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Mortar   Listen
noun
Mortar  n.  A chamber lamp or light. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mortar" Quotes from Famous Books



... unsearchable judgment of God revenged on the grandchild of Edward the Third: and so it fell out, even to the last of that line, that in the second or third descent they were all buried under the ruins of those buildings, of which the mortar had been tempered with innocent blood. For Richard the Second, who saw both his Treasurers, his Chancellor, and his Steward, with divers others of his counsellors, some of them slaughtered by the people, others in his absence executed by his enemies, yet he always took himself ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... better soldier, he might have lain low, and let the fugitives entice their pursuers after them to their own destruction. But this had not occurred to the youth who had recently changed the pestle and mortar of a chemist's dispensary for the sword of a mounted infantry leader, and he did his best, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... four high. The walls consisted of beams scarcely squared, joined together with wooden mortices and pegs. The roof, which was probably flat, consisted of oak planks, the spaces between which had been filled in with mortar made of sand and grease. On the ground-floor lay several flint implements, showing no signs of having been polished, a quartz wedge, and a stone chisel, which had evidently seen long service. This chisel, the discoverers say, corresponded ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... themselves to cut trenches at all; they merely levelled the space intended to be covered, and, having probably watered it to settle the soil, they at once laid the bricks upon the surface. When the house was finished, the scraps of mortar, the broken bricks, and all the accumulated refuse of the work, made a bed of eight inches or a foot in depth, and the base of the wall thus buried served instead of a foundation. When the new house rose on the ruins of an older one decayed by time or ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... by Voltaire? Yes, on reading that, it has every internal evidence; distinguishes itself from the surrounding pieces, like a slab of compact polished stone, in a floor rammed together out of ruinous old bricks, broken bottles and mortar-dust;—agrees, too, if you examine by the microscope, with the external indications, which are sure and at last clear, though infinitesimally small; and is beyond doubt Voltaire's, if it were now good ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of the Roman nobles, or the flourishing towns of Roman citizens. Upon the sites of most of these old-world places new towns have been constructed; hence it is difficult often to trace the foundations of Roman cities in the midst of the masses of modern bricks and mortar. Hence we fly to the villages; and sometimes, as at Silchester, near a little English village, we find the remains of a large, important, and flourishing town, where the earth has kept safely for us during many centuries the treasures and memories ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... its cavity by rubbing it with wet sand; they are to be mingled for an instant with a bone or horn spatula, and then rubbed together for six minutes; then the mass is to be scraped together from the mortar and pestle, which is to take four minutes; then to be again rubbed for six minutes. Four minutes are then to be devoted to scraping the powder into a heap, and the second third of the hundred grains of sugar of milk ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the melancholy little house We built to be so gay with. God is just. King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, The walls become illumined, brick from brick Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, That gold of his I did cement them with! Let us but love each other. Must you go? That Cousin here again? he waits outside? Must see you—you, and not with me? Those loans? More gaming debts to pay? you smiled ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... indeed, a black robin. In size, form, flight, manners, note, call, there is hardly an appreciable difference. The bird starts up with the same flirt of the wings, and calls out in the same jocund, salutatory way, as he hastens off. The nest, of coarse mortar in the fork of a tree, or in an outbuilding, or in the side of a wall, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... knowledge of history and of the belles-lettres is here absolutely necessary; and without this share of knowledge at least, to affect the character of an historian, is as vain as to endeavour at building a house without timber or mortar, or brick or stone. Homer and Milton, who, though they added the ornament of numbers to their works, were both historians of our order, were masters of all ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... who has been going about telling a pitiful story of being wounded by a trench-mortar during the Jutland battle is now regarded by the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various

... world-embracing church devoted to the simple worship of God and the inculcation of morals. To many a religion without a future-life annex may appear as unfinished as a building without a roof; as ephemeral, as unstable as one put together without nails or mortar; but such forget that future reward and punishment was no part of the early Hebrew cult—that the doctrine of man's immortality is but a late and apparently a Gentile graft; that the Buddhist religion, which has held the souls of countless millions in thrall, teaches ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... want a pretty thing to ornament your room, go and pick up some round, clear pebbles, of different colours, and give one side of them a polish at the grindstone; then get some pieces of brick, and join them together in the shape of an arch, or any thing you fancy, with a little mortar; spread more mortar, thick and rough, over the front, and, while it is wet, stick in your pebbles, with the shining side outmost, with bits of glass, moss, sealing-wax, and any gay thing that comes in your way. I have seen ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth

... de ville, captives in the story below, had made the same resolution. They had no arms, but they barricaded the doors and resolved to defend themselves from the murderous throng outside, howling for their blood. Two guns and a mortar had been brought by the mob to fire on the prison and the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... all haste to rejoin our companions. And now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... side go all three, splashing and spattering through the mortar-like mud, which, flung up in flakes by their horses' hoofs, is scattered afar in ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... was a just one was apparent from the reports of both McGowan's and the Railroad Company's experts. These showed that the McGowan mortar held but little cement, and that not of the best; that the backing of the masonry was composed of loose rubble instead of split stone, and that the collapse of his structure was not caused by the downpour, but by the caving in of culverts and spillways, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... local opinion was in favour of the action of the Dean and Chapter. When it came to moving the stones, after all the rubbish was removed, it was found that the mortar had crumbled into mere dust, and could be swept away; and that the stones themselves could be lifted from their positions, without the use of any tool. What has actually been done is this: the north gable has been taken down ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... from the shells and scrape off the brown skin, pound them to a paste in a mortar with the hard-boiled yolk and sweet herbs. When quite smooth, add the shalot and parsley minced, the salt, pepper, lemon rind, baked potato, and bread crumbs. Mix all well together, then add the two raw yolks; stir well ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... quickly to undo the large package, and as the wrappings finally came off, I could see that it was some bulky instrument that looked like a huge gun, or almost a mortar. It had a sort of barrel