"Mortar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reason the last house but one in that imperfect row especially haunted me with its hollow grin and empty window-eyes. Something in the shape of this brick-and-mortar skeleton was attractive; and there being no workmen about, I strolled into it for curiosity and solitude. I gave, with all the sky-deep gravity of youth, a benediction upon the man who was going to live there. I even remember that for ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Knights. Statutes were drawn up. These young demons grew as vigilant as the pupils of Amoros,—bold as hawks, agile at all exercises, clever and strong as criminals. They trained themselves in climbing roofs, scaling houses, jumping and walking noiselessly, mixing mortar, and walling up doors. They collected an arsenal of ropes, ladders, tools, and disguises. After a time the Knights of Idleness attained to the beau-ideal of malicious mischief, not only as to the accomplishment but, still more, in the invention of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... reasonable than to expect that a Catholic priest should starve to death, genteelly and pleasantly, for the good of the Protestant religion; but is it equally reasonable to expect that he should do so for the Protestant pews, and Protestant brick and mortar? On an Irish Sabbath the bell of a neat parish church often summons to church only the parson and an occasionally conforming clerk; while, two hundred yards off, a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and pelted by all the storms of heaven. Can anything ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... may be required. Five hundred dollars should be his own to spend on his arrival, if he wishes to farm. If he comes as an artisan he may, like the happy masons now to be found in Winnipeg, get the wages of a British Army Colonel, [1] by putting up houses as fast as brick, wood, and mortar can be got together. Favourable testimony as to the climate was everywhere given. The heavy night dews throughout the North-West keep the country green when everything is burned to the south, and the steady winter cold, although it sounds formidable when registered by the thermometer, is universally ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... EXIST,"—it is Voltaire, the enemy of religions, who says so,—"IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO INVENT HIM." Why? "Because," adds the same Voltaire, "if I were dealing with an atheist prince whose interest it might be to have me pounded in a mortar, I am very sure that I should be pounded." Strange aberration of a great mind! And if you were dealing with a pious prince, whose confessor, speaking in the name of God, should command that you be burned alive, would you not be ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... great strength, which later on the English blew to pieces. Some of the men were sent to Panama "to work in the castle of St Jerome"—a wonderful, great castle, which was burned at the sack of Panama almost before the mortar dried. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the best ground rotten stone of the druggist, put a few ounces at a time in a wedgewood or porcelain mortar, with plenty of clean rain water. This should have about forty drops of nitric acid to the quart. Grind well, and after letting the mortar stand two minutes, pour into a third. After remaining undisturbed eight minutes, finally pour off into a fourth to settle. Rinse back the sediment in the ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... night boat. After supper they took out the skiff from the rocky landing for a last row. They pulled round under the dark cliffs that rose sheer from the water and were crowned with the wall of the old fort, the cliffs themselves seamed across with strata of white, like mortar-lines of some Titanic masonry. They gave chase to a tug puffing northward half a mile to the right, towing two or three canal-boats through the still water and the stiller night. Then a sail came ghostily out of the shadow astern, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... with deep arms that stood on the hearth, he lit his cigar and sipped drowsily the glass of brandy she had left on a silver tray on the table. The ceiling was ridiculously high—what a waste of good bricks and mortar!—the room was ridiculously large! On the smooth white walls reddish shadows moved in a fantastic procession, and from the big chintz-covered lounge the monstrous blue poppies leaped out of the firelight. The high canopy over the bed was draped ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... by-gone days. The ascent further down the road almost amounts to a feat, assisted by the foot-worn paces in the chalky steep. Here this portion of the hill resembles an immense wall of viretum, down whose side has been poured liquid mortar. The path winds along the verge of the hill, whilst on the left is a valley or little ravine, whose sides are clothed with thick dwarfish box, intermingled with the wild and trackless luxuriance of forest scenery. Hence the road stretches away to Ashurst, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... three sorts are inserted between the fingers, the fourth is held between the thumb and forefinger. This last description is no longer used in fine weaving, and is therefore sold with bandala. After the fine sorts have been pounded in a rice-mortar, in order to render the fiber soft and pliable, they are severally knotted into one another, and converted ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the garden which fronted the windows, on the other side the before-mentioned brook. I was so alarmed that I threw indiscriminately everything that came to hand out of the window, even to a large stone mortar, which at another time I should have found it difficult to remove, and should have thrown a handsome looking-glass after it had not some one prevented me. The good bishop, who that day was visiting Madam de Warrens, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... further side of a green valley, could be seen buildings with an encircling wall of flint and mortar faced with ruddy brick, the dark red-tiled roofs rising among walnut-trees, and an orchard in full bloom spreading into ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this, the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... natural waters, as an