know, that like most of the poisoning calf-worshipping crowd who call ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... go dere in de woods wid him. Finally one night when he was outer de swamp he had to lie hidin' in de ditch all night, cross from de nigger hospital. Den somebody crep' up and shot him, but he didn't die den. Dey cay'ed his [TR: sic] crost to de hospital and he die three ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... answer to a seditious Pamphlet of J. Milton's entituled 'Brief Notes on a late Sermon, &c.' Addressed to the Author.—'If the Blinde lead the Blinde, both shall fall into the ditch.'—London, Printed for Henry Brome, April 20, 1660." This was the title of a tract, of fourteen small quarto pages, which was out on April 25. The author does not give his name; but he was Roger ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... height the eagle describes the appearance of the world lying stretched out beneath: at first it rises like a huge mountain out of the sea; then the ocean appears as a girdle encircling the land, and finally but as a ditch a gardener digs to irrigate his land. When they have risen so high that the earth is scarcely visible, Etana cries to the eagle to stop; so he does, but his strength is exhausted, and bird and man ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... unworthy of a king, 'Si dicere fas est,'" he wrote to Secretary of State Praets. "But the force of truth is such that he who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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. ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... was not. She was caked with mud and dirt from head to foot, an appalling figure in the lamplight. The rain dripped from her hair, her sinister clothing, her whole person. She looked as if she must have hidden in a wet ditch. I gazed horror-struck at my speckless matting and pale Oriental rugs. I had never allowed a child or dog in the house for fear of the matting, except of course my poor Lindo, who had died a few months previously, and whom I had taught to wipe ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... without knowing whence his death had proceeded. A good man of Larze, returning one night from his evening prayer to the wine flasks of Pomme-de-Pin, where he had left his understanding and memory, fell into a ditch full of water near his house, and found he was up to his neck. One of the neighbours finding him shortly afterwards nearly frozen, for it was winter time, said ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... success, and praised its execution very highly, as it deserved, and he explained to me more in detail the exact results. The fort was an inclosed work, and its land-front was in the nature of a bastion and curtains, with good parapet, ditch, fraise, and chevaux-de-frise, made out of the large branches of live-oaks. Luckily, the rebels had left the larger and unwieldy trunks on the ground, which served as a good cover for the skirmish-line, which crept behind these ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... One day Somerville and I and our daughters went to drive towards the Tavolata, on the road to Albano. We got out of the carriage, and went into a field, tempted by the wild flowers. On one side of this field ran the aqueduct, on the other a deep and wide ditch full of water. I had gone towards the aqueduct, leaving the others in the field. All at once we heard a loud shouting, when an enormous drove of the beautiful Campagna grey cattle with their wide-spreading ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... 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 ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... there was, for the cart-wheel flew off, and down went the cart, and Belinda and the boy were tumbled into a ditch, whence they scrambled out and rolled down a grassy slope, on and on and on, such a distance that Belinda ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... was the page, cast one look at his fair Graciosa and obeyed; but no sooner had the duchess mounted, than the horse ran away with her and dragged her over briers, stones, and mud, and finally threw her into a deep ditch. Her head was cut in several places, and her arm fractured. They picked her up in little pieces, like a broken wineglass; never was there a poor bride in worse plight. But in spite of her sufferings her malice remained. ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... because covered with a film of brown pitch-dust, and so letting in the unwary walker over his shoes. The pitch in the gutter-bank is in its native place, and as it spues slowly out of the soil into the ditch in odd wreaths and lumps, we could watch, in little, the process which has produced the whole deposit—probably ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might not understand, is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute that the whole concern is going over, a conviction which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly macadamized road comes in sight. Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to run into him; and he never finds himself ascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning to speculate upon his chances, supposing—as seems extremely probable—that ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... on thee, and be thy bow-bearer.—Only, for her mother's sake, let there pass some slight form of marriage between you—Ye need no license or priest in these happy days, but may be buckled like beggars in a ditch, with a hedge for a church-roof, and a tinker for a priest. I crave pardon of you for making such an officious and simple request—perhaps you are a ranter—or one of the family of Love, or hold marriage rites as unnecessary, as Knipperdoling, or ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... evil will, and is minded to help the Trojans, verily then I too would desire that even instantly this might be, that the Achaians should perish here nameless far from Argos: but and if they turn again, and we flee back from among the ships, and rush into the delved ditch, then methinks that not even one from among us to bear the tidings will win back to the city before the force of the Achaians when they rally. But come as I declare, let us all obey. Let our squires hold the horses by the dyke, while we being harnessed in our ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... eventually gave old goody Liu a tug on the sly and plied her with minute questions as to who the girl was. The old dame was placed under the necessity of fabricating something for his benefit. "The truth is," she said, "that there stands on the north bank of the ditch in our village a small ancestral hall, in which offerings are made, but not to spirits or gods. There was in former days some official ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... by a little bridge across a broad ditch. By the bridge stood a tall, massive post upon which a sign squeaked softly as it swayed to and fro. The inn was built round three sides of a square, the left-hand side being the house itself, the centre, the kitchen, and the right-hand ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... that he slipped the toe of his stockinged foot under him, and gave him a tremendous send right out of the door, and he went flying over the trees at the bottom of the lawn, and over the barley-field on the other side of the ditch, and over the pasture, where the cows were kept, and over the pomegranate orchard, and over the palm-grove by the little lake, and over Hassan ab Kolyar's cottage, right smack down into the soft marsh, back ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... player in a somewhat tricky piece of cross-country work. There is a nasty ditch to be negotiated. Many an optimist has been reduced to blank pessimism by that ditch. "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," might be written on a notice ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... know, is open country. They look; and suddenly down the mountain-side from the big village comes a man of some sort; such a strange man, with such a wonderful head ... that all scream: "Oy, Trishka is coming! Oy, Trishka is coming!" and all run in all directions! Our elder crawled into a ditch; his wife stumbled on the door-board and screamed with all her might; she terrified her yard-dog, so that he broke away from his chain and over the hedge and into the forest; and Kuzka's father, Dorofyitch, ran into ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... Confederate steamer, which had promised such favorable results for their cause; for the commander had been entirely occupied till he received his wound, and even then he had attended to his duties, for, as before suggested, he was a "last ditch" man. He was not fighting for the South as a mere hireling; for he had married a Southern wife, and she had enlisted all his sympathies in the cause of ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... out of him, but he's had a bad attack of pneumonia, and it's an old enemy of his, as it always is to a man of his physique. He's a good worker, but lacks judgment to make his work count. Doesn't really seem to have much to work for. But he's a friend to the last ditch. Just hear ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... do parliamentary towers and gables so colossally arise to enchant the vision? The Thames draws the ships of the world and crawls muddily and lazily out to sea wondering what haphazard of history ever concentrated so much commerce, politics and human splendour on the banks of one large ditch. Ottawa's house of political drama overlooks one of the noblest rivers in the world, that takes its rise in everlasting hills ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... 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! ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... tolls were abolished, the total revenues derived from the canal had been $121,461,871, while expenditures had amounted to $78,862,154. Various factors, including the competition of the railroads, caused a considerable decline in canal traffic in the last quarter of a century. The old canal was a ditch following the line of the Mohawk and other rivers and creeks. The new barge canal system has four branches, the Erie, from Albany to Buffalo; the Champlain, from Albany to Lake Champlain the Oswego, which starts north midway on the ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... his buggy and beat as silent a retreat as his ungreased axles would permit never occurred to him. It was much as if his harrowed spirit, driven hither and yon without mercy throughout the whole day long, had at last backed into a corner, in a mood of last-ditch, crazy desperation, and bared ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... body of men that had been appointed to this service move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire of our guns had crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall to ruins; we saw this force descend into the ditch and begin to plant the scaling-ladders. We were soon with them. The Lieutenant-General thought the assault ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and blunders that were made were numerous. In one place there were a number of people penetrating a path that led only to a hedge and deep ditch; indeed it was a brook ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... 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
... collars at the joints if these can be procured, and, if not, with a bit of paper laid over the joints to prevent the entrance of loose material, and to hold the pipes in place during construction. The ditch should then be filled with cinders, gravel, or coarse sand. If stones are to be used, they should be broken to a small size,—not more than one inch in diameter,—and the loose bits should be mixed with them in the filling. ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... Exchange, with "hedging," to conceal my own opinions. The charge was not prudently chosen, since, of all men now obtaining any portion of popular regard, I am pretty well known to be precisely the one who cares least either for hedge or ditch, when he chooses to go across country. It is certainly true that I have not the least mind to pin my heart on my sleeve, for the daily daw, or nightly owl, to peck at; but the essential reason for my not telling you my own opinions on this matter is—that I do ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... 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 of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... ingenuity invent. They had been careful to prepare a list of plausible reasons for leaving then. They had first invented a gold rumor that they hoped would sound convincing, but Andy had insisted upon telling him straightforwardly that they did not favor fence-building and ditch-digging and such back-breaking toil; that they were range men and they demanded range work or none; that if they must dig ditches and build fences and perform like menial tasks, they preferred doing ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... other tree, to stick one up right in front of every seat; to keep a gang of young wretches thrusting pamphlet or handbill into every person's palm that enters the gate, to paint a vulgar sign across every gray rock; to cut quack words in ditch-work in the smooth green turf of the mall or ball-ground. I have no doubt that it is the peremptory decision and clear good taste of the Commissioners alone, which have kept this last retreat of nature within our crowded city from being long ago plastered and daubed with placards, handbills, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... fastened them each to a separate tree in the best manner I could. This done, I returned to the chaise and the postilion. In a minute or two Belle arrived with two poles which, it seems, had long been lying, overgrown with brushwood, in a ditch or hollow behind the plantation. With these both she and I set to work in endeavouring to raise the fallen ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to his mouth as he saw the man he was following stop abruptly and begin to climb the bank. He was too close behind to be able to turn back. All he could do was to crouch down in the ditch and "lie low." He heard Jeffreys as he gained the top of the bank sigh wearily; then he seemed to be moving as if in search of a particular spot; and then the lurker's hair stood on end as he heard ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... enable others to follow them, and the fort might be taken. Now they made a desperate assault on one side, now on another, but were each time repulsed. We had the advantage of possessing a platform on which we could run rapidly from place to place as we were required, while the enemy had the ditch to pass and the high palisade to climb before they could reach the top. This enabled us to defend ourselves in a way we could not otherwise have done; still the Indians vastly outnumbered us, and seemed determined not to abandon their enterprise. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... their country. Certain species unite for hunting purposes, seek each other, call each other (a poet would say invite each other), to share their prey; in danger they aid, protect, and warn each other. The elephant knows how to help his companion out of the ditch into which the latter has fallen. Cows form a circle, with their horns outward and their calves in the centre, in order to repel the attacks of wolves. Horses and pigs, on hearing a cry of distress from one of their number, rush to the spot whence it comes. What descriptions I might ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... of London, called Bringwin, and Tourgwin, in Welsh, from its whiteness, is encompassed by a very deep and broad ditch, as well as a double wall very high. In the middle of the whole is that very ancient and very strong tower, enclosed with four others, which, in the opinion of some, was built by Julius Caesar. Upon entering the tower, we were obliged to quit our swords at the ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... fancied he would like to go faster, so he began to cluck with his tongue and cry "C'ck! c'ck!" The horse broke into a smart trot, and before Hans was aware he was thrown off—splash!—into a ditch which divided the highway from the fields, and there he lay. The horse, too, would have run away had it not been stopped by a peasant, as he came along the road, driving his cow ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... and when near enough I let fly my lariat. The rope settled gracefully around the smoke stack, and as usual my trained horse set himself back for the shock, but the engine set both myself and my horse in the ditch, and might have continued to set us in places had not something given way, as it was the rope parted, but the boys said afterwards that they thought they would have to send for a wrecking train to clean the track or ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... ditch, runnel, and watercut, the turbid waters were hurrying, all with one common flow, all with increasing speed, to the Thames. The sound of waters filled the air, dropping, poppling, splashing, trickling, dripping from ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... daddy! Perhaps it's not had enough to eat, like that kitten I found in the ditch. And perhaps it'll get fat, like her; and mamma said we wanted an old horse to go in the cart for luggage, and I'm sure that one's very old. And that's such a horrid man, like hump-backed Richard. And when nobody's looking, he tugs it, and beats it. Oh, I wish ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... skeletal condition, or where some small amount of fat remains but nutritional reserves (vitamins and minerals) are exhausted and there is insufficient nourishment forthcoming, the body begins to consume nutrient-rich muscle and organ tissue in a last-ditch effort to stay alive. Under these dire circumstances, the least essential muscles and organs from the standpoint of survival are metabolized first. For example, muscles in the arms and legs would be consumed early in the process, the heart muscle used only toward the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt, and the water-[newt]; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipped from tything to tything' [this is an Anglo-Saxon institution one sees]; 'and stocked, punished, and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back' [fallen fortunes here, too] ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... assurance that God is on their side than ever visits the breast of antelope or jelly-fish. This assurance, when put to the test in adventurous living, becomes in a strong and high-bred creature a refusal to be defeated, a gallant determination to hold the last ditch and hope for the best in spite of appearances. It is a part of Protestantism to be austere, energetic, unwearied in some laborious task. The end and profit are not so much regarded as the mere habit of self-control and practical devotion and steadiness. The ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... through most of the first half of the session. When finally it became evident to Heinzman that Newmark would win, he made the issue of toll rates the ditch of his last resistance, trying to force legal charges so low as to eat up the profits. At the last, however, the bill passed the board. The company ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... uppermost in the minds of some men, which is this: the world of fashion has not hitherto been painted with effect, for the same reason that nobody thinks it worth while to describe a ditch; both being, in the estimation of these persons, stagnant perfumed entities, rich in peculiarly useless vegetation, abounding in vermin and animalculae, and diffusing a contagious effluvia over the surface of society. This error, like many other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... midday, I came into the world at Frankfort-on-Maine. Our house was situated in a street called the Stag-Ditch. Formerly the street had been a ditch, in which stags were kept. On the second floor of the dwelling was a room called the garden-room, because there they had endeavoured to supply the want of a garden ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... should be ready to drink ditch-water," exclaimed Desmond; "I never felt so thirsty ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... were for a time nonplussed. They felt inclined to proceed farther in search of a "better bed," but their weariness outweighed this inclination; and, after some hesitation, they resolved to remain in the "ditch," into which they had so unwillingly descended. They proceeded therefore to ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... dead past bury its dead. The future is still ours. The trees in October willingly let go their leaves to fall into the ditch. Their life is not in last year's leaves, but in the infant buds that crowd the old leaves off. Put forth new activities. Open new furrows. Sow new seed. All the tomorrows are thine; but they are few and short. Fulfill his dictum who said: "I am as one going once across this vast ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the walls of Sicca, and are flung against them into the ditch. Not a moment's hesitation or delay; they recover their footing, they climb up the wood or stucco, they surmount the parapet, or they have entered in at the windows, filling the apartments, and the most private and luxurious chambers, not one or two, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... pleasantest place I have seen here. The multitude of small gardens and orangeries, among the huge masses of fortifications, many of them seeming almost as thick as the gardens inclosed by them are broad. Pomegranate in (beautiful secicle) flower. Under a bridge over a dry ditch saw the largest prickly pear. Elkhorns for trunk, and then its leaves—but go and look and look.—(Hard rain.) We sheltered in the Botanic Garden; ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... always afraid to meet soldiers. Conrad, however, fortunately for him, knew what he was to do if he met any troopers on the road. He opened his truck, took out the little coffin, and put it into a shallow dry ditch by the roadside; then wheeling the truck hastily to the edge of the road, got into it, and pulled the lid over himself as he lay. He had not long to wait before the trampling of many horse-hoofs warned him that the troopers were approaching. ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... started and plunged. I was ten yards away before the man could do anything, and struggling to my seat; but, as I rose and gripped the reins, something flew over my head, scarce missing it by six inches; and I saw the blade of the cleaver flash into the ditch beyond. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... refused to move on again without much urging and coaxing. Before going down hill he planted his feet obstinately on the ground, declining to proceed; and at the bottom of an ascent he turned short round. If a bird flew suddenly out of the jungle he jumped over into the opposite ditch, and many times nearly, though never quite, upset us. After these performances, I was not surprised to hear that this pony had never been ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... or sparkle, under the ashes of much corruption, that is but insufficient in itself, and is often more blinded and darkened by lusts. So that if it were never so much refined—as it was in many heathens—yet it is but the blind leading the blind, and both must fall into the ditch. Our end is high and divine,—to glorify God and to enjoy him; therefore our reason caligat ad suprema; it can no more steadfastly behold that glorious end, and move towards it, than our weak eyes can behold the sun. Our eyes can look downward upon the earth, but not upward ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... House of Allington and those of the Small House open on to each other. A proper boundary of thick laurel hedge, and wide ditch, and of iron spikes guarding the ditch, there is between them; but over the wide ditch there is a foot-bridge, and at the bridge there is a gate which has no key; and for all purposes of enjoyment the gardens of each house are open to the other. And the gardens of the Small ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... is yet," he told me. "The Danes cannot take the city, try what they will, though they dug a great ditch round the Southwark fort, and took ships through it above the bridge, and so kept us shut up close enough. But walls and forts and citizens are too much for them. Now the siege is but a blind, while ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... an air of indifference: "Oh, I found the old jug in the ditch a week ago when we were digging out gravel. There was a lot more stuff around there, but the men smashed it all to pieces with their picks. This jug was the only thing they spared, and, inasmuch as you are here, I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... machine took the first turn gracefully. But Wrentz had not counted on a second shorter turn to the opposite direction. And he worked the wheel madly for a second swerve; the huge car skidded, spun round, and, reeling on two wheels for an instant, turned over in the ditch. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... matter of over twenty years ago, I got acquainted wi' a man whose skull I'd crack wi' this poker, like the claw of a lobster, if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was Compeyson; and that's the man, dear boy, what you see me a pounding in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade arter I was ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... cannon of Mahomet could only be fired seven times in one day, but the weight and repetition of the shots made some impression on the walls. The Turks rushed to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm and to build a road to the assault. In the attack, as well as in the defence, ancient and modern artillery was employed. Cannon and mechanical engines, the bullet and the battering-ram, gunpowder and Greek fire, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... that moment it looked as if they would catch Brushtail. He was in such a great hurry that in trying to jump across a wide ditch in the woods he fell right into it. And Yappy was ...
— Doctor Rabbit and Brushtail the Fox • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... bumped across a little ditch and passed through a broken fence to where a knot of men were regarding something ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... 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 I was putty well able to look ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the ancient city is stated to have been nearly 2,000 feet in diameter, surrounded with a fosse, or ditch, of immense depth, and two ramparts, inner and outer: on the inner, which was much higher than the outer, stood a wall nearly 12 feet thick at its foundation, of flint and chalk, strongly cemented together, and cased with hewn stone, on which was a parapet with battlements. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... minister, and an ordinary preacher at Alcmar in Holland, was (one day as he walked in the fields for his recreation) suddenly taken with a lax or looseness, and thereupon compelled to retire to the next ditch; but being [1683]surprised at unawares, by some gentlewomen of his parish wandering that way, was so abashed, that he did never after show his head in public, or come into the pulpit, but pined away with melancholy: (Pet. Forestus med. observat. lib. 10. observat. 12.) So shame amongst ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... most endangered being Bosco Trecase, with its 10,000 inhabitants. Toward this devoted town poured steadily the irresistible flood of molten rock. The soldiers who had been hurried to the front sought to divert its flow by digging a wide ditch across its course and throwing up a high bank of earth, but they worked in vain. The demon of destruction was not to be robbed of its prey. The liquid stream advanced like a colossal serpent of fire, turning its head like a crawling snake to the right ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the big creek. I got down in the ditch—couldn't get across. I was running up and down it looking for a place to cross. A big old mill was upon the hill. I could see it. I seen three men coming, a white man with a gun and two Negro men on horses or mules. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... her. The old woman then produced some wretched substitutes from the bottom of the heap of rags, which she turned up for that purpose; together with a girl's cloak, quite worn out and very old; and the crushed remains of a bonnet that had probably been picked up from some ditch or dunghill. In this dainty raiment, she instructed Florence to dress herself; and as such preparation seemed a prelude to her release, the child complied with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... burst in, but it was on the other side of the moat. The water was very low, so two boats were dragged up to serve as a bridge, but they were so much below the top of the ditch that a ladder was put down into one, up which Mademoiselle dauntlessly mounted, unheeding that one step was broken, and I came after her. This was our escalade ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as we came cautiously down the hill, on turning a corner we beheld a smooth sheet of snow lapping over the top of the hedge on one side, like iced sugar on a cake, and sloping downward to the ditch on the other ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Save for the man sowing, and some rooks crossing from elm to elm, no life was visible in all the green land. And it was quiet—with a strange, a brooding tranquillity. The fields and hills seemed to mock the scars of road and ditch and furrow scraped on them, to mock at barriers of hedge and wall—between the green land and white sky was a conspiracy to disregard those small activities. So lonely was it, so plunged in a ground-bass of silence; so much too big and permanent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... when he decimated them by his conscriptions. He knew, as well as any Jacobin in France, how to philosophize on liberty and equality; and, when allusion was made to the precious blood of centuries, which was spilled by the killing of the Duc d'Enghien, he suggested, "Neither is my blood ditch-water" The people felt that no longer the throne was occupied, and the land sucked of its nourishment, by a small class of legitimates, secluded from all community with the children of the soil, and holding the ideas and superstitions of a long-forgotten state of society. ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sector of 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 Green Beret • Thomas Edward Purdom
... Blake moved inland, working his interrogative way along the Big Ditch to Panama. He even slipped back over the line to San Cristobel and Ancon, found nothing of moment awaiting him there, and drifted back into Panamanian territory. It was not until the end of the week that the first glimmer of ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... a chip. But the absence of table etiquette was not considered, so long as the purpose was served. There were no utensils for making tea or coffee, so the men had to dispense with these comforts and content themselves with a drink out of a roadside ditch. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... boast of my Argentines was that they could be driven but not led. For about three hours I led, or tried to lead them, at the end of which time my right, or leading arm, was about four inches longer than my left, and once or twice quite six. This was when a ditch or some such obstacle had to be overcome. My own steed, having nobly negotiated it, two of the others would follow his excellent example, and then the remaining three would pause on the bank, irresolutely ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... take the carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no more than order it to be flung into a ditch and buried there." ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... witnessed our surrender. "See," said he, "what a bombardment they have begun again. That is in the hope of slaying you. That is out of revenge because you dared surrender instead of dying like rats in a ditch to feed their pride!" It was true that a bombardment had begun again. It had begun that minute. Those truly had been ranging shells. If we had stayed five minutes longer before surrendering we should have been blown to pieces; ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... down the distance from 10,860 miles to 4,620 miles by taking the canal route, and the vast majority of ships which pay tolls to the canal company fly the British flag. Germany comes second, a long way after; Holland third, and the French, whose dreams of commercial empire cut the ditch, are fourth. The United States has not been represented in the canal in a decade by any commercial ship—only vessels of the navy and yachts of the Yankee millionaires show the Stars and Stripes to the Bedouins of the desert who bring ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... not concern himself with the broader problems of life and attack them with all the apparatus of recorded experience, unless he happen to live on one bank or other of the Fleet Ditch! If a man have the gift, he can find all the "brass and plume of song" in his orchard edge. If he have not, he may (provided he be a bona fide traveller) find it elsewhere. What, for instance, were the use of telling ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... farmers when they saw me leaping a pasture fence or climbing a hill, would smile (I assume that they smiled), and say, there goes that literary cuss, or words to that general effect. I took a boyish delight in showing that Ladrone would walk a log or leap a ditch at the mere ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... that do you?" said the pines. "If you get to the town, they will turn you into an irrigating ditch, and set ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... by the dirty, narrow, ill-paved or unpaved streets of the suburbs, and overpowered by the noisome vapour arising from a deep open fosse that ran along the street behind the wharf. This ditch seemed the receptacle for every abomination, and sufficient in itself to infect a whole town with ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... these methods, the far-sighted and the near-sighted. Bacon fell into the ditch, and Freud is obsessed by the vision of a world only seen through the delicate anastomosis of the nerves of sex. Yet also they both have their rightness, they both help us to realise the Divine Mystery of the Soul, towards which no telescope can ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... said Gratillet. "Now we must be very careful, for it is pitch dark and banisters are unknown in Uargla. Ah, now I know where the pathway comes from. It is a ditch which gets ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... me most contemptible thoughts of him, and made me often say I was a warning for all the ladies of Europe against marrying of fools. A man of sense falls in the world and gets up again, and a woman has some chance for herself; but with a fool, once fall, and ever undone; once in the ditch, and die in the ditch; once ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... harm though he had gone nowhere at all. The night before a little snow had fallen so that footprints could be traced. [Sidenote: An finds the sword] An rode back to the brushwood, and followed the footprints of Thorolf to a certain ditch or bog. He groped down with his hand, and grasped the hilt of a sword. An wished to have witnesses with him to this, and rode for Thorarin in Saelingsdale Tongue, and he went with An to take up the sword. After that An brought the sword back ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... street, on which the hotel was situated, a splendid wide avenue, planted with rows of majestic oaks, their branches meeting overhead. This extends over one mile; on one side of it is the Governor's Palace and grounds, cut off from vulgar feet by a moat, or walled ditch, and accessible by a small drawbridge from the avenue. Opposite ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... might have had different names, and human history might have been considered to begin only a few hundred years before. Even this had not happened. The link with the past remained. There was a narrow, cobbled path on Manhattan, with sewage oozing down the ditch in its center, which was still Fifth Avenue. It ran roughly along the same directions as old Broadway, not because there was no one who could read the yellowed old maps but because surveying was ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... come from Ball, off Malta; and has brought me information, that the attempt to storm the city of Valette had failed, from—(I am afraid, I must call it)—cowardice. They were over the first ditch, and retired, damn them! But, I trust, the zeal, judgment, and bravery, of my friend Ball, and his gallant party, will overcome all difficulty. The cutter just going off prevents my being more particular. Ever ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... Mrs. Watney in the 'Palatine' yacht at Bournemouth. Crossed to Trouville in the night. Lay in 'the ditch' for twenty hours. 12th, Cherbourg. Met the French fleet and saw the arsenal. 13th, back to Southampton and to Foxholes. Pleasant ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... into the country, taking my shame and rage with me. On a certain Saturday, bestriding my faithful bike, I went for a spin along the dusty high-road which runs past the camp. After going at high speed, I dismounted, seated myself under a tree in the shade, by the side of a ditch, and was falling asleep. It was summer, the sun was pouring down. A cyclist stopped in front of me with a punctured tyre. He asked me to lend him the wherewithal to repair it; and whilst the solution was drying we ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... preparing and laying out the seed beds.—A suitable piece of land is to be enclosed quadrilaterally by boundaries, ploughed two or three times, cleared of all weeds and roots, made somewhat sloping, and surrounded by a shallow ditch, the bed of which is to be divided by drains about two feet wide. The soil of the same must be very fine, must be ground almost as fine as powder, otherwise it will not mix freely and thoroughly with the extremely ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Turnpike Gate.' At the time of his death, 9th May, 1835, he resided at No. 1, Camera Square, Chelsea. Blanchard had dined with a friend at Hammersmith, and left him to return home about six in the evening of Tuesday. On the following morning, at three o'clock, poor Blanchard was found lying in a ditch by the roadside, having been, as is supposed, seized by a fit; in the course of the evening he was visited by another attack, which was succeeded by one more violent on the Thursday, and on the following day ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... assaulting column being rent with musketry as it dashed over the interval between the trenches and the fort. On dashed the assailants, through the abatis, which had been torn to fragments by the artillery fire, into the ditch, and up the face of the work. The parapet was scaled almost without opposition, the few Russians there taking shelter behind their breastworks in the rear, whence they opened ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... marched Patty Cannon down to the little bridge of planks where ran the ditch nearly on the State line, and tradition still believes the figment that Joe Johnson at that ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... eye the men measured strength, fighting out to the last ditch the moral battle which was to determine the physical one. Sullenly, at the last, the one on the ground shifted his gaze and dropped his gun with a ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... be in good form to-day. One really never can tell, you know. An opening that is a scream with some people falls as flat as ditch-water with others." She looked at him pensively for a moment or two, tapping her small white teeth with a ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... largest objects that has been found is an earthenware baking oven, which was unearthed in an old ditch near the site of the May-Hartwell House. Restored from over 200 fragments, the oven was probably used between 1650 and 1690. It may have been made at Jamestown, molded of native clay and fired in a pottery kiln. In use, heated stones were placed inside the oven and left until the walls were hot ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... him. Even after he mismanaged the affairs of the Amity Ditch Company, we commiserated him, although most of us were stockholders, and lost heavily. I remember that the blacksmith went so far as to say that "them chaps as put that responsibility on the old man oughter be lynched." But the blacksmith was not a stockholder; and the expression was ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... declared Peter, with the dignity which comes of much knowledge. "The Spaniards who lived in the Province of New Granada, on the Isthmus of Darien, as it was then called, planned a ship canal across the neck in the year 1518, and there has been talk of the big ditch ever since." ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... with oxen, horses, scrapers, hoes, crowbars—and begin repairing the highway. It was not strenuous work, but a kind of holiday that we all enjoyed more or less. The road got fixed after a fashion, here and there—a bridge mended, a ditch cleaned out, the loose stones removed, a hole filled up, or a short section "turnpiked"—but the days were eight- hour days and they did not sit heavy upon us. The state does it much better now with road machinery and a few men. Once or twice a year Father used to send me with a hoe to throw the ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... rest in a reposeful little valley a hundred feet wide, he chose the most rugged branch he could find, the one with the steepest and highest banks, and up that dry bed, with many a twist and turn, he painfully limped his way. At last he found himself in a snug and safe ditch, precisely like a front line trench seven feet wide, with perpendicular walls and zig- zagging so persistently that the de'il himself could not find him save by following him up to close quarters, and landing upon his horns. There, without food or water, the wounded animal would ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... they had passed. Then she took leave of Aucassin and went her way till she came to the castle wall. There was a breach in it which had been boarded up. On to this she climbed, and so got over between the wall and the ditch; and looking down she saw the ditch was very deep and the sides very sheer, ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... pleasure to be experienced while allaying it; for this, we know, we shall be able to accomplish in a very short time. Indeed, so trifling is the annoyance we feel from ordinary thirst, that it is rare when we are compelled to stoop, either to the ditch or the pond, for the purpose of assuaging it. We are dainty enough to wait, until we encounter a cool well or ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... entirely. Stage-coaches made the journey from New York to Boston in four days in summer and in six in winter. Two days were required to go between New York and Philadelphia. Forty to fifty miles a day was the speed of the best coaches, provided always that they did not tumble into the ditch. In many parts of the country one must needs travel on ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... for herself. She struggled on a few steps nearer. There was something lying on the grass around which they were all gathered; something very much like a human shape. Ah! she could see more plainly now. It was Sir Geoffrey—Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. He was lying half on the grass and half in the dry ditch. His white face was upturned to the cloudless sky; by his side, and discoloring his brown tweed shooting coat, was a dark wet stain. In the midst of it something bright ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fortified position on the north bank of the Maumee near the present Maumee City. There were four nine-pounders, two large howitzers, and six six-pounders, mounted in the fort, and two swivels. The entire fortification was surrounded by a wide, deep ditch about twenty feet deep from the top of the parapet. The forces within consisted of about two hundred and fifty regulars and two hundred militia. All were under command of Major William Campbell, of the Twenty-fourth Regiment. The rout of the Indian allies had been humiliating enough, but at sight ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... there was a narrow lane with a rough thorny hedge on either side, and thither she now went in quest of a shelter of some kind from the rain which was beginning to fall. The lane was on the east side of the road, and under the hedge on one hand there was an old ditch overgrown with grass and weeds; here Fan crouched down under a bush until the shower was over, then got out and walked on again. Presently she discovered a gap in the hedge large enough to admit her body, and after peering cautiously through and seeing no person about, she got ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the brook was full of troops, from the bridge quite to the end of Ligny. On the left in the distance the Prussians were shooting from the windows again, while we did not reply. The shout rose—"The Guard! the Guard!" I do not know how that mass of men passed the muddy ditch, probably by means of plank thrown across, but in a moment they were on the left ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... declared that indignant damsel. "Just because Mother's nervous and thinks I'm going to run her into the ditch! Wait till I've had my course of motoring lessons! I'll take the shine out of Bevis! See if ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... larger than those of a hen, and oval in shape, the shell having a rough, hard surface. So numerous are they, that Bates observes "it is scarcely exaggeration to say that the waters of the Solimoens are as well stocked with alligators in the dry season, as a ditch in England ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... and then worshipped as Deities. The Atheists are the vanguard of the army of Freethought, on whom falls the brunt of the battle, and are shivered the hardest of the blows; their feet trample down the thorns that others may tread unwounded; their bodies fill up the ditch that, by the bridge thus made, others may pass to victory. Honour to the pioneers of progress, honour to the vanguard of Liberty's army, honour to those who to improve earth have forgotten heaven, and who in their zeal ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... landmark. A ravine or dry wash was finally encountered, when Dell dismounted. As a matter of precaution, he carried matches, and on striking one, confusion assumed the reign over all caution and advice. He was lost, but contentious to the last ditch. Several times he remounted and allowed his horse free rein, but each time Dog-toe turned into the eye of the storm, then the true course home, and was halted. Reason was abandoned and disorder reigned. An hour was lost, when the confident boy mounted his horse and took ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... livery, and even overlaid the dark 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 there ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... conflagration, and between the flaring, smoking lights the impetuous torrent of horses, guns, and men tore onward at a mad gallop. Their feet were winged with the tireless speed of victory as they rushed on in devilish pursuit of the French, to overtake them in some last ditch and crush them, annihilate them there. They stopped for nothing; on, on they went, heedless of what lay in their way. Horses fell; their traces were immediately cut, and they were left to be ground and torn by the pitiless ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and had got into the sermon he was going to preach, and was utterly insensible to the outward storm: his pony getting its feet balled, staggered about, and at last upset his master and himself into the ditch at the road-side. The feeble, heedless, rapt old man might have perished there, had not some carters, bringing up whisky casks from the Ferry, seen the catastrophe, and rushed up, raising him, and dichtin' ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 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 ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... what had happened, were surrounded by cavalry and brought in tied to the horses' tails. Many a knight, better accoutred than his fellows, was despatched in a more summary manner and stripped of his armor, after which his body was carelessly thrown into a ditch by the roadside.[829] La Renaudie was so fortunate as to escape this fate and the yet more cruel doom that awaited him at Amboise, by meeting a soldier's death, while courageously fighting against a party of Guisards who fell in with ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... it, er jes' a-not a-keerin':- Kingfisher gittin' up and skootin' out o' hearin'; Snipes on the t'other side, where the County Ditch is, Wadin' up and down the aidge like they'd rolled their britches! Old turkle on the root kindo-sorto drappin' Intoo th' worter like he don't know how it happen! Worter, shade and all so mixed, don't know which you'd orter Say, th' worter in the ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... when there was no moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon, and once the General had his horse ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... creeping under a ditch, with the fowl in my leather bag, keeping to the shore where the farmer could not see me, when I came upon a ship drawn up upon the sands, a great red ship with ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... the hangman was to give the rope to five fellows, the most popular and devil-may-care rakes and roysterers in the whole town. Beppo was up very early that morning, and at the first streak of light had dropped himself over the wall into the town ditch, and was away for the open country and the free air of the hills; for he knew that neither at home nor in the streets would life be worth living for a week after, because of all the vengeances ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... and my wife with the governess and several children went back without him in the waggonette. About a mile and a half from the town, just where the horses had to walk up a steep hill, a number of men with bludgeons and sticks came out of a ditch, peered into the trap, and seeing it contained nothing but women and children let it pass on with a grunt of disgust, whilst ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... want to know the length and precise direction of one side of a plot of land. Often there is no indication on the ground itself of any boundary line at all, especially if it is uncultivated land—neither ditch, or wall, or tree, or any other mark. But you station yourself at the corner, and from thence look towards the stone, a few feet off, on the boundary line you want to fix. Now and then your line of vision is made doubly sure by a second ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... microscope will show you another kind of little blood corpuscle, known, from the fact that it is not colored, as the white corpuscle. These corpuscles are little cells of the body, which in shape and behavior are almost exactly like an ameba—a tiny "bug," seen only under the microscope, that lives in ditch-water. Under the microscope the white corpuscles look like little round disks, about one-third larger than the red corpuscles, and with a large kernel, or nucleus, in their centre. They have the same power of changing their shape, of surrounding and swallowing scraps of food, as has the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... inferior value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened: to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch, and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling its value), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation finds itself away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse around it will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach within ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at him dubiously. "Are ye sure?" he said to Gueldmar. "Are ye sure that wee chap kens whaur he's gaun? He'll no lead us into a ditch an' leave us there, mistakin' ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... of Moses about the professor was fulfilled. Just as it was growing dark that genial scientist returned, drenched to the skin and covered with mud, having tumbled into a ditch. His knuckles also were skinned, his knees and shins damaged, and his face scratched, but he was perfectly happy in consequence of having secured a really splendid specimen of a "bootterfly" as big as his hand; the scientific name ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... houses, amid our friends, and with the consolations of religion, strips not death of its character as the king of terrors. But to die as the drunkard dies, an outcast from society, in some hovel or almshouse, on a bed of straw, or in some ditch, or pond, or frozen in a storm; to die of the brain-fever, conscience upbraiding, hell opening, and foul spirits passing quick before his vision to seize him before his time—this, this is woe; this is the triumph of sin and Satan. Yet, in the last ten years, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the wound which he got in Hungary, in a battle with the Turks. I must tell you a story apropos of two noble instances of fidelity and generosity. His servant, a French papist, saw him fall; watched, and carried him off into a ditch. Lord Crawford told him the Turks would certainly find them, and that, as he could not live himself, it was in vain for him to risk his life too, and insisted on the man making his escape. After a long contest, the servant retired, found a priest, confessed himself, came back, and told ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... real sensible answer to that. Who was I, to step in casual and ditch a court order? But say, when the only girl in the universe tackles you with the clingin' clinch, hints that you're a big, brainy hero who can handle any proposition that's batted up to you—well, that's no time ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... day appointed for his execution, his sister found access to the prison. The guards were asleep, and his companions drowned in intoxication. She embraced the favourable moment, and set him at liberty. He lay concealed in a ditch for three days, till the heat of the search was over, and in disguise escaped to London, and thence to Bedford, where, aided by some great people who favoured the royal cause, he commenced business as a doctor. Here his evil habits ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... complacent 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
... go up on our own terms and in our own time.... Nothing has been said about a combined attack of army and navy. Such a thing is not only practicable, but, if time permitted, should be adopted. Fort St. Philip can be taken with two thousand men covered by the ships, the ditch can be filled with fascines, and the wall is easily to be scaled with ladders. It can be attacked ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan |
