Riddling

Track work had to be confined largely to the vital aspects of alignment and level, and the finer points of track maintenance, as well as such matters as the riddling and cleaning of ballast, proper care of drainage and formation, cuttings, and embankments, suffered considerable neglect.

Hence the laughter of ridicule, whether spontaneous or incited by words, and hence too the laughter of wit, which has an intermediate ancestry in such mental tussles or riddlings as may at one time have taken the place of more savage physical strife.

The good grain is riddled by hand into a heap at a convenient part of the barn, and the riddlings are thrown among the stuff which descends to the floor through the other spout.

O perplex'd diſcompoſition, O ridling diſtemper, O miſerable condition of Man.