efflorescence in limestone caverns, and in the neighbourhood of decaying nitrogenous organic matter. Hence its synonyms, "wall-saltpetre" and "lime-saltpetre"; from its disintegrating action on mortar, it is sometimes referred to as "saltpetre rot." The anhydrous nitrate, obtained by heating the crystallized salt, is very phosphorescent, and constitutes "Baldwin's phosphorus." A basic nitrate, Ca(NO3)2.Ca(OH)2.3H2O, is obtained by dissolving calcium ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... half. The foundation was of rock stones, which were also squared; and one of them measured four feet seven inches by two feet four. Such a structure, raised without the assistance of iron-tools to shape the stones, or mortar to join them, struck us with astonishment: It seemed to be as compact and firm as it could have been made by any workman in Europe, except that the steps, which range along its greatest length, are not perfectly straight, but sink in a kind ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... flowers I have, made of pearls, and to let him take them away. One also requires a piece of deep red gauze, three feet in length of the best quality; and the pearls must be triturated to powder in a mortar." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... except here and there in the west country towns, were made of stone. This was about 1570. Gradually, even in timber buildings, the intervals of the main beams were occupied by stone walls, or where stone was expensive, by mortar or plaster, intersected by horizontal or diagonal beams, grooved into the principal piers. This mode of building continued for a long time, and is familiar to our eyes in the older streets of the metropolis, and in many parts of the country."[4] Harrison, just quoted, says, "the ancient ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... cellar, and calls that going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls have become separated from all the birds of the air—have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud—have forgotten all about live trees and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take them as they are. I accept as products of nature and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... ten into five watches, each to take a spell of two hours' work. One night, as soon as all was quiet, Joe and I set to work, he with a chisel which he had used in making our new instrument, I with my clasp knife. Very gently, so as to avoid noise, we began to scrape away at the mortar between the block of stone we had selected for removal and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... world) that it was never contrived or built, by any means, but that the stones did by chance grow into those curious figures into which they seem to have been cut and graven; and that, upon a time, (as tales usually begin,) the materials of that building—the stone, mortar, timber, iron, lead, and glass—happily met together, and very fortunately ranged themselves into that delicate order in which we see them now, so close compacted, that it must be a very great chance that ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... ghastly smile of envy at the prosperity which it could no longer interrupt. Or, if this idea should seem extravagant, at least the two opposite neighbours present as lively a personification as stone and mortar can afford, of their respective inhabitants; the town of Valence flourishing in industrious cheerfulness, and the castle domineering, savage, poverty-stricken, and formed only for purposes of ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... of bronze bells in Valencia as early as 622, and an ancient mortar was found near Monzon, in the ruins of a castle which had formerly belonged to the Arabs. Round the edge of this mortar was the inscription: "Complete blessing, and ever increasing happiness and prosperity of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... came up, but, having grounded, it was not until two o'clock that Captain Hardinge was able to place his ship in the position assigned; this he now did in a most judicious manner, and opened a brisk fire from his two mortars; which was returned from the mortar and gun-batteries on the heights near the town, and also from some guns on the pier, and the gun-vessels placed in ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... itself with little lonely hamlets and tiny rustic villages, and weaving them close into the web of its being, choking up rural streams and blotting out groves and meadows with monuments of brick and mortar. Where {16} the friends of George the First could have hunted and gunned and found refreshment in secluded country ale-houses, the friends of George the Third were familiar with miles of stony streets and areas of arid squares. London was not then the monster city ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "don't," he can not reach the fullest development of character. Furthermore, character is not built negatively but positively. A building can never be erected by merely keeping out of it all unworthy material. There must be an actual putting together of brick and mortar, and the great truth is evident that whenever a place is filled by the good, the bad is in that very act kept out, whether in buildings or character. The motive back of many a "don't" is worthy, and often there may be no alternative but to instantly check an action, but for the ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say, "Strike, batter, break; 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you pound and bray so"; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from the middle of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... dry, crumbling soil, we should expect the shaft and the chamber at the bottom to have soft, powdery walls, subject to petty landslips, if no work were done but that of excavation. On the contrary, the walls are neatly daubed, plastered with a sort of clay-like mortar. They are not precisely smooth, indeed they are distinctly rough; but their irregularities are covered with a layer of plaster, and the crumbling material, soaked in some glutinous liquid and dried, is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... The houses are so lofty that the strip of blue sky can scarcely send its light to the bottom, whilst the upper storeys have such an affectionate leaning towards each other, that the wonder is that any mortar is capable of restraining their eagerness to fall on each other's necks. But all the houses are not like this, and the character of the masonry speedily improves on emerging from the gloomy alleys into the magnificent Strada Reale, more ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... been built, very likely everything about it is in a more or less chaotic condition. Odds and ends of lumber, mortar, brick, and all kinds of miscellaneous building material scattered all over the place, the ground uneven, treeless, shrubless, and utterly lacking in all the elements that go to make a place pleasing and attractive. Out of this chaos order must be evolved, and the evolution may ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... the Gadarean sea— I wish that pity would drive out the devils, Which in your royal bosom hold their revels, And sink us in the waves of thy compassion! Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation! 60 Now if your Majesty would have our bristles To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles, In policy—ask else your royal Solons— You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw, 65 And sties well thatched; besides ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as savages do, but they starved them slowly in a large and prosperous city. One of these unhappy men, driven to the last extreme of hunger, is said to have gnawed his own fingers to the first joint from the hand, before he expired. Others ate the mortar and stone which they chipped from the prison walls, while some were found with bits of wood and clay in their mouths, which in their death agonies they had sucked to find nourishment." [Footnote: This account is quoted by Mr. Bolton in a recent ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... blanched. Blanch also the bitter almonds. As you blanch the almonds, throw them into a bowl of cold water. Then take them out, one by one, wipe them dry in a clean towel, and lay them on a plate. Pound them one at a time to a fine paste, in a marble mortar, adding, as you pound them, a few drops of rose-water to prevent their oiling. Pound the bitter and sweet almonds alternately, that they may be well mixed. They must be made perfectly fine and smooth, and are the better ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... crumbles near the edge like as frosted mortar. I've seen a noble sheep, sir, eighty pound of mutton, browsing here one moment, and seen it go down the next in a puff of white dust. Hark to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... smile that she could give no better notion of his amiability than by mentioning that he was known among her friends as the Cavaliere Frattanto. This praise, Odo thought, seemed scarcely to the cousin's liking; but he carried it off with the philosophic remark that it is the mortar between the bricks that holds the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... have hardly seen anything but chimney-pots and bricks and mortar all your life, Sam,' said Mr. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... includes one's country. Clerambault would never have expected to find any sympathy in her for his theories of fraternal pity. She had little enough for her friends, but none at all for her enemies. She would have ground them in a mortar with the same cold satisfaction that she felt when she tormented hearts or teased insects because something or ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... built on a promontory,—and to the port of Thapsus, a maritime town, situated on a kind of isthmus, between the sea and a lake. The artificial nature, of this latter harbour is placed beyond all doubt, as there is still remaining a great part of it built on frames: the materials are composed of mortar and small pebbles, so strongly and closely cemented, that they have the appearance, as well as durability, of solid rock. It is singular, that in the dominions of Carthage, extending, as we have seen, upwards ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Haram is situated in an oblong space, surrounded on the eastern side by a quadruple colonnade, and by a triple one on the other. The columns are connected by pointed arches, upon each four stand little domes constructed of mortar and whitened outside. Some of these columns are of white marble, granite, or porphyry, but the greater part are of the common stone found ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he does not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay, and what else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall straightway. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, be ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... that I might be ready to go to the drawing up of my answer to Middleton to-morrow, and therefore home to supper and to bed. I hear this day that there is fallen down a new house, not quite finished, in Lumbard Street, and that there have been several so, they making use of bad mortar and bricks; but no hurt yet, as God hath ordered it. This day was brought home my pair of black coach-horses, the first I ever was master of. They cost me L50, and are ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I sticks my stones and my bricks With mortar I takes from the snobbish? All who can feel for the public weal Likes the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and if in case of urgency one is obliged to resort to trituration of chloride of lime in a mortar, only employ water, never ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... agreed to cause it. That cause must be omnipotent, wise, and good, because all things are double one against another, and He has left nothing imperfect. Men make watches, build ships or houses, out of pre-existing metals, wood, hemp, bricks, mortar, and other materials, therefore God made nature out of no materials at all. Unassisted nature cannot produce the phenomena we behold, therefore such phenomena clearly prove there is something supernatural. Not to believe in a God who designed Nature, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... forbear laughing as he said: "My employment has been almost ludicrously incongruous with the title by which you honor me. I have been shovelling brick and mortar ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the world whence the trade of the world and the political and economical bustle of the world may be observed, in a way impossible in any other part of the globe—here Marx found what he sought and needed, the bricks and mortar for his work. 