"Mortar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yawn and give his vote, Always firm in his vocation, For the court against the nation. Those are Allens Jack and Bob,[18] First in every wicked job, Son and brother to a queer Brain-sick brute, they call a peer. We must give them better quarter, For their ancestor trod mortar, And at Hoath, to boast his fame, On a chimney cut his name. There sit Clements, Dilks, and Carter;[19] Who for Hell would die a martyr. Such a triplet could you tell Where to find on this side Hell? Gallows Carter, Dilks, and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... common brick, burnt earth, and but one step from the handfuls of clay of the ancestral mud hut, small in size and permeable to damp. Slowly, day by day, the walls grew tediously up, to a melody of tinkling trowels. These bricks are joined by mortar, which is mixed in small quantities, and must vary very greatly in its quality and properties throughout the house. In order to prevent the obvious evils of a wall of porous and irregular baked clay and lime mud, a damp course of tarred felt, which cannot possibly last more than a few ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the vanilla bean. Many chefs and professional cooks overcome this difficulty by purchasing the vanilla beans and using them for flavoring purposes by soaking or cooking small pieces of them in the material that is to be flavored or grinding the bean in a mortar and using ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... And then the cap? But that I do not mind; My Derby hat has used me to a style A trifle jaunty, and a hard stiff crown; So if my hair prove not too trying I yet may like to wear the "mortar-board," If still ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... had a frontage of two hundred and two feet, and its greatest depth was one hundred thirty-one feet. Flat-faced prisms, firmly laid in adobe mortar, are placed at irregular intervals in ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... a vase good for all purposes; it will be used as a vessel for holding all foul things, a mortar for pounding together law-suits, a lamp for spying upon accounts, and as a cup for the mixing ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... well-loved horizons of the Seine through a mist. Then he found himself once more in the Rue de la Femme-sans-Tete, where he breakfasted at Gomard's wine shop, whose sign 'The Dog of Montargis,' inspired him with interest. Some stonemasons, in their working blouses, bespattered with mortar, were there at table, and, like them, and with them, he ate his eight sous' 'ordinary'—some beef broth in a bowl, in which he soaked some bread, followed by a slice of boiled soup-beef, garnished ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... sprawling city. Absorbed, charmed, grimly content with the abominable desolation of it all, he stood and gazed. No evidence of any plan, of any continuity in building, appeared upon the waste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortar dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous clarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering a thousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, it shut down on the illimitable, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... erect Whatever fate could befall them; Tried but the good to recollect, Cried for the truth to call them. To be loved by the children of other suns And send a message to find them, This is the fate of the happiest ones Tho' the mortar of life may grind them. They were like swimmers breasting the waves In the troughs of a stormy channel, They are silent now in their lonely graves, But the world has become the panel. They wore the truth like a bridal dress And sorrow like wedding apparel, ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... to be three feet and a half by two feet and a half. The foundation was of stones squared, and one of them measured four feet seven inches by two feet four inches. It was surprising that such a structure should have been raised without iron tools to shape the stones, or mortar to join them. The quarried stones must have been brought from a considerable distance by hand, and the coral must have been raised from under the water, where, though there is an abundance, it is at a depth of never less than three feet. To square these stones must have ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... doubtless understood well, because they instantly departed, and went out on the banks of the pond, one party one way; another, another way. Those next us were between us and the dam, and we at the proper distance not to be seen, and to observe them. Some of them made mortar, others carried it on their tails, which served for sledges. I observed they put themselves two and two, side by side, the one with his head to the other's tail, and thus mutually loaded each other, and trailed the mortar, which was pretty stiff, quite to ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... the head of an old hypocrite, one ounce of Nero's conspiracy, two ounces of the hatred of truth, five scruples of liars' tongues, twenty-five drops of the spirit of Oliver Cromwell, fifteen drops of the spirit of contentment. Put them in the mortar of self-righteousness and pound them with the pestle of malice and sift them through the skin of a Doctor of Divinity and put the compound into the vessel of rebellion and steep it over the fire of Sedition twenty-four hours, and then strain it in the rag of high treason. After which put it in the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... 