"Trowel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little hill where the road dipped at the edge of the hamlet here sounded clink of steel on rock, suggesting that men labored there with trowel and drill. There was complaining creaking of cordage—the arm of a derrick sliced a slow arc across the blue ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... thoroughfares which speculative builders love to raise upon some miserable fragment of waste ground hanging to the skirts of a prosperous town. Brigsome's Terrace was, perhaps, one of the most dismal blocks of building that was ever composed of brick and mortar since the first mason plied his trowel and the first architect drew his plan. The builder who had speculated in the ten dreary eight-roomed prison-houses had hung himself behind the parlor door of an adjacent tavern while the carcases were yet unfinished. The man who had bought the brick and mortar skeletons ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... should be seen, and to emphasise the roughness by filling up the joints with conspicuous pointing. This, however, is not so destructive as much of the work which has been condemned above, because at any time the walls could be recovered with a thin coat of smooth plaster laid on with a trowel, but not "floated,"—that is, not brought to a smooth ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... little judicious flattery has on the race of husbands, and how smoothly it makes the marital wheels go round. I don't mean false, blatant, absurd flattery, such as men often bestow on us when desirous to please, not realising that compliments laid on with a trowel are an insult to one's intelligence. Nothing of that kind, of course, but delicate, subtle, loving flattery. An attitude of gentle admiration toward your Perseus, subdued a little possibly for public use, ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... off by the lower end of the pond, when, to my horror, I perceived a boy groping on the grass on all fours, apparently digging up the ground with a trowel. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... one was raspberry toffee from Lisbeth, and the other, a curiously shaped one, was from Peter, and contained a trowel. Its somewhat prosaic appearance was relieved by the handle being decorated with Marjory's initial inside a heart of uncertain proportions, executed by poor old Peter's shaky hand ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... could reasonably object. The foreigner felt perhaps slightly uncomfortable when the same statesman, departing for a moment from his usual objective standpoint, spoke of the German "traversing the world with a sword in one hand and a spade and trowel in the other"; but otherwise no act of Germany's world-policy need have inspired alarm, or need inspire alarm at the present time, in sensible foreign minds. The rapidity of its action probably helped to excite a feeling that it could not be altogether ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... building, the term applied to constructions made of bricks. The tools and implements employed by the bricklayer are:—the trowel for spreading the mortar; the plumb-rule to keep the work perpendicular, or in the case of an inclined or battering wall, to a regular batter, for the plumb-rule may be made to suit any required inclination; the spirit-level to keep the work horizontal, often used in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... suggest the hippopotamus. By using head, hands, teeth, tail, and webbed feet the beaver accomplishes much. The tail of a beaver is a useful and much-used appendage; it serves as a rudder, a stool, and a ramming or signal club. The beaver may use his tail for a trowel, but I have never seen him so use it. His four front teeth are excellent edge-tools for his logging and woodwork; his webbed feet are most useful in his deep-waterway transportation, and his hands in house-building and especially in dam-building. It is in dam-building that the beaver shows his greatest ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, — Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... contemplating our fireplace, in which, some of the hearth-bricks are rather irregularly disposed; and we said to ourself, perhaps the brick-layer who built this noble fireplace worked like Ben Jonson, with a trowel in one hand and a copy of Horace in the other. That suggested to us that we had not read any Ben Jonson for a very long time: so we turned to "Every Man in His Humour" and "The Alchemist." Part of Jonson's notice "To the Reader" preceding "The Alchemist" struck us as ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... sailing against them, and when I became conscious I found wicked flaunting poppies sprouted right up against the sweet modest clover-pinks, while the whole paper of bachelor's-buttons was sowed over everything—which I immediately began to dig right up again, blushing furiously to myself over the trowel, and glad that I had caught myself before they grew up to laugh in my face. However, I got that laugh anyway, and I might just as well have left them, for Billy ran to the gate and called Doctor John to come in and make Molly stop digging up his ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the road to stretch by legs. I walked on and on until I came, almost unaware, to the site of the house that was never built. The tent was still there, in fact, it was a permanent camp, and I was rather surprised to see the man working with a trowel on a corner of the unfinished foundations of the house. At first I thought he was going to build a stone hut in the corner, but when I got close to him I saw that he was working carefully on the original plan of the building: he was building ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... Sabrina dropped her trowel on a heap of weeds, and cast her gardening gloves on the top. She led the way to the house, and when they were in the coolness of the big sitting-room with its air of inherited repose, she turned about and spoke ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... please,' whispered Rogers, something between joy and sadness in his heart, 'for there are hills of leaves that I would burn up quickly—' but the man hurried on, tossing his trowel over the Guard's head, and nearly hitting another passenger who followed too close. This was the Woman of the Haystack, an enormous, spreading traveller who utterly refused to be hurried, and only squeezed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... At trowel, a knife, fork, and spoon, of artistically painted wood, and a pair of oars, all claim a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... and each of them carried a bunch of small salad and a darling little crystal-and-silver watering-pot (Portcullis's gifts). The Duke of Southlands gave his daughter away, and Juno insisted on his wearing a smock-frock and carrying a trowel, and just as the dear Bishop said, "Who giveth this woman?" the poor old darling dropped his trowel with a crash ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... hermit to inhabit it is merely the matter of a walk in the neighbourhood. When removed from her own dwelling, which is turned topsy- turvy by my trowel, and placed in possession of the den produced by my art, the Lycosa at once disappears into that den. She does not come out again, seeks nothing better elsewhere. A large wire-gauze cover rests on the soil in ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... pull up a plant and examine the root? I am afraid we cannot, unless you care to go back to the house for a fork or a trowel. The Dandelion has a very long strong root—tap-root—which goes deep into the ground; and there is no tall main stem of which we can take hold—the leaves and flower stalks only break off in ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... been suspected of being a travelling musician, and also a colporteur for the Salvation Army; in fact, of being almost everything but a tiler or plasterer. But this shrewd woman had evidently come to the conclusion that, if I did not work upon the housetops, I must perforce be an artist of the trowel. I assured her that I was as incapable of fixing a tile as of making a ceiling; whereupon ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and purposelike in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... wearing soft, round, visorless caps, were removing the debris of the fatal barricade; soldiers with shovel and hoe filled in the trenches and raked the long, winding street clean of all litter; soldiers with trowel and mortar were perched on shot-torn houses, mending chimneys and slated roofs so that their officers might enjoy immunity from rain and wind and ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... rock or the plaster. It was the sign of victory, and he who lay within had conquered. The great rudeness in the drawing of the palm, often as if, while the mortar was still wet, the mason had made the lines upon it with his trowel, is a striking indication of the state of feeling at the time when the grave was made. There was no pomp or parade; possibly the burial of him or of her who had died for the faith was in secret; those who carried the corpse of their beloved to the tomb were, perhaps, in this very act, preparing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... schooner [U.S.], spider, terrine, toby, urceus. plate, platter, dish, trencher, calabash, porringer, potager, saucer, pan, crucible; glassware, tableware; vitrics. compote, gravy boat, creamer, sugar bowl, butter dish, mug, pitcher, punch bowl, chafing dish. shovel, trowel, spoon, spatula, ladle, dipper, tablespoon, watch glass, thimble. closet, commode, cupboard, cellaret, chiffonniere, locker, bin, bunker, buffet, press, clothespress, safe, sideboard, drawer, chest ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sent to walk in the Tuileries," said a mason, who was returning from his work with his trowel in his hand; "the servant who took care of him met with some friends there, and told the child to wait for him while he went to get a drink; but I suppose the drink made him more thirsty, for he has not come back, and the child cannot find ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... TROWEL.—This gardening implement foretells good weather conditions; seen in the winter, it indicates unusual mildness. See ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... by the practice of the most successful cultivators. In Zilla, N. Mooradabad, in April, about six weeks after planting, the earth on each side of the cane-rows is loosened by a sharp-pointed hoe, shaped somewhat like a bricklayer's trowel. This is repeated six times before the field is laid out in beds and channels for irrigation. There, likewise, if the season is unusually dry, the fields in the low ground are watered in May and June. This supposes there are either nullahs, or ancient pucka wells, otherwise ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... architect's essentials; Now the rubbish from the burning, From the third great fire that swept her, On the first evening in April, Gathers in the northwest corner; And this row of ancient houses, Numbered with the things of yore, Soon will rise again to greet us, Soon resound with plane and trowel. All the city's luckless harbors Shall revive with added grandeur;[11] Now her handsome jail and court-house, Her new halls and spacious churches, Her improved suburban dwellings, And her central, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... of the Rougon Asylum, the triumphant monument destined to carry down to future ages the glory of the family. Vast preparations had been going on for a week past. There was talk of a silver hod and trowel, which the old lady was to use herself, determined to figure to triumph, with her eighty-two years. What swelled her heart with regal pride was that on this occasion she made the conquest of Plassans for the third time, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... was