'Capital' could be created ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... caps and skirts, two mantles for bad weather, and two pairs of sandals. Here is a fire, here a bench on which Thou mayst sleep, a mortar for crushing wheat, and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... old neighbor could not refuse such a simple request, so he consented to give the old man the tree under which Shiro lay buried. Shiro's master then cut the tree down and carried it home. Out of the trunk he made a mortar. In this his wife put some rice, and he began to pound it with the intention of making a festival to the memory of his ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... prayer gone up, from out a cloud there broke A voice which thus in godlike accents spoke:— "The suppliant must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and crowbar take, And pry me up that stone, or break; Now fill that rut upon the other side. Hast done it?" "Yes," the man replied. "Well," said the voice, "I'll aid thee ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... approaches more nearly to the simple question of where do you wish to live, and a rich daughter-in-law would have surely seen to it that she did not have to leave her square mile of Mecca and go out into the wilderness of bricks and mortar. If the house in Blue Street could not have been compounded for there were other desirable residences which would have been capable of consoling Francesca for her lost Eden. And now the detested Courtenay Youghal, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... been changed, and are changing every year before our very eyes; but what can never be changed, in spite of some recent atrocities in brick and mortar, is the natural beauty of its gardens, and the historical character of its architecture. Whether Friar Bacon, as far back as the thirteenth century, admired the colleges, chapels, and gardens of Oxford, we do not know; and even if we did, few of them ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... was a red brick structure with long windows. From the joints of its walls the mortar was falling. It lay all around the building in a girdle of gray, like an encircling ant-hill, upon the green lawn. Splendid sugar-maples grew all about the square, in the center of which the court-house stood, and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Lawn Sieve, then sift some Starch as fine; to a Pound of Sugar put a Quarter of a Pound of Starch; make it of what Colour you please, into a stiff Paste; putting thereto Gum-Dragon well steep'd in Orange-Flower-Water; beat it well in a Mortar, and make it in Knots or Shells in a Mould or Moss, with rubbing it thro' an Hair Sieve: The Red must be colour'd with Carmine; the Yellow with Gumboodge, steep'd in Water, and put to the Gum; the Green is made with Yellow Gum, putting to it Stone-Blue steep'd in Water; the Brown with Chocolate, ...
— Mrs. Mary Eales's receipts. (1733) • Mary Eales
... y parle francais;' 'Man spricht Deutsch.' Of some of these there is quite a little biography, beginning with the year of their establishment and narrating their happy union with other agreeable premises, like a brick and mortar novel. I remember them well: their 'romantic surroundings' or 'their exclusive privilege of meeting trains upon the platform;' their accurate resemblance to 'a gentleman's own house' (with 'a reception-room 80 feet ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. 'Oho!' said the board, looking very knowing, 'we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all, in no time.' So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they) ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... bayonet, when General Ampudia capitulated. Taylor's forces consisted of four hundred and twenty-five officers, and nine thousand two hundred and twenty men. His artillery consisted of one ten-inch mortar, two twenty-four-pound howitzers, and eight field batteries of four guns, the mortar being the only piece serviceable for the siege. The Mexican works were armed with forty-two pieces of cannon, and manned with a force of at least seven thousand troops of the line, and from ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... decks the mortar's bursting fires Sweep the full streets, and splinter down the spires. Blaze-trailing fuses vault the night's dim round, And shells and langrage lacerate the ground; Till all the tented plain, where heroes tread, Is torn ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... him by some chance association; and there is nothing like the daily and thorough perusal of a newspaper for dulling a man's brain. He pottered about his garden gossiping with the gardener; made little alterations in the house—bricks and mortar are like an anodyne; he collected stamps; played bezique with his wife; and finally, in his mild, gentle ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... ever allow herself to be in cold weather. There is a very neat parlour behind the shop for her to sit in, not very light indeed, being a la Southampton, the middle of three deep, but very lively from the frequent sound of the pestle and mortar. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... large thick coffin of wood, not made of planks joined together, but hollowed out of the solid timber like a canoe; this being covered, and let down into the grave, is surrounded with a coat of their mortar, called chinam, about eight or ten inches thick, which in a short time becomes as hard as a stone. The relations of the deceased attend the funeral ceremony, with a considerable number of women ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... to draw from her confessions relating to an intended husband, who was awaiting her at Berne, and whose letters, both in prose and verse, were her comfort in her exile. This future husband was an apothecary, and the idea that he pounded out verses as he pounded his drugs in a mortar, and rolled out rhymes with his pills, sometimes inclined Jacqueline to laugh, but she listened patiently to the plaintive outpourings of her 'promeneuse', because she wished to acquire a right to reciprocate ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... a quaint, dreamy old region in the west of London, which bricks and mortar have not, as yet, overtaken, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... any tools that are not labor-saving? The mason's trowel is a labor-saving tool, invented to prevent him from using his hands to put on the mortar; the bolo or the knife is just as much a labor-saving tool as the planing machine; the sickle saves labor and so does the reaper. The difficulty is that some people do not stop to think that the saving of labor applies just ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... had reached their houses, bombs had commenced to fly into the town, and here and there mortar-shells were heard whizzing through the air; with the cries of the flying and the wounded, and the screams of the dying, was now heard the moaning toll of the alarm-bell, telling that to the terrors of the siege were added those of the elements. Like gigantic torches of ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these times near the dismal country station; with nothing particular on draught but cold air and damp, nothing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no business doing beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the hall? Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty apartment of four pieces up one hundred and seventy-five waxed stairs, the privilege of ringing the bell ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... medicine-men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or mimaluse island. And no concoction of herbs,—however skilfully compounded with stone mortar and pestle,—no incantation of medicine-men or steaming atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... mankind and the land was flooded with blood[191]. Re became alarmed and determined to save at least some remnant of mankind. For this purpose he sent messengers to Elephantine to obtain a substance called d'd' in the Egyptian text, which he gave to the god Sektet of Heliopolis to grind up in a mortar. When the slaves had crushed barley to make beer the powdered d'd' was mixed with it so as to make it red like human blood. Enough of this blood-coloured beer was made to fill 7000 jars. At nighttime this was poured out upon the fields, so that when the goddess came to resume her ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the enemy were beginning to give way, I saw Pavel Petrovitch (who was a general by this time) looking very hard at a mortar-battery about a hundred yards to our right; and all at once he struck his knee fiercely with his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week—once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... as great a grievance to those that come near him as a pewterer is to his neighbours. His discourse is like the braying of a mortar, the more impertinent the more voluble and loud, as a pestle makes more noise when it is rung on the sides of a mortar than when it stamps downright and hits upon the business. A dog that opens upon a wrong scent will do it oftener than one that never opens but upon ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... A shop with "mortar-boards" displayed in its window seemed like a temple crowded with shrines; and a confectioner's shop, in which two young gentlemen in gowns sat and refreshed themselves, was like a distant glimpse of Olympus where the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... match and an annual excursion to Blackpool or Ramsgate; who seldom, if ever, see the glorious face of Nature and, when they do, gaze into it with blank unrecognising eyes; whose whole life is one long round of monotony—monotonous toil, monotonous amusements, monotonous clothes, monotonous bricks and mortar;—until the very heaven itself, with its trailing cloud-armadas and its eternal stars, is forgotten, and the whole universe becomes a cowl of hodden grey, "where-under crawling cooped they live and die." And then look at those other millions—the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... meat aside; put the under shell and the claws in a mortar with half a pound of butter and a cupful of cold boiled rice, and pound them as smooth as possible; then put this into a saucepan, and add a heaping teaspoonful of salt, a bouquet of assorted herbs, a dozen whole peppers, a blade of mace, and three ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey
... generations—the heavy boot of the conquistador; the sandaled foot of the old padre; the high heel of a dainty Spanish-born lady; the bare, horny sole of the Indian convert—each of them taking its tiny toll out of stone and mortar—each of them wearing away its infinitesimal mite—until through years and years the firm stone was scored away and channeled out and left at it is now, with curves ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... any substance in it was indeed thrown into a kind of mortar, ground up, mixed with something that gave the mass cohesion and plasticity, then moulded into buttons as clay is moulded by the potter, and burned, dried, and hardened. Therefore, if brass and pearl buttons are in ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... manufacture of hydraulic cements have given an impetus to the use of concrete, but its use is by no means of recent date. It is no uncommon thing in the taking down of heavy walls several centuries old to find that the method of building was to carry up face and back with rubble and stiff mortar, and to fill the interior with bowlders and gravel, the interstices of which were filled by grouting—the whole mass becoming virtually a monolith. Modern quick-setting cement accomplishes this object within a time consistent with the requirements of modern engineering ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... maize, which serves for props, for the maize grows on stalks similar to the sugar-cane. When they wish to make use of the grain for bread or porridge, which they call Sappaen, they first boil it and then beat it flat upon a stone; then they put it into a wooden mortar, which they know how to hollow out by fire, and then they have a stone pestle, which they know how to make themselves, with which they pound it small, and sift it through a small basket, which they understand how to weave of ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... walls of all the large houses at Zanzibar are many feet thick of solid stone masonry; and even the floors and partitions dividing the rooms are of