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 with crags and cover'd with the dead. Each shower ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... village. They strolled up to it. It had a tower built of flint, and clad on two sides with ivy three feet deep, and the body of the church was as snowy as the cottages, and on the south side a dozen swallows and martins had lodged their mortar nests under the eaves; they looked, against the white, like rugged gray stone bosses. Swallows and martins innumerable wheeled, swift as arrows, round the tower, chirping, and in and out of the church through an open ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... he should have wandered over England and Europe, content often to have the grass for his bed and the sky for his hostry-roof, has astonished very much (and I believe scandalized very much) this age. My explanation of the matter is this: Among the myriads of children born into a world of brick and mortar there appears now and then one who is meant for better things—one who exhibits unmistakable signs that he inherits the blood of those remote children of the open air who, according to the old Sabæan ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... fireside there is a second 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. ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... Danny Grin started in to move a small pile of bricks. Next a tub of mixed mortar was carried to the level spot decided upon as the place ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... over the world. Out of the bed of the King she would rise, and over the whole world she would follow thee. And it has a price, pretty boy, it has a price. What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? I can pound a toad in a mortar, and make broth of it, and stir the broth with a dead man's hand. Sprinkle it on thine enemy while he sleeps, and he will turn into a black viper, and his own mother will slay him. With a wheel I can draw the ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... was still in a trance. All this life through which the electric car whirred seemed remote and unreal, and he would have experienced little interest and less shook if the great stone steeple of the church he passed had suddenly crumbled to mortar-dust ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... exercises an effect upon the soil exactly the reverse of what has just been stated. That lime should act as a binding agent is only natural when we reflect on the way in which it acts when used as mortar. It is quite to be understood, therefore, that its action on light friable soils should be to increase their cohesive powers, and at the same time to increase the capillary power of the soil to absorb water from the lower ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... see her in the midst of the little gathering round the foundation, the sturdy workman smiling over his hod of mortar, Dr. Spencer's silver locks touching her flaxen curls as he held the shining trowel to her, and Harry's bright head and hardy face, as he knelt on one knee to guide the little soft hand, while Hector stood by, still and upright, his eyes fixed far away, as if his thoughts were ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... north end of the railway bridge, one turns first to the right and then to the left, and soon after leaving the uninteresting bricks and mortar of the town, one enters some of the most beautiful lanes in the home counties. At the first cross road one turns to the right, and again through an open gate to the left, and thence a field path leads to ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... limited scale. We can do nothing to it except to foul it, which we do with every breath that we breathe, every fire that we make, every factory that we build. Our only chance of safety, our only hope of life, is to connect every room and every corner of those little brick and mortar boxes, those caged sections of out-of-doors, that we call houses, with nature's great system of air supply, "All Outdoors." Fortunately, the only thing needed to make the connection is to open a window—no need to send for a plumber or put in a meter, and there is no charge ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... to drop before the conclusion of the ballet?' He affirmed that he had directions from me to do so. I was then called upon the stage, and received a volley of hisses, yellings, etc. I stood it all, like brick and mortar; but at last, thinking to appease them, I said the truth was that an order had been received from the Bishop of London to conclude the performance before midnight. Some person from the third tier of ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... his pachydermic frame draped in his gown, and his mortar-board cap on his head, for the Seniors were required to wear their regalia during Commencement week, was bellowing through a megaphone, as he stood on the steps of Bannister Hall, and Mr. Hicks, with his ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... six or seven yards thick, all 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
... road ascended a little, and joined the highway, which kept along a level, consisting mostly of land lately redeemed from the peat-moss. It went straight for two miles, fenced from the fields in many parts by low stone walls without mortar, abhorrent to the eye of Cosmo; in other parts by walls of earth, called dykes, which delighted his very soul. These were covered with grass for the vagrant cow, sprinkled with loveliest little wild flowers for the poet-peasant, burrowed in by wild bees for the adventurous ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Vincent, "but at least you have bones and muscles. If you were to pound the poor secretary in a mortar, you might take him all up in a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... feet thick, and formed of bricks and stones. Trenck numbered them as he went on with the greatest care, so that the cell might present its usual appearance before the Wednesday visit of his guards. To hide the joins, he scraped off some of the mortar, which ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the arm with sweet oil; while the old