seized with a building-fever. If Paris is a monster, it is certainly a most mania-ridden monster. It becomes enamored of a thousand fancies: sometimes it has a mania for building, like a great seigneur who loves a trowel; soon it abandons the trowel and becomes all military; it arrays itself from head to foot as a national guard, and drills and smokes; suddenly, it abandons military manoeuvres and flings away cigars; ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the top of the hive, applied the pincers of one of its legs to its side, detached a scale of wax, and immediately began to mince it with the tongue. During the operation, this organ was made to assume every variety of shape; sometimes it appeared like a trowel, then flattened like a spatula, and at other times like a pencil, ending in a point. The scale, moistened with a frothy liquid, became glutinous, and was drawn out like a riband. This bee then attached all the wax it could concoct to the vault of ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... degrees all the surplus dirt was washed away, leaving only these stones and a kind of fine black sand, in which the gold being heavy, had stayed. This sand was carefully gathered up with a brush and iron trowel into a shallow tin basin, and then an experienced miner carefully manipulated the same with clear water. What with blowing with the breath, and allowing the water to flow gently over it, all the ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Gothic must rejoice that the ruin has been purchased by the commune of La Serve: for, standing as it does within view of the new chateau, no doubt it would have been brought to the state of that delectable domicile by the aid of the trowel and paint-brush. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the field of Bricklaying, the Non-stooping Scaffold, the Packet and the Fountain Trowel were not invented until the analysis of bricklaying was made, and the synthesis of the chosen elements into standard methods made plain the need and ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... door, I supposed they must be in the garden, and so had taken the liberty of coming in. I could have feigned some apology inconsistent with sincerity, but that was not my way. Besides, her manner was so unexpectedly abrupt as to confuse me. There she stood, with a garden-trowel in her hand, in working dishabille, and presenting altogether a needlessly unattractive picture of a female horticulturist; for, though operating in a garden is really working in the dirt, yet it does not follow that one must of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... breathes, With verdant carvings, flowery wreathes Of never-wasting bloom; In strong relief his goodly base All instruments of labour grace, The trowel, spade, and loom. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in his chosen lot, is particularly open to criticism on this ground. I cannot emphasize too gravely the importance of preliminary calm—what Hobbes calls "the unprejudicated mind." But this by way of parenthesis.) One may attack the problem with the mortar trowel, or with the axe. Sismondi, I think, has ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... a brick from the pile, with his left hand, and he generally tossed the brick up a little way in the air, and it turned over before he caught it again, so that he saw all sides of it; and, with the flat trowel which he held in his right hand, he ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... convenient implement this for a froth-house builder who is compelled to work behind her back—mortar-feeder, trowel, darby, compass, and level all in one! Beginning with the first touch of the cement, the flowing point describes a very small half-circle to the right, again meeting the bark. It is now carried inward and upward, describing a very close circle with ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... first place if I may borrow a garden trowel I will remove some of this earth with which I am encased, and then if I may avail myself of your domestic conveniences I will have a bath. This done, we will converse more at leisure. It will be wise, I think"—he laid a muddy hand ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Cross—having been born in Hartshorn Lane, now Northumberland Street; he attended the parish school of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields; and persons who roam about Lincoln's Inn will call to mind that he helped to build it—a trowel in one hand and a volume of Horace in the other. His residence, in his day of fame, was outside the Temple Bar, but all ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... have raised precisely such a shout in just such sandy gullies, but Sile felt as if he were the first being on earth to whom such an experience had ever happened. He at once began to dig and sift among the gravel fiercely. He took out his hunting-knife and plied it as a trowel. Little bits of dull yellow metal rewarded him every now and then until he worked along to where a ledge (or the edge of one) of quartz came nearly to the surface. On the upper side of that, and lying closely against it, he pried out something that ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... there to relieve our dulness. We have them in the place of heavenly; and he would have argued that we have a right to bother them too. He had a notion, up in the clouds, of a Sailors' Convalescent Hospital at Crikswich to seduce a prince with, hand him the trowel, make him "lay the stone," and then poor prince! refresh him at table. But that was a matter ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a shocking oath, in connection with the name of Mrs. Curtis, and started forward with his trowel as if he were about ...
— Berties Home - or, the Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... times more during the addition of water through a rose nozzle. A bed of concrete 6 ins. thick was first laid, and on this a layer of rubble stones, no two stones being nearer together than 3 ins., nor nearer the forms than 3 ins. The stones were rammed and probed around with a trowel to leave no spaces. Over each layer of rubble, concrete was spread to a depth of 6 ins. The forms or molds for piers for a viaduct were simply large open boxes, the four sides of which could be taken apart. The depth of the boxes was uniform, ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... it was the bugle call of "Forward, charge!" She had been, for the last few weeks, a little paler than usual. Now her powerful old face flushed to an angry red. She dashed her trowel to the garden path and clenched her fists. "What's coming to Greenford!" she shouted. It was no longer a wail of despair. It ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... plant up again by its leaves, it is not firm enough in the ground. If a man uses brain and eye, he can learn to work very rapidly. By one dexterous movement he scoops the excavation with a trowel. By a second movement, he makes the earth firm against the lower half of the roots. By a third movement, he fills the excavation and settles the plant into its final position. One workman will often plant twice as many as ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... ferocious phantasy. As you could not well take up the matter with Paddy (being of the same nest), I have;—but I hope still that I have done justice to his great men and his good heart. As for * * *, you will find it laid on with a trowel. I delight in your ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... beaver, whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, is a builder, who cuts down trees and piles log upon log until he has raised a solid, domed cabin from seven ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... broil, Unless 'tis built on British soil! And there, too, Joseph Coombs was found, With solemn step his march around Among the patients, pacing slowly— Disciple of the meek and lowly, Who afterwards oft turned the key On many a goodly company. In that strong work of mason's trowel, Ruled now by Alexander Powell. And William Addison, no more— As trim a soldier as e'er wore The uniform, or bravely bore His head erect, with step as light As wings that touch the air in flight. Well ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... 'Petersham trousers,' 'Brummel cravats,' 'Osbaldistone ties,' and 'Exquisite crops,' should be only sketchily rendered in paint. Of course, Mr. Opie, who affected thorough John Bullism in art, who laid on his pigments steadily with a trowel, and produced portraits of ladies like washerwomen, and gentlemen liking Wapping publicans—of course, unsentimental, unfashionable Mr. Opie denounced the degeneracy of his competitor's style. 'Lawrence makes coxcombs of his sitters, and they make ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Mark merrily, snatching away his wrist. "I am not going to have my hand used as a trowel to save yours, you lazy beggar. Here, Dean, get hold of Pig and do as I do. Let's give them an ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... man's back—he who is pulling at the rope fastened at the tree's top branches—is filled in with two grey tints, it matters not at all how the task is accomplished. Truly the brush has plastered that back as a trowel might, and the result reminds one of stone and mortar, as Millet's execution reminds one of mud-pie making. The handicraft is as barbarous in Chavannes as it is in Millet, and we think of them more as great poets working in a not wholly sympathetic and, in their hands, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... about. Carefully brush away a heap and a little hole is seen, now hit the ground near it a few times with a stick or stamp on it with your foot and the worm, if he is near the top, comes up. When he is safely out of the way dig carefully down with a knife or trowel so as to examine the hole or "burrow." At the top you generally find it lined with pieces of grass or leaves that the worm has pulled in; lower down the lining comes to an end, but the colour of the burrow is redder than that of the rest of the soil wherever the soil has a greenish tinge. ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... story is told how, before being appointed to the See of Ripon, he once married a young couple with the assurance that he was not only a Carpenter but a Joiner. Only a few months ago he was about to lay the foundation stone of a new vicarage. The architect handed him the trowel, etc., inviting him to become "an operative ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and purposelike in their succession that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... of priests there are builders. But, like the men on Jerusalem's walls, they have to grasp the sword in one hand and the trowel ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... digging, as trowels, dibbers, and spuds, may be had of dealers. In buying a trowel it is economy to pay an extra price and secure a steel blade with a strong shank that runs through the entire length of the handle. One of these tools will last several years and may be used in hard ground, but the cheap trowels ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... use askin' you for that one pound two and sixpence that you borrowed from my brother, Lord Pebble, some time ago. I'm after gettin' a job from the parish priest to set a range in his kitchen, but I haven't either a trowel or a hammer, and unless I can raise the price of ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... before the first of these; then I went on and clearly made out the position of another; then I came to the third: that was really open, although the aperture was much smaller than it had been. It did not look as I remembered it, but without hesitation I took a trowel which I had brought with me, and began to dig in ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... excitement spreads like fire. The