that might have been, say, forty inches in length, and where the breechlock should have been on an ordinary gun was a great hemispherical cavity. There was also a peculiar arrangement of springs and wheels ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... siege began, and while we were yet at this point of the line, we got a mortar-battery—two guns—into position. One clear, calm evening, the Yankees proceeded to try a little of this new-fangled music on our friends across the lines. The mortars were planted some distance to the right, and in such a position that we had a fine chance for observation. The ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... wood fire will not melt granite. Another pundit says they are volcanic. O wondrous volcano to spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by means of coarse glass, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland in 1835. My record of just fifty years ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Avenue, too new for wall paper, still exuding the indescribable cold, white smell of mortar in the drying, was none the less—-and with the flexible personality of houses—taking on the print of the family. A mission dining-room set, ordered wholesale through the machinations of one of Mrs. Becker's euchre friends, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... such baffles should be tight. The setting should be so constructed that the boiler is free to expand without interfering with the brickwork. This ability to expand applies also to blow-off and other piping. After erection all mortar and chips of brick should be cleaned from the pressure parts. The tie rods should be set up snug and then slacked slightly until the setting has become thoroughly warm after the first firing. The boiler ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... the other whilst the brother's corpse is still palpitating beneath that terrible stroke. They get married, with not unreasonable haste, but no sooner do they reach Beechcroft, a house of evil import if ever bricks and mortar had such a character, than they are driven asunder ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... looked up at the building with a little wave of the hand, indicating lightly the stones and mortar. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... flash of volcanic fire out of the vale of Siddim, vitrifying the clay of it, and fastening the slime, only to end in wilder scattering; according to the fate of those oldest, mightiest, immodestest of builders, of whom it is told in scorn, "They had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar." ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... such critics as Bielinski, Dobroliubov, and Nekrasov—a remarkable poet—disproves this statement. Without a Gogol the later novelists would be rather in the air. He first fashioned the bricks and mortar of native fiction. Read Kropotkin, Osip-Luri, E. Semenov, Walizewski, Melchior de Voguee, and Leo Wiener if you doubt the wealth and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... guarded,—on one occasion at least by eight juniors armed with bayonets,—from the sophomores, who were infuriated by the fact that the head of the intended victim, a skull furnished from medical sources, was crowned by a mortar-board, the sophomore class insignia. A formal trial followed, presided over by a Pontifex Maximus, in which a Judex, an Advocatus Pro, and an Advocatus Con participated, with the foregone result that the culprit was sentenced to be hanged, shot, and burned; ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... of only about two hundred invalids and recruits. Napoleon's regular army was employed on the Danube and in the Peninsula. The British attacking force consisted of thirty-seven ships of the line, twenty-three frigates, thirty-three sloops of war, twenty-eight gun, mortar, and bomb vessels, thirty-six smaller vessels, eighty-two gunboats, innumerable transports, with over forty thousand troops, and an immense artillery train; making in all, says the English historian, "an hundred thousand combatants." A landing was ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... his long spurs so scratched and tickled her, that they produced the effect of an emetic. No sooner was he in, but out he was squirted with the most horrible impetuosity, like a ball or a shell from the calibre of a mortar. Sphinx was at this time quite sea-sick, and the unfortunate count was driven forth like a sky-rocket, and landed upon the peak of Teneriffe, plunged over head and ears in the snow—requiescat ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... the very next day after we moved out, with a peach-basket and a fire-shovel. But my poor bush was buried under seven feet of yellow sand. To-day there's seven stories of brick and mortar. So all I've got from the old place is just this furniture of ma's and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... side street, and took his stand behind a huge wooden column surmounted by a gilded mortar and pestle. Here he was about to rip open the envelope, but a glance across the street discovered a policeman looking at him. Bog felt guilty and awkward. He coughed, and thrust the letter into his pocket, and moved ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... defence, they might most materially have annoyed the invading squadron, and perhaps frustrated the impending attack; for the British ships were crowded in an anchoring ground of little extent:—it was calm, so that mortar-boats might have acted against them to the utmost advantage; and they were within range of shells from Amak Island. A few fell among them; but the enemy soon ceased to fire. It was learned afterwards, that, fortunately for the fleet, the bed of the mortar ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... probably always be so. There being practically no stone in the country and wood being very scarce, buildings were constructed entirely of bricks, some of them merely sun-dried, others kiln-baked. The natural wells of bitumen supplied a tenacious mortar. [Footnote: Compare Genesis XI 3: "And they had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar."] The ruins that have been explored at Tello, Nippur, and elsewhere, belong to city walls, houses, and temples. The ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... of Gloucester cheese and 1/4 pound of Cheshire cheese. Beat this scraped cheese in a mortar with the yolks of 4 eggs, 1/4 pound of fresh butter, and the crumbs of a French roll boiled in cream until soft. When all this is well mixed and pounded to a paste, add the beaten whites of 4 eggs. Should the paste seem too stiff, 1 or ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... assemblage of dwellings below. Here, and in the adjoining hamlet of Millbeck, the effects of manufactures and of agriculture may be seen and compared. The old cottages are such as the poet and the painter equally delight in beholding. Substantially built of the native stone without mortar, dirtied with no white lime, and their long low roofs covered with slate, if they had been raised by the magic of some indigenous Amphion's music, the materials could not have adjusted themselves more beautifully in accord with the surrounding scene; and time ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... you not borrow from your briefs and criticism a couple of days to look about you here? I dare not ask Mrs. Jeffrey till next year, when my hand will be out of the mortar-tub; and at present my only spare bed was till of late but accessible by the feudal accommodation of a drawbridge made of two deals, and still requires the clue of Ariadne.... I am like one of Miss ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... in with great severity, and the sufferings of the army were extreme. In a few days, however, these sufferings were considerably diminished by the erection of logged huts, filled up with mortar, which, after being dried, formed comfortable habitations, and gave content to men long unused to the conveniences of life. The order of a regular encampment was observed; and the only appearance of winter quarters, was the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... in this country were chiefly constructed of stone or flint, according to the part of the country in which the one material or other prevailed, embedded in mortar, bonded at certain intervals throughout with regular horizontal courses or layers of large flat Roman bricks or tiles, which, from the inequality of thickness and size, do not appear to have been shaped in ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... who have no ear for true harmony. They paint in Flanders, only to deceive the external eye, things that gladden you and of which you cannot speak ill, and saints and prophets. Their painting is of stuffs, bricks and mortar, the grass of the fields, the shadows of trees, and bridges and rivers, which they call landscapes, and little figures here and there; and all this, although it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reasonableness or art, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... house, did the baker snatch out the rest of the ovenful to feed his hungry family as they groped about for safety in the terrible darkness? In several bakeries you will see, also, the mills. They are great mortar-shaped things standing taller than a man. The heavy stone above turned around upon the stone below. A man poured wheat in at the top. It fell down and was ground between the two stones and dropped out at the bottom ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall

... of the fireplace, and as soon as the smoke cleared the young men gave the inside of the chimney a thorough going over. They could see the blue sky away up above. The opening was large, but far too small for any human being to enter down it. The mortar between the bricks seemed for the most part undisturbed. Breitmann made the first discovery of any importance. Just above his height, standing in the chimney itself, he saw a single brick projecting beyond its mates. He reached up, and ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... pleasure from warring against St Jude's. It helped him to enjoy his meals. He slept the better for it. After a little turn up with a Judy he was fuller of that spirit of manly fortitude and forbearance so necessary to those whom Fate brought frequently into contact with Mr Dexter. The Judies wore mortar-boards, and it was an enjoyable pastime sending these spinning into space during one of the usual rencontres in the High Street. From the fact that he and his friends were invariably outnumbered, there was a sporting element in these affairs, ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... sorry plight when the States took possession of it. As at Zutphen, the substantial burghers had wandered away, and the foreign soldiers bivouacking there so long had turned the stately old Hanseatic city into a brick and mortar wilderness. Hundreds of houses had been demolished by the garrison, that the iron might be sold and the woodwork burned for fuel; for the enemy had conducted himself as if feeling in his heart that the occupation could not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a grand error which many fall into in building, looking as they do only at the extent of wood and timber; or stone and mortar in the structure, and paying no attention to the surroundings, which in most cases contribute more to the effect of the establishment than the structure itself, and which, if uncultivated or neglected, any amount of expenditure in building will ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... who conceives an idea receive a greater reward than he who puts the idea into execution? Why should the man who works with his brain have more of the sweets of life than he who works with his hands? Why should the man who lays the brick have more of the world's goods than he who carries the brick mortar to him? These questions do not apply alone to the capitalist, but also to the laborer as well, and as long as the laboring classes champion the cutthroat policy of grading man's allowance according to his ability, of ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... white fangs bury themselves in the back of Savage, who with a kind of sigh fell forward on to his face. Then there was a convulsion of those shining folds, followed by a sound as of bones being ground up in a steam-driven mortar. ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... the trigger, ready to bring to the present, keeping silence in the attitude of expectation. From that point a piece of cannon was stationed at the mouth of each of the side streets which open out of the main road of the Faubourg. Occasionally there was a mortar. To obtain a clear idea of this military arrangement one must imagine two rosaries, extending along the two sides of the Faubourg St. Antoine, of which the soldiers should form the links and the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... it. And then various exhibitions of the tortures of the damned. A liar bound to a post was having his tongue pulled out by a devil— slowly, with artistic jerks; it was already longer than the owner's body. Another devil was pounding another Soul in a mortar so vigorously that the sound of the braying could be heard above all the din of the machinery. A little farther on was a man being eaten alive by two serpents having women's faces; one serpent was white, the other blue. The white had been his wife, the blue his concubine. All the tortures known ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... 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. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... where they burned quantities of it to scatter over the clay-soil, and first wetting it with water till it fell into powder, and then mixing it with sand which he riddled from the gravel he dug from the garden, he made it into good strong mortar. When its bed was at length made for it, he took the wheel and put in a longer axis, to project on one side beyond the gudgeon-block, or hollow in which it turned; and upon this projecting piece he fixed a large ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... Carrie was too vague for me there; but I went to bed at last, and dreamed that we two were building houses on the seashore. Carrie's was the prettier, for it was all of sea-weed and bright-colored shells that looked as though the sun were shining on them, while mine was made of clay, tempered by mortar. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... visitation all was carefully replaced, and the intervening mortar as carefully preserved; the whole had, probably, been whitewashed a hundred times; and, that I might fill up all remaining interstices, I pounded the white stuff this afforded, wetted it, made a brush of my hair, then applied this plaster, washed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... fixed on the perpendicular supporters by a knob, formed on the top of the upright stone, which entered into a hollow, cut in the crossing stone. This is a proof, that the enormous edifice was raised by a people who had not yet the knowledge of mortar; which cannot be supposed of the Danes, who came hither in ships, and were not ignorant, certainly, of the arts of life. This proves, likewise, the stones not to be factitious; for they that could mould such durable masses, could do much more than ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... and his references to "stone churches," or "churches of stone and mortar," have many parallels in Boehme. Dinah of the Old Testament, for example, is "nothing else but a figure of our stone churches and our colleges with their ministers!" and Jacob's concubine, again, "signifieth nothing else but the stone churches in which ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... young women need never despair. The young doctor gave a certain friend of yours to understand that, if she chose to be Mrs. Glauber, she was welcome to ornament the surgery! I told his impudence that the gilt pestle and mortar was quite ornament enough; as if I was born, indeed, to be a country surgeon's wife! Mr. Glauber went home seriously indisposed at his rebuff, took a cooling draught, and is now quite cured. Sir Pitt applauded my resolution ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... spring, caught in a stone trough. Attention had been given to the trees. Below me stood a wall, which, though rough, was not the haphazard thing men pile up in the last recesses of the hills, but formed of chosen stones, and these bound together with mortar. On my right was a deep little dale with children playing in it—and this' I afterwards learned was called a 'combe': delightful memory! All our deeper hollows are called the same at home, and even the Welsh have the word, but they spell it cwm; it is their mountain way. Well, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... mortar do not make Charleston, but the people with whom I have always lived. I will certainly take you to a place of safety, if your father cannot; but my duty is here. I would not only lose the respect of every one, but also my own self-respect, if I did not cast in my ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... man—supposed to be on the watch—fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment. Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table. The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals—in plain words, the dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls, icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at intervals in the red fire-light. No wind whistles outside the lonely ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... and posting this letter, Admet-el-Abdoun was gathering together in a bundle all his wearing apparel and household belongings, consisting of three old hooded mantles, two cloaks of goat's wool, a mortar for grinding alcazuz, an iron lamp, and a copper skillet full of pesetas, which he dug up from a corner of the little yard of his house. He loaded with all this his one wife, slave, odalisque, or whatever she ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... call galley- tiles in England, all made of the finest china, and the figures exceeding fine indeed, with extraordinary variety of colours, mixed with gold, many tiles making but one figure, but joined so artificially, the mortar being made of the same earth, that it was very hard to see where the tiles met. The floors of the rooms were of the same composition, and as hard as the earthen floors we have in use in several parts of England; as hard as stone, and smooth, but not burnt and painted, except some smaller ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... entrance is of grey limestone in undisturbed horizontal strata, and this is so plainly marked in the roof-supporting pillars as to give them the appearance of having been prepared by skillful hands, in several blocks, and afterwards arranged in place without the aid of mortar. Unfortunately, all efforts to photograph this wonderful portico have failed to give satisfaction—its position above the river being such as to afford no point for the proper placing of the camera; but a second visit made for the purpose of trying was far from being a loss, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... coquettish blue turban, slouched forward as one thoroughly ashamed of himself. The Slave of the Lamp climbed down from the piano, and dispassionately kicked him. "Play up, Turkey," he said; "this is serious." But there fell on the door the knock of authority. It happened to be King, in gown and mortar-board, enjoying a Saturday ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... tower of the world whence the trade of the world and the political and economical bustle of the world may be observed, in a way impossible in any other part of the globe—here Marx found what he sought and needed, the bricks and mortar for his work. 'Capital' could be ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... wheat flour, be manufactured into maccaroni or vermicelli, or at least the maccaroni made from it falls to powder when put into hot water. The fresh plantain, however, when boiled whole, forms a pretty dense firm mass, of greater consistency and toughness than the potato. The mass, beaten in a mortar, constitutes the foo-foo of the negroes. The plantain meal cannot be got into this state unless by mixing it up with water to form a stiff dough, and then boiling it in ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... result being a reddish-brown mass composed of the micro-organisms contained in kumys ferment, casein, and a small quantity of fat. Twenty grains of this yeast are ground up in a small quantity of freshly drawn milk in a clean porcelain mortar, and shaken in a quart bottle with one pound of fresh milk,—all mare's milk, naturally,—after which it is lightly corked with a bit of wadding and set away in a temperature of 22 degrees to 26 degrees Reaumur. In about twenty-four ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... great stretch of courtesy I may call them such, are very small, consisting each of but one room about ten feet square; they had been built of stones collected in the cave, and laid loosely in the wall without mortar; they had fireplaces and chimneys, good wooden floors, and doors, but no windows, as there was neither light to let in nor prospect to view without. As there was neither rain nor snow fall, neither midday heat nor dew of night, beneath that stony cope, roofs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... shoe. There's already one bar removed from the chuck-hole (No use trying to reproduce the dialect). If we saw out another bar, that will give us enough room for going through. Then it will be easy to dig out the mortar between the bricks, in the jail wall. Once out, we can make for the river bottoms, and, by wading in the water, even their bloodhounds can't ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... stables, built originally for a granary. The towers are the Luginsland (Look in the land) on the east, and the Fuenfeckiger Thurm, the Five-cornered tower, at the west end (on the left hand as we thus face it). The Luginsland was built by the townspeople in the hard winter of 1377. The mortar for building it, tradition says, had to be mixed with salt, so that it might be kept soft and be worked in spite of the severe cold. The chronicles state that one could see right into the Burggraf's Castle from this tower, and the town was therefore kept informed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... very small pieces or scraped into threads, and boiled in water sufficient to cover them until the pieces are soft and easily mashed. By this time the water will be pretty much boiled down, and the whole mass should then be poured into a mortar and beaten up, adding at the same time a few grains of wheat. When done, the paste thus made may be put into an earthen vessel and kept. When required to be used, it should be melted or softened over the fire, adding goose grease or ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... strongly, as I say, or in not feeling, as Epicurus said. Now this loss of feeling is caused by being entirely absorbed in the cultivation of virtue, or of real good and felicity, in such wise that Regulus did not feel the chest, Lucretia the dagger, Socrates the poison, Anaxagoras the mortar, Scaevola the fire, Cocles the abyss, and other worthies felt not those things which would torment and fill with terror the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... loft, if the house-owner was well off. Each cabin had a hand-mill and a hominy block; the last was borrowed from the Indians, and was only a large block of wood, with a hole burned in the top, as a mortar, where the pestle was worked. If there were any sugar maples accessible, they were tapped ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... table in five pages; medicine, topography, theology, all right, and Jones has gone home to his family some hours. Sir Christopher is the architect of St. Paul's. He has not laid the stones or carried up the mortar. There is a great deal of carpenter's and joiner's work in novels which surely a smart professional hand might supply. A smart professional hand? I give you my word, there seem to me parts of novels—let us say the love-making, the "business," the villain in the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of them. It is not a pretty nest; it is large, and coarsely put together, of old dried grass, roots, and dead leaves, plastered inside with clay, mixed with bits of straw, so as to form a sort of mortar. You know, Lady Mary, that the blackbird and thrush build nests, and ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... up old bones, and cut them to pieces at the joints, and if they were full of worms and maggots, they would scald them over the fire to make the vermine come out, and then boil them, and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar, and so eat them. They would eat horse's guts, and ears, and all sorts of wild birds which they could catch; also bear, venison, beaver, tortoise, frogs, squirrels, dogs, skunks, rattlesnakes; ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

... bells. It is the church of the San Gabriel Mission. All other buildings of the institution have disappeared; but this old edifice remains, and, unless purposely destroyed by man, may stand here for five centuries more, since its enormous walls are five feet thick, and the mortar used in their construction has rendered them almost as solid as if hewn from rock. As I descended, at the station a quarter of a mile away, a little barefooted Mexican boy approached and shyly offered me his hand. "Are you the Father," ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... transparent, not viscid, excessively elastic matter, precisely like caoutchouc, attached to two sets of rootlets on the same branch. These threads proceeded from the bark of the rootlet at one end, and at the other end were firmly attached to particles of silex or mortar from the wall. There could be no mistake in this observation, as I played with the threads for a long time under the microscope, drawing them out with my dissecting- needles and letting them spring back again. Yet I looked repeatedly at other rootlets similarly treated, and could ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... rear out of range of the Spanish rifles; so far as we could see, it accomplished very little. The dynamite gun was brought up to the right of the regimental line. It was more effective than the regular artillery because it was fired with smokeless powder, and as it was used like a mortar from behind the hill, it did not betray its presence, and those firing it suffered no loss. Every few shots it got out of order, and the Rough Rider machinists and those furnished by Lieutenant Parker—whom we by this time began to consider as an exceedingly valuable member of our own regiment—would ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... discernible in the preparation of forcemeats. A common cook is satistified if she chops or minces the ingredients and moistens them with an egg scarcely beaten, but this is a very crude and imperfect method; they should be pounded together in a mortar until not a lump or fibre is perceptible. Further directions will be given in the proper place, but this is a rule which must be strictly attended to by those who wish to attain any excellence in this ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... taken for the couple in a very fashionable row of buildings abutting upon the Bayswater Road, called Princess Royal Crescent. The house was quite new, and the street being unfinished had about it a strong smell of mortar, and a general aspect of builders' poles and brickbats; but nevertheless, it was acknowledged to be a quite correct locality. From one end of the crescent a corner of Hyde Park could be seen, and the other abutted on a very handsome terrace indeed, in which lived an ambassador,—from ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... requisite distance, and their other ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape of one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger. The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish, mortar—anything to keep out the weather. The fires were made in the centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only chimney. No Highland hut or Irish cabin could ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of 300 pounds, and a culverine of 150; and in this second post was a passe-volant like the former, both belonging to the great gallies. In another place was an iron saker of 12 pounds, a small cannon of 16 pounds, a falcon of 6 pounds, and a mortar throwing a ball of 400 pounds. In another post was a culverine of 100 pounds. By this prodigious train of artillery, the Turks had battered down one tower, so that they could easily mount the breach, the tower not being very high, and the ditch not having been dug to a sufficient ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... them very fine, or pound them in a mortar," replied the housekeeper anxiously. "I don't know of no other way of ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... many a day. Yes'um, beat rice many a day for my grandmother en my mamma too. Had a mortar en a pestle dat beat rice wid. Dey take big tree en saw log off en set it up just like a tub. Den dey hollow it out in de middle en take pestle dat have block on both it end en beat rice in dat mortar. Beat it long time en take it out en fan it en den ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... achieve wonders almost past belief. What a contrast this, between the cultured, logical, profound, masterly reason of a Gladstone and that of the hod-carrier who has never developed or educated his reason beyond what is necessary to enable him to mix mortar ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... van Coehoorn (circ. 1641-1704), a Dutch military engineer, the contemporary and rival of Vauban, invented a mortar which bore his name. He was the author of a celebrated work on fortification, published ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... day, week after week, month after month they endured still; swept by rifle and machine-gun fire, blown up by mines, buried alive by mortar bombs, their very trenches smitten flat by high explosives—yet they endured and held on. They died all day and every day, but their places were filled by men just as fiercely determined. And ever as the countless German batteries fell ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... 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 quarts of ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey

... stands apart; By years of toil you've learned the trick (Like PHEIDIAS with his plastic art) Of slapping mortar on a brick; Touched too the summit Of science with your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various

... pine lumber, and contained but one room, to which one window gave light and one door admission. Its weatherbeaten sides revealed a virgin innocence of paint. Against one end of the house, and occupying half its width, there stood a huge brick chimney: the crumbling mortar had left large cracks between the bricks; the bricks themselves had begun to scale off in large flakes, leaving the chimney sprinkled with unsightly blotches. These evidences of decay were but partially concealed by a creeping vine, which extended its slender branches ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... 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 ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... Kentucky. It was named after old Colonel Whitney, the man who built the first brick house in Kentucky. It was in the fall of the year, and the mortar was freezing, and they mixed whiskey with their mortar to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... sticks my stones and my bricks With mortar I takes from the snobbish? All who can feel for the public weal Likes the public-house ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... steep and slippery. One instant he was toppling over backward, the next, by a mighty effort, he had recovered his equilibrium, and finally managed to reach a safer place. As he hurried on another pillar went down. The roof sagged lower, and an avalanche of mortar and tiling slid into the court below. Yells, groans, and cries ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... indeed many parts of the town, less than a century back were studded with gardens, but the flowers have had to give place to the more prosaic bricks and mortar, and householders desirous of floral ornaments have now in a great measure to resort to the nursery grounds of the professed horticulturists. Foremost among the nurseries of the neighbourhood are those of Mr. R.H. Vertegans, Chad Valley, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... wanted to make up the amount"; "the great Victoria Bridge has been being built more than two years"; "when I reach London, the ship Leviathan will be being built"; "if my orders had been followed, the coat would have been being made yesterday"; "if the house had then been being built, the mortar would have been being mixed."' We may reply that, while awkward instances of the old form are most abundant in our literature, there is no fear that the repulsive elaborations which have been worked out in ridicule of the new forms will prove to have been anticipations of future usage. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... little Russian children," said old Peter, "when she can get them. She usually only eats bad ones, because the good ones get away. She is bony all over, and her eyes flash, and she drives about in a mortar, beating it with a pestle, and sweeping up her tracks with a besom, so that you cannot tell which way she ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome

... the casual observer would appear to have been set in the wall to fill in the broken corner of one of the larger stones. Upon close inspection they found that it was set loosely in the wall without mortar. They dared not touch it for fear it might stop the invisible machinery that it ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... Swan:—Bone and skin your swan, and beat the flesh in a mortar, taking out the strings as you beat it; then take some clear fat bacon, and beat with the swan, and when 'tis of a light flesh colour, there is bacon enough in it; and when 'tis beaten till 'tis like dough, 'tis enough; then season it with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, all beaten ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... city. My general impressions are of crooked, narrow lanes, white-washed houses, mortar-plastered streets, in the clean quarter;—of seeing alcoves on each side, with deep recesses, with a fore-ground of red-turbaned Banyans, and a back-ground of flimsy cottons, prints, calicoes, domestics and what not; or of floors crowded with ivory tusks; or of dark ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... won. But did all the powers of the universe combine to prevent it growing? Is not that a one-sided statement of facts? Did not all the powers of the universe also combine to make it grow, if only it had valour and worth wherewith to grow? Did not the rains feed it, the very mortar in the wall give lime to its roots? Were not electricity, gravitation, and I know not what of chemical and mechanical forces, busy about the little plant, and every cell of it, kindly and patiently ready to help it, if it ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... himself into a chair 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 with ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... at the mairie of the Eleventh Arrondissement, and had gone to Belleville. Amazed and confused by this intelligence, the mob followed its leaders. Only a few minutes before it left, two guns and a mortar had been brought to fire on the prison; they were now dragged away in ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... commands over hills and valleys, town and country; and it breaks upon one almost as a startling surprise when its beauties are seen for the first time. It is, indeed, so very unexpected to come upon such a fine and far-spreading view so suddenly and so close to bricks and mortar. Alas! the latter are fast encroaching upon this delightful but somewhat neglected spot, and unless the Croydonians are wise enough to secure the acquirement of the summit of the hill as a public open space, this splendid view will be ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... built of sticks of wood, the largest at the bottom, and the smallest at the top, and laid up with a supply of mud or clay mortar. The interstices between the logs are chinked with strips of wood and daubed with mortar both outside and in. A double cabin consists of two such buildings with a space of 10 or 12 feet between, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... no way changed. A mere stone shell, littered with fragments of wood and mortar. There was the rough wooden block on which Alan used to sit while he first frightened us with bogey-stories, and then calmed our excited nerves by rapid sallies of wild nonsense. There was the plank from behind which, erected as a barrier across the doorway, he ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... keepers in wine-warehouses, rent-collectors for the agents of old Frenchmen who have been laid up to dry in Paris, custom-house supernumeraries and court-clerks' deputies (for your second-rate Creole is a great seeker for little offices). A decaying cornice hangs over, dropping bits of mortar on passers below, like ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... difference in the size and texture of bricks from different sources. One method of making the brick spawn is as follows: Equal parts of horse dung, and cow dung, and loam soil are thoroughly mixed together to a consistency of mortar. This is pressed into the form of bricks and stood on edge to dry. When partly dry, a piece of spawn about an inch in diameter is pressed into one side of each brick. The bricks are then stood up again until thoroughly dried. They are then ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... Big-foot, hurrying over to him. "The thing is sealed up with mortar. Hasn't been used in fifty cats' lives. Wonder what's ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... has been already made. These bricks surpass in hardness and durability those of modern days, and are of different size and shape from those we are acquainted with. Those used in St. Albans are of two sizes, 17 x 8 x 2 and 11 x 51/2 x 2. The joints are wide, the mortar between the courses being almost as thick as the bricks. The window jambs and the piers were built or faced with brick; even the staircases were of brick. What stone was used is clunch, from Tottenhoe in Bedfordshire, which, according to Lord Grimthorpe, is admirably suited for ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... material, well seasoned, and of good workmanship? Is the hardware (locks, hinges, lighting fixtures, etc.) strong enough to stand usage? Are the outside walls of good material— if of brick, of good quality with good quality mortar; if of frame, of good lumber, well seasoned and well painted with three coats of paint? What kind of sheathing is used? Is wood well seasoned? Is the roofing of a material adapted to the climate and of good quality? What material is ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney

... houses suffered more than stone ones. This was attributed to the inferior mortar used by Jamaican masons, for which there can be no excuse, for the island abounds in lime. Wooden houses escaped scatheless. Every statue in the Public Gardens was thrown down, except that of Queen Victoria. The superstitious negroes were ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... life. The middle class was making money, the rich were getting richer, and Nancy, hardly more than eighteen or nineteen miles from the trenches, forgot its danger till, on the first day of January, 1916, the Germans fired several shells from a giant mortar or a marine piece into the town, one of which scattered the fragments of a big five-story apartment house all over Nancy. And on that afternoon thirty thousand people left ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... scarified by fusion. Its hardness is not superior to that of olivine or massive chrysolite. Chemical analysis shows that its composition is that of a ferruginous olivine. One gramme of the stone, crushed in an agate mortar, and acted on by a magnet, yielded 0.43 gramme of meteoric iron, which was malleable. After the removal of this a qualitative analysis was made of the residual powder. Another gramme was also taken, without picking out the metallic iron, and was tested for chlorine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... linking 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... are built with stone and mortar (son de mamposteria), others with firebricks, and they are ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... pass through Westminster, without thinking of Milton; or the Borough, without thinking of Chaucer and Shakspeare; or Gray's Inn, without calling Bacon to mind; or Bloomsbury-square, without Steele and Akenside; than I can prefer brick and mortar to wit and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture in the splendour of the recollection. I once had duties to perform which kept me out late at night, and severely taxed my health ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... philosophy for the day. But as I stood not far from them, idly watching the labors of the workmen who were carrying up the column of Aurelian—noting how one laid the stone which another brought, and how another bore along and up the dizzy ladders the mortar which others tempered, and how the larger masses of marble were raised to their places by machines worked by elephants, and how all went on in exact order—while I stood thus, the voice of the speaker frequently fell upon my ear, and at last, by its peculiarity, and especially ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... not long ago at Strasburg with us, and betrothed since then] nor Keyserling: I left them at Breslau, not to expose them to the dangers of war. They perhaps will be a little angry; but what can I do?—The rather as, on this occasion, one cannot share in the glory, unless one is a mortar! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... thereof in getting to themselves worldly power, and can make worldly mixtures to accomplish the same, such as their late agreement with their king, and hopes by him to carry on their designe, [they] may know, that the Sion promised and hoped for will not be built with such untempered mortar. As for the unjust invasion they mention, time was, when an army of Scotland came into England, not called by the supreame authority. We have said in our papers with what hearts and upon what accompt we came, and the Lord hath heard us, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... their crannies, and birds nesting in their eaves, and mason-bees filling the delicate network of their traceries—they still present angles as sharp as when they were but finished, and joints as nice as when the mortar dried in the first months of their building. This immunity from age and injury they owe partly to the imperishable nature of baked clay; partly to the care of the artists who selected and mingled the right sorts of earth, burned them with scrupulous ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... who has seamed the rebellious South with military roads to send victory along them, and bring back the groaning and the scarred. These and the rest are grand historic figures, worthy of all artistic depiction. They have looked so often into the mortar's mouth, that no bravo's blade can make them wince. Do you see the thin-haired, conical head of the viking Farragut, close by General Grant, with many naval heroes close behind, storm-beaten, and every inch Americans in ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. The whole is greater than the part: how exceedingly true! Nature abhors a vacuum: how exceedingly false and calumnious! Again, Nothing can act but where it is: with ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... Talisay kept growing and those who lived there were constantly improving it. When Father Obach, the Jesuit priest, fell through the bamboo stairway in the principal house, Rizal and his boys burned shells, made mortar, and soon built a fine stone stairway. They also did another piece of masonry work in the shape of a dam for storing water that was piped to the houses and poultry yard; the overflow from the dam was made to ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... I'll soon show them that;" and he began to feel about carefully all over the face of the stones before him, to satisfy himself before long that there had been a large roughly square opening here, which had been filled in with some pieces of stone, between which he could feel that there was mortar. ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... barley roasted in an earthen pan, then powdered in a mortar, and mixed with cold water, and drank. This is the travelling food of the country—of the Arab, the Moor, the Berebber, the Shelluh, and the Negro; and is universally used by travellers in crossing the Sahara: the Akkabas that proceed from Akka and Tatta to Timbuctoo, Houssa, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... breathless, he looked down at the bluish, white streak that nakedly crossed a little ridge, clipped to a ravine on either side, and reappeared boldly further on. Fisette picked up samples from time to time, at which his patron glanced, and finally, taking mortar and pan, crushed a fist full of ore and washed it delicately, till a long tapering tail of yellow metal clung to the rounded angle of the pan. And at that Clark asked a few questions of the mining engineer who had come with him, nodded contentedly and started back, leaving Fisette ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... pulpits, in schools and on farms and in trades, but also in commercial life and in places of extended influence. We should like to show our Samples in their Christian homes, homes which are not made of brick and mortar and boards and shingles, but which are only sheltered by these; homes where there is educated intelligence, where there are books and thoughtful minds that can appreciate them; homes where there is refinement, and where samples are examples ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... how far I could improve the means that offered themselves, and, watching my opportunity in the course of the day, with my fingers and by the aid of the stick left to stir my fire, I removed some of the decayed mortar to the right and left, and increased the aperture on the inside; but was exceedingly careful not to push any flakes, or part of the ceiling, down into the floor below. The attention I paid to this was very exact, for ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... built of freestone throughout, having no packing with trumpery within, as I was told, but all solid. The stones are large and of excellent quality, and are so exactly cut to fit the places where they are laid, that no mortar is used, only a little earth being occasionally thrown in to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... made by dropping a bunch of parsley into boiling water, and in a minute or two, when it becomes intensely green, take it up, pound it in a mortar, and then through a sieve. Use as much pulp as will color ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... than perhaps would ever have been heard within them had they stood. This tearing in pieces of the Imperial patent granting liberty of Protestant worship, this summary execution done upon senseless bricks and mortar, was an act of defiance to the Reformed religion everywhere. Protestantism was struck in the face, spat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... They have a mill made in the form of some kind of malt-mills, whose stones are firm and hard, which work by turning, and upon this mill are ground the cacaos grossly, and then between other stones they work that which is ground yet smaller, or else by beating it up in a mortar bring it ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head

... that a friend of mine was building. I watched them for an hour. They seemed to know their trade. I invited them to come over and see me. They came, took the contract for my work, hired a white man to carry mortar at a dollar a day, and when they got through it was the best job of plastering in town. I found that they had learned their trade at Tuskegee. They averaged four dollars a day each in wages. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... up in a part of the town, where he had not much acquaintance, and fearing much whether he should get into business, hired a man acquainted with such business, and made him be every morning between five and six, and often late in the evenings, working very hard at the great mortar; pounding and beating, though he had nothing to do with it, but beating some very needless thing, that all his neighbours might hear it, and find that he was in full employ, being at work early and late, and that consequently he must be a man of vast ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... grinding of corn, even in hand-mills, seem to have been universal till the Roman era, the earlier British method being to bruise the grain in a mortar.[28] Without the resources of civilization it is not easy to deal with stones hard enough for satisfactory millstones. We find that the Romans, when they came, mostly selected for this use the Hertfordshire "pudding-stone," a conglomerate of the Eocene period crammed with rolled flint ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... use in mortar, too, Lime, water, sand and hair, They nicely mix and smoothly fix, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... care to own that I hired a stout nag from the landlord's stable after dinner, and rode back at nightfall twenty miles to my old home. My heart beat to see it. Barryville had got a pestle and mortar over the door, and was called 'The Esculapian Repository,' by Doctor Macshane; a red-headed lad was spreading a plaster in the old parlour; the little window of my room, once so neat and bright, was ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... he lay stunned on the floor, and when at last he came to himself, he could hardly remember what had happened. At last his eye fell on a packet, which had fallen down with the wood and the mortar, and was lying quite close ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... Bittertart, the baker. The celebrated Christopher Caustic, Esq., surgeon, has the mortification to find his Esculapian dormitory decorated with the sign-board of Mr. Slaughtercalf, a German butcher; while his handsome brass pestle 57 and mortar, with the gilt Galen's head annexed, have been waggishly transferred to the house of some Eton Dickey Gossip, barber and dentist. Mr. Index, the bookseller, changes names with old Frank Finis, the sexton. The elegant door plate of Miss Caroline Cypher, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... himself, he was thoroughly qualified to choose an architect. His choice fell upon Professor Aitchison, now R.A., and he probably hit upon the only man of his generation able to put his feeling into bricks and mortar, viz., the feeling for a beauty sedate, delicate, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... surely never before 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 ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... rhythm in it. Stillness and peace. The Cathedral chimes. Stillness and peace again. And there was a smell of cut lawn grass with dew on it from the ground, and of roses from the borders, and of lichen and moss and crumbling mortar from the walls. Sometimes these smells pierced the peace like sound; and sometimes they gathered close and ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... principal battery, the foot of Twiggs' division had been ordered down to the northeast side of the town, to make an armed reconnoisance of the advanced battery, and to take it if it could be done without great loss. The volunteer division was scarcely formed in rear of our howitzer and mortar battery, established the night previous under cover of a rise of ground, before the infantry sent down to the northeast side of the town became closely and hotly engaged, the batteries of that division were sent down, and we were then ordered to support the attack. Leaving ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... their own request, the King imposed on them a new taille of three thousand livres.[1188] At their own expense they despatched workmen of all trades,—masons, carpenters, smiths. They lent their artillery. They sent culverins, cannons, La Bergere, and the large mortar to which four horses were harnessed, with the gunners Megret and Jean Boilleve.[1189] They furnished ammunition, engines, arrows, ladders, pickaxes, spades, mattocks; and all were marked, for they were a methodical folk. Everything for the siege was sent to ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... to restore the pristine beauty of the furniture by a little manual labour. Heat a gallon of water, in which dissolve one pound and a half of potash; and a pound of virgin wax, boiling the whole for half an hour, then suffer it to cool, when the wax will float on the surface. Put the wax into a mortar, and triturate it with a marble pestle, adding soft water to it until it forms a soft paste, which, laid neatly on furniture, or even on paintings, and carefully rubbed when dry with a woollen rag, gives a polish ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... stonemasons and other workmen round about to come to Cologne, where they should find work and wages. Among others came Rinaldo; and he worked among the laborers and did more than four or five common workmen. When they went to dinner he brought stone and mortar so that they had enough for the whole day. When the others went to bed he stretched himself out on the stones. He ate bread only, and drank nothing but water; and had for his wages but a penny a day. The head workman asked him ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... work very hard indeed; they help their husbands in all kinds of work. Among other occupations they act as bricklayers' labourers. They run up and down the tall ladders with heavy loads of bricks or mortar, chattering gaily all the while as if life were one ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... severe epigram, occurring in the Holy Scriptures, goes to show the impossibility—even though the somewhat unsatisfactory argument of the pestle and mortar be resorted to—of separating the same class of people from their rather confused ideas of the fitness of things. However, when the Mussulman, careering over Sahara, finds himself, by a stumble of ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... a Venetian blind in the upper part of the door, which he threw up when inside so as to admit a little air. And there you would see him, with a green shade over his eyes, seated on a stool, and pounding his pestle in a great iron mortar that looked like a howitzer, mixing some jallapy compound. A smoky lamp shed a flickering, yellow-fever tinge upon his pallid face and the closely-packed ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... sick monks and ailing novices were sent to get change of air and a taste of country life. There is a bit of an old wall still bordering my garden, and a strip of pale soil runs across the gooseberry beds, pale with dust of mortar and chips of brick, where another old wall stood. There was a great pigeon-house here, pulled down for the shooting-box, and the garden is still full of old carved stones, lintels, and mullions, and capitals of pillars, and a grotesque figure of a bearded man, with a tunic confined round ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... but, as the season advanced, they seemed to think that the branch of a tree, or a sheet of canvass, was too slender a barrier between them and a frosty night, and their fortified camp was gradually becoming a fortified town, of regular brick and mortar. Though we were living under the influence of the same sky, we did not think it necessary to give ourselves the same trouble, but reasoned on their proceedings like philosophers, and calculated, from the aspect of the times, that there was a probability of a speedy ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... word villa is a country seat; but the reader will ask, how can a country seat be in the midst of a metropolis, or in its brick and mortar confines? The term, however, admits of various modifications. The villas of the Romans resembled large city palaces removed into the country, and some of them were four times larger than Versailles with its three ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various

... the canyon wall and across the mountain side to the spring. There they found Bill Frank's camping outfit and the few things that Jim and Haney had transferred from the canyon below. They found, also, the pan and the hand mortar, rusty and battered by the storms of many years, with which Dick Winters had slowly and with infinite toil beaten and washed out the gold he was never to enjoy. After an hour's search they found the store of nuggets where Bill Frank had hidden them. Haney and Jim had ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... soon as possible; and in my way towards Mr. Jarvie's, whose dinner hour was now approaching, I stopped at a small unpretending shop, the sign of which intimated the indweller to be Christopher Neilson, surgeon and apothecary. I requested of a little boy who was pounding some stuff in a mortar, that he would procure me an audience of this learned pharmacopolist. He opened the door of the back shop, where I found a lively elderly man, who shook his head incredulously at some idle account I ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Mortar" :   trench mortar, howitzer, cement, building material, bricks and mortar, vessel, daub, high-angle gun



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