servant brought in a bundle of rue from the garden, which, being bruised in a mortar, filled the room with a fresh, aromatic smell. With this fragrant herb she made a cooling cataplasm. Having dressed my arm, they placed it in a sling, then in place of my coat a light Indian poncho was ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... as the spread of the quick busy weeds between the paving-stones; the air smelt of pounded mortar and crushed stone; the sound of a footfall echoed like the drop of a pebble in a well. At first the horror of wrecked apartment-houses and big shops laid open makes one waste energy in anger. It is not seemly that rooms should be torn ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... to return to the archiepiscopal palace (p. 273) at St. Feuchien, but to go off to the attack. I returned to Boves, where, having washed and shaved, I had dinner in a damaged house with some officers of a light trench mortar battery, and after dinner started on my way to Gentelles Wood. It was a time of intense excitement. Less than a week ago we had been in the line at Arras, and now we were about to make our great attack at Amiens. The warm summer evening was ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... prince, whom they had fled from, Fondly-furious, thinks of vengeance, And, discarding sword and fire, Has them walled-up in the cavern, Walled-up fast with bricks and mortar. ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... horizontal and perpendicular lines of the language; and the opposition or inference is often much more one of words than of ideas. But modern languages have rubbed off this adversative and inferential form: they have fewer links of connection, there is less mortar in the interstices, and they are content to place sentences side by side, leaving their relation to one another to be gathered from their position or from the context. The difficulty of preserving the effect of the Greek is increased by the want of adversative and inferential particles in English, ...
— Charmides • Plato
... for his hat, not quite expecting to find it there; in truth, he would not have been much surprised to find the basement itself gone. Certainly, the foundation had disappeared from under a structure mightier and stronger, as he viewed it, than piles of stone and mortar. He had frequently criticized the office slavery of the bank, but he had never lost faith in the institution's magnitude and imperishability. It was the solidity of it that he had banked on and clung to, in spite of blinding work; but now the golden god ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... persons not residents of Essen knew about the new mortar which the firm of Friedrich Krupp manufactured at its own expense and which later, because its shell rapidly smashed the strongest fortifications of reinforced concrete, our military authorities promptly acquired. Must ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... began. There a stratum of rock, softer than those above, had been hollowed out by the action of time until it was like a deep groove running along the sides of the canyon. In this hollow (like a great fold in the rock) the Ancient People had built their houses of yellowish stone and mortar. The over-hanging cliff above made a roof two hundred feet thick. The hard stratum below was an everlasting floor. The houses stood along in a row, like the buildings in a city block, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... which you were to turn the windmills into castles. I made one condition—two, in fact. One that you came back. Well, you have kept that. The other was that you told me what it was like to build the castles of bricks and mortar, which in the days when I knew you, you built in ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mask, supposed to protect them from infections at this time, so that it was not difficult to make a characteristic picture as a sign for a pharmacy. These symbolic signs were much commoner and very necessary when people generally were not able to read. It is from that period that we have the mortar and pestle as also the colored lights in the windows of the drug stores, and the many-colored barber-pole. Also the big boot, key, watch, hat, bonnet, and the like, the last symbolic sign invention apparently being the wooden Indian for ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... which has been previously opened and washed rapidly in cold water, and spread it, mucous surface upwards, on the convex surface of an inverted capsule. Scrape the mucous surface firmly with the back of a knife blade, and rub up the scrapings in a mortar with fine sand. Add water, and rub up the whole vigorously for some time, and filter. The filtrate is an ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... was levelled; Sugarlips backed against an adjoining wall, with a nervous adhesiveness that evidently proved him less fearful of a little mortar than a great gun! ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... bear's grease, or raccoon's oil served for shortening, and the leaves of the wild raspberry for tea. Our neighbors went to mill at Canton—a journey of five days, going and coming, with an ox-team, and beset with many difficulties. Then one of them hollowed the top of a stump for his mortar and tied his pestle to the bough of a tree. With a rope he drew the bough down, which, as it sprang back, lifted the pestle that ground ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... 