blacksmith leaves his anvil, the carpenter his bench, and the tailor his goose. The tanner deserts his hide, and the shoemaker throws down his last to save his all. The mason with his trowel in his hand, rushes from the half-finished wall; Pat drops his hod between heaven and earth and slides down the ladder, muttering: "Oi'll have me moaney or Oi'll have blood!" The fat phlegmatic Dutchman, dozing behind his ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... of the strange things people do when their ideas are confused. The man stood for a moment or two, as if transfixed, a trowel motionless in one of his hands, and a brick in the other; at last giving a kind of gasp, he answered ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of the prohibited Spanish daggers or knives which a traveller may, occasionally get hold of and smuggle out of the country. The blade was broad, trowel-like, but the point drawn out several inches, so as to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... afterwards to study at the University of Cambridge. In his seventeenth or eighteenth year, probably from a want of means, he had to give up the career of learning, in order to follow the simple calling of his stepfather. It may be easily understood that Ben was little pleased with the use of the trowel; he fled to the Netherlands, became a soldier, and took part in a campaign. After a year, the youthful adventurer, then only nineteen years old, came back to London. He talks of a heroic deed; but the truthfulness of his account may well be doubted. He pretends having killed an ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... killed of 'em yesterday," he declared, pointing towards the Empty House with a bit of broken flower-pot, "or else it's the ones you killed last week, and who was always astealin' of my strorbriz." He looked very wise as he said this, and his wand of office—a dirty trowel—which he held in his hand, gave ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... description given in The Fairchild Family of one belonging to a nobleman's estate. My self-education was essentially Squeersian. When I read a thing, I forthwith went and did it. The gardener had lent me a trowel, and I had found a thin, flat stone that served as a cover. Digging was easy work in the top-dressing of sand and the substratum of loose, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... architects strongly advocate is that the joints shall be struck as the work proceeds—that is, that very shortly after a brick is laid, and while the mortar is yet soft, the bricklayer shall draw his trowel, or a tool made for the purpose, across it, to give it a smooth and a sloping surface. This is best when the joint is what is called a weather joint—i.e., one in which the joint slopes outward. Sloping it inward is not good, as it lets in wet; finishing it with a hollow ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... The Trowel is an instrument used by operative masons to spread the cement which unites the building into one common mass; but we, as Free and Accepted Masons, are taught to use it for the more noble and glorious ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... Gould was an injudicious flatterer; he made the flattered fellow uncomfortable. It is a nice thing, flattery, and causes one to feel good all over, if it is delicately applied with a camel's-hair brush, as it were. But Gould laid it on with a trowel. He only courted success; if anyone were down he would be the first ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... master. Why shouldn't he? Are you fitted to take the reins or share his responsibility? If you were at your right job, Robert Fenley, you'd be carrying bricks and mortar in a hod; for you haven't brains enough to lay a brick or use a trowel." ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... good at what may be styled toast-cooking. Indeed, all the lightkeepers were equally good. The bread was cut an inch thick, and butter was laid on as plasterers spread plaster with a trowel. There was no scraping off a bit here to put it on there; no digging out pieces from little caverns in the bread with the point of the knife; no repetition of the work to spread it thinner, and, above all, no omitting of corners or edges;—no, the smallest conceivable fly could ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... witches and warlocks, Smiting the heathen horde,— One hand on the mason's trowel, And one on the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... yours is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls a plain, every-day squash a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run a well-ordered truck-patch; though it's no ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... where should be paw, And beaver-trowel tail, And snout of beast equip'd with teeth Where gills ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wolverene, from disturbing them during the winter; and as they are frequently seen to walk over their work, and sometimes to give a flap with their tail, particularly when plunging into the water, this has, without doubt, given rise to the vulgar opinion that they use their tails as a trowel, with which they plaster their houses; whereas that flapping of the tail is no more than a custom which they always preserve, even when they become tame and domestic, and more particularly so when they ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... path through the trees that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour. In one of the winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation. Mr. Holt rose from his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with a trowel. His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity at dinner the night before, was almost ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to wear himself out and to settle down into a sort of quiet despair," thought Sarah as she looked after him. Then lifting her trowel, she returned with a sigh