several thicknesses too, all made of wood and stone and lime, the wood being covered over with mortar. The roof is the best part of them, however. It is made quite flat, and it is the principal spot for the family to go of an evening when the sun has gone down and the night-breeze begins to blow. The Arabs and Parsees go on ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Father William," the young man said, "And your legs always get in your way; You use too much mortar in mixing your bread, And you try to drink ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... creature who, in spite of his height, walks erect. He can so do only by means of the support given him by his bony framework. The human body is like a tall building—the muscles are like the mortar and plaster, the bones are like the steel framework around which everything else is built and without which the structure could ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... to the seniors to rise. They put on their mortar-boards. The president said once more, "By the power invested in me...." The seniors filed by the president, and the grand marshal handed each of them a roll of parchment tied with blue and orange ribbons. Hugh felt a strange thrill ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... the chicken boiled as above; cut in bits, and pound smooth in a mortar. Take a teacupful of bread-crumbs; soak them soft in warm milk, or, if liked better, in a little broth. Mix them with the chicken; add a saltspoonful of salt, and, if allowed, a pinch of mace; and serve in a ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... looked at each other in silence. The child had dropped from the beam, and lay fast asleep across his mother's bosom, with his head on a lump of mortar. Without a word spoken, Mrs. Person, picking her way carefully to the spot, knelt down by the dead mother, tenderly kissed her cheek, lifted the sleeping child, and with all the awe, and nearly all the tremulous joy of first motherhood, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... report of a mortar announces that the prime patron of the festivities, the rich nabob, Master Jock, has departed from his castle. The crowd takes up its position in the cemetery and the gardens adjoining. The wary horsemen stand out in the open; some of them make ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... need Bayard to bring home a sack of lime for my mortar. And you are over thoughtful for Madcap. I walked up to inspect the pasture, and there is enough to last the pair for a week. It is odds, too, we find some burnt lands at the back of these woods, with patches of good grass. Let us keep the horses up here, at any rate until the nights turn ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the fighting near Ypres on October 29, "we experienced ... the action of the 'minenwerfer,' or trench-mortar. This piece, though light enough to be wheeled by two men, throws a shell weighing 187 lbs. The spherical shell has a loose stem which is loaded into the bore and drops out in flight. It ranges about 350 yards at 45 deg. elevation. The shell is a thin-walled ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... brilliancy. There are two round holes for ventilation in the ceiling: the only windows are two which are at the lower end of the hall, and look out on a gloomy courtyard surrounded by a high wall, on whose ridged top is a forbidding array of broken bottles imbedded in the mortar. On an elevated platform at one side, as high as the dancers' heads, sits the orchestra "composed of artists of talent," thirteen in number; and it is but justice to say that they make excellent music—far better than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Mortar-boats covered with green branches for the purpose of fooling the enemy, as no one could tell at any distance at all whether these were or were not olive-branches, steamed up the river and bombarded Forts Jackson and St. Philip till the stunned ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... and Asiatic shores with their forts—Kilid Bahr, Chimilik, Kum Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we want of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... corn-meal is used. Each family has a mill for grinding the kernels into meal, while for beating it into hominy they use a crude mortar, made perhaps by burning a hole in the top ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... are duly roasted, and well cleansed, they put them into a large Mortar to reduce them into a gross Powder, which they afterwards grind upon a Stone till it is very fine, which requires ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... tinged the whole course of his thought. I doubt whether he was ever called upon by founders of institutions of any sort for counsel without his warning them to beware of spending their money in bricks and mortar. The building being already started before he took charge, and the three other objects being sanctioned by law, he was, of course, hampered in carrying out his views. But he did his utmost to reduce to a ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... a pound of sweet almonds and three ounces of bitter, turn them into cold water for a few minutes; then you must pound them very fine in a stone mortar, if you have a marble one so much the better, and do it ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... pound in a mortar to a smooth paste, a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, and mix them with the yolks of six hard boiled eggs grated, mid a pint of cream, which must first have been boiled or it will curdle in the soup. Season it with nutmeg and mace. Stir the mixture into the soup, and let it boil afterward ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... front windows.... To see some of them finished and standing, and then the huge blocks lying about, looks so massy, and carries one, in imagination, to the ruined piles of ancient Babylon. I despise the infernal bogus brick columns plastered over with mortar. Marble is the cheapest building-stone ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... trees had been cut off as if by one shell, about ten feet above the ground, but in another, where nothing whatever remained but piles of stone and mortar, a great elm had apparently ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... them were two pieces taken from the Muscovites, each of them weighing 18,000 lbs. weight, and carrying a bullet of 96 lbs. weight, as much more as the greatest whole cannon carries. There was also a basilisk of nineteen feet in length, very extraordinary, and a great mortar-piece of brass of a fathom and three fingers in diameter at the mouth of it; with many other pieces of brass ordnance taken from the Poles in their wars with them, which were now but of little use; nor were those huge pieces capable ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... possible, put them into a pot over a gentle fire with very little water, stirring it often with a wooden spoon; when dissolved, add the salts of tartar and powdered chalk; take it off the fire, add the arsenic, and stir the whole gently; lastly, put in the camphor, which must first be pounded in a mortar with a little spirits of wine. When the whole is properly mixed together it will have the consistence of paste. It may be preserved in tin or earthenware pots, well closed and cautiously labelled. When wanted for use it ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... chosen as a manufactory for so destructive an article: I suppose the great command of water for the machinery is the chief inducement to fix it here. The powder is mixed by pounding, the mortars being of rosewood, and the pestles of the same shod with copper; yet the mortar-hoops are iron, which seems to me to be a strange oversight. I do not understand these things, however; but the machinery interested me: it is extremely simple, and the timber used in the construction very beautiful. The principal mill ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... looked out to ascertain where the sentries were posted, and was thankful to see that none were opposite my cell window. By working away into the masonry, I found that I could clear one of the bars out of its socket, both above and below. The particles of stone and mortar which I dug out, I carefully brushed off into my hand and placed on the ground where my bed stood. By morning, to my great joy, I found that the bar moved, and that it could be wrenched out without ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... canoe on the river; she can help to hoe the young corn, and can find the wild bees' honey in the woods, gather the scarlet fruit when it is fully ripe and falls from the trees, and help her mother to pound the corn in the great wooden mortar. All this, and much more, as you will see, Manenko can do; for every little girl on the round world can help her mother, and do ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... building a little house of red bricks, and it was the tap-tap-tapping of his trowel, or mortar-shovel, that ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... a man should know how to do everything in the world." Mr B.—Very right; the more knowledge he acquires the better. T.—And therefore Harry and I are going to build a house. Mr B.—To build a house! Well, and have you laid in a sufficient quantity of brick and mortar? "No, no," said Tommy, smiling; "Harry and I can build houses without brick and mortar." Mr B.—What are they to be made of, then—cards? "Dear sir," answered Tommy, "do you think we are such ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... ones you may rub or pound down till every inch of the motherly bosom shall feel their pressure. Upon this first course of—pebbles, if you please, lay larger ones that shall overlap and bind them together, using mortar if you wish entire solidity. As the wall rises, introduce enough of large size to bind the whole thoroughly. Above the footing the imperfect bearings of the larger stones are of less consequence, since there is little danger of their crushing ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... exact position which each of the feet of the bricklayer should occupy with relation to the wall, the mortar box, and the pile of bricks, and so made it unnecessary for him to take a step or two toward the pile of bricks and back again each time ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... you were born a poet, and have mistaken your art. Prythee excuse me, who am but a poor soldier, for marring so fine a rhapsody with any thing so sublunary; but, methinks, for an enemy's quarters, yonder fort shows as peaceable a front of stone and mortar as one could ask for. What can it mean that they ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... Big-foot, hurrying over to him. "The thing is sealed up with mortar. Hasn't been used in fifty cats' lives. Wonder ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... the 2nd of March. Anotolo may be said to be half-way between Zulla and Magdala. Letters were received from the prisoners, stating that Theodore was still engaged in efforts to get up his ordnance and heavy baggage to Magdala; but, impeded by his mortar, it was not likely that he could reach that stronghold until the first week ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... hotly engaged with a large force of Rumi. Rumi armed for the first time with heavier weapons, mortar-like guns that hurled pods of smothering dust that caused almost instant strangulation. Rumi who attacked suddenly, giving them time only to drop to the ground and set up the Bannings and machine guns before three ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... the walls of hot rooms, &c., should be specified to be executed with an extra neat joint, and should bond to less than 12 in. to the foot; otherwise the effect of the unwieldy mortar joints is clumsy. This applies equally to walling and to arches and vaults. Work which may pass as fair in ordinary cases, looks coarse and rough in the glazed interior walls of a bath. In selecting glazed bricks there is some difficulty in obtaining ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... hill on which the castle stood was itself enclosed with a second stockade; the edge of the brow above that again was defended by a stout high wall of flints and mortar, crenellated at the top. There were no towers or bastions. An old and ivy-grown building stood inside the wall; it dated from the time of the ancients; it had several gables, and was roofed with tiles. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... here is the greatest seeming deviation from the original lines of the building. The greatest height of the Babil mound is 130 or 140 feet. It is mainly composed of sun-dried brick, but shows signs of having been faced with fire-burnt brick, carefully cemented with an excellent white mortar. The bricks of this outer facing bear the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar. A very small portion of the original structure has been laid bare enough however to show that the lines of the building did not slope like those ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... mountainous crescent, and here we have another deserted settlement smaller than Farmidan, also to all appearance not more than a century old, and directly under the lee of the precipitous rocky mountains. A high building of a rich burnt-sienna colour, with a dome of stone and mortar—the latter said to have been mixed with camel's milk, which gives the mortar greater consistency—is to be seen here. This, too, is supposed to have been a fire temple. Its base is quadrangular, with two tiers of three windows each. A small lateral wall is next to the entrance, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... my eyes rested upon a dainty figure sitting in the chair by the dying fire, evidently engaged upon some absorbing occupation. It was a woman clad in a sprigged silk gown, the image of my lady of the dining-room portrait. What was she doing? Seemingly pounding some substance in a small mortar. As I gazed astounded a slight knock sounded on the door. My Lady seemed extraordinarily perturbed; she started violently, seemed to shake something white from the mortar as she gathered it hastily to her, moved swiftly with the slightest rustle as of a scurrying mouse and vanished ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... After all, Britannia did "rule the waves," and was more able to rule them than ever. The fleet was assembled for her majesty's personal review, and consisted of 240 steam vessels, including gun-boats, mortar-boats, and floating batteries. There were three vessels of 100 guns each, six of 91, an equal number of 80 guns, and vessels of every order; frigates, brigs, sloops, &c, had their proportionate numbers. The steam-power ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is done economically. Meat used for sandwiches should be chopped very fine and slightly moistened with cream, melted butter, olive oil or mayonnaise dressing well seasoned. Fish should be rubbed or pounded in a mortar; add enough sauce tartare to make it sufficiently moist ...
— Sandwiches • Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer
... called) were lovelier than the work of the brotherhood of St. Martin's. Gabriel felt very proud even to grind the colours for them. But as he passed over to one of the tables and began to make ready his paint mortar, the monk who had charge of the writing-room called ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... Rich and Poor: this being the offer of an excellent new Invention." The invention consists of a proposal to the Londoners of a cheap substitute for coal, devised by a "Mr. Richard Gesling, Ingineer, late deceased." Mr. Gesling's idea was that, if you take brickdust, mortar, sawdust, or the like, and make up pasteballs thereof mingled with the dust of sea-coal or Scotch coal, and with stable-litter, you will have a fuel much more economical than coal itself. But, though this is the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... I found he'd given orders, for the men came with a load of bricks and mortar, and they set to work and built up a wall in front of the stacked-up bottles, regularly bricking up the passage, just as if it was a bin of wine that was to be left for so many years to mature; after which the wall was white-washed over, the men went away, and Sir John clapped ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... mortar-toad, that seems to chase after you and jump over the top of you, and it bursts in the very trench, just scraping over ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... that, mechanically seeking a way out. There was none. The walls of the great enclosure were not like the wall of the tower. Here were no rough hewn stones, with protruding ridges of mortar set between. These walls were as smooth as glass, and just as smooth was the curved wall of ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... what I mean, indignant and not unintelligent country-practitioner? Then you don't know the history of medicine,—and that is not my fault. But don't expose yourself in any outbreak of eloquence; for, by the mortar in which Anaxagoras was pounded! I did not bring home Schenckius and Forestus and Hildanus, and all the old folios in calf and vellum I will show you, to be bullied by the proprietor of a "Wood and Bache," and a shelf of peppered sheepskin reprints ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... convincing arguments that the hostelry had been named by a whimsical fate not too dignified to stoop to punning. There were times when the hungry boarders thought the name facetious, but they conceded it to be quite exact in a descriptive sense, if its brick and mortar were intended to honor monumentally the tales of the host. His first name, August, was not an adjective of limitation as to time, for the proprietor was A. Stuffer every month and day in the year; and his son Emil, a quiet, inoffensive student of birds, a taxidermist, ornithologist ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... of the minor functionaries of the establishment, with buildings to contain records, etc. The latter are mean, and altogether unworthy of the neighbourhood. They were plastered on the exterior, and observing a hole in the mortar, I approached and found to my surprise, that here, in the heart of the English capital, as a part of the legislative and judicial structures, in plain view, and on the most frequented square of the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... are the walls of stone and mortar to that? We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. - But our Captain ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the privateers was a 13-inch brass mortar weighing nearly three thousand pounds, which was taken to Cambridge, where (according to the same veracious narrator of the "powder cry," the witty Provincial colonel), it was the occasion of a great jubilation. "To crown the glorious scene," ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of the Mosaic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