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 ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... and pacing up and down over the turf athwart the slim shadows of the poplars; or, with comfortable indifference to the local observances, sat in talk on the carriage of one of the burly, uncared-for guns, while the spider wove his web across the mortar's mouth, and the grass nodded above the tumbled pyramids of shot, and the children raced up and down, and the nursery-maids were wooed of the dapper sergeants, and the red-coated sentry loitered ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... happiness of this calm rural home, this useful, innocent life, as if that ill-advised act of hers had never been acted—as if that autumn morning, that one half-hour in the modern Gothic church, still smelling of mortar and pitch-pine, set in flat fields, from which October mists were rising ghostlike, was no more than a troubled dream—a dream that she had dreamed and done with for ever. Could it be that such an hour—so dim, so shadowy to look back ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... its level head of brickwork (a, Fig. XXXV.) is the weakest way of covering a space. Indeed, in the hastily heaped shells of modern houses, there may be seen often even a worse manner of placing the bricks, as at b, supporting them by a bit of lath till the mortar dries; but even when worked with the utmost care, and having every brick tapered into the form of a voussoir and accurately fitted, I have seen such a window-head give way, and a wide fissure torn through all the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... might or might not have heard; but, at any rate, he deigned no reply, and went on with his task, which was pounding seeds in a stone mortar. ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... more beautiful will they be. If on the old Thornbush moon old Herschel with his reflector could see a town-house two hundred feet long, on the Brick Moon young Herschel will be able to see a dab of mortar a foot and a half long, if he wants to. And people without the reflector, with their opera-glasses, will be able to see sufficiently well." And to this they agreed: that eventually there must be two ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... College premises and the property of Dr. Broadfield was part of the old Abbey wall. The mortar had crumbled away from the stones, leaving large interstices, so it was quite easy to climb. With a little boosting from Verity and Nora, Ingred successfully reached the top, and peered over into the neighboring garden. Just below her was a rockery, which offered not ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... He is thought to allude here, figuratively, to the composition of a dish called "moretum," (in praise of which Virgil wrote a poem) which was composed of garlic, onions, cheese, eggs, and other ingredients, beaten up in a mortar. The allusion to eating is appropriately used in an address to ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... task I have imposed upon myself the more necessary, because this department of the science, perhaps regarded by some who have no ideas beyond stone and mortar as chimerical, and by others who think nothing necessary but truth and proportion as useless, is at a miserably low ebb in England. And what is the consequence? We have Corinthian columns placed beside pilasters of no order at all, surmounted by ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... material. They always delivered an inferior quality. There is not one case recorded in the business history of San Francisco where a contractor or builder delivered a quality superior to the one sold. A seven-million-dollar city hall became thirty cents in twenty-eight seconds. Because the mortar was not honest, a thousand walls crashed down and scores of lives were snuffed out. There is something, after all, in the contention of a few religionists that the San Francisco earthquake was a punishment for sin. It was ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... home, and soon showed me how he managed "de niggers." His wife sat silently by the fire. He ordered her to "pound de rice;" and she threw a quantity of unhulled rice into a wooden mortar three feet high planted in the ground in front of the shanty. Then, with an enormous pestle, the black woman pounded the grains until the hulls were removed, when, seating herself upon the floor of the dark, smoky cabin, she winnowed ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... trowel was brought; and when the member for the Gentlemanly Interest, tucking up his coat-sleeve, did a little sleight of hand with the mortar, the air was rent, so loud was the applause. The workman-like manner in which he did it was amazing. No one could conceive where such a gentlemanly creature could have picked ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... is the moat which surrounds the massive walls of the imperial palace, open only to those who have the honor of an imperial audience. These walls are of granite laid up without mortar, the corner stones being of unusual size. The visitor may see the handsome roofs of the imperial palaces. Those who have been admitted declare that the decorations and the furniture are in the highest style of Japanese art, although ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... gave way and fell with a slight, rustling noise down out of my reach. Was it the box? No, for in another instant I had come in contact with its broken edges and had drawn it out; the falling object must have been some extra mortar, and it had gone where? I did not stop to consider then. The object in my hand was too alluring; the size, the shape too suggestive of a package of folded bonds for me to think of anything but the satisfaction ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... which far resounded through the dark winding streets. He now strode by without stopping to speak or to look at me, his head and turban nearly reaching the roof of the streets, and his big sword, swinging from his back, extended crosswise, scraping the mortar from both sides of the walls. His iron spear, as large as an ordinary iron gas-light post, was carried in his firm fist horizontally, to prevent its catching the roof of the covered streets. The giant is one of the chiefs of a powerful tribe of Ghat Touaricks, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... should pray to be taken suddenly and to be spared the misery of a prolonged deathbed. He had his wish, for it was all over in a few minutes and was absolutely painless. I was staying with a chum of mine in his chambers in Dane's Inn—long since gone the way of all stone, bricks and mortar. My host came in with a newspaper and laid it on the table before me with his finger on a cross-headed paragraph, "Death of George Dawson, M.A." Nothing in all my experience had ever hit me so before, and whatever ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... preparing 100 gallons of dip.—Weigh out the lime, 12 pounds (or hydrated lime, 16 pounds), and sulphur, 24 pounds. Place the unslaked lime in a shallow, water-tight box similar to a mortar box, or some other suitable vessel, and add water enough to slake the lime and form a lime paste or lime putty. Sift into this paste the flowers of sulphur and stir well; then place the lime-sulphur paste in a kettle, boiler, or tank containing 30 gallons of water, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... goes on, cell upon cell, each supplying the materials for the partition separating it from the one below. On reaching the end of the cylinder, the Osmia closes up the case with a thick layer of the same mortar. Then that bramble-stump is done with; the Bee will not return to it. If her ovaries are not yet exhausted, other dry stems will be ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... rooms must be calcimined, painted, frescoed and papered; they must be dyed in the mortar, finished with leather, with tiles, with tapestry and with solid wood panels. There must be blinds—outside blinds, awnings, inside shutters, rolling blinds, Venetian shades and no blinds at all. There must be wide, low-roofed piazzas all around the house, so that we ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... thirdly, common 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 ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 linseed oil, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... 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 ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... want greater than all the others—bread. My barley was very fine, the grains were large and smooth; but before I could make bread I must grind the grains into flour. I spent many a day to find out a Stone to cut hollow and make fit for a mortar, and could find none; nor were the rocks of the island of hardness sufficient. So I gave it over and rounded a great block of hard wood and, with the help of fire and great labour, made a hollow in it. I made a great heavy pestle ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... making an opening piecemeal, he receded as far as he could, took a short run, and threw himself against the wall with all his force. After a few repetitions of this vigorous but not very prudent proceeding, the frail bulwark gave way, and amidst a shower of dust and mortar, Paco entered the vault into which ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... vigor of these lines, which nobody could have written who had not been compelled, in the sunny summer-days, to bray drugs in a mortar. Yet who does not like to read a medical book?—to pore over its jargon, to muddle himself into a hypo, and to imagine himself afflicted with the dreadful disease with the long Latin name, the meaning of which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... samples as we have seen them and do see them, not alone in 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, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... Wimbledon. Here M. Zola's impressions changed. True, he did not have occasion to perambulate what he would doubtless have called the 'phalansterian' streets of new South Wimbledon. I spared him the sight of the chess-board of bricks and mortar into which the speculative builder has turned acre after acre north of Merton High Street. But the Hill Road, the Broadway, the Worple Road, and the various turnings that climb towards the Ridgeway pleased him. And he commented very favourably on the shops in the Broadway and the Hill Road, ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... 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 ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... wait for half an hour before we started a fire to let the mortar dry. The sun's pretty hot. Maybe it won't take ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the siege; Strengthen thy fortresses: Go into the clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brickkiln: There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet in their prince-like habitations and palaces." The timber houses were covered with tiles; the other sort with straw or reeds. The fairest houses were ceiled within with mortar and covered with plaster, the whiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison's admiration. The walls were hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted cloth, whereon were divers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled with oak. Stoves had just begun to be used, and only in some ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... about our ears if you persist," he cried, as a shower of crumbled stone and mortar followed ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... spell Tavern, or caravansera, or hotel. Would I could steal its echoes! you should find Such store of vanished pleasures brought to mind Such feasts! the laughs of many a jocund hour That shook the mortar from King George's tower; Such guests! What famous names its record boasts, Whose owners wander in the mob of ghosts! Such stories! Every beam and plank is filled With juicy wit the joyous talkers spilled, Ready ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some noble persons 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 ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... dry 20 parts of fire clay, 20 parts cast-iron turnings, one part of common salt, and 1/2 part sal ammoniac, and then add water while stirring, so as to form a mortar of the proper consistency. The mixture will become very hard ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... with the local names. What was the brook called? It was called "The Cockshoot"! And the great hill, here, on my right? It was called "The Overblow"! Five minutes more, and we saw our first house—lonely and little—built of mortar and flint from the hills. A name to this also? Certainly. Name of "Browndown." Another ten minutes of walking, involving us more and more deeply in the mysterious green windings of the valley—and the great event of the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the end of the hall, a filthy two-cell jail, now empty but smelling of ammonia and ancient sweat. The whole second story was a large unfinished room littered with piles of folding chairs, a lime-crusted mortar-mixing box, and the skeletons of Fourth of July floats covered with decomposing plaster shields and faded red, white, and blue bunting. At the end was an abortive stage. The room was large enough for the community dances which Mrs. Nat Hicks advocated. But ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... thought. It was your salvation, for the stairs and the spot where you must have fallen are a heap of stone, brick, and mortar. If you had remained there, you would certainly have ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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 ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... not for logical reasoning or arguments that the atheist is led to say, "that up to this moment the world has remained without knowledge of a God."[73] It is from the folly of his heart; and, as Solomon says, that "though you bray him and his false logic in the mortar of reason, among the wheat of facts, with the pestle of argument, yet will not his folly depart from him."[74] I fully agree with Hobbes when he says, "where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason we should believe," but I think the several arguments given above, which could ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... a quart of beef gravy and a quart of veal gravy; let the whole simmer gently till the hare is done. Strain the meat; then pass the soup through a sieve, and put a penny roll to soak in the broth. Take all the flesh of the hare from the bones, and pound it in a mortar, till fine enough to be rubbed through a sieve, taking care that none of the bread remains in it. Thicken the broth with the meat of the hare; rub it all together till perfectly fine, like melted butter, not thicker; ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... followed at a considerable distance. People politely drew on one side as they approached; but no other homage was paid to the sovereign, who thus takes his walk in public almost every day. Lady Morgan is merry at the expense of the Grand Duke's taste for brick and mortar: but monarchs, like other men, must have their amusements; some invent uniforms, some stitch embroidery;—and why should not this good-natured Grand Duke amuse himself with his trowel if he likes it? As to the Prince of Carignano, I give ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... remarkable. It is one of the four Palatine churches of Apulia. The surrounding territory is fertile. The medieval walls, erected by the emperor Frederick II., rest upon the walls of an ancient city of unknown name. These early walls are of rough blocks of stone without mortar. Ancient tombs with fragments of vases have also been found, and there are cases which have been used as primitive tombs or dwellings, and a group of some fifty tumuli ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... those days were very far from having attained the strength and solidity which a few generations later were bestowed upon them. The stones of which they were constructed were comparatively small, and fastened together by mortar, consequently they could ill resist even an assault by manual weapons. Covered by their shields the Northmen worked untiringly at the foundations, and piece by piece the walls crumbled to the ground. Every effort, however, to enter ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the infantryman who suffers most, for he has to live, eat, sleep, and work in the mud. The plain of dragging slime that stretches from Switzerland to the sea is far worse to face than the fire of machine guns or the great black trench-mortar bombs that come twisting down through the air. It is more terrible than the frost and the rain—you cannot even stamp your feet to drive away the insidious chill that mud always brings. Nothing can keep ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... that there should be no time lost, and men were set at work, carrying bricks and mortar. It so chanced that one of them, going in through a back entrance with a hod over his shoulder, and being young and lively, found his eye caught by the countenance of a pretty, frightened-looking girl, who seemed to be loitering about watching, as if curious ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 a ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... in it, and give Mr. Gray a school-house. O, father does so want Mr. Gray for to have his wish! Father saw all the stones lying quarried and hewn on Farmer Hale's land; Mr. Gray had paid for them all himself. And father said he would work night and day, and little Tommy should carry mortar, if the parson would let him, sooner than that he should be fretted and frabbed as he was, with no one giving him a helping hand ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fowls' livers and then let them simmer until tender in a little strong soup stock, adding some sliced mushroom, minced onion, and a little pepper and salt. When thoroughly done mince the whole finely, or pound it in a mortar. Now put it back in the saucepan and mix well with the yolks of sufficient eggs to make the whole fairly moist. Warm over the fire, stirring frequently until the mixture is quite thick, taking care ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... sale, and bought it for a hundred dollars. It consisted of one room only, and was, in its then condition, utterly unfit for my purpose; but I determined to set to work and build on to it—by no means the hazardous speculation in Gorgona, where bricks and mortar are unknown, that it is in England. The alcalde's permission to make use of the adjacent ground was obtained for a moderate consideration, and plenty of material was procurable from the opposite bank of the river. An American, whom I had cured of the cholera at Cruces, lent me his boat, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... therefore, was hastily got out and carried into 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 ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and dipped to the chin." A woman, in the year 1568, was "carted and banished." At Sandwich, Ipswich, and some other places, as a punishment for scolding and other offences it was not an uncommon thing to compel the transgressors to carry a wooden mortar ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... the dead bacteria are injected as a suspension in fluid. Methods have been introduced for the purpose of breaking up the bodies of bacteria and setting free the intracellular toxins. For this purpose Koch ground up tubercle bacilli in an agate mortar and treated them with distilled water until practically no deposit remained. Rowland and Macfadyen for the same purpose introduced the method of grinding the bacilli in liquid air. At this temperature the bacterial bodies are extremely brittle, and are thus readily ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... 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 ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... days were always impressed by the sight of that face that seemed to know nothing of what went on within: like the blank wall of a prison enclosing sin, regrets, and pain, and wasted life, in the cold indifference of mortar ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... 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, which were built of materials in ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not to be beaten I commenced another and much larger one, sixteen feet by ten feet. I selected a site close above high water-mark, and commenced digging, and in fact worked a whole day at it, intending to line it with a mixture of sand and lime, of which I had several tubs for making mortar for repairing the brickwork of my homestead; but that very evening I discovered a natural fish pond, or rather a pool, that could be turned into one by ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... that mountain till they found a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and when so treated it divides as it were into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded in a great copper mortar, and then washed, so as to remove all the earth and to leave only the fibres like fibres of wool. These were then spun, and made into napkins. When first made these napkins are not very white, but by putting them into the fire for a while they come out as white as snow. And so again whenever ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... them by. Come from the window, love,—come in, at last, Inside 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 for that? Well, let smiles buy ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... other attendants of the king, he made some provision for the deserted corpse. He sent for one of the subordinates of the palace, and ordered him to watch by the body. Then, going to his carriage, he saw several hodmen lounging about, who were carrying mortar for some repairs that were being made at the palace. The physician called them, and bade them go tell the lord-Steward that the king's coffin must be saturated with spirits of wine, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... brow so puckered as yours, for having little of the milk of human kindness so called: but this of breaking, by force of lies merely, and for your own uses, the hearts of poor innocent creatures, nay of grinding them slowly in the mortar, and employing their Father's hand to do it withal; this—Herr General, forgive me, but there are moments when I feel as if the extinction of probably the intensest scoundrel of that epoch might have been a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 4.1-inch howitzer quick firers threw a shell of thirty-two pounds. This howitzer had a range of more than 6,000 yards, and was a powerful weapon. The 30.5-centimeter mortars fired a shell of 858 pounds with a bursting charge of 56 pounds of ecrasite. The extreme range of this mortar was about six miles. Ten rounds could be fired each hour. Two guns and their ammunition lorries were drawn by three large tractors. An hour was required to get one of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... no mortar for binding the blocks together, and therefore he must make his joints smooth and even and force in loose snow to fill up the crevices. A little experience will enable one to do this work well, and the construction of the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... piece off from the bins there was a big deep box. They were mixing clay and water in it, and making a paste. It looked like lime when they're making mortar. The box leaked awfully, and white paste was ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... between the western base of this Safra and the eastern side of the Bada' valley, lie masses of ruin now become mere rubbish; bits of wall built with cut stone, and water-conduits of fine mortar containing, like that of the Pyramids, powdered brick and sometimes pebbles. We carried off a lump of sandstone bearing unintelligible marks, possibly intended for a man and a beast. We called it "St. George and the Dragon," but ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... you would not, Sweet, Tho' we prayed you, Paid you, brayed you In a mortar—for you could ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... pulley dangling at its point, cracked, and rusted, and abandoned, and no less cracked and abandoned, shot out from the second floor a moss-covered platform that had been intended for the reception of bales of stuffs that had never arrived. The mortar had, here and there, been wrenched from between the bricks by savage weather and age, and the doors, too, had shrunk before their united malignity. How such a house had drifted to such a locality is unaccountable, unless—as is often the case—some navigator of real estate had thought ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... Emperor was drawn on a sledge to a tent pitched on the ice, whilst the Embassador and his suite were conducted into a dirty hovel little better than a pig-stye, where they were desired to sit down on a sort of bench built of stone and mortar; for, like the room they were put into on a former day, it was destitute of the least furniture; and they were told that something presently would be brought for them to eat. On complaining to their conductors that this was ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... built of human blood and tears, what stone and mortar do they use in hell, I wonder?" Then, without pausing for an answer, she rose, saying that she was weary, curtseyed to d'Aguilar, her father and Peter, each in turn, and ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... highest skill. Many of us, however, are astonished at the ingenuity that is displayed in this department. Large logs, notched at the ends so as to dovetail together, and sometimes hewn on the inside, compose the body of the hut. By the careful application of mud—that Virginia mortar or plaster with which every soldier is so familiar—to the crevices between the logs, a very comfortable structure is made ready for its covering and occupancy. Shelter-tents, buttoned or sewed together, form the roof, which, by the aid of talmas or ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... they built it, so, with some slight additions, it had remained to this day, for in those ages men did not skimp their flint, and oak, and mortar. It was a beautiful little spot, situated upon the flat top of a swelling hill, which comprised the ten acres of grazing ground originally granted, and was, strange to say, still the most magnificently-timbered piece of ground in the country side. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... recorded in 1662 that "the right coffee powder" was being sold at the Turk's Head coffee house in Exchange Alley for "4s. to 6s. 8d. per pound; that pounded in a mortar, 2s; East India berry, 1s. 6d.; and the right Turkie berry, well garbled [ground] at 3s. The ungarbled [in the bean] for less with directions how to use the same." Chocolate was also to be had at "2s. 6d. the pound; the perfumed from 4s. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Thebais, in the reign of Numerian, in 284, under the governor Sabinus. After the governor had tried the constancy of the martyrs by racks, scourges, and various inventions of cruelty, he caused Victorinus to be thrown into a great mortar, (the Greek Menology says, of marble.) The executioners began by pounding his feet and legs, saying to him at every stroke: "Spare yourself, wretch. It depends upon you to escape this death, if you will only renounce your new God." The prefect grew furious ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... flag-ship, was advised of the serious injury to the fleet, and informed that Commodore Foote, leaving his two ironclads least injured to protect the transports at the landing, would proceed to Cairo with the other two, repair them, hasten the completion of the Benton and mortar-boats, and return to the prosecution of the siege. General Grant, upon this, made up his mind to intrench, and with reinforcements complete the investment of the enemy's works. Reaching the lines about one o'clock on his return, he learned ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... first month at sea—events so subtle as perhaps to seem an unimportant part of this narrative of a strange voyage, yet really as necessary to the foundation of the story as the single bricks and the single dabs of mortar at the base of a tall chimney are necessary to the completed structure. I later had cause to remember each trivial incident as if it had been written ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... stopped and two platoons of "A" Company and two platoons of "D" Company under Captain L.H. Watson advanced against the Hindenburg Line. The wire was exceptionally thick and strong and had not been destroyed by our fire and on it the enemy concentrated heavy machine-gun and trench-mortar fire. Casualties were heavy and at 12.15 p.m. the assaulting platoons, being unable to get through the wire, withdrew to their old line to allow the trench-mortar and machine-gun fire to be neutralised. At 1.15 p.m. the Brigade commander came to Headquarters and an assault with ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... of the adventurous grass on the borders of the sopping sidewalks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. Here and there in the vacant lots abandoned hoop-skirts defied decay; and near the half-finished wooden houses, empty mortar-beds, and bits of lath and slate strewn over the scarred and mutilated ground, added their interest to the scene. A shaggy drift hung upon the trees before our own house (which had been built some years earlier), ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells |
