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As he came within view of the poor little tenements, so recently vacated by the Irish ditchers, all awry and askew, stretching in a wavering row along the river-bank near the junction of the levee that he had built with the main line, his eyes filled.
Every now and again he drew on huge gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and buffeted them together until he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. This violent exercise over, the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered and bruised, to their places, where, of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily as possible. Dr.
Even the hedgers and ditchers and the sturdiest labourers choose the lee side of the hedge when they pause to eat their luncheons; but the 'gips' do not trouble to seek such shelter. Passing over the hills one winter's day, when the Downs looked all alike, being covered with snow, I came across a 'gip' family sitting on the ground in a lane, old and young exposed to the blast.
It was the lower sort of people with whom he chiefly conversed, such as ploughmen, ditchers, and other day-labourers. To every cottager in the parish he was a bounteous benefactor. He was, in the literal sense of the word, a careful overseer of the poor; for he went from house to house, industriously inquiring into the distresses of the people.
Thus E.J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields, said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantation ditches; T.B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippi in 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers; and a Georgia planter when describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usual routine.
Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols. I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter. Carpenter? why that's but no; a very tidy, and, I may say, an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, carpenter; or would'st thou rather work in clay? Sir? Clay? clay, sir? That's mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir. The fellow's impious! What art thou sneezing about?
So the gigantic black lived in the world of coleopteras, carnivorous insects, hunters, gunners, ditchers, cicindelles, carabes, sylphides, moles, cockchafers, horn-beetles, tenebrions, mites, lady-birds, studying all Cousin Benedict's collection, not but the latter trembled on seeing his frail specimens in Hercules' great hands, which were hard and strong as a vise.
'I thought you m't have altered your mind, sir, as ye have stared that way at nothing so long. 'Oh no; I am interested in the house, that's all. 'Most people be, as the saying is. 'Not in the sense that I am. 'Oh!...Well, his family is no better than my own, 'a b'lieve. 'How is that? 'Hedgers and ditchers by rights.
The work had been persistently pushed at practicable intervals, whenever the labor could be constrained to it. Possibly this urgency had no ill results except in one or two individual cases. The sons of toil are indurated to hardship, and most of the gang were brawny Irish ditchers.
It was here that the soldiers of Maurice, burrowing in the ground at ten stuyvers a day, were jeered at by the enemy from the battlements as boors and ditchers, who had forfeited their right to be considered soldiers but jeered at for the last time. From 30th May to 9th June the prince was occupied in throwing up earthworks on the low grounds in order to bring his guns into position.
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