"Mortar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... above that it is not for logical reasoning or arguments that the atheist is led to say, "that up to this moment the world has remained without knowledge of a God."[73] It is from the folly of his heart; and, as Solomon says, that "though you bray him and his false logic in the mortar of reason, among the wheat of facts, with the pestle of argument, yet will not his folly depart from him."[74] I fully agree with Hobbes when he says, "where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason we should believe," but I think the several arguments given above, which could ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben Weatherstaff had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from between the bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely clinging things to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and white ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beach, and were there just in time to see the men from the station bring down the life-boat. It was a hard pull through the sand, but the feat was soon accomplished, and the boat was left near the water's edge, to be ready in case the line from the mortar should fail to reach ...
— The Wreck • Anonymous
... having entered the capacious cabin built of hewn logs, with the chinks well filled with hard mortar, they were shown a wagonload of groceries which Mr. Garrity had actually taken secret pleasure in purchasing without letting the boys know ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... painted tiles, like the little square tiles we call galley- tiles in England, all made of the finest china, and the figures exceeding fine indeed, with extraordinary variety of colours, mixed with gold, many tiles making but one figure, but joined so artificially, the mortar being made of the same earth, that it was very hard to see where the tiles met. The floors of the rooms were of the same composition, and as hard as the earthen floors we have in use in several parts of England; as hard as stone, and smooth, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... The poor man, trying to put a good face upon it, gravely replied, "No, I am sure, sir, they would stand two!" The Spaniards must have intended to have made this place impregnable. There is now lying in the middle of the courtyard a little mountain of mortar, which rivals in hardness the rock on which it is placed. It was brought from Chile, and cost 7000 dollars. The revolution having broken out prevented its being applied to any purpose, and now it remains a monument of the fallen greatness ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... purification which is disallowed, must not be kneaded in mortar, lest it bring misfortune to others. R. Judah said, "it is worthless." "A cow which drank water of purification?" "Her flesh is unclean for twenty-four hours."(750) R. Judah said, "it becomes worthless ...
— Hebrew Literature
... lion gave a tremendous roar, and sprang at Tommy, bounding against the iron bars of the cage with such force that, had they not been very strong, it must have broken them. As it was, they shook and rattled so that pieces of mortar fell from the stones. Tommy shrieked; and, fortunately for himself, fell back and tumbled head over heels, or the lion's paws would have reached him. Captain Osborn and Mr Seagrave ran up to Tommy, and picked him up: ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... decks the mortar's bursting fires Sweep the full streets, and splinter down the spires. Blaze-trailing fuses vault the night's dim round, And shells and langrage lacerate the ground; Till all the tented plain, where ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... inundations of the river, and covered with water only during those inundations. At all other seasons it has been used by the city immemorially to furnish earth for raising their streets and courtyards, for mortar, and other necessary purposes, and as a landing or quay for unlading firewood, lumber, and other articles brought by water. This having been lately claimed, by a private individual, the city opposed the claim on a supposed legal title in itself; but it has been adjudged that the legal title was not ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... building himself a house, though he might not have been able to build it himself, he was thoroughly qualified to choose an architect. His choice fell upon Professor Aitchison, now R.A., and he probably hit upon the only man of his generation able to put his feeling into bricks and mortar, viz., the feeling for a ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... paint on wood I use a burner. From iron, I have found the quickest and most effectual way is to dissolve as much sal soda in warm water as the water will take up, and mix with fresh lime, making a thick mortar; spread this on the tank, about an inch thick, with a trowel; when it begins to crack, which will be in a few minutes, it has softened the paint enough, so that with a wide putty knife you can take it all off; then wash off tank ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... flat ledge, between the western base of this Safra and the eastern side of the Bada' valley, lie masses of ruin now become mere rubbish; bits of wall built with cut stone, and water-conduits of fine mortar containing, like that of the Pyramids, powdered brick and sometimes pebbles. We carried off a lump of sandstone bearing unintelligible marks, possibly intended for a man and a beast. We called it "St. George and the Dragon," but the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... rent-collectors for the agents of old Frenchmen who have been laid up to dry in Paris, custom-house supernumeraries and court-clerks' deputies (for your second-rate Creole is a great seeker for little offices). A decaying cornice hangs over, dropping bits of mortar on passers below, like ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... a Mortar the Leg of a young Coney (Vulgarly called the Almond) or of a Whelp or Catling, and a quantity of Virgins Wax and Sheeps suet, till they are incorporated, and temper them with clarified ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... on the dawning of a fine morning in August, that I left the brick-and-mortar purlieus of home, and in company with two young friends, commenced this excursion. The diversified chain of the Hambleton Hills, bounding the fruitful valley of Mowbray, rose at the distance of six miles before us; and whose summit we intended reaching before breakfast. The varying aspect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... the stone does not bear upon the solid ground. The smaller ones you may rub or pound down till every inch of the motherly bosom shall feel their pressure. Upon this first course of—pebbles, if you please, lay larger ones that shall overlap and bind them together, using mortar if you wish entire solidity. As the wall rises, introduce enough of large size to bind the whole thoroughly. Above the footing the imperfect bearings of the larger stones are of less consequence, since there is little danger ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... palisade of trunks of trees set upright in the ground, hewn flat on both sides, and closely fitted together—an excellent defence against musketry, but worthless against artillery. The garrison of the fort, 370 in number, had eight small cannon and a mortar, with which, all next day, they kept up a brisk fire against the battery which the French were throwing up, and arming with twenty-six pieces of ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... did. The college first. The ruling passion, strong in the hospital. When a Wream gets to kingdom-come, he always asks Saint Peter first for a mortar board and gown instead of a crown and wings." Norrie's eyes were shining. "And he's a little particular about the lining of the wings, too—Purple, for Law; White, for Letters; Blue, for Philosophy; Red, for Divinity. Take this quieting powder. College presidents should be ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... all; they merely levelled the space intended to be covered, and, having probably watered it to settle the soil, they at once laid the bricks upon the surface. When the house was finished, the scraps of mortar, the broken bricks, and all the accumulated refuse of the work, made a bed of eight inches or a foot in depth, and the base of the wall thus buried served instead of a foundation. When the new house rose on the ruins of an older ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... should get from the clay in the garden, and I told him that kind of clay was generally made into bricks, and suggested making bricks. From that we went on to the use of bricks, and to-morrow we are going to dig, and make bricks to build a town. Bernard is anxious to know how we shall make mortar. Just then it started to rain, and Bernard said that if the sun kept shining and it rained hard enough we should have a rainbow, and he wished it would come so as to see the beautiful colours. I thought this rather a coincidence, and told him I had a book with all ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... Kentucky. It was named after old Colonel Whitney, the man who built the first brick house in Kentucky. It was in the fall of the year, and the mortar was freezing, and they mixed whiskey with their mortar ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... watch tower of the world whence the trade of the world and the political and economical bustle of the world may be observed, in a way impossible in any other part of the globe—here Marx found what he sought and needed, the bricks and mortar for his work. 'Capital' could be created in ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... from the Chemin de Mantga (see plan), has great walls of clay and conglomerate. The softer conglomerate is quarried and broken up for its sandy dolomitic material, which, mixed with lime, makes excellent mortar. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... presently made slaves, and chained to the oars, and within fifteen days after we returned again into Tripolis, and then we were put to all manner of slavery. I was put to hew stones, and other to carry stones, and some to draw the cart with earth, and some to make mortar, and some to draw stones (for at that time the Turks builded a church), and thus we were put to all kinds of slavery that was to be done. And in the time of our being there the Moors, that are the husbandmen of the country, rebelled against the king, because he would have constrained ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... well-loved horizons of the Seine through a mist. Then he found himself once more in the Rue de la Femme-sans-Tete, where he breakfasted at Gomard's wine shop, whose sign 'The Dog of Montargis,' inspired him with interest. Some stonemasons, in their working blouses, bespattered with mortar, were there at table, and, like them, and with them, he ate his eight sous' 'ordinary'—some beef broth in a bowl, in which he soaked some bread, followed by a slice of boiled soup-beef, garnished ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... anticks and monsters of themselves? Whence come their (absurd fashions); but the one from some ill-shaped dame of France, the other from the worse-minded courtesans of Italy? Whence else learned they to daub these mud-walls with apothecaries' mortar; and those high washes, which are so cunningly licked on that the wet napkin of Phryne should he deceived? Whence the frizzled and powdered bushes of their borrowed hair? As if they were ashamed of the head of God's making, and proud of the tire-woman's. Where learned we that devilish ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... everyone to be converted, because it's a ghastly business preparing for the operation. It isn't everyone who needs it—only those self-willed, devilish, stand-off, proud people, who have to be braised in a mortar and pulverised to atoms. Then, when you are all to bits, you can be built up. Do you remember that stone we broke the other day? Well, I was a melted blob of stone, and then I was crystallised—now I'm full of eyes within! And the best of it is that they are little living eyes, and not sparkling ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and skin your swan, and beat the flesh in a mortar, taking out the strings as you beat it; then take some clear fat bacon, and beat with the swan, and when 'tis of a light flesh colour, there is bacon enough in it; and when 'tis beaten till 'tis like dough, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... equivalent is given in these, it is of the form shown in 33. It is, however, occasionally seen on articles of stone, as the spearpoint (32) and stone hatchet (34) and sacrificial knife. It also appears in the symbol for the stone mortar (36) from Tro. 19c. Before discussing its signification and probable origin we will give the significations which have been suggested of the different names of ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... so plainly marked in the roof-supporting pillars as to give them the appearance of having been prepared by skillful hands, in several blocks, and afterwards arranged in place without the aid of mortar. Unfortunately, all efforts to photograph this wonderful portico have failed to give satisfaction—its position above the river being such as to afford no point for the proper placing of the camera; but a second visit made for ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Pompeian look which it bore on the day after its surrender to the Western Allies in 1856. We drove through miles of ruins, the roofless walls staring at us from the dismantled doors and windows, the dust from the rubbish-heaps of brick and mortar blinding us at every turning of the streets, though, we were told, the city is looking up and thriving, and both house-rent and building-ground are rising in ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... measured by our plastic power... Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them into ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... thoroughly impoverished and desolate;" and he accordingly, after viewing the marvels of the locality, pursued his way to Banda, and thence laid a dak (or travelled by palanquin with relays of bearers) to Calpee, "there to sit from nine to four, writing filthy accounts of bricks and mortar, square feet, cubic feet, and running feet, rupees, annas, and pie; squabbling with wrinkled unromantic villains, whose cool-tempered and overwhelming patience amply deserve their unlawful gains—I mean as labourers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... a very long, narrow window, in the style of the house, and there was a protecting stone ledge above it. Upon this ledge lay the book, wrapped in its oil-skin covering and secured from falling by a piece of broken iron hooping, stuck in the mortar of the bricks. It could be seen from nowhere save an upper window of the house next door, or from the tree itself, and in either case only when the ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... school, discoursing of the deepest subjects of wisdom, in which sages might alone find themselves appropriately employed, and yet having its birth and deriving its first life from a society of artisans, whose only object was, apparently, the construction of material edifices of stone and mortar. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... come in contact with dry, lumpy soil. Never plant when the ground is wet and sticky, unless it be at the beginning of a rainstorm which bids fair to continue for some time. If sun or wind strikes land which has been recently stirred while it is too wet, the hardness of mortar results. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... many as the number of bricks lacking in the measure, and these babes they put into the building instead of the missing bricks. The taskmasters forced each man of the Israelites to put his own child in the building. The father would place his son in the wall, and cover him over with mortar, all the while weeping, his tears running down ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... do you let the land be owned?" he would go on. "You don't let people own the air. And these bricks and timber you mustn't touch, the mortar you need and the gold you need—they all came out of the ground—they all belonged to everybody or nobody a little ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... layer consisted of 123 blocks of stone, those in the interior being sandstone, while the outer casing was of granite. Each stone was fastened to its neighbour above, below, and around by means of dovetails, joggles, oaken trenails, and mortar. Each course was thus built from its centre to its circumference, and as all the courses from the foundation to a height of thirty feet were built in this way, the tower, up to that height, became a mass of solid stone, as strong and immovable as the Bell Rock itself. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... description. At first their omnivorousness astonished her. "Skunks and rattlesnakes, yea the very bark of trees" they esteemed as delicacies. "They would pick up old bones and cut them in pieces at the joints, ... then boil them and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar and so eat them." After some weeks of starvation Mrs. Rowlandson herself was fain to partake of such viands. One day, having made a cap for one of Philip's boys, she was invited to dine with the great ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... vista of annihilation but two objects remained recognizably intact, and these, strange to say, were two iron bed frames bolted to the back wall of what I think must have been a barrack room for officers. The room itself was no longer there. Brick, mortar, stone, concrete, steel reinforcements, iron props, the hard-packed earth, had been ripped out and churned into indistinguishable bits, but those two iron beds hung fast to a discolored patch of plastering, though the floor was gone ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a piece of glass, from one of the small, diamond-shaped panes, dropped, with a dull tap, amid the dust upon the sill behind me, and crumbled into a little heap of powder. As I turned from contemplating it, I saw light between a couple of the stones that formed the outer wall. Evidently, the mortar was ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little room, with one small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon a smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which was horrible with pieces of broken old bottles, stuck into mortar. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... was thankful to see that none were opposite my cell window. By working away into the masonry, I found that I could clear one of the bars out of its socket, both above and below. The particles of stone and mortar which I dug out, I carefully brushed off into my hand and placed on the ground where my bed stood. By morning, to my great joy, I found that the bar moved, and that it could be wrenched ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... author of ordinary modesty; but the knight[48] was as remarkable for his powers of endurance, as some modern pugilists are said to be, for the quality technically called bottom. After having been "brayed in a mortar," as Solomon expresses it, by every wit of his time, Sir Richard not only survived to commit new offences against ink and paper, but had his faction, his admirers, and his panegyrists, among that numerous and sober class of readers, who think that genius consists in good intention.[49] In the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the globe may be traced, and folds of the draperies of figures at the sides. Scarcely any of the tesserae remain, but the lights of the drawing appear in relief. A certain test of the age of the different parts of the building is afforded by the quality of the mortar used. By this it is proved that the eastern apse is due purely to Euphrasius, the foundations being set in mortar of the kind used by him; and also that he kept the atrium pretty much as it was, only adding the columns with Byzantine caps. The ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... This was a red-brick bungalow with an ample veranda, standing back from the future street that was as yet little better than a country road. The veranda commanded a long perspective of pines, but no further bricks and mortar, and but very few weather board walls. The yard behind the house was shut in by as many outbuildings as clustered about the small homesteads which Fergus had already beheld on the banks of the Murrumbidgee. The man in charge of the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... careful examination of the masonry showed that the work of bricking up the entrance had undoubtedly been done from the other side, and after the door had been closed and bolted. This was evidenced from the fact that there was no mortar next the door, against the smooth inner surface of which the bricks had been closely laid. Henley worked his hinge between some of the looser joints, and found, just as he expected, that the mortar had been laid from within. By degrees he managed to wedge one of ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. Here and there in the vacant lots abandoned hoop-skirts defied decay; and near the half-finished wooden houses, empty mortar-beds, and bits of lath and slate strewn over the scarred and mutilated ground, added their interest to the scene. A shaggy drift hung upon the trees before our own house (which had been built some years earlier), while its swollen eaves ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the College premises and the property of Dr. Broadfield was part of the old Abbey wall. The mortar had crumbled away from the stones, leaving large interstices, so it was quite easy to climb. With a little boosting from Verity and Nora, Ingred successfully reached the top, and peered over into the neighboring garden. Just below her ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... all haste to rejoin our companions. And now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... somewhat of an antiquity-hunter, and am fond of exploring London in quest of the relics of old times. These are principally to be found in the depths of the city, swallowed up and almost lost in a wilderness of brick and mortar, but deriving poetical and romantic interest from the commonplace, prosaic world around them. I was struck with an instance of the kind in the course of a recent summer ramble into the city; for the city ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the less porous the stone or brick, the better able must the jointing be to keep out wet, for this reason, that when rain is beating against a wall, it either runs down or becomes absorbed. If both brick and mortar, or stone and mortar be porous, it becomes absorbed; if all are non-porous, it runs down until it finds a projection, and then drops off; but if the brick or stone is non-porous, and the mortar porous, the wet runs down the brick or stone until it arrives ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... Swift, to justify charges of impiety. But, again, it is not necessary to bother (tabuster) about that. Any one who cannot see that it is the foolish use of reverend things and not the things themselves that the satire hits, is hardly worth argument. But there is no doubt that this sort of mortar, framework, menstruum, canvas, or whatever way it may be best metaphored, helps the apparent continuity of the work marvellously, leaving, as it were, no rough edges or ill-mended joints. It is, to use an admirable phrase of Mr. Balfour's about a greater matter, "the logical glue which holds ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... attracted, was the army hospital, drawn by two staid and well-fed oxen. In front appeared the snowy locks and 'fair round belly, with good cotton lined' of the worthy Dr. Esculapius Liverwort Tarand Cantchuget-urlegawa Opodeldoc, while by his side his assistant sawbones brayed in a huge iron mortar, with a weighty pestle, much noise, and indefatigable zeal, the drugs and dye-stuffs. Thigh-bones, shoulder-blades, vertebrae, and even skulls, hanging round the establishment, testified to the numerous and successful amputations performed by ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the boulevard was covered with torn cartridge wads; the sidewalk on the northern side disappeared beneath the mortar torn from the fronts of the houses by the bullets, and was as white as if snow had fallen on it; while pools of blood left large dark patches on that snow of ruins. The foot of the passer-by avoided a corpse only to tread upon fragments of broken glass, plaster, or stone; some houses were so ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... arteries. "Take of moss growing on the head of a thief who has been hanged and left in the air; of real mummy; of human blood, still warm—of each, one ounce; of human suet, two ounces; of linseed oil, turpentine, and Armenian bole—of each, two drachms. Mix all well in a mortar, and keep the salve in an oblong, narrow urn." With this salve the weapon, after being dipped in the blood from the wound, was to be carefully anointed, and then laid by in a cool place. In the mean time, the wound was to be duly washed with fair clean water, covered ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... assault had not yet been given when both leaders were killed, Colonel Elliott by a shell and Captain Halahan by machine-gun fire which swept the decks. The same shell that killed Colonel Elliott also did fearful execution in the forward Stokes mortar battery. The men were magnificent; every ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... house they saw two slave-girls pounding rice in a large wooden mortar, with two enormous wooden pestles, while the savoury steam that arose from some invisible kitchen served to put a finer edge on ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... exceeding cleanness are sadly at war with the picturesque. To whatever the hand of man builds the hand of Time adds a grace, and nothing is so prosaic as the rawly new. Fancy for a moment the difference for the worse, if all the grim, browned, rotted walls of Rome, with their peeling mortar, their thousand daubs of varying grays and yellows, their jutting brickwork and patched stonework, from whose intervals the cement has crumbled off, their waving weeds and grasses and flowers, now sparsely fringing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Brewster, his pachydermic frame draped in his gown, and his mortar-board cap on his head, for the Seniors were required to wear their regalia during Commencement week, was bellowing through a megaphone, as he stood on the steps of Bannister Hall, and Mr. Hicks, with his ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... or the smoke of factory chimneys. Possibly also by the disproportion that existed between the humble little straggling village which you expected to find and the grandiose establishment, this country mansion in the style of Louis XIII, an agglomeration of mortar looking pink through the branches of its leafless park, ornamented with wide pieces of water thick with green weeds. What is certain is that as you passed this place your heart was conscious of an oppression. When you entered ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... o'clock on the morning succeeding the assassination of the King all the members of the different Chambers assembled in their scarlet robes and capes, the presidents wearing their cloaks and mortar-shaped caps; and half an hour afterwards the Chancellor, accompanied by several masters of the Court of Requests, and dressed from head to foot in black velvet, took his place below the First President in the great hall of the Augustine monastery, where the young King was to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... silly fancy. If you want a pretty thing to ornament your room, go and pick up some round, clear pebbles, of different colours, and give one side of them a polish at the grindstone; then get some pieces of brick, and join them together in the shape of an arch, or any thing you fancy, with a little mortar; spread more mortar, thick and rough, over the front, and, while it is wet, stick in your pebbles, with the shining side outmost, with bits of glass, moss, sealing-wax, and any gay thing that comes in your way. I have seen such pretty contrivances, and have said to myself, ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... further side of a green valley, could be seen buildings with an encircling wall of flint and mortar faced with ruddy brick, the dark red-tiled roofs rising among walnut-trees, and an orchard in full bloom spreading into ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... appetite were stowing away pieces as big as one's fist. The course of meat finished, they spread upon the sheepskins a great heap of parched acorns, and with them they put down a half cheese harder than if it had been made of mortar. All this while the horn was not idle, for it went round so constantly, now full, now empty, like the bucket of a water-wheel, that it soon drained one of the two wine-skins that were in sight. When Don Quixote ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... brethren in the Borgo. The Turks set up their batteries, and fired their enormous cannon shot upon the fortifications. One of their terrible pieces of ordnance carried stone balls of 160 lb., and no wonder that stone and mortar gave way before it, and that a breach was opened in a few days' time. That night, when, as usual, boatloads of wounded men were transported across to the Borgo, the Bailiff of Negropont sent the knight La Cerda to the Grand Master to give an account of the state ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most spirited and lively manner; the peace- loving Trygaeus rides on a dung-beetle to heaven in the manner of Bellerophon; War, a desolating giant, with his comrade Riot, alone, in place of all the other gods, inhabits Olympus, and there pounds the cities of men in a great mortar, making use of the most celebrated generals for pestles. The Goddess Peace lies buried in a deep well, out of which she is hauled up by ropes, through the united exertions of all the states of Greece: all these ingenious ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... they leave unsaid; and both edges are often keen. What they say generally has a foundation of truth with a superstructure of gilded staff. You must knock over the staff and examine the foundations to see if they are laid up in good cement mortar or only mud. Sometimes they are honestly laid but your true promoter can no more help putting on his Coney Island palace of dreams than a yellow journal reporter can help making a good story of the most everyday assignment. I suppose he ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... threatens me divinely! I am falling to pieces already. I care not, though, like Anacharsis, I were pounded to death in a mortar: and yet that death were fitter for usurers, gold and themselves to be beaten together, to make a most cordial cullis for the devil. He hath his uncle's villainous look already, In decimo-sexto. [Enter Courtier.] ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... the time we reached the native village, or town rather, for it was a place of considerable dimensions. The houses were conical structures not unlike bee-hives, and were made of compressed seaweed cemented over with a rude form of mortar, there being neither stick nor stone upon the coast nor anywhere within many hundreds of miles. As we entered the town an enormous crowd of both sexes came swarming out to meet us, beating tom-toms and howling ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the castle was swarming with workmen; the banging of hammers, the rasp of saws, the spattering of mortar, the crashing of stone and the fumes of charcoal crucibles extended to the remotest recesses; the tower of Babel was being reconstructed in the language of six or eight nations, and everybody was happy. I had no idea there were so many tinsmiths ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... FOR TURKEY—Put a dozen or fifteen large chestnuts into a saucepan of water, and boil them until they are quite tender, then take off the shells and skins, put into a mortar and pound them. Put four ounces of shredded beef suet into a basin, stir in one-half pound of bread crumbs, season with salt and pepper to taste, and squeeze in a little lemon juice. Mix in a pound of chestnuts and stuffing will be ready ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... tools that are not labor-saving? The mason's trowel is a labor-saving tool, invented to prevent him from using his hands to put on the mortar; the bolo or the knife is just as much a labor-saving tool as the planing machine; the sickle saves labor and so does the reaper. The difficulty is that some people do not stop to think that the saving of labor applies ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... return, and go up a little gulch, just above this creek, and about two hundred yards from camp, and discover the ruins of two or three old houses, which were originally of stone, laid in mortar. Only the foundations are left, but irregular blocks, of which the houses were constructed, lie scattered about. In one room I find an old mealing stone, deeply worn, as if it had been much used. A great deal of pottery is strewn around, and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... and weak, seek to promote internal discord, so that thou mayest become only terrible to thyself! And remove from thee the false prophets, who have seen vanity and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that it may fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have strengthened the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the righteous sad. O, do this, and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an enviable ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the wall the tradition of former years was recalled, for there sat the grim skeleton of an Indian, fully armed for war! The new wall included him as before, but to this day there is a point in the wall where stone and mortar cannot long contain the Indian spirit's wrath. This Indian sentinel was first discovered by William Cooper when River Street was graded, and four generations of tradition in the Cooper family testified to his ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... and indeed many parts of the town, less than a century back were studded with gardens, but the flowers have had to give place to the more prosaic bricks and mortar, and householders desirous of floral ornaments have now in a great measure to resort to the nursery grounds of the professed horticulturists. Foremost among the nurseries of the neighbourhood are those ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Make the mortar bed large enough to hold the material for one course; put in unslaked quicklime in proportion to 1 to 20 or 30 of other material; throw into it plenty of water, and don't have that antediluvian idea that you can drown it; put in clean sand ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... the yellow earthenware, but they are unbreakable, and therefore cheaper in the end; they cost about 4s. 6d. each. A small sausage machine is very necessary, for by means of this useful contrivance many scraps of meat and bread can be utilized; the cost of one is 10s. 6d. A pestle and mortar, too, will be found of great use in making up odds and ends into dainty tit-bits; these, too, cost about 10s. 6d. Wire and hair sieves are invaluable for preparing soups and many other dishes; sieves with a wooden rim will be found ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... these lines, which nobody could have written who had not been compelled, in the sunny summer-days, to bray drugs in a mortar. Yet who does not like to read a medical book?—to pore over its jargon, to muddle himself into a hypo, and to imagine himself afflicted with the dreadful disease with the long Latin name, the meaning of which he does not by any means comprehend? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... it sounded, for all through the big rooms was scaffolds and ladders and a dozen or more original members of the Overalls Club splashin' mortar and paint around. I was glancin' at these horny-handed sons of toil sort of casual when all of a sudden I spots one guy in a well-daubed suit of near-white ducks who looks strangely familiar. Walkin' up to the step-ladder ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... of such a man," observed the stranger slowly, "changes a wilderness into a city. One great mind is surely a higher indication of civilisation than are incalculable leagues of bricks and mortar. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... explains nothing," said the student, covering himself up with a sheet; "all that is simply pounding liquid in a mortar. No one knows anything and nothing can ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the height of two courses (about two feet three), had been placed across the passage with a view to walling it up. Along the side of the passage were similar blocks ready for use, and, most curious of all, a heap of mortar and a couple of trowels, which tools, so far as we had time to examine them, appeared to be of a similar shape and make to those used by workmen ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... is in both of them a large amount of waste of labor. There are men in both of them, and in various other colleges, much of whose work is almost as much a misuse of energy and time as if they were employed so many hours a day in carrying hods of mortar, simply because they are doing what the masters of primary schools ought to do, and what no man at a university ought to be asked to do. It is a kind of work, too, which, if it have to be done in colleges at all, is already abundantly provided for ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... flight of steps into the garden, as you may see in Prout's drawing. If the rooms were not an addition, and it did not suggest itself at the moment to look attentively, I believe these little architectural and ornamental steps to have been; and as we know he did meddle with brick and mortar, by building a small chapel here, the conjecture is not improbable;—it is but a conjecture, and remains for others to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... out his hand and felt a cask near by. It was half filled with dirty water, being used for the purposes of making mortar. A tub of water was ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... that it was not difficult to make a characteristic picture as a sign for a pharmacy. These symbolic signs were much commoner and very necessary when people generally were not able to read. It is from that period that we have the mortar and pestle as also the colored lights in the windows of the drug stores, and the many-colored barber-pole. Also the big boot, key, watch, hat, bonnet, and the like, the last symbolic sign invention apparently being the wooden Indian for the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... with low, red walls. A short distance below its head we discover the ruins of an old building on the left wall. There is a narrow plain between the river and the wall just here, and on the brink of a rock 200 feet high stands this old house. Its walls are of stone, laid in mortar with much regularity. It was probably built three stories high; the lower story is yet almost intact; the second is much broken down, and scarcely anything is left of the third. Great quantities of flint chips are found on the rocks near by, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... one moment and looked at each other in silence. The child had dropped from the beam, and lay fast asleep across his mother's bosom, with his head on a lump of mortar. Without a word spoken, Mrs. Person, picking her way carefully to the spot, knelt down by the dead mother, tenderly kissed her cheek, lifted the sleeping child, and with all the awe, and nearly all the tremulous joy of first motherhood, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Well, my dear, young women need never despair. The young doctor gave a certain friend of yours to understand that, if she chose to be Mrs. Glauber, she was welcome to ornament the surgery! I told his impudence that the gilt pestle and mortar was quite ornament enough; as if I was born, indeed, to be a country surgeon's wife! Mr. Glauber went home seriously indisposed at his rebuff, took a cooling draught, and is now quite cured. Sir Pitt ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I mean, indignant and not unintelligent country-practitioner? Then you don't know the history of medicine,—and that is not my fault. But don't expose yourself in any outbreak of eloquence; for, by the mortar in which Anaxagoras was pounded! I did not bring home Schenckius and Forestus and Hildanus, and all the old folios in calf and vellum I will show you, to be bullied by the proprietor of a "Wood and Bache," and a shelf of peppered sheepskin reprints by Philadelphia Editors. Besides, many of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... last, and dreamed that we two were building houses on the seashore. Carrie's was the prettier, for it was all of sea-weed and bright-colored shells that looked as though the sun were shining on them, while mine was made of clay, tempered by mortar. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... professional opinions to advance themselves officiously to his lips whenever occasion offered. The building was, in short, a recently-erected chapel of red brick, with pseudo-classic ornamentation, and the white regular joints of mortar could be seen streaking its surface in geometrical oppressiveness from top to bottom. The roof was of blue slate, clean as a table, and unbroken from gable to gable; the windows were glazed with sheets of plate glass, a temporary iron stovepipe passing out ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... entirely by the falling water eddying round and round in a small hollow of the rock, and grinding the pebbles which it has brought down, against the bottom and sides of this hollow, just as you grind round a pestle in a mortar. By degrees the hole grows deeper and deeper and though the first pebbles are probably ground down to powder, others fall in, and so in time there is a great hole perforated right through, helping to make the ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... the name of "Oldershaw." On the other side was the private door, with a bell marked Professional; and another brass plate, indicating a medical occupant on this side of the house, for the name on it was, "Doctor Downward." If ever brick and mortar spoke yet, the brick and mortar here said plainly, "We have got our secrets inside, and we mean ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... speakers. And doubtless, if there is a beneficent Providence that really picks the world over for opportunities of kindliness, halls which are habitually let out for political meetings are allowed means of relieving their feelings which are forbidden to other collections of bricks and mortar. But he mustn't say that to Ellen. To her political meetings were plainly sacred rituals, and in any case he was not sure whether she laughed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... is seventy feet square and a hundred feet high, built of the native Kentish ragstone and Caen stone; and the adamantine mortar or cement used in its construction was made with sand, evidently procured at the seaside some distance from Rochester, for it contains remains of cardium, pecten, solen, and other marine shells, which would not ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... impassioned savage; "they defy us. Drag them to the mortar and crush them into dust!" The words had scarcely passed his lips when Denviers rushed forward and snatched the mask from the Tamil sitting there! The savages around, when they saw this, seemed for a moment unable to move; then they threw themselves wildly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... on them, which will make them peel easily; either roll them with a bottle on the cake board or pound in a mortar, with a little loaf-sugar; they should not be pounded too much or they will be oily; peach kernels make a fine flavoring for custard, but as they contain prussic acid, do not ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... rubble, formed of cement so hard that the daggers failed to make any impression, whatever, upon it; and after laboring through the whole day, they were forced to abandon the design, and replace the stones as they had before been; filling up the interstices with the mortar which they had dug out, so that no trace of the task upon which they were employed ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... commenced another and much larger one, sixteen feet by ten feet. I selected a site close above high water-mark, and commenced digging, and in fact worked a whole day at it, intending to line it with a mixture of sand and lime, of which I had several tubs for making mortar for repairing the brickwork of my homestead; but that very evening I discovered a natural fish pond, or rather a pool, that could be turned into one by a little ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... anyone asks for water, tell him it's all run out. As for a knife, or an axe, or a pestle, or a mortar,—things the neighbours are all the time wanting to borrow—tell 'em burglars got in and stole the whole lot. I won't have a living soul let into my house while I'm agone—there! Yes, and what's more, listen here, if Dame Fortune herself comes ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... Lower Old Red Sandstone, and were excavators among its fossiliferous beds. The vitrified forts of the north of Scotland give evidence of yet another of the obsolete arts. Before the savage inhabitants of the country were ingenious enough to know the uses of mortar, or were furnished with tools sufficiently hard and solid to dress a bit of sandstone, they must have been acquainted with the chemical fact, that with the assistance of fluxes, a pile of stones could be fused into a solid wall, and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the low, broad, massively-framed chairs, which were covered in leather stamped with Japanese dragon designs in copper-colored metal. Near the fireplace was a great bronze bell of Chinese shape, mounted like a mortar on a black wooden carriage for use as a coal-scuttle. The wall was decorated with large gold crescents on ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... have, of course, more in their power in the way of house-building than any other class of mechanics. It was necessary, however, that there should be money provided for the purchase of wood for the roof, and for the carting of the necessary stones and mortar; and I had none. But Aunt Jenny had saved a few pounds, and a very few proved sufficient; and so I built a cottage in the Pays, of a single room and a closet, as my first job, which, if not very elegant, or of large accommodation, came fully up to Aunt ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Always firm in his vocation, For the court against the nation. Those are Allens Jack and Bob,[18] First in every wicked job, Son and brother to a queer Brain-sick brute, they call a peer. We must give them better quarter, For their ancestor trod mortar, And at Hoath, to boast his fame, On a chimney cut his name. There sit Clements, Dilks, and Carter;[19] Who for Hell would die a martyr. Such a triplet could you tell Where to find on this side Hell? Gallows Carter, Dilks, and Clements, Souse them in their own excrements. Every mischief's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... nothing can be more reasonable than to expect that a Catholic priest should starve to death, genteelly and pleasantly, for the good of the Protestant religion; but is it equally reasonable to expect that he should do so for the Protestant pews, and Protestant brick and mortar? On an Irish Sabbath the bell of a neat parish church often summons to church only the parson and an occasionally conforming clerk; while, two hundred yards off, a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... were sausage-shaped missiles which came wobbling toward us, slowly, almost awkwardly; but they dropped with lightning speed, and alas, for any poor Tommy who misjudged the place of its fall! However, every one had a chance. Trench-mortar projectiles are so large that one can see them coming, and they describe so leisurely an arc before they fall that ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... his example, but, more considerate than the other attendants of the king, he made some provision for the deserted corpse. He sent for one of the subordinates of the palace, and ordered him to watch by the body. Then, going to his carriage, he saw several hodmen lounging about, who were carrying mortar for some repairs that were being made at the palace. The physician called them, and bade them go tell the lord-Steward that the king's coffin must be saturated with spirits of wine, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... then followed the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice flour" and broken grain, and barreled ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... collateral effects of the destruction of the forests in ancient Italy may be found in old Roman architecture. In the oldest brick constructions of Rome the bricks are very thin, very thoroughly burnt, and laid with a thick stratum of mortar between the courses. A few centuries later the bricks were thicker and less well burnt, and the layers of mortar were thinner. In the Imperial period the bricks were still thicker, generally soft-burnt, and with little mortar between the courses. This fact, I think, is due to the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... distribution of the cross of the Legion of Honor, but, owing to the shameful negligence of some one, the name of this man of talent was overlooked. The port of Boulogne contained about seventeen hundred vessels, such as flatboats, sloops, turkish boats, gunboats, prairies, mortar-boats, etc.; and the entrance to the port was defended by an enormous chain, and by four forts, two on the right, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... each other as in the best masonry work to-day. They are regularly arranged in the walls in such a manner as to give the greatest degree of strength and solidity to the structure, and nowhere is cement or mortar utilised. There are no huge pillars or single blocks such as may be seen in other prehistoric edifices, and neither in boldness of design nor imposing grandeur have the temples presented any difficulties to the builders. There is nothing upon a great scale, nothing attempted outside ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... a pound of sweet almonds and three ounces of bitter, turn them into cold water for a few minutes; then you must pound them very fine in a stone mortar, if you have a marble one so much the better, and do it in a ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... up in the midst of another general list, including cheese, and shoes, and stays.[33] Not until 1748 did an advertisement appear in which several of the old English nostrums rubbed shoulders with each other.[34] Then Silvester Gardiner, at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, asserted that "by appointment of the Patentee" he was enabled to sell "Genuine British Oyl, Bateman's Pectoral Drops, and Hooper's Female Pills, ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... digging in that mountain till they found a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and when so treated it divides as it were into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded in a great copper mortar, and then washed, so as to remove all the earth and to leave only the fibres like fibres of wool. These were then spun, and made into napkins. When first made these napkins are not very white, but by putting them into the fire for a while they come out as white ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... dry, crumbling soil, we should expect the shaft and the chamber at the bottom to have soft, powdery walls, subject to petty landslips, if no work were done but that of excavation. On the contrary, the walls are neatly daubed, plastered with a sort of clay-like mortar. They are not precisely smooth, indeed they are distinctly rough; but their irregularities are covered with a layer of plaster, and the crumbling material, soaked in some glutinous liquid and dried, is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... got out and carried into the garden which fronted the windows, on the other side the before-mentioned brook. I was so alarmed that I threw indiscriminately everything that came to hand out of the window, even to a large stone mortar, which at another time I should have found it difficult to remove, and should have thrown a handsome looking-glass after it had not some one prevented me. The good bishop, who that day was visiting Madam de Warrens, did not remain idle; he took her ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... project beyond the outside of the wall, that they might serve to hang a curtain on them to defend and repel all blows whilst they were building the walls between that and the next floor, and the floor of this story they faced with bricks and mortar, that the enemy's fire might do them no damage; and on this they spread mattresses, lest the weapons thrown from engines should break through the flooring, or stones from catapults should batter the brickwork. They, moreover, made three mats of cable ropes, each of them the length of the turret ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... the woman, and Winslow making the most of his little stock of Indian words directed her to bruise some of the maize in her stone mortar, and meantime calling for one of the egg-shaped earthen stew-pans used by the natives, he half filled it with water, and settled it into the hot ashes of the open air fire. The maize ready, he winnowed it in ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... corresponding diameter. They are so firm in their texture that the weight of a horse makes no apparent indentation on their solidity; and even the intense rains of the monsoon, which no cement or mortar can long resist, fail to penetrate the surface or substance of an ant hill.[3] In their earlier stages the termites proceed with such energetic rapidity, that I have seen a pinnacle of moist clay, six inches in height and ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... frequent removals of these for boiler inspection and the hitting of the end of the long poker, several bricks were broken every three months, and I came to the decision to try stock bricks faced with fireclay as mortar; and I was more than satisfied with the result, and ever since then I used stock bricks ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... slabs of ice in the river were forced upwards, and shivered into all manner of fanciful shapes. It was the dammed-up current of the mighty river which at length had forced the barrier of ice, and carried all in front of it, as the mortar carries the shell. There was one continuous, deafening roar, punctuated with a series of violent explosions as huge blocks of ice were shivered and shot into the air by that Titanic force. Nothing on earth could live in that ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to bear of experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... merchandise should be smuggled into the town. The people, in building the walls and houses, fabricate a good substitute for stones, which are not to be found in those parts, by forming clay into balls, which they dry in the sun, and use with mud as mortar; the walls are thus made very strong, and as rain is unknown, durable also. The houses, with very few exceptions, are of one story, and those of the poorer sort, receive all their light from the doors. They are so low as to require stooping nearly double ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the more recondite knowledge up to which it is expected to lead. To extract the genesis of life from any data that completest acquaintance with the stages and processes of protoplasmic growth can furnish, is a truly hopeless problem. Given the plan of a house, with samples of its brick and mortar, to find the name and nationality of the householder, would be child's play in comparison. Life, as we have seen, is not the offspring of protoplasm, but something which has been superinduced upon, and may be separated from, the protoplasm that serves ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... and deterioration of the plaster work; wall paper will become detached from the walls, paint will blister and peel off, and distemper will lose its virtue. To avoid similar mishaps, sea sand, or sand containing salt, should never be used either for plaster or mortar. In fact, it is necessary that the materials for mortar should be as free from salts and organic matter as those used for plaster, because the injurious effects of their presence will be quickly communicated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... the night boat. After supper they took out the skiff from the rocky landing for a last row. They pulled round under the dark cliffs that rose sheer from the water and were crowned with the wall of the old fort, the cliffs themselves seamed across with strata of white, like mortar-lines of some Titanic masonry. They gave chase to a tug puffing northward half a mile to the right, towing two or three canal-boats through the still water and the stiller night. Then a sail came ghostily out of the shadow astern, and stole on them as they drew away and waited ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... some chance association; and there is nothing like the daily and thorough perusal of a newspaper for dulling a man's brain. He pottered about his garden gossiping with the gardener; made little alterations in the house—bricks and mortar are like an anodyne; he collected stamps; played bezique with his wife; and finally, in his mild, gentle ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... ended by telling them that in the morning they should hear the big guns. This greatly pleased them, for they were extremely impatient for the artillery to begin. About sunrise the battery of the left opened with eight heavy cannon and a mortar, joined, on the next morning, by the battery of the right, with eleven pieces more. The fort replied with spirit. The cannon thundered all day, and from a hundred peaks and crags the astonished wilderness roared back the sound. The Indians were ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... is a square garden-plot, allowing of not more than four long steps in each direction, a garden of black soil, with trellises bereft of vines, and where, in default of vegetation under the shade of two trees, papers collect, old rags, potsherds, bits of mortar fallen from the roof; a barren ground, where time has shed on the walls, and on the trunks and branches of the trees, a powdery deposit like cold soot. The two parts of the house, set at a right angle, derive ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... themselves houses, plant gardens and remain till their children were ten years old. Then the Sultan caused all the children to be brought to him, both boys and girls. The boys were apprenticed to masons, carpenters, and other tradesmen; others were employed to make mortar. The next year they were taught to drive the mules, the third to make adobe for building; the fourth year they learned to ride horses bareback, the fifth they were taught to ride in the saddle while using firearms. At the age of sixteen these boys ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... does the grinding of corn, even in hand-mills, seem to have been universal till the Roman era, the earlier British method being to bruise the grain in a mortar.[28] Without the resources of civilization it is not easy to deal with stones hard enough for satisfactory millstones. We find that the Romans, when they came, mostly selected for this use the Hertfordshire "pudding-stone," a conglomerate of the Eocene period crammed with rolled ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... successful in getting the authorities to fix the building—shed, we should have said—she secured the willing service of two of her larger boys. She mounted one mule and the two boys another, and thus they rode to the ginhouse. They got cotton seed, returned, mixed it with earth, which formed a plastic mortar, and with her own hands she pasted up the chinks, and ever after smiled at the unavailing ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... new house, but I've had one given to me for my own; Brick red, with a white window, and black where it ought to be glass, and the chimney yellow, like stone. Brother Bill made me the shelves with his tool-box, and the table I had before, and the pestle-and-mortar; And Mother gave me the jam-pot when it was empty; it's rather big, but it's the only pot we have that will really hold water. We—that is I and Jemima, my doll. (For it's a Doll's House, you know, Though some of the things are real, like the nutmeg-grater, but not the ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Frosts and Winters, which make the Northern Workmen lie half the Year Idle. I might mention too, among the Benefits of the Climate, what Historians say of the Earth, that it sweated out a Bitumen or natural kind of Mortar, which is doubtless the same with that mentioned in Holy Writ, as contributing to the Structure of Babel. Slime ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