to the sowing of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... studio was at the top of his house, with a high north window and roughly plastered walls of uncolored sand, left as Bertrand himself had put the plaster on, with his trowel marks over the surface as they happened to come, and the angles and projections thereof ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... consequence of Mr. Puddleham's cloth and advanced years. "There's no lies is too hot for them," said Mr. Grimes, in his energy, and "no lawlessness too heavy." Then he absolutely refused to put his hand to a spade or a trowel. He had his time named in his contract, he said, and nobody had a right to drive him. This was ended by the appearance on a certain Monday morning of a Baptist builder from Salisbury, with all the appurtenances of his trade, and with a declaration on Mr. Grimes' part, that he would ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... should be taken not to break the flakes, and this is best avoided by the use of a fish trowel, which not being sharp, divides it better than a steel knife. Examine this little drawing, and you will see how a cod's head and shoulders should be carved. The head and shoulders of a cod contain the richest and best part of this ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... that," says MCLAUGHLIN. "I carry the keys of the Bumsteadville[1] churchyard vaults, and can tell to an atom, by a tap of my trowel, how fast a skeleton is dropping to dust in the pauper burial-ground. That's more than they can do who call me names." With which ghastly speech JOHN MCLAUGHLIN retires unceremoniously from ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... they would study them in any other school. That is, they have first to learn the facts as matters of knowledge, and then to study the art and science of teaching these facts to others. Instead of coming with their brick and mortar ready prepared, that they may be instructed in the use of the trowel and the plumb-line, they have to make their brick and mix their mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubtedly a drawback and a misfortune. But it cannot be helped at present. All ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... barrier of prohibitive custom had once been levelled, umbrellas came in with a rush, and they are now used to an almost ludicrous extent. A mason may be seen sitting at work on a wall with his umbrella in one hand and his trowel in the other. Farm labourers out in the country, seated on the pole of their bullock-cart, or men perched on the top of loads of wood in great cities, will enjoy both the dignity and the shade of their outspread umbrella in the hot season. That it is assumed in some cases more for dignity than ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... made a wondrous picturesque figure of himself as, in a raised corner of the crowded and beflagged marquee, he had flourished a trowel, and talked about the great and enlightened public, and about the highest function of the drama, and about the duty of the artist to elevate, and about the solemn responsibility of theatrical managers, and about the absence ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... and Mab brought in some dirt from the yard. It was wet and sticky but when it had been spread out on a paper under the stove it soon dried. That night Daddy Blake filled a big wooden box with the dirt, which he worked with a trowel until it was ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... wild grapes, Virginia jessamine. In the middle is a sun-dial. There are many plants in pots. Your child is looking at the flowers. She shows them to her nurse—she is making holes in the earth with her trowel, and planting seeds. The nurse is raking the path. The young girl is pure as an angel, but the beginning of love is there, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... remembered as neglected and overgrown had become orderly. The little beds cut in the turf were neat in their Winter bareness, despite a few dead leaves which had fluttered on to them. Her eyes fell on a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel lying on the grass by one of the beds. From the open mouth of a brown paper bag a bulb had partly rolled before it became stationary. There was a hole dug in the turf. Some one had been planting bulbs and had gone away leaving ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on the structure of the system and consolidate ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the towers, and rises to a height of three hundred and thirty feet. They are firmly braced together by tie-girders and cross tubes nearly as large as themselves. They were erected section by section, rivets and hammers being used instead of trowel and mortar. Scarcely were their summits united when, from their feet, there began to spring on either side the great tubes forming the lower part of the arch. In the cantilever construction, the bridge grows right and left from ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... future and time past! Think of the indefinite possibilities in the one, the rigid fixity of the other. Our present actions are like cements that dry quickly and set hard on exposure to the air—the dirt of the trowel abides on the soft brick for ever. Many cuneiform inscriptions were impressed with a piece of wood on clay, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Trowel and spade and tomahawk went furiously to work, and soon cleared away the gravel from a surface ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... sang for's daily bread; Surprising Shakspeare fin'd the wool; Great Virgil creels and baskets made; And famous Ben employed the trowel. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... nun being walled up in a vault of her convent, brick by brick, till the last brick shut off the last glimmer of the bricklayer's lantern, till the last layer of mortar made for her the last sound she would hear, the patting clink of the trowel on the brick, before it was all horrible dark silence for ever. I wondered how many people had been silenced in that way. I wondered how long I should live, if that was ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... trowel cuts them quite in half, It is a bitter cup; They give a sour sardonic laugh And sew the pieces up; They sew them up and wind away With seeming unconcern, But oh, be careful! one fine day I hear the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... extra pains I was taking on their house—these and a thousand other wonderings and reveries kept possession of my mind; while the natural pride and hope and confidence of a young man turned to sweet music the sound of saw and hammer and trowel, and even translated the rustling of pine shavings with ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He made us come in. We entered an attic room, where we saw "the little mason" asleep in a little iron bed; his mother hung dejectedly over the bed, with her face in her hands, and she hardly turned to look at us; on one side hung brushes, a trowel, and a plaster-sieve; over the feet of the sick boy was spread the mason's jacket, white with lime. The poor boy was emaciated; very, very white; his nose was pointed, and his breath was short. O dear Tonino, my little comrade! ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... our name Mobile, says Biedman, "stood on a plain surrounded by strong walls." Herrera, in his General History, states that the walls were formed by piles, interwoven with other timber, and the spaces packed with straw and earth so that it looked like a wall smoothed with a trowel. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... him be always helped first, and to the most elegant Tid-Bit; and when you drink together, offer him always the Place of Toast-maker; whether he be your Inferiour or your Equal, let him always choose before you, and be not ashamed to trowel ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... to be met with; but is lately cultivated in some Physick Gardens at Mitcham. It must be kept well weeded, and the top of the Bed, where it grows, must, when we cut it, be pricked up, a little, with a small Fork, or the Earth made fine with a Trowel; because the Runners, of this sort of Mint, shoot along upon the Surface of the Ground, and so at the Joints strike Root, which is contrary to other Sorts of Mint, which shoot ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... side, and on the other he knew there were flower-beds and fruit-trees, for every once in a while Miss Rachel was to be seen emerging from there in a broad straw hat and with buck-skin gloves, trailing long bits of string or boughs of green stuff, with scissors and trowel and watering-can. ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... Connor Sydney, in "England and the English in the Eighteenth Century," that a bricklayer (who chanced to be the seventh son of his father), or a sharp-witted cobbler, picked up an antiquated collection of medieval recipes, and perused it in his leisure hours! Then, dispensing with his trowel or awl, he devoted himself to the sale of pellets, lotions and gargles, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Side halls. They were stirring up the minds of the people. They were not merely making them discontented with conditions, but they were offering a programme of reconstruction—a programme that included a trowel as well as ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... intending his fortune to build, In his youth would have taught him the trowel to wield, But the mortar of discipline never would stick, For his skull was secured by a facing of brick; And with all his endeavours of patience and pain, The skill of his sire he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... February, 1851, he spent the night at a little inn a few miles from the object of his journey, and shortly after dawn he sallied forth on his ride through the forest, carrying with him a spade and a trowel and a little tin dish. In the cool air of the morning the scent of the spreading gum trees braced up his frame as he plunged deeper and deeper among those lonely hollows and wood-clad hills. In an hour or two he reached the well-remembered spot—the ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... And while another stone Swings to its socket, haste with trowel and hod! Win the old smile a moment ere, alone, Soars the great soul to bear report to God. Night falls; but thou, dear Captain, from thy star Look down, behold how bravely ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... cases, there no doubt were instances of criminal passion, but in nine cases out of ten these troubadours sang for their bread and butter. They lauded the seigneurs to the skies for their gestes of valour, and their ladies for their transcendent beauty; they laid on their colours with a trowel, and were paid for so doing. That some of them burnt their fingers in playing with fire one cannot doubt, but I hardly think that they set to work in their trifling with the intent of provoking blisters. The husbands of the much-lauded ladies were hardly likely to suffer this sort of fun to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... through the gaping and broken windows in any of the rooms; nothing but workmen, and the implements of their several trades, swarming from the kitchens to the garrets. Inside and outside alike: bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons: hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, and trowel: all at work together, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... she said, sharply, rising from her knees and shaking her trowel at the intruder. "I don't want no apples to-day, an' I don't care how ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... presume that Romulus must have been a little older than Rome, the builder a little anterior to what he built. Varro and the Capitoline Tables and Mr. Hook will all agree to that postulate. And whatever some of them may say as to the youth of Romulus, when he first began to wield the trowel, at least, I suppose, he was come to years of discretion; and, if we say twenty-three or twenty-four, which I am as much entitled to say as they to deny it, then we are all right. 'All right behind,' as the mail guards say, 'drive on.' And so I feel ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... explaining bits to Greg, who was hopelessly mystified, when Mother came out to transplant some columbine that had wandered into the lawn. We did a quick secret consultation and then decided to let her in on the Castaway. So we bolted after her and took away the trowel and showed her the letter. She read it ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... there must be a hole dug for it, in the first place; you must take a trowel and make a hole for it But your dress will be the waur!" he exclaimed, glancing at his little ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and oblongs of early flowering annuals and bedding plants. Mr. Brown had to get down on his hands and knees, with gardener's shears, to clip the turfed borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks. Thus he could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies, whether to spare them, give a country violet its blossoming time, and leave a screening burdock undisturbed until fledglings were out of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... and it was these two bits of possibilities that put a happy thought into Sarah's head. For three days she said nothing, but she fell into the way of going often in and out of that door, and always her eyes were hungrily fixed on one or the other of those squares. On the fourth day she bought a trowel and some flower seeds and set resolutely to work. She had dug the trowel into the earth four times, and was delightedly sniffing the odor from the moist earth when ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... suppose that the main wall of the house had been closed in at a later period would be preposterous, and for manifest reasons. His examination of the room's interior had been most thorough and exhaustive. The place was smoothly plastered upon the inside, and even the mason's trowel had been found upon the floor within, so that it became at once evident that those who had done the work had been self-immured. Although the reason for such an act was utterly beyond his comprehension, Paul felt a certain ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... man gave him the bricks and mortar, and a little trowel as well, and the little pig built himself a nice strong little house. As soon as it was finished the wolf came to call, just as he had done to the other little pigs, and said: "Little pig, little pig, let ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... enough to say, "the Holy Ghost fell on those that believed." No man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard the chink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... may join your sacred Guild, Save only graduates (so to speak), Experts with hod and trowel, skilled In the finesse of pure technique: And that is why No rude ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... foremost," said he, "the tools!" and immediately he ran off to look for a little wheel-barrow which his Grandpapa had made for him; with the spade, the trowel, and the iron rake, which were ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... cannon, the loud strains of martial music, and the cheers of her followers, the empress laid the first stone of the city of Caterinoslaw, and after her, the emperor took up the mortar and trowel, and laid the second one. He performed his part of the drama with becoming solemnity; but, about an hour later, as he was taking his customary afternoon walk with the French ambassador, M. de Sigur, he laughed, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and lamentations like a hen in distress, raising her hands to heaven. All at once they heard some one rushing up the stairs. It was the butler, in his shirt-sleeves and his enormous apron of ticking, still carrying his trowel in his hand. He was bewildered, his eyes protruding, while all about him he spread the smell of fresh earth. At every instant ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... dig up the yellow one. We have brought a basket and trowel, and can examine them thoroughly. We must dig down deep so as not to break off the stem. There is a ring or collar around it near the top. There is a bulb at the base, with some slight membrane attached. ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... there wasn't a trick in brick or stone That this young man hadn't seen or known; Nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul But this young ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... garden tools. There's a little spade an' rake an' a fork an' hoe. Eh! they are good 'uns. There's a trowel, too. An' th' woman in th' shop threw in a packet o' white poppy an' one o' blue larkspur when ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had known, a short time before, as a prosperous and thriving market town. Then through an aperture that had been a window I saw three women sitting round a candle. And in the next street I found a man on his knees on the pavement, working with bricks and a trowel. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... are fought over with great bitterness, but they are not fought over in the Hall of the Unions-once the Club of the Nobility, with on its walls on Congress days the hammer and spanner of the engineers, the pestle and trowel of the builders, and so on-but in the Communist Congresses in the Kremlin and throughout the country. And, in the problem with which in this book we are mainly concerned, neither the regular business of the Unions nor their internal squabbles affects the cardinal fact that in the present crisis ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome |
