"Masonry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... built into the masonry, and a cavernous oven gaped from the massive wall. At the stove was an old negress, making coffee with shaky deliberation.... The girl and the wrinkled old woman made him sit down at the table, and then placed before him crisp rusks of mandioc flour and steaming coffee whose splendid aroma ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... thousands of girls were there in England today, well-educated, skilled in the masonry of society—to all outward seeming perfectly contented, awaiting their final summons to the marriage-market—the culmination of their brief, inglorious careers. Yet if one could penetrate beneath the apparent calm, ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... so affected our eyes that the light from the window was sufficient to illumine the apartment and to make all objects plainly discernible. There was little to be seen. The arched roof was of solid masonry; the walls were without a break save the narrow window and the door. Through the window we could see only a patch of sky in the east, reddened by the reflection of the sinking sun; but the sight was so beautiful that Max and I were loath to leave it ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... For the most of this distance it runs through a mountainous country, keeping on the ridges, and winding over many of the highest peaks. In some places it is only a formidable rampart, but most of the way it is composed of lofty walls of masonry and concrete, or impacted lime and clay, from 12 to 16 feet in thickness, and from 15 to 30 or 35 feet in height. The top of this wall is paved for hundreds of miles, and crowned with crenallated battlements, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... surrounded by the black outlines of a great edifice. Then we alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited. In a little while footsteps were heard, a man emerged from the darkness, and we dropped into his wake without saying anything. He led us under an archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a tall iron gate, which he locked behind us. We followed him down this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very distinctly see. At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... pierce below the curtain about the south-west corner, in a place they call the Devil's Elbow. I have never met that celebrity; nor (if the rest of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry, the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building. I had never the heart to look for any length of time—the thought that I must make the descent in person some ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a small wooden shed fixed in the angle of a buttress. Evidently well acquainted with the place, she was not long in finding a lantern and materials to light it, and inserting her fingers in a crevice of the masonry, from which the mortar had been removed, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... over the dry hills of limestone, covered with a scrubby brushwood, to a crest where are the first rude and ruined defences. The limestone is succeeded by the sandstone cliff cut into steps, which led from ledge to ledge and gap to gap, well guarded with walls and an archway of solid masonry. Through this we passed on to the flat summit of the Kymore hills, covered with grass and forest, intersected by paths in all directions. The ascent is about 1200 feet—a long pull in the blazing sun of February. The turf consists chiefly of spear-grass and ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... walls, between the Hypsas and a small tributary, the latter having been spanned by a bridge, now called Ponite dei Morti, of which one massive pier, 45 ft. in width, still exists. Just outside the south wall is a Roman necropolis, with massive tombs in masonry, and a Christian catacomb, and a little farther south a tomb in two stories, a mixture of Doric and Ionic architecture, belonging probably to the 2nd century B.C., though groundlessly called the Tomb of Theron. A village of the Byzantine period has been explored at Balatizzo, immediately ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... little round shutter in the postern at the height of a man's head; for aforetime the main gateway had been of massive oak, bolt-studded and impervious to anything less than cannon shot. The wall of masonry that surrounded the chateau was both high and thick, built four hundred years ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... starlight. After a pull of a long seven miles down the bay, the galley had rounded into the northern end of Gorumna Isle, guided by a high beacon set among the stars. As they drew nearer Brian made out that this beacon was set on the tower of a high pile of masonry black against the sky, lit here and there by cressets, and it was plain that the Bird Daughter kept good watch since they had more than once been hailed in ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... stood all was right. But the flooring was uneven to the foot, and scatter'd with small pieces of masonry. 'Twas one of the many chambers in the castle that had dropp'd into disrepair. Groping my way with both hands, and barking my shins on the loose stones, I found a low vaulted passage that led me ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... gate of the Kasbah one comes on more waste land and on other walls—for all Moroccan towns are enclosed in circuit within circuit of battlemented masonry. Then, unexpectedly, a gate in one of the inner walls lets one into a tiled court enclosed in a traceried cloister and overlooking an orange-grove that rises out of a carpet of roses. This peaceful and well-ordered place is the interior of the Medersa (the college) of the Oudayas. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... inwardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. But the physical had also its part. The cellar in which he was confined was some feet underground, and it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up in the wall, and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. The walls were of naked masonry, the floor of bare earth; by way of furniture there was an earthenware basin, a water-jug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue-grey cloak for bedding. To be taken from the hot air of a summer's afternoon, the reverberation of the road and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mark which, by the way, should have its Venetian pictorial rendering, tells how a man who was working on the Campanile fell, and as he fell had the presence of mind to cry "S. Mark! S. Mark!" whereupon a branch instantly sprang forth from the masonry below and sustained him until help arrived. Tintoretto, who has other miracles of S. Mark in the Royal Palace here and in the Brera at Milan, would have drawn ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... is told shall ... for over the battered masonry, in through the splintered doors, felling shadowy foes on every hand.... When well within-side ... the prowess of each unto himself ... tempest of pistol cracking ... bleeding deathfully ... ah, the killing is fast and desperate ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... streets. A few desultory pedestrians went walking hither and yon, leisurely, with no apparent purpose. It was the lull of supper hour and there was an orange glow that penetrated even down to the streets which were mere canyons between sombre, artificial cliffs of masonry. To the west a small patch of open sky glowed sulphurously through a smoke pall. A city was a poor place to spend time in—really live in, he thought. And Mary Louise—he wondered if she thought so, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... one kills mosquitoes. I looked a second time at the moving thing in the grass. It was clothed in innocent black; but, being a son of Adam, I rose with involuntary politeness to let it pass. An instant more, and it slipped into the masonry at my side, and I sat down again. It had been out taking the sun, and had come back to its hole in the wall. How like the story of my own day,—of my whole winter vacation! Nay, if we choose to view it so, how like the story of human ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... cleave vertically, sometimes producing an appearance suggestive of masonry, frequently forming impressive cliffs; but often they lie in unbroken beds of great area. When a number of well-defined strata cleave vertically, and one end of the series sags below the other, or lifts above it, the process which geologists call faulting, the scenic ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... inside the stern, forbidding walls. In the apartment in question some rude attempt had been made to render things more habitable than in the rest of the grim establishment. A few pieces of tapestry covered the rough masonry, and the floor was strewn with fresh rushes. On a carved wooden bench by the window sat a fair and beautiful girl of seventeen, who was occupying herself with a piece of needlework, and talking earnestly meanwhile to her attendant, a maiden of ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... grand and striking; but the place had been the hold of knights and kings a thousand years ago and more. The young girl pointed out to Richard where the main-land cliff had once projected so as to meet the rock, and showed him on the former's brow some fragments of rude masonry. "That was the ancient barbacan," she said, "once joined to the castle by a draw-bridge, as was supposed, which, when drawn up, left Gethin so that neither man nor beast could approach it without permission of its defenders. Even ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... were two large tanks, near the river, surrounded by high mounds of earth. These tanks were about half a mile from the English position. On the river bank, a little in advance of the grove, was a hunting box belonging to the nabob, surrounded by a masonry wall. Clive took possession of this, immediately he heard the sound of the nabob's music, on ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... every respect. It is unanswerable. He has given to words their natural meaning. He has recognized the intention of the framers of the recent amendments. There is nothing in this opinion that is strained, insincere, or artificial. It is frank and manly. It is solid masonry, without crack or flaw. He does not resort to legal paint or putty, or to verbal varnish or veneer. He states the position of his brethren of the bench with perfect fairness, and overturns it with perfect ease. He has drawn an instructive parallel between the decisions ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ask the reason of this halt when a ray of his lantern fell on a wall of masonry; and with a start almost laughable I knew we had arrived. To come to an entirely strange house at night is an experience which holds some taste of mystery even for the oldest campaigner; but I have never in my life received ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... doubt about his having fallen from here!" he said. "Some of the masonry on the very edge of this parapet is loose. I could dislodge it with ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... his father's name and possessed many of his traits, inherited the seigneury. Soon he made it one of the most valuable properties in the whole colony. The old manor-house gave way to a pretentious chateau flanked by four imposing towers of solid masonry. Its dimensions were, as such things went in the colony, stupendously large, the structure being about two hundred feet in length by one hundred and seventy in breadth. The great towers or bastions were loopholed in such way as to permit a flanking fire ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... was a little scene in the room. Mr. Manwaring seemed to think that some one had somehow got into the room. Through the door it could not be, nor down the chimney, for they found an iron bar across the flue, near the top in the masonry. The window looked into a court-yard no bigger than a ball-room. They went down and examined it, but, though the ground beneath was moist, they could not discover the slightest trace of a footprint. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... still I see, This drear accursed masonry, Where e'en the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes, Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep Against the smoky paper thrust, With glasses, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... freemason, written by the hand of King Henry VI., with notes by Mr. Locke. Freemasonry, Henry VI., and Locke, make a strange heterogeneous olio; but that is not all. The respondent, who defends the mystery of masonry, says it was brought into Europe by the Venetians—he means the Phoenicians. And who do you think propagated it? Why, one Peter Gore—And who do you think that was?—One Pythagoras, Pythagore. I do not know whether it is not ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... been here always," Cecil answered, "but they most of them think that it is blocked up now. We did try to, Andrew and I, but the masonry gave way. These lumps on the floor are the remains of our work. Keep your torch down. You'll ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Corn Exchange, may have been part of a bath. There are no remnants of a church or a temple, but some antiquaries fancied they saw relics of a Roman basilica, or judgment hall, among the fragments of masonry removed for the station. There were no burials within the walls, but they begin, even among the pavements and villas, just outside the limits marked by the wall of the Pretorium. That it was defended ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... fifty- five feet high, eight hundred and seventy feet long, and fifty feet wide, is still one of the finest monuments of antiquity, built of stone without cement. It is still solid and strong, and gives us a vivid conception of the magnificence of Roman masonry. Narbo (Narbonne) was another commercial centre, adorned with public buildings which called forth the admiration of ancient travelers. The modern cities of Treves, Boulogne, Rheims, Chalons, Cologne, Metz, Dijon, Sens, Orleans, Poictiers, Clermont, Rouen, Paris, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... that impalpable hawser of force and cruelly wrenched and twisted by its enormous couple of angular momentum, the hexan works came up out of the ground as a waterpipe comes up in the teeth of a power shovel. The ground trembled and rocked and boulders, fragments of concrete masonry, and masses of metal flew in all directions as that city-encircling conduit of diabolical machinery was torn ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... and look up at the amazing cluster of buildings clinging to the rocks on one side of the gorge, while the old walls are whitened by the pale brilliancy of the moon. Above the roofs of all the houses is a mass of masonry, vast and heavy, pierced by narrow Romanesque windows—a building uncouth and monstrous, like the surrounding crags. It stands upon a ledge of the cliff, partly in the hollow of the rock, which, indeed, forms its innermost ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... was applied. The powder exploded. The noise of the explosion was almost overpowered by the roaring of the guns and the rushing of the wind. Still, many an Afghan trembled at the ominous sound. Mighty indeed was the effect. Down with a crash came heavy masses of masonry and shivered beams in awful ruin and confusion. Now occurred a slight delay. It had been agreed that the signal for the storming party should be the bugle-call "Advance," but the bugler had fallen, and so Durand had to rush back to the nearest party he could find. At length the signal was ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... demigod among their penates. Madame de Fischtaminel and Caroline, who have become, through the efforts of Madame Foullepointe, the best friends in the world, have even gone so far as to learn and employ that feminine free-masonry, the rites of which cannot be made familiar by ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... less than half a league distant: and on that rock stood a castle which was a furnace—its walls black as the bars of a grate, its windows aglow with contained fire. For the moment it seemed that this fire filled the whole pile of masonry: but presently, while we stood and stared, a sudden flame, shooting high from the walls, lit up the front of a tall tower above them, with a line of battlements at its base and on the battlements a range of roofs yet intact. As though a slide had been opened and as rapidly shut again, this vision ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his mood, for he was, in his own mind, mounting to attack the solid thrones of horrible and heathen kings. He leapt out of the boat on to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender figure, amid the enormous masonry. The two men in the tug put her off again and turned up stream. They had never ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of pebbles, concrete or mortar, would be a most satisfactory title, were it not that it has an odd sound to any one unfamiliar with Greek. The name is given to Bees who build their cells with materials similar to those which we employ for our own dwellings. The work of these insects is masonry; only it is turned out by a rustic mason more used to hard clay than to hewn stone. Reaumur, who knew nothing of scientific classification—a fact which makes many of his papers very difficult to understand—named the worker after her work and ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... me, soul of mine, that I have loosed The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn!— Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... for his dying as there had seemed for his living, for as far as anyone knew there was nothing the matter with him, except an extreme sleepiness of an evening, which was but natural in an old weary man who still kept at his stone-masonry though he was ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... the holder should bind himself to plant trees at the rate of twenty-five to the acre, and keep them up at that rate; and that for each grove, however small, he should build and keep in repair a well, lined with masonry, for watering the trees, and for the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... separate flue—separate throughout, from hearth to chimney-top. At least such an arrangement is deemed desirable. Does not this look egotistical, selfish? But still more, all these separate flues, instead of having independent masonry establishments of their own, or instead of being grouped together in one federal stock in the middle of the house—instead of this, I say, each flue is surreptitiously honey-combed into the walls; so that these last are here and there, or indeed almost anywhere, treacherously ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... heavy thuds, telling that some of the shot had struck our hull; and then, as the mizen-topmast fell over the side, the fore- topgallant-mast following—the topmast-head being shot away—our whole broadside rang out at once, and we distinctly heard the crushing sound of the shot as it struck the masonry. ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... perpetual credit or it perishes irretrievably. For that reason, in the happier times of India, a number, almost incredible, of reservoirs have been made in chosen places throughout the whole country; they are formed for the greater part of mounds of earth and stones, with sluices of solid masonry; the whole constructed with admirable skill and labor, and maintained at a mighty charge. In the territory contained in that map alone, I have been at the trouble of reckoning the reservoirs, and they amount to upwards of eleven hundred, from the extent of two or three acres to five miles in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Lady Florimel soon found the ruin. The front of a projecting portion of the cliff was faced, from the very water's edge as it seemed, with mason work; while on its side, the masonry rested here and there upon jutting masses of the rock, serving as corbels or brackets, the surface of the rock itself completing the wall front. Above, grass grown heaps and mounds, and one isolated bit of wall pierced ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... him up. I pointed out King's Cross to him; he wouldn't even bark at it. I called his attention to the poster outside Euston Theatre of The Two Biffs; for all the regard he showed he might never even have heard of them. The monumental masonry by Portland Road ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... his back against the limestone wall and wondered. Strange things followed. The air was full of white, fluttering pigeons that circled about, and settled upon the convent wall. The wall blossomed with a quantity of shining green eyes that blinked and peered at him from the solid masonry. A pink, classic nymph came from an excavation in the cavernous road and danced, barefoot and airy, upon the ragged flints. The sky was traversed by a company of beribboned cats, marching in stupendous, aerial procession. The noise ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... goats in the ruins of an old castle, high up above the stream. Day after day one of his herd used to disappear, coming back in the evening to join the homeward procession, very fat and well-liking. So Karl set himself to watch, and saw that the goat slipped in at a hole in the masonry. He enlarged the hole, and presently was able to creep into a dark passage. He made his way along, and soon heard a sound like a falling hailstorm. He groped his way thither, and found the goat, in the dim light, feeding on grains of corn which came splashing ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... colony, there are to-day the ruined remains of a fort; and it is this fort, the fortress of St. George, that the expedition was sent out to erect. On the 11th of December the little fleet set sail for [from? D.W.] Lisbon—ten caravels, and two barges or lighters laden with the necessary masonry and timber-work for the fort. Columbus was in command of one of the caravels, and the whole fleet was commanded by the Portuguese Admiral Azumbaga. They would certainly see Porto Santo and Madeira on their way south, although they ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... for the front wall and scrambled up it, leaving Spotty to bark wildly on the ground and make futile rushes at the solid wall he couldn't hope to climb. Some of the masonry was loose, and Poots, digging with her sharp claws, sent down a shower of dust into the dog's eyes. He whined, and dug at his eyes with both forepaws. Then he sneezed ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... risk the guinea and the hanging. By request he led the way, and Kipling, Sir Norman Lockyer and I followed. We crossed an unpopulated quadrangle and stood under one of its exits—an archway of massive masonry—and there we lit up and began to take comfort. The photographers soon arrived, but they were courteous and friendly and gave us no trouble, and we gave them none. They grouped us in all sorts of ways and photographed us at their diligent leisure, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... cliffs might prove to us, there was a grandeur and sublimity in their appearance that was most imposing, and which struck me with admiration. Stretching out before us in lofty unbroken outline, they presented the singular and romantic appearance of massy battlements of masonry, supported by huge buttresses, and glittering in the morning sun which had now risen upon them, and made the scene beautiful even amidst the dangers and anxieties of our situation. It was indeed a rich and gorgeous view for a painter, and I never felt so much regret ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... perpendicular on each side, and the width between the two varying from forty to fifty feet. The high rocks were of black carbonate of lime in perfectly horizontal strata, so equally divided that they appeared like solid masonry. For fifty or sixty feet above the rushing waters they were smooth and bare; above that line vegetation commenced with small bushes, until you arrived at their summits, which were crowned with splendid ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... critic, and, plunging into the garden, took a mischievous delight in its wildness and the victorious struggle of nature with the formality of art. At every step through the tangled labyrinth he could see where precision and order had been invaded, and even the rigid masonry broken or upheaved by the rebellious force. Yet here and there the two powers had combined to offer an example of beauty neither could have effected alone. A passion vine had overrun and enclasped a vase with a perfect symmetry no sculptor ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... at Jizeh, which lay half buried in the sand, was uncovered and measured by Caviglia. It is about 150 feet long, and 63 feet high. The body is made out of a single stone; but the paws, which are thrown out about fifty feet in front, are constructed of masonry. The Sphinx of Sais, formed of a block of red granite, twenty-two feet long, is now in the Egyptian Museum in the Louvre. There has been much speculation among the learned, concerning the signification of these figures. Winckelmann observes that they ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... into the open air, but the scene had changed. The lonely castle was crowded with Persians who had come from their lime-burning to see the Europeans. Persian women were sitting around by sundry little ovens of masonry, where, by the help of gas flames, they baked their Tsheuks, thin cakes of unleavened bread. Followed by the crowd, we were led a couple of hundred steps from the castle to a spring that was covered over; the cover was taken off, and a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... adjustment, however, not of an instrument, but of the entire structure of the pyramid itself), that I have suggested for this remarkable passage—this 'cream-white, stone-lined, long tube,' where it traverses the masonry of the pyramid, and below that dug through the solid rock to a distance ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... (despite the afterthought of the spire) certainly helps to impart an air of modernity to the building, that is lacking in far less ancient work, for oddly enough it is often the decaying features of the latest decorated style that impress the vulgar by their apparent age. The extreme care in the masonry has imparted a machine-like finish. As Professor Willis wrote: "The regularity of the size of the stones is astonishing. As soon as they had finished one part, they copied it exactly in the next, even though the additional expense was considerable. The masonry runs in even ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... Through a grating of iron bars, straight at the side and semi-circular at the top, set in massive masonry of some building, in the foundation of which he crouched, he saw, in the vagueness of clouded starlight, the domain of ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... and looking only to the political uneasiness amongst magistrates which accompanied the early footsteps of Christianity, one may illustrate it by the parallel feelings which in our own generation, amongst the Portuguese, for instance, have dogged the movements of free-masonry. We in England view this panic as irrational: and amongst ourselves it would be so; for British free-masonry conceals nothing worse than it professes. But, on the Continent, it became a mask for shrouding any or every system of anti-social ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... generally desirable, since in most cases the dam must also be used as a waste weir; that is, the freshets must run over the dam. This means that unless the crest of the dam is protected with timber or masonry the dam will be washed out; as happened, indeed, in the terrible flood at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, several years ago. If it is possible to carry the overflow water of the stream away in some other channel than over the dam, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... and Brethren of "King David's Lodge in New Port Rhode Island "with joyful hearts embrace this opportunity to "greet you as a Brother, and to hail you welcome "to Rhode Island. We exult in the thought that "as Masonry has always been patronised by the "wise, the good, and the great, so that it stood "and ever will stand, as its fixtures are on the "immutable pillars ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse
... Birrcastle, in Parsonstown Park, belonged to Lord Rosse; the length of its tube was 48 feet and the width of its mirror 6 feet; it magnified 6,400 times, and it had required an immense erection of masonry on which to place the apparatus necessary for working the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... with white Campanulate flowers; it is probably a Frankeniacea. On the pagodas an Aristella grows. Certain features prevail in the vegetation similar to those of the Coromandel coast. Fig trees often surrounded at base with brick-work; this never lasts long, the roots tearing up the masonry ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... improvements, such as the metalling of the road from the so-called zigzag to Baguio, the construction of five steel bridges, and the replacing of all the original bridges on the road and of all the original culverts except those made of concrete or masonry. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... I broke in again, pointing to rubbish piles of ruined masonry on the left edge of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Malakoff, which remained in their hands, although the English were unsuccessful in their attack upon the Redan. On the fall of the Malakoff the Russian commander blew up his magazines, while the French and English demolished the great docks of solid masonry, the forts, and defences of the place. Thus Sebastopol, after a siege of three hundred and fifty days, became the prize of the invaders, at a loss, on their part, of a hundred thousand men, and a still greater loss on the part of the defenders, since ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... the internal flat ceiling, was gone; and though we can glean no certain knowledge from documentary evidence, it appears probable that the eastern section of the building suffered more than any other, for whatever other causes may have aided in the wreck of this part—a weakness in the masonry, an insufficiency in the supports or abutments—the fall of such heavy timbers as those which must have formed the outer roof and inner ceiling of the chancel would in itself be sufficient to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... underfoot from what has gone before: scraps of Roman tile and stone chippings protrude through the grass in meagre quantity, but sufficient to suggest that masonry stood on the spot. Before the eye stretches under the moonlight the interior of the fort. So open and so large is it as to be practically an upland plateau, and yet its area lies wholly within the walls of what may be designated as one building. It is a ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... edifice is anything but a crude invasion. More than half a century has passed since this great chapel replaced the Tudor building which had unluckily come to be regarded as inadequate, but the ponderous Early Decorated tower is scarcely less of an intrusion than when its masonry stood forth in all its garish whiteness against the time-worn brick of Lady Margaret Beaufort's court. A Perpendicular tower would have added a culminating and satisfying feature to the whole cluster of courts, and by this time would have been so toned down by the action of weather that ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... authors, and their talk should be of books. "When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war." There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic. No man can get above his pursuit in life: it is getting above himself, which is impossible. There is a Free-masonry in all things. You can only speak to be understood, but this you cannot be, except by those who are in the secret. Hence an argument has been drawn to supersede the necessity of conversation altogether; for it has been said, that there is no use in talking to people ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... quite familiar, leaves no impression. Yes, the fences tied like that with reeds, overtopped by sprouting elders, the fat weeds on wall and tomb, the undulations of sere green plain, the white snow-masses floating, as it were, in the blue of the sky; the straddling bits of aqueduct, the lumps of masonry. Am I utterly and for ever spoilt for this? Has it given me so much that it can never give me any more?—that the sight of Arezzo and its towers beneath the blueness and the snow of Falterona, the green marshy valley, with the full Tiber issuing from beneath the last Umbrian ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... might be a winning bet the sand was planked there in front of the hotel to the sea with spruce boards. It was very handsomely planked, but it was never afterwards touched, apparently, for any manner of repairs. Here, for half a mile the dune on which the hotel stands is shored up with massive masonry, and bricked for carriages, and tiled for foot-passengers; and it is all kept as clean as if wheel or foot had never passed over it. I am sure that there is not a broken brick or a broken tile in the whole length or breadth ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... the impression of lightness, as well as strength, as though every yard of concrete was doing its special share of the work without overstraining, which is, of course, the characteristic of well-designed reinforced masonry. ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... the old monastery there is a broad open space, between the buildings and the overhanging rocks, at the base of which there is a deep recess, almost amounting to a cave, in which stands a great black cross planted in a pedestal of whitewashed masonry. A few steps lead up to it. As the moon rose higher the cross was in the shadow, while the platform and the buildings were in the ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... summer lightning in the sky. Every few seconds the town trembled from the shock of exploding bombs, first at one point and then at another, but nothing could be seen of the raiding squadron. Pieces from the shells bursting overhead and fragments of bombs and shattered masonry fell like rain into the streets and into the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... they first alighted, down the long ridge—through the half-grown town within its narrow walls, where a few high houses, first evidences of the growth of the wealthy burgher class, alternated with the low buildings which they were gradually supplanting—through the massive masonry of the Port with its battlements and towers to the country greenness and freshness of the Canon's Gate which led to the great convent of the valley, there could be no finer scene for a pageant. Holyrood was one of those great monastic establishments ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... their grandfather in the oriel room, so called because of the great oriel window, which was a small room in itself, although it looked, as you approached the castle, no bigger than a swallow's nest on the face of the solid masonry, being the only excrescence visible above the trees from that point of view. The castle stood on a hill which descended precipitously from under the oriel, so that the latter almost overhung the valley in which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Accoramboni, close to the Campo dei Fiori which was the place of public executions by fire. The name Parione is said to be derived from the Latin 'Paries,' a wall, applied to a massive remnant of ancient masonry which once stood somewhere in the Via di Parione. It matters little; nor can we find any satisfactory explanation of the gryphon which serves as a device for the whole quarter, included during the Middle Age, with Ponte and Regola, in the large portion of the city dominated ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Tombs, but by conjecture rather than of certain knowledge, that near to the haven of Piraeus, where the land runs out like an elbow from the promontory of Alcimus, when you have doubled the cape and passed inward where the sea is always calm, there is a large piece of masonry, and upon this the tomb of Themistocles, in the shape of an altar; and Plato the comedian confirms this, he believes, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... immensely proud—the Lungara, which wriggles through the middle of the town, and the Giro, which makes the entire circuit of the town, leaving outside only the rim of houses that rise from the edge of the mountain, some of them founded on the natural rock, others stretching roots of masonry far down into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... not to be determined so exactly. Sometimes, in an impressible nature, the idea works havoc, but there are, no less, natures so robustly protected, that this sort of projectile falls flat and harmless on skulls of triple brass, as cannon-shot against solid masonry; then there are flaccid and spongy-fibred natures into which ideas from without sink like spent bullets into the earthworks of a redoubt. Rastignac's head was something of the powder-magazine order; the least shock sufficed to bring about an explosion. He ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... so that the light shone all around. Gliding shadows fell on the black walls gleaming with moisture, and showed up the cracks in [Pg 2] the rough masonry, the places where the bricks were crumbling away, and the dark corners in which hung big spider-webs. It was the old cellar of an old house in which the two women were standing, and a very neglected one ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... aid and support? For nearly three centuries men were prevented from joining hands even for literary, artistic, and educational purposes. Societies could only be formed under the protection of the State, or the Church, or as secret brotherhoods, like free-masonry. But now that the resistance has been broken, they swarm in all directions, they extend over all multifarious branches of human activity, they become international, and they undoubtedly contribute, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... window to this room, and the only light in it was such as found its way through the chinks of the door and an air-hole in the masonry of the back wall. Bessie sank on a half-emptied sack of mealies and tried to reflect. Her first thought was of escape, but soon she came to the conclusion that this was a practical impossibility. The stout yellow wood door was locked upon her, and a sentry stood before it. She rose and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... foot of the tower, however, was another matter; huddled up in a heap was the body of a man, with a coil of rope and some shattered masonry lying all ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... morning—my fourth, I think—as I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing: Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... next day he remained at home, and sent off the carcase of the pig to Alfredston. He then cleaned up the premises, locked the door, put the key in a place she would know if she came back, and returned to his masonry at Alfredston. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... passing Shadwell when they came on a knot of people and two watchmen posted at the corner of a street across which a reek of smoke mingled with clouds of gritty dust. Twice or thrice they heard a crash or dull rumble of falling masonry. A distillery had been blazing there all night and a gang of workmen was now clearing the ruins. But as Charles and his mother came by the corner, the knot of people parted and gave passage to a line of stretchers—six stretchers ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... transformed into a Palais de Justice. The altered structure served also as a residence for the King's judicial proxy, and was commonly known as the Palace of the Intendant.[10] It was an imposing mixture of timber and masonry, and at the close of the seventeenth century was the most considerable building in Quebec. While lacking the glorious site of the Castle of St. Louis, in point of interior decoration it far eclipsed this chateau of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... chance of finding the way into their confidences. The universal golden key does not unloose tongues in such cases in the Orient. But Kim as a member of the once mighty Zulu nation (he was really a descendant of a prince of the house of Dingnan) was able, through a mysterious free masonry still existing among colored races the world over, to ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... through the window we saw the spectres of the great pile of masonry on lower and mid-Manhattan. Spectres of the giant buildings; the familiar skyline, and mingled with it the ghostly gray outlines of the mountains and valley depths of Tako's world. All intermingled! The mountain peaks rose far higher than the tallest of New York's skyscrapers; and the pits ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... his pistol and triggered it. The outer wall flew outward in an explosion of flying masonry. He switched on his radio and called the ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... fortifications that seemed built by rule and plumb line, with the markings of the basalt visible through the clear air. Basalt has that terrible peculiarity. It seems the work of a hand, it makes castles and fortifications whose ruled markings bear the inevitable suggestions of masonry. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the Ecole Militaire, in front of which it is situated, as you will perceive by referring to the Plan of Paris. Its form is a parallelogram of four hundred and fifty toises in length by one hundred and fifty in breadth. It is surrounded by ditches, faced with masonry, which are bordered on each side by a double row of trees, extending from the facade of the ci-devant Ecole Militaire to the banks of the Seine. That building, I shall observe en passant, was founded in 1751, by Lewis XV, for the military ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the church is not altogether imposing. "The windows, with one exception, are seen to disadvantage from without, and the whole building is enveloped in a shroud of yellow gravelly plaister, strangely dissonant with ideas of Norman masonry."[9] The church is built in the cathedral form, with a nave and transept, and a low and massive tower, rising from the intersection: the whole length of the church is 150 feet; the length of the transept is 120 feet. The architecture of this structure is singularly curious, and deserving ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... 5 miles S.W. from Hitchin) has an ancient church, carefully restored in 1868. It stands in the park of The Bury, a large mansion, Elizabethan in style. The embattled tower has masonry probably older than fourteenth century, and much of the nave arcade is Norman. Note the sculptured capitals of pillars, curiously similar to those at Old Shoreham. The chancel arch is E. Perp.; probably substituting ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... ASHLAR. Blocks of stone masonry fronting docks, piers, and other erections; this term is applied to common or freestone as they come of various lengths, breadths, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Filipinos, if they themselves ask it? We reply that they also ask for independence. Will the Americans grant them the latter because of that fact? The majority of the Filipino insurgent chiefs were inclined to Masonry. They had bound themselves, for a long time past, to work for the expulsion of the friars; and, drunk with the wine of liberty, they asked for every kind of freedom, including that of religion. How many insurgents have abjured Catholicism? Their number does not exceed two dozen. The law ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... masonry seemed to be more in line with my present plans than any of the other subjects. It ought to prove of value, I thought, to a man in the general contracting business and certainly to a man who undertook the contracting of building construction. ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... decorative woman! As for her background, it was simple enough to throw into relief the brilliant vision that she was. Not, however, a scheme of interior decoration to copy! The walls were whitewashed; a large stove of masonry was built into one corner, and four beds and a cradle stood on the other side of the room, over which hung in a row five virgins, the central one being the Black Virgin beloved by the Poles. The legend is that the original was painted during the life of the Virgin, on a panel of dark wood. Here, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... urged him to a gallop. We flew round the bay. The village on the headland took shape rapidly—a few cube-shaped, whitewashed houses perched amid what seemed at first to be great rocks, but on a close approach revealed themselves as blocks of masonry, the ruins of some city of antiquity. From time to time a jet of spray shot up above them, white as lilies in the gloom. The sea was rising. I discerned an ancient gateway opening on the beach, and set my horse towards it, while the rain came down in sheets. I saw no more until the ruins ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... humble opinion, it is as a stage-coach beside the Empire State Express when compared to the fleetness of good news. So it did not take long to start this bit like an electric fluid through the school, and what sort of "Free Masonry" filled in details so ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... (which approached it from the S. starting from Falerii and passing through Castellum Amerinum, probably mod. Orte, where it crossed the Tiber). It has a fine position, 1332 ft. above sea-level, and still retains considerable remains of the city wall, built in polygonal masonry of carefully jointed blocks of limestone, some 12 ft. in total thickness, and showing traces of reconstruction at different periods. Various remains of the Roman period exist between the walls, including a large water reservoir divided into ten chambers. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... just as we did," remarked Joe, as they leaned up against the masonry of the ruined hall and ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... means, now, was a solid piece of masonry, an impenetrable wall, which had moreover to announce itself as the base of two heaven-high towers, made to appear to the eye as if resting on itself, consisting in itself, but at the same time light and adorned, and, though pierced ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... dead bodies of young soldiers. At Nieuport I noticed a shrine over a doorway in the church standing peacefully among the ruins, and at Pervyse also one remained, until the tower reeled and fell with an explosion from beneath, which was deliberately ordered to prevent accidents from falling masonry. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... she met so many of them that she had grown reconciled to her habits, believing them to be common to all "smart" people—a part of the Bohemian life. The truth of the matter was that she had become a prominent member of a coterie closely knit and associated by a bond of mutual vice—a kind of masonry whereof Kazmah of Bond Street was Grand Master and Mrs. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the alternate airiness and solidity exhibited by nature in the nicely-poised logging stones and columnar piles, and in the walls of prodigious cuboidal blocks of granite which often crest and top her massive domes and ridges in natural cyclopean masonry." ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... examination of the back area, and of the coal-vaults, with a view to discover some mode of egress, but entirely without success. On the contrary, the result was, so far as it went, subversive of the theory; solid masonry met them ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then to Teddy's mother's bath-room. At the bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath-water, and as Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... present occasion, the younger Pliny fairly squatted below the root Jamie thought it prudent to put some of his own masonry, which was favourably placed in an adjacent chimney for such a purpose, between him and the spot whence the report proceeded; while even Blodget looked up into the air, as if he expected to see where the bullet was going. Captain Willoughby had no thought of ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... platform I reached, and then peered about amongst the dense growth in search of some trace of masonry; but though again and again the blocks of stone wore the appearance of having been piled together, I could find nothing definite—nothing but that ever-recurring dense foliage creeping over and hiding everything, till we had panted up another hundred feet, where a much larger table-land ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... halted to peer through the break in the age-old masonry when Mahommed Gunga spurred up close to him, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... little stone and showed no knowledge of masonry. But they built so massively out of the earth, that their works have lasted to this day in many places, just as they left them, except for the heavy growth of trees, which the first settlers found covering them, and which were sometimes seven or eight hundred years old. At Marietta, these ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Rome will then already have fallen, when a Gothic army shall have penetrated so far as even to have seen her gates. The walls of Rome are her living and moving walls of flesh. Her old and crumbling ramparts of masonry, upon which we have so often climbed in sport, rolling down into the surrounding ditch huge masses, have ever been to me, when I have thought of them, pregnant signs of ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... thousand souls on a square league. The village or rather the small town of Maracay was heretofore the centre of the indigo plantations, when this branch of colonial industry was in its greatest prosperity. The houses are all of masonry, and every court contains cocoa-trees, which rise above the habitations. The aspect of general wealth is still more striking at Maracay, than at Turmero. The anil, or indigo, of these provinces has always been considered in commerce ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... war, and of the different additions and alterations made by successive Bishops, is naturally rather puzzling. The castle is a medley of the building of eight centuries. Oldest of all is the ruined keep and the framework, or foundations, of the castle buildings; the masonry of the keep is the work of Henry of Blois, and belongs to the twelfth century. Next come three pillars of the old chapel, now used as a servants' hall. I saw it when it was set for a meal, and the severe cleanliness of the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... unconsecrated ground. The exact place of his burial was not deemed a point of importance, but it having been questioned, I am able to state that the spot was correctly described by me. Nichols, in his Literary Anecdotes (vol. viii. p. 456.), tells us that "Baskerville was buried in a tomb of masonry, in the shape of a cone, under a windmill in his garden; on the top of this windmill, after it fell into disuse, he had erected an urn, and had prepared an inscription," of which MR. ELLIOTT has given ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... once quiet little stream, with its stretch of meadowland reaching to the foot of the steep hills, was now a swirl of angry reddish water careering toward the big culvert under the "fill." There it struck the two flanking walls of solid masonry, doubled in volume and thus baffled, shot straight into and under the culvert and so on over the broad ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... terraces that commanded the Vistula. The rocky turf of the footpath, smoothed by the tread of forgotten generations (but still whispering to her of those who had passed on); the crumbling masonry of the retaining walls, gray with the pallor of the years; and afar the curving, dust-swept farmlands, which had mothered a thousand harvests, now moved with strange planting of peasant- soldiers. Mobilization business everywhere, drilling of the half- equipped, a singing ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... checking—and at length preventing—the flow of sap; and in buildings it is no doubt beneficial as long as it is closely watched and kept in place, but if allowed to drive its roots into joints, or to grow under roofs, the swelling roots and branches will soon displace any masonry, and ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... not if you bridge the seas, Or ride secure the cruel sky, Or build consummate palaces Of metal or of masonry. ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... earlier hands, and no inscriptions have been found. But no doubt exists that they were the sepulchres of the Kings of Memphis. The Queens and the "princes of Noph" reposed in smaller pyramids beside the Kings. These mountains of wasted masonry belong to the earliest ages of the Pharaonic monarchy, before the time of the Sesostrian conquests, and therefore they bespeak the toil and suffering, not of captives, but of native slaves. Before them couches the Sphinx, hewn from the rock, to spare, as ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... my fears lest King George and his minions should reappear among us. I thought that, if he had done all the dreadful things stated in the Declaration of '76, he might come again, burn our houses, and drive us all into the street. Sir William Johnson's mansion of solid masonry, gloomy and threatening, still stood in our neighborhood. I had seen the marks of the Indian's tomahawk on the balustrades and heard of the bloody deeds there enacted. For all the calamities of the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... work required; and was watchful on every side, not only on account of the ardor which caused him to give his aid, but also for the sake of his example. He was the first and most steadfast in the work of conveying earth and stones for earth-works and masonry; and his example was followed by the citizens with the men in their service. Besides this fatigue he was overburdened with the minor cares of the work, sending in all directions for the lime, and himself allotting it as if he had no other matters to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... were singularly beautiful. Here a small spire sharply cut the sky, or a graceful point of roof told of a chapel or high-pitched hall; there, half frowning, half friendly, a mass of creeper-clad, grey wall looked capable of withstanding a siege. In some places solid pieces of masonry spoke of comparatively recent improvement, while towards one end of the building walls had crumbled, leaving ruined chambers open to wind and weather. There were open casements, through which one might catch a glimpse of comfort within, and again there were narrow slits, deeply sunk into thick ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... the mutter of cannon on the horizon, and they knew the German conquerors were advancing. They were always advancing. Nothing had stopped them. The metal and masonry of the defenses at Liege had crumbled before their huge guns like china breaking under stone. The giant shells had scooped out the forts at Maubeuge, Maubeuge the untakable, as if they had been mere eggshells, ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... moon caught his rounded back in its cloth doublet of a dull reddish hue. At other times he was forced to sit, and to work his way downwards with his hands and heels, tearing his clothes, bruising his elbows and his shoulders against the projections of the titanic masonry. Lumps of chalk detached themselves from beneath and around him and slipped down the precipitous sides in advance of him, with a dull reverberating sound which seemed to rouse the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... surrounded by a moat, and there was a massive stone gateway, of older date than the Court itself—though that was old—dividing a small prim garden from the park; this gatehouse was a noble piece of masonry, of the purest gothic, rich with the mellow tint of age, and almost as perfect as in the days when some wandering companionship of masons gave the last stroke of their chisels to the delicate ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... appeal is never in vain; the free-masonry of the sex has no unworthy members. Fanny forgot in a moment her "miff" with Verty, when she saw that for some reason Redbud was very nearly ready to burst into tears, and wished to have the young man's attention called ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... for Dwellings, but Clubs, Churches, Public Buildings, Barns, and all necessary outbuildings for Farms, Country Seats, Suburban Homes, etc.; accurate estimates of materials with cost, and all Tables and Rules necessary in Plastering, Plumbing, Painting, Roofing, Masonry, Cornice, Windows, Doors and Porch Materials, with 50 plans and Specifications on buildings from ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... made restless movements against these parapets, as they had stood there meditating on the aspect of affairs. In the case of the more friable bricks and stones even the flat faces were worn into hollows by the same mixed mechanism. The masonry of the top was clamped with iron at each joint; since it had been no uncommon thing for desperate men to wrench the coping off and throw it down the river, in reckless defiance ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... collected by him for delinquencies committed within the precincts of the Cite, had been able to build a house on the bank of the Seine just at the end of the Rue du Port-Saint-Landry. To protect the merchandise landed on the strand, the municipality had constructed a sort of break-water of masonry, which may still be seen on some old plans of Paris, and which preserved the piles of the landing-place by meeting the rush of water and ice at the upper end of the Island. The constable had taken advantage of this for the foundation of his house, so that ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... or so before midnight, they clanked into Lahore station—a big-bastioned building, whose solid masonry breathed fire, as literally as any dragon of romance. Within was a great darkness, partially dispelled by hanging oil-lamps; and babel enough to wake the Seven Sleepers. The uninitiated arriving at an Indian ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... carriage and mounted the steps to the portal. And, although the coachman was innocuous, being apparently carved in stone, Denry would have given a ten-pound note to find himself suddenly in his club or even in church. The masonry of the Hall rose up above him like a precipice. He was searching for the bell-knob in the face of the precipice when a lady suddenly appeared at the doors. At first he thought it was the Countess, and that heart of his began to slip down the inside of his legs. But ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the Sand Hill still held out, it was plain enough that its days were numbered unless help should soon arrive. In truth, it required a clear head and a practised eye to discover among those confused masses of prostrate masonry, piles of brick, upturned graves, and mounds of sand and rubbish, anything like order and regularity. Yet amid the chaos there was really form and meaning to those who could read aright, and Marquette saw, as well in the engineers' lines as in the indomitable spirit that looked out of the grim ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... feasible one for escape. The room in which the captive was confined was one of some twenty-odd built along the strong wall that surrounded the post. Across the narrow corridor that connected the row of rooms on the inside, the heavy masonry of the wall jutted out roughly. At the end of the corridor, a stout door was locked and bolted at night, so that during the dark hours the window was ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... broken tribe is now called—live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm leaves known as the parchery, the squalor and untidiness of which present the sharpest contrasts to the trim street of tiled masonry houses where the Brahmans congregate. "Every village," says the proverb, "has its Pariah hamlet"—a place of pollution the census of which is even now taken with difficulty owing to the reluctance of the high-caste enumerator to enter its unclean precincts. "A palm tree," ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to say that the different orders of society were bound together by links of gratitude and regard: that they were not like layers of various coloured sand, but that they formed one solid whole of masonry, each part having its relation of use and beauty ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... moment two sailors appeared over the edge of the quay, and a Maltese cross of light burst into radiance at the end of a sloping gangway, whose summit was just perched on the solid masonry of the port. The sailors were clothed in blue, with white caps, and on their breasts they bore the white-embroidered ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... was detected in the street surface above. Bench excavation was suspended and a section of the permanent lining, 35 ft. long, was placed. The space between the lining and the beams and between the beams and the roof was filled with rubble masonry. Grout pipes were built into the masonry and later all voids were filled with grout. Fig. 3, Plate LIX, shows the first section of the concrete lining completed and part of the rubble in place; and Fig. 4, Plate LIX, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was absolute, the panes were covered with dust, but by wiping this away he could see that the window was fortified with strong iron bars crossing it within a few inches of the glass and imbedded in the masonry on each side. He examined the other window. It was the same. He manifested no great curiosity in the matter, did not even so much as raise the sash. If he was a prisoner he was apparently a tractable one. Having completed his examination ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... give up the gate we required them to surrender before we would treat with them. The Chinese were given until noon on October 13 to give up the Anting gate. We made a lot of batteries, and everything was ready for the assault of the wall, which is battlemented and forty feet high, but of inferior masonry. At 11.30 P.M. on the 12th, however, the gate was opened, and we took possession; so our work was of ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... leading me to something very like a disaster. "Let us be calm," I muttered to myself, and ran into the shade of a leprous wall. From that short side-street I could see the broad main thoroughfare ruinous and gay, running away, away between stretches of decaying masonry, bamboo fences, ranges of arcades of brick and plaster, hovels of lath and mud, lofty temple gates of carved timber, huts of rotten mats—an immensely wide thoroughfare, loosely packed as far as the eye could reach with a barefooted and brown multitude paddling ankle deep in the dust. ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... carriage having fortunately broken down in passing one of the streams. All those rivulets should have bridges built over them! I could look at my new bridge for ever. I often ask myself, 'Now, how can such a piece of masonry ever be destroyed?' It seems quite impossible, does not it? We all know that everything has an end; and yet, whenever I look at that bridge, I often think that it can only end when all ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... arch remains. The wider the span of the arch the greater is the pressure to which each stone is exposed. At length a span is reached which corresponds to a pressure as great as the stones can safely bear, and accordingly we thus find the limiting span over which a single arch of masonry can be constructed. Apply these principles to the stupendous arch formed by the ring of Saturn. It can be shown that the pressure on the materials of the arch capable of spanning an abyss of such awful magnitude would be something so ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the mouth of the working or gallery. Inside the mouth of this gallery are stacks of gold quartz piled up ready for roasting, which shows that the workers, whoever they were, must have left in a hurry. Also, about twenty paces in, the gallery is built across, and a beautiful bit of masonry it is." ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the Federation of the Churches, the International Sunday-school Lesson Series, and evangelistic campaigns, in which the congregations of a community unite their efforts to reach the multitudes of the unchurched and the unsaved. It includes also condemnation of secret orders, such as Masonry and Odd-Fellowship." (L. u. W. 1916, 58.) Such, indeed, was the price of the new doctrinal basis. The General Synod as a whole, however, was evidently neither possessed of the power nor even of the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... ground, such as were not shattered, were broken by bullets. Cannon-balls embedded themselves in the masonry and the heavy doorways. The upper windows were safe, however: the shots did not range so high. At one of these, over a watchmaker's shop, a little girl was to be seen, looking down with eager interest. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gorse; below were the cliffs of Gurnard's Cove, with rocky projections that resemble the castellated work of man's hand, and intermingled therewith much of the materiel connected with the pilchard fishery, with masses of masonry so heavy and picturesque as to resemble Nature's handiwork. Beyond lay the blue waters of the Atlantic, which at that time were calm almost as a mill-pond, studded with a hundred ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... canons do not stand on end, but lie in horizontal strata and show but little dip anywhere. Indeed, the rocks lie so plumb in many places that they resemble the most perfect masonry. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... this breakfast, he directed me to follow him, and, walking before me with his gold-knobbed staff in his hand, passed out of the shady court into the public square. Here we found a number of aged men seated on unpleasantly smooth and cold polished stones in a curious circle of masonry. They were surrounded by a crowd of younger men, shouting, laughing, and behaving with all the thoughtless levity and merriment of a Polynesian mob. They became silent as the chief approached, and the old men rose from their places ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Schloss, residence of the Bredows and other feudal people for a long while, had good solid masonry in it, and around it orchards, potherb gardens; which Friedrich Wilhelm's Architects took good care to extend and improve, not to throw away: the result of their art is what we see, a beautiful Country-House, what might be called a Country-Palace with all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... that a masonry emplacement not only furnishes a platform for the heavy modern high power gun, but also in every particular serves the purpose and takes the place of the fort of former days, the importance of the work accomplished is ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... becomes a man and a brother. I have gazed on Harper's Ferry, or rather the rock at the Ferry; I have seen it towering up in simple grandeur, with the gentle Potomac gliding peacefully at its feet, and felt that that was God's masonry, and my soul had expanded in gazing on its sublimity. I have seen the ocean singing its wild chorus of sounding waves, and ecstacy has thrilled upon the living chords of my heart. I have since then seen the rainbow-crowned Niagara chanting ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... worked for nine hours incessantly, when at length the earth was entirely removed from the vault, all the horizontal strata of masonry demolished, and the large slab which covered the place where the stone sarcophagus lay, removed by a crane. This outer coffin of stone was perfect, and could scarcely ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... to have been imprudent. Her father believed that the "old hag" breathed upon her while she was with her mother, who was sketching in the Palace of the Casars; but the Palatine Hill is on high ground, with a foundation of solid masonry, and was guarded by French soldiers, and it would have been difficult to find a more cleanly spot in the city. A German count, who lived in a villa on the Calian Hill, close by, considered his residence ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... herself down to think in the chancel, not far from a life-sized statue of the Virgin, in painted oak, which stood here because of its peculiarities, for the back half of it seemed to be built into the masonry. Also the eye-sockets were empty, which suggested to the observant Emlyn either that they had once held jewels or that this was no likeness of the holy Mother, but rather one ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... that stubborn "stone wall" which, in the battle of the preceding December, General Hooker's column had not even been able to reach; had stormed Marye's Hill, which General Hooker had described, in vindication of his own failure to carry the position, as "masonry," "a fortification," and "a mountain of rock;" and had marched thereafter so promptly as to force Lee, in his own defence, to arrest the second advance upon the Federal main body, and divert a considerable force to meet the attack ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... antagonists and struggle is needed to overcome; and to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious indwelling life works without effort and almost without consciousness, but it is also likened to the erection of a building, in which there is continuity, and each successive course of masonry is the foundation for that above it. That work of building is work that must be done in silence. If we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must silently drink in the sunshine and dew, and so prosperously pass from blade to ear, and thence ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Libby Prison at Richmond, and John Brown's Engine House at Harper's Ferry, this is to the stranger the most interesting piece of scenery in the Old Dominion. So firm and substantial is the masonry that it is supposed to have been standing long before the English settlement of the country. Some learned writers think that those stately abutments are too massive for the red man of the forest to have constructed. Besides, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... garden wall to scale, nearly twice my own height, and without notch or cranny in the ancient, solid masonry. I stood against it on my toes, and I touched it with my finger-tips as high up as possible. Some four feet severed them from the coping that left only half a sky above ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... was wild, then, about this secret of Masonry. In early, early days I loved, I married a girl fair as Blanche, who, too, was tormented by curiosity, who, too, would peep into my closet, into the only secret guarded from her. A dreadful fate ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting Shadows of palaces and strips of sky; I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets Seen in mirage, or towers of clouds uplifting In air their unsubstantial masonry. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... uncle, and he was seen to issue, lantern in hand, from the tower door, and, where the ruins did not intervene, to pick his way over the swarded courtyard, avoiding treacherous cellars and winding among blocks of fallen masonry. The arch of the great gate was still entire, flanked by two tottering bastions, and it was here that Jonathan met them, standing at the edge of the bridge, bent somewhat forward, and blinking at them through the glow of his own lantern. Mr. Archer greeted him with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson |
