"Bricklayer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like to see old Stiffneck obliged to bow down his head and swallow his infernal pride, and drink the cup of humiliation poured out by Pump and Aldgate's butler. 'Pump and Aldgate, says he, 'your grandfather was a bricklayer, and his hod is still kept in the bank. Your pedigree begins in a workhouse; mine can be dated from all the royal palaces of Europe. I came over with the Conqueror; I am own cousin to Charles Martel, Orlando Furioso, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the doublet, trunk-hose, and shoes of a bricklayer, together with trowel and measuring-rod. He was informed who his new journeyman was to be, and Grotius at once put on ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... first place then, it has really nothing whatever to do with the Cave, as a property, excepting for the accidental circumstance that nearly at the end of last century the then occupier of the Town House, as it was called, Thomas Watson by name, and a bricklayer, set his men to work during the hard winter of 1790, at cutting the present passage down through the solid chalk into the Cave from the house by which it is now entered. An interesting advertisement of this event which I have {36} found ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... Savage, a bricklayer's labourer employed by the Cubitt Town Construction Company, was making his way across Hyde Park en route to his work. He had crossed the main drive which runs parallel with the Bayswater Road, when his attention was attracted to a figure lying on the grass near to the sidewalk. He ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... can you do?" The first party answers, "Anything." The second party says, "Set to work, then!" whereupon they go through pantomimic motions descriptive of the occupation chosen, such as planing, sawing, or hammering, for the carpenter; the motions of the bricklayer, tailor, cobbler, motor-man, etc. The second party guesses what this pantomime indicates. Should they guess correctly, they have a turn at representing a trade. Should they fail, the ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... hook and ladder. "And this windmill that whirls so busily. My Leo is seven, and his head is full of engines, and motors, and things that run on wheels. He cares no more for music, the little savage, than the son of a bricklayer." ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... memorials of the land of his fathers. Certainly, however, the most interesting of the whole is the library of the Rev. Dr Magoon, "an eminent and popular divine of the Baptist Church." He entered on active life as an operative bricklayer. There are, it appears, wall-plates extant, and not a few, built by his hands, and it was only by saving the earnings these brought to him that he could obtain an education. When an English mechanic finds out that he has a ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... too, he came officially into contact with the Regimental colours, which looked like the lining of a bricklayer's hat on the end of a chewed stick. Bobby did not kneel and worship them, because British subalterns are not constructed in that manner. Indeed, he condemned them for their weight at the very moment that they were filling him with awe and other more ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... drawers of water, laborer, navvy[obs3]; hand, man, day laborer, journeyman, charwoman, hack; mere tool &c. 633; beast of burden, drudge, fag; lumper[obs3], roustabout. maker, artificer, artist, wright, manufacturer, architect, builder, mason, bricklayer, smith, forger, Vulcan; carpenter; ganger, platelayer; blacksmith, locksmith, sailmaker, wheelwright. machinist, mechanician, engineer. sempstress[obs3], semstress[obs3], seamstress; needlewoman[obs3], workwoman; tailor, cordwainer[obs3]. minister &c. (instrument) 631; servant &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... age found me the possessor of a trade, an attainment, and a capital invaluable for a poor young man beginning the race of life. For whether seen smutted by the soot of the blacksmith shop, or whitened by the lime of the plasterer or bricklayer; whether bending beneath tool box of the carpenter or ensconced on the bench of the shoemaker, he has a moral strength, a consciousness of acquirement, giving him a dignity of manhood unpossessed by the menial and those engaged in unskilled labor. Let it never be ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... maladroit attempt to shift the blame on to the employers only deepened the impression that trade-unionism is developing into a system of caste, in which certain occupations are reserved for certain people. Only an elect bricklayer, for example, may lay bricks— though anybody can heave them—and the mere fact that a man has shouldered a rifle in the service of his country in no way entitles him to carry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... that the Queen has the same advantage as myself—that she is up the steeple; but so is every ordinary bricklayer or emperor. The thing is to be able to look and understand when you are up. I once saw a curious sight as I sat with the swallows flying far under my feet. The people did not wander about the street here and there as usual, but hundreds after ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... members of the company immediately proceeded to engage their workmen and a very interesting illustration of the way they set about it has been preserved in an old indenture dated 13th March, 1764, in which James Simonds, "trader," made agreement with one Edmund Black of Haverhill, "bricklayer," to pay the said Black L16. 16s. for eight months labor at brickmaking, fishing, burning lime, or any other common or ordinary work at Passamaquoddy, St. John, Annapolis Royal or any other part of Nova Scotia, in the Bay of Fundy. In addition to his pay, at the rate L2. 2s. per ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... it said; and as it spoke the heap of mud slid into the river just as a slab of damp mixed mortar will slip from a bricklayer's trowel. ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... had t'ree boys an' t'ree girls who did well at their work. Hope Mikell, my eldest bredder, an' James wus de shoemaker. William Fuller, son of our master, wus de bricklayer. Margurite an' Catharine wuz de maids an' look at ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was the youngest member of the Athletic team and at that time quite a promising young player. He did not last long with the Athletics, however, and after playing on one or two other league teams he dropped out sight. He was a bricklayer by trade, and the last time I heard of him he was in St. Louis working ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... Testament, and account them as things of nought; yea, as I am credibly informed, in public congregations they vent these their damnable opinions." He gives no names; but Edwards mentions "one Marshal, a bricklayer, a young man, living at Hackney," who made a mock of the Scriptures in his harangues, and asserted that he himself "knew the mystery of God in Christ better than St. Paul." A companion of this Marshal's ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... be proper," he asked, "for my client to show his respect for the court and dress in a becoming manner; or should he appear in his everyday clothes as a working bricklayer, dirty ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... and its inhabitants were called together to consider the best means of protecting it from the enemy. A Bricklayer present earnestly recommended bricks, as affording the best materials for an effectual resistance. A Carpenter, with equal energy, proposed timber, as providing a preferable method of defense. Upon which a Currier stood up, and said: "Sirs, I differ from you altogether; there is no material ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... a space, and now Hawkins awoke and began to clamor for food. Where was I taking him? he demanded to know. And why was I togged out like a bricklayer? He announced that he had had enough of this kind of travelling and insisted on going to a hotel and having a decent meal. I tried to reason with him and explained that it was only for a day or so, and that presumably we would go to Boston or some other city, where he should have ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Alport, Charles (in South Africa). Anderson, J. R., agricultural department. Barnett, Josiah, in United States. Barnswell, James, carpenter. Bauman, Frederick, confectioner. Beaven, Hon. Robert. Botterell, Mat., butcher. Blaguiere, Edward. Bullen, Jonathan, bricklayer. Boscowitz, Joseph, fur dealer. Borde, August, Chatham Street. Burnes, Thomas, saloonkeeper. Carey, Joseph W. Cridge, Edward, rector Christ Church. Crowther, John C., painter. Davie, Doctor John C. Dougall, John, iron moulder. ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the cynical lawyer in the pavilion! But I prefer to consider the interests ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this fire had come, suspecting the Portuguese had hired some Malays to do it: But a Chinese bricklayer, who wrought at the Dutch house, told a Hollander next morning, who had been long in the country, that it was done by the Chinese brewer and his accomplices, who were now fled, and if we looked well in the room we should find how it had been done. The Dutchman ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... doubted on the ground that a bricklayer or domestic servant in a province of the Roman Empire would not have known how to read and write. This doubt really rests on a misconception of the Empire. It is, indeed, akin to the surprise which tourists often exhibit when confronted with Roman remains in an excavation or a museum—a ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... view, my dear," answered the vicar. "Let a man be apprenticed to a skilled trade, and carry a bricklayer's hod, or a carpenter's rule. Let him only wear slops and work in an engine-room, or use a mason's trowel—so long as he does these things and receives his wages weekly, he is a 'working-man;' and, must have the hours of labour ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the manner of working helps the general arrangement considerably. When the bricklayer is building the narrow shaft of a factory chimney, he stands in the center of his turret and turns round and round while gradually laying new rows. The caddis worm acts in the same way. It twists round in its sheath; it adopts without inconvenience whatever position it pleases, so as to bring its ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... details, as was the fashion of his school. The additions were carried out in 1873, and the library is now 130 feet long, but shuts out a large part of the view northward through the gardens. It is believed that Ben Jonson worked here as a bricklayer, and we are told by Fuller that he had a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket. Aubrey says his mother had married a bricklayer, and that he was sent to Cambridge by a bencher who heard him repeating Homer as he worked. Of actual members of eminence, Lincoln's Inn numbers almost as many as ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... admiration of Horace, perpetually breaks out into digressive accounts of what sort of a man his friends take him to be. For one, Horace in wrath prepares an epigram: and for Crispinus and Fannius, brother bards, who threaten "they'll bring your life and death on the stage, as a bricklayer in a play," he says, "I can bring a prepared troop of gallants, who, for my sake, shall distaste every unsalted line in their fly-blown comedies." "Ay," replies Asinius, "and all men of my rank!" Crispinus, Horace calls "a light voluptuous reveller," and ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... as ganger or overseer, would find a bricklayer's assistant, male or female, sitting in the shade doing nothing. Women are employed largely as day-labourers, and more often than not it was the woman who was the slowest to obey. The overseer would tell her peremptorily to get up and go to work. The woman would pretend not to ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... in his agony, laid a hatchet on his thigh, and ordered his servant to strike with a mallet. The leg was cut off, and the Duke died of the gush of blood. Such was the end of that powerful prince. Why, there is not now a bricklayer who falls from a ladder in England, who cannot obtain surgical assistance, infinitely superior to that which the sovereign of Austria could command in the twelfth century. I think this a bill which tends to the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... carry a pail of water," he replied. "I'm my own contractor, my own carpenter, and my own bricklayer, and I shall be sixty-seven come Michaelmas," he ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... downcast moods, that Canada was no place for the gentleman emigrant; but could he point out any colony more suited? Also, that his sons earned daily bread by harassing toil, worse than that of a bricklayer or day labourer at home; but were they not happier than in pursuit of mere pastime like thousands of their equals in the province they had left? Robert would certainly have answered in the affirmative. Arthur's restless spirit less wisely ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... has always been held in slight estimation from a literary standpoint. Dr Samuel Butler says, in his "Character of a Small Poet,'' "He uses to lay the outsides of his verses even, like a bricklayer, by a line of rhyme and acrostic, and fill the middle with rubbish.'' Addison (Spectator, No. 60) found it impossible to decide whether the inventor of the anagram or the acrostic were the greater blockhead; and, in describing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... my contributions were to be found, but I never heard that they looked at them. They were never worth reading, and yet such complete silence was rather lonely. The tradesman who makes a good coat enjoys the satisfaction of having fitted and pleased his customer, and a bricklayer, if he be diligent, is rewarded by knowing that his master understands his value, but I never knew what it was to receive a single response. I wrote for an abstraction; and spoke to empty space. I cannot help ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... inexperienced girl into the bargain. You tell me you are a gentleman. Sir! I had as lief you said you were a blacksmith. In this grand country of ours, where progress is the watchword, effete standards and dogging traditions must go by the board. Grit is of more use to us than gentility. Each single bricklayer who unships serves the colony better than a ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... he, "but yesterday was I at the very same business. I sent for old Henry Daunce, the bricklayer of White Chapel (who used to preach the gospel in his garden every holiday, where I have seen a thousand persons), and got him to enclose my books in a brick wall by the chimney side in my chamber, where they shall be preserved from moulding ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the sense to see that the mere mechanical work may be done by any body, and that there is the same art in constructing a vessel, whether the boards are well or ill wrought. Sir Christopher Wren might as well have served his time to a bricklayer, and first, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... began in poverty, his father dying before he was born, and leaving his widow poorly provided for. When Ben was about two years old his mother married again, and this second husband was a bricklayer. Ben, however, tells us that his own father was a gentleman, belonging to a good old Scottish Border family, and that he had lost all his estates in the reign of Queen Mary. But about the truth of this we do not know, for Ben was a bragger and a swaggerer. He ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of English literary celebrities, we cannot but be struck with the large proportion of those who have received little or no regular education in their early days, and whose opportunities of study have been of the scantiest. Ben Jonson working as a bricklayer with his book in his pocket: Wm. Cobbett reading his hard-earned 'Tale of a Tub' under the haystack, or mastering his grammar when he was a private soldier on the pay of 6d. a day; when 'the edge of my berth or that of my guard-bed was my seat to study ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... architect, and munificent public benefactor, was the son of a poor bricklayer, and was born at Reading in 1753. He showed early indications of talent and a predilection for architecture; and, at the age of fifteen, his father placed him with Mr. George Dance (then considered one of the most accomplished of the English architects), ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... slaves: With this farm will be sold about Thirty Likely Negroes mostly country born, among them a very good bricklayer, and driver, and two sawyers, 17 of them are fit for field or boat work, and the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... unknown person who was in the habit of assuming the supernatural character, and thus frightening the superstitious inhabitants of the village, rashly determined on watching for, and shooting the ghost; when, unfortunately, in Black-Lion Lane, he shot a poor innocent man, Thomas Millwood, a bricklayer, who was in a white dress, the usual habiliment of his occupation. This rash act, having been judged wilful murder by the coroner's inquest, Smith was accordingly committed to gaol, and took his trial at the ensuing sessions ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... were written by a person called Emerson, and of a dull character, but the backs were very beautiful, and Miss Sandal was most awfully pleased with them when she came down to her cottage with her partially repaired brother, who had fallen off the scaffold when treating a bricklayer to tracts. ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... whist, and I won't be asy: so, Mr. Keegan, if you want to have my answer, take it, and carry it down to that old bricklayer in Carrick, whose daughter has the divil's bargain in you; and for the like of that you're not bad matched. Tell him from me, Larry Macdermot—tell him from me, that I'm not so owld yet, nor so poor, nor so silly, that he can swindle me out of my lands ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... had been accused of stealing and killing a calf belonging to M. Rolette, and the constable, a bricklayer of the name of Bell, had been dispatched to arrest the culprit and ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... said, "for a man, in this country now. To be just another man's hand, as I am. To have to wear what clothes you are told, and go to church to please customers, and work—There's no other kind of men stand such hours. A drunken bricklayer's a ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... people were admiring me, in one instance for perseverance and another for boldness in climbing a low tree, and what is odder, a consciousness, as if instinctive, that I was vain, and contempt of myself. My supposed admirer was old Peter Haile the bricklayer, and the tree the mountain ash on the lawn. All my recollections seem to be connected most closely with myself; now Catherine (Catherine Darwin) seems to recollect scenes where others were the chief actors. When ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... more than he meant. He belonged to the New Unionism, and affected a costume in character—fustian trousers, flannel shirt, a full red tie and work-man's coat, all well calculated to set off a fine lion-like head and broad shoulders. He had begun life as a bricklayer's labourer, and was now the secretary of a recently formed Union. His influence had been considerable, but was said to be already on the wane; though it was thought likely that he would win a seat in ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... BRICKLAYER'S CLERK. A contemptuous expression for lubberly pretenders to having seen "better days," but who were forced ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... magnificence. His saddle had cost him not a real less than five hundred dollars gold; his silver spurs could have been pawned in any Tia Juana loan office for twenty-five dollars and many a longing glance was cast on a magnificent bridle that would have cost any bricklayer a month's pay. Panchito, a splendid big chestnut with two white stockings and a blazed face, was gray with sweat and alkali dust and shod like a plow horse. He wore cactus burrs in his tail and mane and had ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... busy watching the bricklayer that he forgot all about the masons who were putting mortar on ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... agricultural employments, and their continuance kept carefully in view by the heads of the principal families. John Putnam not only gave large farms to each of his sons, but he trained them severally to some mechanical art. One was a weaver, another a bricklayer, &c. The farmer was also a mechanic, and every description of useful ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... for Municipal Band. Solo Cornet and others. Work found for bricklayer, carpenter, painter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... hard, and did their best to get a livelihood for themselves and children, of which they had several besides myself, who was the eldest. My father was a bricklayer, and my mother sold apples and oranges and other fruits, according to the season, and also whiskey, which she made herself, as she well knew how; for my mother was not only a Connacht woman, but an out-and-out Connamara quean, and when only ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Greg, Henslowe Papers, pp. 28-30; 112. The names of the sharers are not inspiring: Thomas Sparks, merchant tailor; William Gwalter, innholder; John Fisher, barber-surgeon; Thomas Wigpitt, bricklayer; etc.] ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... the following under the signature of "An Operative Bricklayer," in the Times of the 30th July, 1867: "I found there were a great number of men in Paris that worked on the buildings who were not residents of the city. The bricklayers are called limousins; they ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... there's the question; But I say, 'tis true: The elder of them being put to nurse, Was by a begger-woman stolne away, And ignorant of his birth and parentage, Became a Bricklayer, when he came to age. His sonne am I, deny it if ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... flock—these, and such as these, which are rough occupations enough, and which carry with them many hardships, are good enough for the best of us, certain conditions of leisure, freedom, and due wages being granted. As to the bricklayer, the mason, and the like—these would be artists, and doing not only necessary, but beautiful, and therefore happy work, if art were anything like what it should be. No, it is not such labour as this which we need to do away with, but the toil which makes the thousand ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... strips of soft body-stuff soaked with lime and hardened, like bricklayer's mortar, or concrete.[24] When you know the shape of the body, you know the bones; for they simply form a shell over the head and run like cores, or piths, down the centre of the back, and down each joint ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... the following remarkable epitaph appears to the memory of Joseph Rogers, who was a bricklayer as well as ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... that bricklaying should survive and succeed, but that every bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought to rebuild the ruins of any bricklayer, and to give any faded whitewasher a new white coat. It was the whole aim of the Guilds to cobble their cobblers like their shoes and clout their clothiers with their ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... Any metaphor silenced him. He never thought of replying that art is not a ladder—with a curate, as it were, on the first rung, a rector on the second, and a bishop, still nearer heaven, at the top. He never retorted that the artist is not a bricklayer at all, but a horseman, whose business it is to catch Pegasus at once, not to practise for him by mounting tamer colts. This is hard, hot, and generally ungraceful work, but it is not drudgery. For drudgery is not art, and cannot ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... to meet with the plasterer and bricklayer that did first divide our lodgings, and they do both tell me that my chamber now in dispute did ever belong to my lodgings, which do put me into good quiet of mind. So by water with Sir Wm. Pen to White Hall; and, with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of John Bone, bricklayer, of Bromley, Kent, it would probably be wrong to associate with his calling the tools engraved on his headstone. They were probably meant with the rest of the picture to represent the ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... went out I saw a man standing on the other side of the road looking like a bricklayer. Turning back after I had gone a hundred feet or so, I saw him cross the road, and go into the house. I went back, the street-door was as it always was, open. Stepping inside I heard a male voice through Kate's door, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... The bricklayer nearly broke out again; but, obeying a glance from his wife, closed his lips and followed her obediently upstairs. Mr. Price, filling his pipe from a paper of tobacco on the mantelpiece, winked at himself encouragingly in the glass, and smiled gently ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... success don't go to her head, and she don't never get no attacks of this here complaint which they calls temper'ment. I always figgered out that temper'ment, when a grand wopra singster has it, is just plain old temper when it afflicts a bricklayer. I don't know what form it would take if it should seize on a bull, but Emily appears to be absolutely immune. Give her a ton of hay and one sack of peanuts a day, and she's just as placid as a great gross of guinea pigs. Behind the scenes she never makes no trouble, but ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that followed his spirit of encouragement, the willingness with which he put his shoulder to the wheel everywhere that aid was needed, his boldness in defying those leagued against him, completely changed the aspect of Jamestown. The gentlemen who had refused to wield axe or spade or bricklayer's trowel because of their gentility ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... living and high thinking. She had a brother, and his motto was the same, and it was his charity concert that Alice held the fatal shillings in her muff throughout of. Later on he was giving tracts to a bricklayer, and fell off a scaffold in his giddy earnestness, and Miss Sandal had to go and nurse him. So the six of us stayed in the plain living, high thinking house by ourselves, and old Mrs. Beale from the village came in every day ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... selling Testaments at Seville in a quiet satisfactory manner. We have just commenced offering the book to the poor. That most remarkable individual, Johannes Chrysostom, the Greek bricklayer, being the agent whom we employ. I confess that we might sell more than we at present do, were we to press the matter; but we are cautious, and moreover our stock of Testaments is waning apace. Two or three ladies of my acquaintance occasionally dispose of some ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... bailiff or reeve, who collected the lord's rents, assisted by a bedellus, beadle or under-bailiff. Bovarii, or oxherds, looked after the plough-teams. The carpentarius, or carpenter; the cementarius, or bricklayer; the custos apium, or beekeeper; the faber, or smith; the molinarius, or miller—were all important officers in the Norman village; and we have mention also of the piscatores (fishermen), pistores (bakers), porcarii (swineherds), viccarii (cowmen), who were all employed ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... Push thirsting for blood. One of them had got three months for taking a fancy to a copper boiler that he had found in an empty house, and they discovered that a bricklayer, who lived next door, had put the police on his track. The Push resolved to stoush him, and had lain in wait for a week without success. Jonah took the matter in hand, and inquired secretly into the man's habits. He discovered that the bricklayer, sober as a judge through ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... apprentices even of his own creed. Thus the Israelite is prevented from following any trade that requires particular assistants; he cannot with any prospect of success become a joiner, locksmith, blacksmith, or bricklayer, nor can he do the work of any mechanic where the aid of other persons is absolutely requisite. The disadvantages which he must labour under are indeed numerous. Where there is a large family, and the children are of tender ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... deal of trouble I found one of them. He was a bricklayer, and he told me as near as he could remember the man who gave me to Tim Morrisey was from Philadelphia, and that's ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... there any other greater, more satisfying, more majestic thought of life than this—the scaffolding by which souls are built up into the temple of God? And to care whether a thing is painful or pleasant is as absurd as to care whether the bricklayer's trowel is knocking the sharp corner off a brick, or plastering mortar on the one below it before he lays it carefully on its course. Is the building getting on? That is the one question that is worth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... bricks from cracking. Bricks are always thirsty, and if one is laid in mortar, it will suck the moisture out of it almost as a sponge will suck up water. The mortar thus has no chance to set, and so is not strong as it should be. That is why the bricklayer wets his bricks, especially in summer, before he puts them in place. Lime or cement mortar will not set in freezing weather, and a brick building put up in the winter is in danger of tumbling down when the warm days of ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... of it. I did the baking in a lumber camp one winter. Used to dump the contents of a sack of flour into a trough made out of a log, pour in a pail or two of melted snow, and mix with a hoe after the manner of a bricklayer's assistant making mortar. There was nothing small or mean about my bread making. I ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... I a bricklayer's labourer," exclaimed Bob, "exchange situations with this unfortunate literary hack—this poor devil of mental toil and precarious result, who depends for scanty subsistence on the caprice of his more fortunate inferiors, whose minds, unexpanded ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... probation, the energy and perseverance of the lover is almost unparalleled. He finally ventured to return to his native Tagus, and accomplished the object of his life. Disguising himself as a bricklayer, he skulked about the convent where Ignez lay immured, mingling with the workmen employed there, till he found means to open a communication with her and concert a plan of escape. He then furnished her with male attire, and at last successfully ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... London in 1573. At Westminster School he received a permanent bent toward classical studies from the headmaster, William Camden, who was one of the greatest scholars of the time. Forced into the uncongenial trade of his stepfather, a master-bricklayer, he soon deserted it to enlist among the English soldiers who were helping the Dutch to fight their Spanish oppressors. Here he exhibited some of his dominating traits by challenging a champion from the other army and killing him in classical fashion in single combat between ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... bricklayer's saying, "It's dogged as does it," holds all over the world, and brave men drive death and despair back to their fastnesses. Ferrier thought, "I'm all well except for the active inhabitants of the cabin. They seem to be colonizing ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... was regarded as a fairly good carpenter, mason and bricklayer; at times his master would let him do small jobs of repairing of building for neighboring planters. These jobs sometimes netted him hams, bits of cornmeal, cloth for dresses for his wife and children, and other small gifts; these ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... practices, in which he was attended with the same ill-fortune as formerly; that is to say, he was apprehended for one of his first acts, and committed to Newgate. Out of this prison he escaped by the assistance of a certain bricklayer, and went down to Hatfield in Hertfordshire to remain in hiding, but as he affirmed and was generally believed, being betrayed by the same bricklayer he was retaken, conveyed again to Newgate and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Rawlinson, of Chorley, Lancashire, was a mason and builder, his mother a Devonshire woman. Sir Robert barely went to school—he frankly declares that his education only cost three-halfpence a week. He worked at his father's business at Chorley, and before he was twenty-one he was a stone-mason, bricklayer, millwright, carpenter, sawyer, and even a navvy, and all with a view of grounding himself in everything of a practical nature which would tend to make him an engineer—a profession on ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stewards she knew personally—one a bricklayer, the other a baker on Eighth Avenue. The preacher she had met in a purely formal way as the bishop of the flock. She liked Dr. Craddock. He was known in the ministry as a live wire. He was a man of vigorous physique—just turning ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... common by Betchworth, for Brocks multiply in the local names. Brockham village, with a pretty green, stands beyond Betchworth Park on the Mole; probably the badger has left Brockham since the bricklayer came ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... but he's so cursedly fond of building, he invests all his money (and wants us to invest all ours) in houses; and there's one confounded dog of a bricklayer who runs him up terrible bills,—a fellow called 'Cunning Nat,' who is equally adroit in spoiling ground and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 'Iggins, Publican; Mister Walter Weed, Clerk; Mister Jeremiah Ramsmouth, Local Preacher; Mr. 'Ookey Snagg, Loafer; Mister William Guppy, Potman—place them beside Hybrias, Goat-herd; Damon, Shepherd; Phydias, Writer; Nicarchus, Ploughman; Balbus, Bricklayer; Glaucus, Potter; Caius, Carter; Marcus, Weaver; Aeneas, Bronze-worker; Antonius, Corn-seller; Canidius, Charioteer—and then talk of the glorious modern times of high civilization and the dark ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... awkward and absurd convention I have to restore the old home to the ground landlord in 1941. But who cares about what is going to happen in 1941? The Coalition may have come to an end by that time, and the first Labour Government, under Lord NORTHCLIFFE or Mr. JACK JONES, may be in power. Some bricklayer, in a mood of artistic frenzy, may have designed the plan of a new brick and had it passed by the Ministry of Housing. DEMPSEY may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... gentry, who spent their time cheating the simple-hearted red men. These called themselves gentlemen, because they could do nothing. In a classification of seventy-eight persons at Jamestown we are informed that there were "four carpenters, twelve laborers, one blacksmith, one bricklayer, one sailor, one barber, one mason, one tailor, one drummer, one chirurgeon, and fifty-four gentlemen." To this day there seems to be a large number in that vicinity who have no other occupation than that of being gentlemen, and it is evidently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... "for the Poet taking in the sea, or the woods, or the starry-night, the poet who might be just sharing the sunshine with the salamander, is as much a labourer as the stoker or the bricklayer." ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the constabulary heart. It is the day when inoffensive little tailors receive anonymous letters beginning 'You silly snip,' when the baker is unpleasantly reminded of his immemorial sobriquet of 'Daddy Dough,' and coarse insult breaks the bricklayer's manly heart. Perhaps of all its symbols the most typical and popular are: a nursemaid, a perambulator enclosing twins, and a gigantic dragoon. In fact, we are faced by this curious development—that the day once sacred to universal compliment is now mainly dedicated to low and foolish ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... never had such a curious assortment of missionaries as Borrow employed? At Seville there was the gigantic Greek, Dionysius of Cephalonia; the "aged professor of music, who, with much stiffness and ceremoniousness, united much that was excellent and admirable"; {298a} the Greek bricklayer, Johannes Chysostom, a native of Morea, who might at any time become "the Masaniello of Seville." With these assistants Borrow set to work to throw the light of the Gospel into the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Master Colson, had been all his life a respectable and flourishing master bricklayer in the place. Many a man with less pretensions to the title would call himself a builder now-a-days, or "by'r lady," an architect, and put forth a flaming card, vaunting his accomplishments in the mason's craft, his skill in plans and elevations, and his unparalleled dispatch and cheapness ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... filled his pipe she was ready dressed and waiting for him. Robina said she would give them a list of things they might bring back with them. She also asked Dick to get together a plumber, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a glazier, and a civil engineer, and to see to it that they started off at once. She thought that among them they might be able to do all that was temporarily necessary, but the great thing was that the work should be ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the Protestation of 1642, the Vow and Covenant of 1643, and the Solemn League and Covenant of the same year, all signed by sundry parishioners, and of the death of the last of the Plantagenets, Richard by name, a bricklayer by trade, in 1550, whom Richard III acknowledged to be his son on the eve of the battle of Bosworth. At St. Oswalds, Durham, there is the record of the hanging and quartering in 1590 of "Duke, Hyll, Hogge and Holyday, iiij Semynaryes, Papysts, Tretors ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... most wonderful revelation of the War has been the adaptability of the British working-man. Mr. CATHCART WASON called attention to the case of a professional gardener who, having been recruited for home service, had first been turned into a bricklayer's assistant, then into an assistant-dresser, and finally into a munition-maker. For some time the Ministry of Munitions seems to have been loth to part with the services of this Admirable Crichton, but having learned from the Board of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... worries, or nerves—I put up my glasses, and simply say, 'Pretty young ladies are above all pity!' My hammer, dear Mary; my hammer I must have. The geological one, you know; we have come on a bit of old Roman work; the bricklayer's hammers go flat, like lead. I have just one minute and a half to spare. What fine fellows those Romans were! I will build like a Roman. See to every bit of it myself, Erema. No contractor's jobs for me. Mary, you ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... from a large town in the South of England. It appears that one day last week a bricklayer lost count of the number of bricks he had laid, with the result that a recount had to be made to enable him to ascertain whether he had finished for the day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... will esteem him no wise man; we will esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. And yet, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten that Ideals do exist; that if they be not approximated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck! Infallibly. No bricklayer builds a wall perfectly perpendicular, mathematically this is not possible; a certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him; and he, like a good bricklayer, who must have done with his job, leaves it so. And yet if he sway too much from the perpendicular; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... companion of George, was of a truly remarkable structure; physically and mentally he belonged to the highest order of the bond class. His place of chains was in the city of Washington, and the name of the man for whom he had been compelled to do unrequited labor was William Rowe, a bricklayer, and a "pretty clever fellow,—always used me well," said Thomas. "Why did you leave then?" asked a member of the Committee. He replied, "I made a proposition to my master to buy myself for eight hundred dollars, but he refused, and wanted a thousand. Then I made up my mind that I would make ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... another of sand, and some bags of lime had been despatched to build Sidney his almost daily-demanded pig-pound. Midmore took his friends across the flat fields with some idea of showing them Sidney as a type of 'the peasantry.' They hit the minute when Sidney, hoarse with rage, was ordering bricklayer, mate, carts and all off his premises. The visitors ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... For example,—until a bricklayer has seen his output counted for several days, he has little idea of how many bricks he can lay, or has laid, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... accuracy as well as refinement which resembles the precision with which astronomical instruments are adjusted in Europe at the present day, rather than the rough-and-ready measurements of a modern mason or bricklayer. ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... J. Jennings, bricklayer, aged 26, fell through the roof of a house and bruised and lacerated his shin rather severely to the extent of an inch and half in one part and in several other places in a less degree. I applied the lunar caustic ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... exciting adventure and speedy wealth. Among them was George Percy, a member of a noble family and brother to the Earl of Northumberland. In this singular band we note but eleven professed laborers, four carpenters, one blacksmith, one bricklayer, and one mason: but we are not surprised to find a barber to aid in making the toilet of the "gentlemen," a tailor to decorate their persons, and a drummer to contribute to their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... by the Crown. After having obtained his liberation, he became a priest of the Reformed Church of England. Two years after his death, his widow, the mother of Ben, again married: this time her husband was a master bricklayer. The education of the boy from the first marriage, who at an early age showed talent for learning, was not neglected. It is assumed that friends of his father, seeing Ben's ability, rendered it possible for him to enter Westminster School, and afterwards ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... of man, we can very readily admit, also, that the bricks first assumed the proper shape, and mortar the proper tenacity and hardness, without the intervention of human labor and skill. If there is no need of a bricklayer, we may discard ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... clearing the passage. Many of the military and their horses were hurt; and some of the soldiers, irritated by their rough usage, resorted to their pistols and carbines, and two persons (Richard Honey, a carpenter, and George Francis, a bricklayer) were unfortunately killed, and others wounded. The Edgeware Road was blockaded, but quickly cleared, and the procession moved on till it arrived at the turnpike gate near the top of Tottenham Court Road. There ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... frequently reminded of that difference here in Cornwall. Anywhere in Cornwall you may see a carter, a miner, a fisherman, a bricklayer, who with the high distinction of his finely cast face, the mingling in his manner of easy nonchalance and old-world courtesy, seems only to need a visit to the tailor to add dignity to a Pall Mall club. No doubt England is not a new country, and the English lower social classes have become ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... that anything is, or can be, uninteresting. So I stared at the joints of the walls and seats, and began thinking hard on the fascinating subject of wood. Just as I had begun to realise why, perhaps, it was that Christ was a carpenter, rather than a bricklayer, or a baker, or anything else, I suddenly started upright, and remembered my pockets. I was carrying about with me an unknown treasury. I had a British Museum and a South Kensington collection of unknown curios hung all over me in different ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... bitter moments, envied the bricklayer and the cobbler. Why should he not begin to learn ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... England of a six months' winter, in which the land were as hard as a rock, in which all the cattle had to be kept within doors, in which the bricklayer's trowel and the road-mender's roller had to be ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... public grounds, and it is to be argued that Mr Harding takes nothing but what he received as a servant of the hospital, and that he is not himself responsible for the amount of stipend given to him for his work. Such a plea would doubtless be fair, if anyone questioned the daily wages of a bricklayer employed on the building, or the fee of the charwoman who cleans it; but we cannot envy the feeling of a clergyman of the Church of England who could allow such an argument to be put ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... face Of every protest. "That's the mark you gave me Because I killed my man in Spitalfields, A duel honest as any your courtiers fight. But I was no Fitzdotterel, bore no gules And azure, robbed no silk-worms for my hose, I was Ben Jonson, out of Annandale, Bricklayer in common to the good Lord God. You branded me. I am Ben Jonson still. You ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... watched the papers carefully. In two years I have followed several clues. A bricklayer disappeared, but his drowned body was finally found; a college professor was missing, but he was sixty years of age; a young man in New York embezzled a large sum and hid himself. I followed that trail, although regretfully, but the real embezzler was caught the day I presented myself ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... the value of the raw material to almost fabulous heights. It was thus that Columbus, the weaver, Franklin, the journeyman printer, Aesop, the slave, Homer, the beggar, Demosthenes, the cutler's son, Ben Jonson, the bricklayer, Cervantes, the common soldier, and Haydn, the poor wheelwright's son, developed their powers, until they towered head and shoulders above ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden |
