"Plumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... large enough to knock out his father he had been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now back to this honorable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an assistant that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and not the assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... youth made the discovery that if one lighted a match and stepped within the blackness, the match was immediately extinguished, but that upon emerging into daylight the flame came up again. Some one happened along with a plumber's gasoline torch. Immediately this was lighted and the experiment repeated. The bearer of the torch, astonished at the instant extinguishment of the flame, felt with his hand to see what could be the matter. Instantly he uttered a yelp of pain, and leaped ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... PLUMBER One who ascertains the capacity of your purse, soaks you with a piece of lead and gets away with the money—a process vulgarly ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... neighbors she did not know and tell her maid how much admired her daughters were and how hard she had worked herself until the good God had seen fit to take her brother from his packing plant. "If you're the janitor's niece you can come in and clean up the mess the plumber made on my floor. It isn't the place of the girl I pay wages to, to clean up ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... to these: but all our poor to know, Let's seek the winding Lane, the narrow Row, Suburban prospects, where the traveller stops To see the sloping tenement on props, With building-yards immix'd, and humble sheds and shops; Where the Cross-Keys and Plumber's-Arms invite Laborious men to taste their coarse delight; Where the low porches, stretching from the door, Gave some distinction in the days of yore, Yet now neglected, more offend the eye, By gloom and ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... other hand cross tongues are limited by the width of the board. After cutting off the tongues, they require planing with nicety to fit the grooves, and the advantage of a grooved board (Fig. 105) will be appreciated. A glue spoon similar to a plumber's ladle is generally used to pour the glue into the grooves, and it is customary to glue the tongue into one board first; after allowing this to set, the joint is completed ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... active brain; in her spare time she had written stories for magazines. The two girls became attached through doing Christian social work together in their spare time, and resolved to live as husband and wife to prevent any young man from coming forward. The "husband" became a plumber's mate, and displayed some skill at fisticuffs when at length discovered by the "wife's" brother. Hence her appearance in the Police Court. Both girls were sent back to their friends, and situations ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... house," he cried. "The roof must leak. The water is coming in! Get a plumber! Get ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... is nowadays expected to contain efficient apparatus for supplying plenty of hot water at all hours of the day. There is little romance about the kitchen boiler and the pipes which the plumber and his satellites have sometimes to inspect and put right, but the methods of securing a proper circulation of hot water through the house are sufficiently important and interesting to ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... dry ear cartilages into warm water. In this they will quickly regain their natural shape. Using them as models make a pair of duplicates of them of thin sheet lead which may be procured from a plumber or hardware dealer. Split into the base of the cartilage so it may be spread as nearly flat as possible and lay on the lead, drawing around its outline with a nail point. Cut out the lead ears with a pair of metal-shears. Hammer into natural concave ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... During the Decorated period the hinges are simpler, on account of the carved panelling on the doors, and they continue to become plainer in the subsequent period. The knockers on the doors often assume very grotesque forms, as at Durham Cathedral. The mediaeval plumber was also an artist, and introduced shields of arms, fleur-de-lis, and other devices, for the enrichment of spires, and pipes for carrying off water ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... Robert went out with the taste of apple still in their mouths and the purple of blackberries on their lips—and, in the case of Robert, on the wristband as well—and bought a big sheet of cardboard at the stationers. Then at the plumber's shop, that has tubes and pipes and taps and gas-fittings in the window, they bought a pane of glass the same size as the cardboard. The man cut it with a very interesting tool that had a bit of diamond at the end, and he gave them, out of his own free ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... (this from a small, bony plumber in workclothes). "Hey, you old grafter! Which way do you expect to vote? For or against this ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... to avoid redundancy of expression. I would never say a "wealthy plumber," nor a "poor poet," nor for that matter ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... are inherited by the children; present-day doctors follow early practitioners; they still pour in many and various decoctions at the top of the obstructed sewer of the human house to dislodge accumulated gases and feces at the bottom. The plumber treats the sewer of the house of brick and stone ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... an inch hole through a lead drain pipe from the laundry tubs, that lay in their way. The hole was behind a cupboard in the kitchen, very close to the wall, and not easy to reach. If clean clothing was to be had, the pipe had to be fixed; but when a plumber was called in, he stated that a carpenter would be needed to remove the cupboard, and again to replace it after the work was completed. The pipe having the hole, he added, would need to be taken out, and, as it was one arm of a larger pipe that had two other branches, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... chance to escape while they were up-stairs. With utmost caution he pushed open the closet door, and on hands and knees began his perilous journey to the window. It was at that moment that he decided positively that he would not be a burglar. A plumber took fewer risks, and made more money. Once at the window he was unable to budge the lock. Standing on the sill, whimpering with fear, he wrestled with it frantically, bruising his fingers, and tearing his nails, but he could not ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... in the south of France in order to establish there a hospital for refugees. The Germans were still advancing and as the refugees poured into the south the government was trying to build villages of barracks for them. When Dr. Alice Gregory with a group of fifteen women, including a carpenter, plumber, chemist and chauffeur, reached Labouheyre, early in April, a site had still to be found for the hospital and the buildings were still to be built, furnished and equipped. The barracks were erected in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... going to tell you, sir; the plumber has been here, because the tap of your cistern came off in my hand. It wasn't my fault; there had been a ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... thus, at the outset, that I came to believe John's spirits were high; and this illusion he successfully kept up until after we had left the plumber and Kings Port several sordid miles behind us; the approach to Kings Port this way lies through dirtiest Africa. John was loquacious; John discoursed upon the Replacers; Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael had quite evidently expressed to her own circle what she thought of them; and the ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... greatly in France, where nearly every adult male may own land and a large proportion will come to do so. So of processes. As a student in Germany I took a few lessons each of a bookbinder, a glassblower, a shoemaker, a plumber, and a blacksmith, and here I have learned in a crude way the technique of the gold-beater and old-fashioned broom-maker, etc., none of which come amiss in the laboratory; and I am proud that I can still mow and keep my scythe sharp, chop, plow, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... be able for a part of the year to return to the simple life of our ancestors it is very necessary that we should also know something of the simple economies of those days, for when one finds oneself out on a farm there is no plumber around the corner and no tinsmith on the next block whom one may call upon to repair breaks and the damage done by time and weather on an old farmhouse. The ordinary man under these conditions is helpless, but some are inspired by novel ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... da Vinci's sick-bed; and that Henry VIII. had said to a pert lord who had snubbed Holbein, "I can make a lord any day, but I cannot make a Holbein!" how Mrs. Haughton still confounded all painters in the general image of the painter and the plumber who had cheated her so shamefully in the renewed window-sashes and redecorated walls, which Time and the four children of an Irish family had made necessary to the letting of the first floor. And these playful allusions to the maternal ideas were still not irreverent, but contrived so as rather ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a pretty village with a broad main street shaded by great maples and elms. It had an apothecary, a blacksmith, a plumber, several shops of one sort and another, two churches, and many boarding-houses; but all its interests gathered about its seminary and its academy. These seats of learning were neither better nor worse than others of their kind, but differed much in ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that they would come to him proved to be a mistaken one. He did indeed visit a few tame pets whom his rector desired him to look after. There was an old man and his wife who lived next door but one to Ernest himself; then there was a plumber of the name of Chesterfield; an aged lady of the name of Gover, blind and bed-ridden, who munched and munched her feeble old toothless jaws as Ernest spoke or read to her, but who could do little more; a Mr Brookes, a rag and bottle merchant in Birdsey's Rents in the last stage of dropsy, and perhaps ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... was sick, and of necessity I had to take his place in the laboratory. Inside half an hour some bumpkin dropped an eight-ounce bottle of sulphuretted hydrogen. It spattered everywhere—and the smell! I feel like holding my nose yet. Later the water got stopped up, and for love or money no plumber—" The speaker paused, his shoulders lifted eloquently. "But what's the use of itemizing. It's been the same all day long, one petty rasp after another. To cap the climax Elice is out of town. She's got an English class in a high-school in ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... if that Mental Science Lady wouldn't let her play the piano, why, her thrilling tales of what she could do when her mind was unfettered were worth the price. That story she told so seriously about how the pipes burst—and the plumber wouldn't come, and "My dear, I gave those pipes only half an hour's treatment, and they closed right up!" It was quite as much fun—well, almost as much—hearing her, as it ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... me the best view, and Salemina the biggest bath. We bought housekeeping stores, distributing our patronage equally between the two grocers; we purchased aprons and dusters from the rival drapers, engaged bread and rolls from the baker, milk and cream from the plumber, who keeps three cows, interviewed the flesher about chops; in fact, no young couple facing love in a cottage ever had a busier or happier time than we; and at sundown, when Francesca arrived, we ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Five years had slipped by since he quit school, and he couldn't remember where they had gone. It was only six months after his father died that he lost his last regular job. He tried selling and was a failure. He had been carpenter's helper, plumber's helper, porter, counter-man and busboy as the months passed, but nothing steady. For the past two months he had been hunting for work, while his few dollars dwindled to where he no longer had room rent. Then it was ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... then the sin will cease of itself. Let us suppose the plaster in your house fell down, and you found that it fell because there was a leak in the water-pipe above, and the water coming through wet the plaster and made it fall. What is the first thing your father would do in that case? Why, get a plumber and stop up the leak in the pipe before putting up the plaster again. Would it not be foolish to engage a plasterer to repair the ceiling while the pipe was still leaking? Everyone would say that man must ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... phases of his death which struck home the hardest was the concern and sorrow the small tradespeople showed—the cobbler, the plumber, the drug-store clerk. You hear men say: "I often find it interesting to talk to working-people and get their view-point." Such an attitude was absolutely foreign to Carl. He talked to "working-people" because he talked to everybody as he went along his joyous way. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... interest, decide quickly and arbitrarily where he will put his plow and run his furrow, and then sit down and plot a schedule of how he proposes to mount the success ladder rung by rung. That might suit a plumber, or tickle the fancy of an interior decorator, but it will not conserve the strength of the officer corps. Its consequence would be to stereotype the thinking faculties of a professional whose inner ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... obtained at any drug store, is quickly brushed over both the tire and the rim, and the tire put in place—that holds very well. Cement well applied is stronger. If the rim is well covered with old cement, gasoline applied to the surface of the old cement will soften it; or with a plumber's torch the rim may be heated without injuring enamel and the cement melted, or take a cake of cement, soften it in gasoline or melt it, or even light it like a stick of sealing-wax and apply it to the rim. If hot cement is used it will be necessary ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... of amorous nature happens to lead a life of much leisure, his idle mind will turn one way; and if the tide of opportunity concur, he will be dissipated, whether he be composer, clergyman, business man, bravo, soldier, sailor, carpenter, king, plumber, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... say we are aware of some questions of why we didn't immediately send out a fleet of ships as soon as the call failed to come through. A military man does not rush troops into battle until he has some idea of what he must oppose; even a plumber needs to get some idea of the problem before he knows what tools to take with him. It would serve no constructive purpose to rush an unprepared fleet out to rescue, and might prove the ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... fix your Aunt Minerva's water pipe," said truth-loving Mr. Jones. "Come, show me the way; I'm the plumber." ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... Piddleswood towards Okeford, Fitzpaine, but the hounds pressing him hard he was obliged to return to the cover, where having taken a turn or two he broke on the opposite side near the town of Shirminster, and crossed the commons to Mr. Brunes's seat at Plumber, where he entered a summer-house, passed through the chimney flue, and entered a drain, whence being bolted, he was run into and killed at Fifehide Neville, fourteen miles straight from the place where he was found, after a chase of two hours ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... and brood. She shows no affection for the male, no pleasure in his society; she only tolerates him as a necessary evil, and, if he is killed, goes in quest of another in the most business-like manner, as you would go for the plumber or the glazier. In most cases the male is the ornamental partner in the firm, and contributes little of the working capital. There seems to be more equality of the sexes among the woodpeckers, wrens, and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the daughter of an old citizen of New York, a worthy man, a plumber by trade, who, by means of plenty of work, small competition, and high prices, managed to scrape together fifty or sixty thousand dollars, which from time to time he judiciously invested in real estate. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... beautiful and hasn't he a classy set of teeth?" rejoined Mark Heath. "Be good, Fido, and you shall have a plumber ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... an unsympathetic but kindly uncle who was a plumber and builder. His uncle had a family of six, the eldest eleven, and Lewisham made himself agreeable and instructive. Moreover he worked hard for the culminating third year of his studies (in which he had decided to do great things), ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... child, had taken but a lukewarm interest in the diversions of her playmates. Even in the early days when she had lived with her parents in a ragged outskirt of Apex, and hung on the fence with Indiana Frusk, the freckled daughter of the plumber "across the way," she had cared little for dolls or skipping-ropes, and still less for the riotous games in which the loud Indiana played Atalanta to all the boyhood of the quarter. Already Undine's chief delight was to "dress up" in her mother's ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the principal witnesses, Madame Flameche, widow of the victim, Louis Ladureau, cabinetmaker, and Jean Durdent, plumber. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... scientist you'd make a magnificent plumber, George!" retorted the Big Business Man. "You're about as helpful in this little gathering as ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... all do, my dear friends, after last night's hurricane? [Footnote: Numbers of the finest trees were blown down. The staircase skylight was blown away, and the lead which surrounded it rolled up as neatly as if just out of the plumber's: roofs were torn off and cabins blown down.] Have any trees been blown away? Has the spire stood? Is Madgy Woods alive? How many roofs of houses in the town have been blown away, and how many hundred slates and panes ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... private perspiring in khaki to splendid officers, French, Italian, Roumanian, Serbian, Czecho-Slovak, be-medalled like the advertisements of patent foods; from the middle aged, leaden pipe laden Marseilles plumber, in his blue smock, to the blue-uniformed Senegalese private, staring with his childish grin, at the multitudinous hurrying sights of an unfamiliar crowd. Backwards and forwards they passed in two thick unending ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the windows, which hard freezing of the sod house and settling of the walls might have a tendency to shatter, double sheets of mica, such as is used in the flexible tops of automobiles, were set in and plastered with clay which was burnt to the hardness and consistency of brick by a plumber's flash lamp sending out the hot flame of burning gasoline ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... commanded him to marry me at once—and if he doesn't obey he will be disinherited and have to become a plumber or something to make a living. His father is Joshua Barnes, the mustard king—you must have heard of him. When I told Auntie who he was she almost collapsed and said something about Joshua Barnes buying and selling twenty hogs—I suppose ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... types of workmen and have opened the way for the elevation of a group of labourers to the higher level of versatile educated men,[27] the old traditions have to a very large extent prevailed. The average sanitary plumber of to-day in England insists upon his position as a mere labourer as though it were some precious thing, he guards himself from improvement as a virtuous woman guards her honour, he works for specifically limited hours and by the hour ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... after day alongside of the great ogres they have killed; the opera-house, with Siegfried himself singing, supported by the real Brunhild and the original, bona fide dragon Fafnir, running of his own motive power, and breathing actual fire and smoke without the aid of a steam-engine and a plumber to connect him therewith before he can go out upon the stage to engage Siegfried ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... on from the street, and it was gaily pouring into the cellar. Mr. Close is a fat man, but he ran like a jack-rabbit to that water main, and shut it off. Then without daring to face—Mary, he started to town for a plumber. ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... Archological Museum, with a collection of inscriptions, sarcophagi, urns, statues, columns, friezes, altars, and tombstones, those of the Pagans having the letters D.M., Diis manibus. Also some of the long lead pipes, with the name of the plumber, "C. Canthius Porthinus fac.," which helped to bring water from the fountain at the foot of the hill on which Baux stands. At the inner end, right hand, is a torse of Mithras of white Pharos marble, 3 ft. 2 inches high, found in 1598 on the site ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... grandeur in soap-manufacturing, and we don't look to manicures and plumbers for social prestige. A feline race would have honored such occupations. J. de Courcy Tiger would have felt that nothing /but/ making soap, or being a plumber, was compatible with a high social position; and the rich Vera Pantherbilt would have deigned to dine only ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... income ran well up toward three hundred dollars a month: her father worked steadily at five dollars a day, George was a roofer's assistant and earned eighty dollars a month, and Chester worked in a plumber's shop, and at eighteen was paid sixty-five dollars. Emeline could only conclude that three hundred dollars a month was insufficient to prevent dirt, crowding, scolding, miserable meals, and an incessant atmosphere ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... pastoral care of their congregations, the brethren share between them a vast variety of constantly recurring temporal duties, for in Labrador there is no baker, greengrocer, and butcher round the corner, and no mason, carpenter, plumber, painter or glazier to be called in when repairs are needed. The missionaries must discharge all these offices, as well as be their own gardener and smith, and on occasion doctor, dentist, chemist, or anything else that may be necessary. ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... Tinsdale improvements had been going on at the Carsons'. Bob, always handy with tools, had been putting in a tank over the bathtub. They had one at the house on the hill, only it was run by a windmill. Bob had a friend who was a plumber's son, and from him had obtained some lengths of second-hand water-pipe and an old faucet. He had conceived the idea of a tank on the roof, and his first plan had been only a rainwater tank, but gradually as his ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... and I. I think I can work dad to let me go. I can pretend to fall in love with the plumber, or somebody, and he'll be glad to trot me off for a while. And he likes you, Eveley. He thinks you ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... problem. What I have been pondering is if it would be wise to offer to pay an increased charge. I'd do anything to get the pipes mended, but, on the other hand, it's not a sound precedent. A state of society in which everyone bid against everyone else for the first services of the plumber would be unbearable. Only the rich would ever be plumbed, and very soon the plumbers would be the millionaires. Perhaps we had better let the letter go as it is? You think so and I think so. Very well then, just Believe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... universality, because of the nature of their work in the world. Not, let it be noted, because of the existence of their work. Leonardo da Vinci must have worked pretty hard; on the other hand, many a government office clerk, village constable or elusive plumber may do (to all human appearance) no work at all, and yet show no signs of the Aristotelian universalism. What makes it difficult for the average man to be a universalist is that the average man has to be a specialist; ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... at the glove counter at Mason's years ago; she was then Maggie McKay, and a vain, pretentious thing. She married a plumber with a romantic name, and her rise has been rapid. Now, if you and I ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... "And I've done so well on that clipping-machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week at another job. I could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure. I'd rather have a trade than be in business—I ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... many—indeed perhaps too many—remarkable men in the Five Towns. Thomas Batchgrew was one of them. He had begun life as a small plumber in Bursley market-place, living behind and above the shop, and begetting a considerable family, which exercised itself in the back yard among empty and full turpentine-cans. The original premises survived, as a branch establishment, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... formulated in his mind a series of disparaging remarks concerning Mr Verloc's face and figure. The fellow was unexpectedly vulgar, heavy, and impudently unintelligent. He looked uncommonly like a master plumber come to present his bill. The First Secretary of the Embassy, from his occasional excursions into the field of American humour, had formed a special notion of that class of mechanic as the embodiment ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... hatchet; a negro farmer and his two daughters were lynched and their bodies burned by four white men (who will probably also be lynched if caught); a girl of eleven shot her girl friend of about the same age and killed her; several persons were found stabbed to death; a plumber killed his brother (also a plumber) for saying that he stole two dollars; a murderer was shot by a posse of militia in a cornfield; a card game at Bayonne, New Jersey, resulted in a revolver fight on the street in which one of the players was killed; bank robbers killed a cashier at twelve ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... between business advantage and right teaching; every writer has faced the alternative of his aesthetic duty and the search for beauty on one hand and the "saleable" on the other. All this is as true of ordinary making as of special creative work. Every plumber capable of his business hates to have to paint his leadwork; every carpenter knows the disgust of turning out unfinished "cheap" work, however well it pays him; every tolerable cook can feel shame for an unsatisfying dish, and none the less ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... started you girls off at such a tearing pace? Why, the boys borrowed that soldering outfit from the plumber. It's all right." ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... the porch had suffered a strenuous clipping; the door might have just come out of prison. In the hall the Carpaccio copies still glowed, but there were dust sheets over most of the furniture and a plumber was moving his things out with that eleventh hour reluctance so characteristic of plumbers. Mrs. Rabbit, a little tearful, and dressed for departure very respectably in black was giving the youngest and least experienced housemaid a faithful ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... provided for. If the place was too hot, or too cold, somebody got thoroughly damned. If the ventilation was bad, and he could not get the windows open, he would break them out. If you questioned his balance-sheet he would the next day flash up an expense-account that looked like a plumber's bill and give you fifty cents as your share of the spoils. At hotels he always got a room with two beds, if possible. I was his prisoner—he was despotically kind—he regulated my hours of sleep, my meals, my exercise. He would throw intruding visitors ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... not hearing from you!! I have torn all my hair off, and constantly beat my unoffending family. Wild notions have occurred to me of sending in my own plumber to do the drains. Then I remember that you have probably written to prepare your man, and restrain my audacious hand. Then Stone presents himself, with a most exasperatingly mysterious visage, and says that a rat has appeared in the kitchen, and it's his opinion (Stone's, not the rat's) ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... fall, and blinded by snow, Tartarin waved his arms and legs at random, like a puppet out of order; then, drawing himself up by means of the rope, he hung suspended over the abyss, his nose against its icy side, which his breath polished, in the attitude of a plumber in the act of soldering a waste-pipe. He saw the sky above him growing paler and the stars disappearing; below he could fathom the gulf and its opaque shadows, from which rose a ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... be finished,' the plumber demanded scornfully, 'before hot and cold are put in?' and he put in hot and cold. Then an army of gardeners arrived with fairy carts and spades and seeds and bulbs and forcing-houses, and soon they had a flower-garden to the right of the verandah, and a vegetable garden to the left, and roses ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... precocious that at the age of eight she could read the Greek Testament in the original; that she was from her earliest youth emotional and sentimental; that despite her intellectual tastes and attainments she gave her hand to an illiterate journeyman plumber and glazier; and that when the fruit of this union lay dying by her side she insisted on dictating to her husband a poem afterward published under the moving caption of "A Mother's Address to Her ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... production. Here am I young and successful, And Walter and Thomas and Selwyn have nothing on me. Press agents are hired to praise me. Watch for my next big sensation, But meanwhile I hope that that play-writing plumber, Who had an idea and nothing else, Never sees ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... nothing from him so I left him looking after me with a perplexed and somewhat indignant gaze. As a detective it seemed I might make a good plumber. I knew very well he would not repeat my questions, but it would be just like good old Paisley to worry himself to death ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... the beautiful spire was destroyed by fire caused by lightning or by a plumber's neglect, and the Chapter House seriously injured. We have no trustworthy plates prior to this fire, and the various estimates about the height of the spire and other matters are anything but infallible. Service was held at St. Gregory's, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... at the bottom locked. But he could get a clear enough view of the interior, even through the dirty glass. The entire space within was not more than ten feet wide and eight feet deep. It held a litter of plumber's tools, a few lengths of gas piping, a row of batteries, a blowpipe, a small hand-forge, a couple of porcelain washbowls, a deal table and chair and what seemed to be an electric transformer in a ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... very, very busy. Something strange and new happens every day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of the ladies was just selling soap, but I didn't buy any. It was horrid soap. The other two were calling ladies,—a silk one and a velvet one. The silk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she told me I was more of a lady than she ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of a political boss's beer-party to the bums of his ward; had it been an account of Mrs. Van Astorbilt's elopement with a plumber; had it been the life-story of a shooting show girl; had it been the description of the latest style in slit skirts; had it been a sarcastic message from some drunken, over-rated city official; had it been a sympathy-squad description of the hardships and soul-beauties of a millionaire ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... selected without much manifest attention by Tutt, who had nevertheless managed to slip in an Abyssinian brother on the back row, and an ex-dog fancier for Number Six. Also among those present were a delicatessen man from East Houston Street, a dealer in rubber novelties, a plumber and the editor of Baby's World. The foreman was almost as fat as Mr. Appleboy, but Tutt regarded this as an even break on account of the size of Tunnygate. As Tutt confidently whispered to Mrs. Appleboy, it was as rotten a jury as ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... this respect is very noticeable in different men; an old plumber once told me that he had been employed upon a pump on a neighbouring farm, where the slot in which the handle works was so worn on one side that the bolt which carries the handle had given way, owing to the man, who had used it for years, not keeping it running truly in the centre. He called ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... boy, that I am easily satisfied. I expect very little from anyone. But I think that I am entitled to prompt and willing service. That, at the very least! Yet I must tell you that Mabel, my cook, has left me most ungratefully after only three months' notice! She is to be married to Bob Summers, the plumber. (Lieutenant Robert Summers, since the war, if you please!) Well, she can never say I did not warn her. I did not mince matters. I told her exactly what married life is, and why I have never tried it. But the foolish girl is beyond advice. I have had two ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... plumber; and I knelt down once more to look for the danger, but could see nothing but the dark whispering hole, with, at a great depth below, the round disc of light representing the mouth ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... the blacksmith over at headquarters company workin on it now. Hes an awful good man. He was a plumber in civilian life. Thats why they made him a blacksmith when he joined the army. He says hes goin to fix it sos Ill never be bothered with ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... day. Th' on'y people she sees is th' childher an' th' neighbors. While th' good man in a swallow- tail coat is addhressin' th' Commercial club on what we shud do f'r to reform pollytics, she's discussin' th' price iv groceries with th' plumber's wife an' talkin' over th' back fince to the milkman. Thin O'Leary moves up on th' boolyvard. He knows he'll get along all r-right on th' boolyvard. Th' men'll say: 'They'se a good deal of rugged common sinse in that O'Leary. He may be a robber, but they's mighty ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... answer) Are you a plumber? (No answer) Are you the water department? (One loud, hollow bang) What do you want? (No answer) I believe you're a ghost. Are you? (No answer) Well, then, stop banging. (She reaches out and turns on the warm tap. No water flows. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... A plumber in Aberdeen is giving lessons to a women's class in knitting. It is said that his treatise on How to Crochet a Burst Bath-Pipe is likely to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... French sergeant and private crouched by their machine-gun ready to repel the charge, the mutual relationship being apparently somewhat that of a plumber and his assistant. They sprayed the oncoming Bavarians with a shower of steel and piled the dead high outside the French trenches. The charge had failed, and the sergeant began to act strangely. At length he broke the silence. "Did you see ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... been entertained by ancestors of the present owner, Mr. Laurence Moore, who would now act as host; and that there were baths to all but five of the bed chambers. Was it not good chance that Larry had them put in? They are not paid for yet, and the plumber, with some others, has been very unkind, making Larry a bankroot—no, a bankrupt. We shall soon be rich again with all these thirties and forties and fifties and hundreds of dollars a day (we can take forty people to say nothing of servants if some of them will sleep ensemble), and then we can ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... this summer, and the bathrooms have all been tiled and fitted up afresh, from beginning to end. I know that, in the past, you have used acid, gritty soaps on the basins and tubs, Martha, and my plumber tells me you mustn't do it. He says it's ruinous. He recommends kerosene oil for the bath-tubs and marble slabs. He says it will take any stain out, and is much safer than the soaps. So please use kerosene to ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... The brave Breton, who was able to resist the awful pain of himself making the coffin of his dear one and lining with his memories those burial planks, could not bear up against this strange reminder. His strength gave way; he was not able to lift the lead, and the plumber, seeing this, came with him, and offered to accompany him to the house and solder the last sheet when the body had been laid ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Fleet of the supreme court of California recently rendered an opinion which indicates the utter emptiness of our boast that in this land all men are equal before the law. Because of the confusion or ignorance of a new motorman, the young child of a plumber, playing upon the track, was killed by an electric car. The parents sued the company and were awarded damages in the sum of six thousand dollars. Defendant took an appeal, which the supreme court sustained, and the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his way through the swarming vehicles which swung up and down Broadway, across to Seventh Avenue, where he turned into a plumber's shop. This fellow had handled small jobs on Shirley's extensive real estate holdings, and he was naturally delighted to do a favor in the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... of bathrooms has become an interesting branch of interior decoration, whereas once it was left entirely to the architect and plumber. ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... The Missouri Pacific enjoined the Rock Island and wouldn't let it go straight through, so they built their own bridge and belted the city and went on around. I got stricken down sick in 1930 and haven't been able to do heavy work since. You know, a plumber and steam-fitter have to do ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... son's gifts became a subject on which she never tired dilating, and naturally such flattery reconciled me to a calling far removed from all my old ambitions; but had it been intimated to me that I might become a plumber I should have accepted that vocation just as readily, provided that by following it I should go out of the valley, over the mountains, to Pittsburgh and the presence ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the night, he wore no waistcoat, and as a protest against the conventions he had dispensed with a collar. As he stood there, belted about his large waist, a billycock hat on the back of his head, he looked to be anything from a broken-down publican to an out-of-work plumber. ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... Ward's generally fresh and unforced humor. But perhaps the worst instance in all Robertson's play of this pitiful sacrifice of situation and character to a petty "joke" is found in Caste. Sam Gerridge, a gas-fitter and plumber, desiring to marry Polly, the daughter of Eccles, a drunken old brute, tells him so, casually mentioning that to prove his affection he will do anything he can in "the way of spirituous liquor or tobacco." This captivates ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... account of its hard and unyielding character. In a fracture of a long bone, that which surrounds the fragments is called the external or ensheathing callus, and may be likened to the mass of solder which surrounds the junction of pipes in plumber-work; that which occupies the position of the medullary canal is called the internal or medullary callus; and that which intervenes between the fragments and maintains the continuity of the cortical ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... not. She's up again!" vociferated a delighted plumber, with a sounding slap on his own leg. "Gor blimy, if she ain't ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... than one; and that as far as she was able to discover "the end" and "the good thing" were liable to remain together indefinitely; for she had settled into that mess of paint, enamel and varnish, until she and that bath tub had formed an attachment that nothing short of a doctor or a plumber ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... prerogatives until, not long ago, the un-American and undemocratic proposition to take away the laying out of the new city park from the easy going but ignorant mercies of the so-called city forester, who had been first a plumber and later an alderman, prevailed. An enlightened civic spirit triumphed and special knowledge ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... eternal old order of things; of James, revolutionary but faithful (of course James never would in fact have kept this absurd job); of a light yellow pressman; of a feckless, torrentially eloquent plumber, whose solution of the class war was loving-kindness and the letting of the blood of all who ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... I'll get the doctor to come round again," Ann Eliza said, trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might speak of sending for the plumber or the gas-fitter. ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... manuscript writing and marketing, though it be only a description of a shop window for a dry goods trade paper, or an interview with a boss plumber for the Gas Fitter's Gazette, will furnish you with experience in your own trade, and set you ahead a step on the long road that leads to the most desirable acceptances. The one thing to watch zealously is your own development, to make sure that you do not too ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... caught her up, with a whistle. "Eh?" said he. "Love in a cottage?—is it thus the poet turns his lay? That's damn' nonsense! I tell you, even in a cottage the plumber's bill has to be paid, and the grocer's little account settled every month. Yes, by gad, and even if you elect to live on bread and cheese and kisses, you'll find Camembert a bit more to your taste ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... world before him why should a man turn dentist? He must have been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his malicious ambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who would scheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer—alas, how shrunk from former days! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia's estimate. "Do you ever see him," he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like a carman, or brush through a crowd like a baker, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... not without a sense of humour, smiled rather wanly. Encouraged, Elizabeth continued: 'Wot's the use o' spoilin' your pretty eyes cryin' for the moon—by which I mean Mr. 'Arbinger—when 'e isn't your Fate? Why, bless you, I was once goin' to marry a plumber's mate, and jest a week afore the weddin 'e went orf with some one else an' owin' me arf-a-crown, too. I was cut up at the time, but I know now 'e wasn't my Fate, 'avin been told since that I'm goin' to marry a man wot'll work with ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... the light of the dashing host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn't, mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber's man come to fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... to know, I'm pretty slick myself. There's tools to open things, an' you hev to be ready to 'xplain how you come thur an' jolly up a parlor maid per'aps. It's easy to hev made a mistake in the house, er be a gas man er a plumber wot the boss sent up to look at the pipes. But night work's best pay after you get onto things. Thur's houses where you ken lay your han's on things goin' into the thousands an' lots ov um easy to get rid of without anybody findin' out. There's Buck he used to be great ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... to make him. He found himself reviling the old man in speech and with a joy quite new in all his experience. He wound up—it was a plagiarism from a plumber—by telling Mr. Sidney that he looked like a turkey-cock, had the morals of a parish bull, and need never hope for a new pig-pound as long ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... information contained in this chapter, I have been recently informed by the Rev. Mr. Sankey, vicar of Wragby, that the family is quite extinct in the parish, except the wife of a plumber, who claims relationship with Harrison. The representative of the Winn family was created Lord St. Oswald in 1885. Harrison is not quite forgotten at Foulby. The house in which he was born was a low thatched cottage, with ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... her heart at the perturbed expression that overtook the hair-dresser. He was trying in vain to remove one of the caps. She caught enigmatic words—"the borax, crystallized ... solid. It would take a plumber ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Kensington Park Gardens with some faint hope of finding that Mabel had returned. But the windows were blank, and even the front door, as he stood there knocking and ringing repeatedly, had an air of dust and neglect about it which prepared him for the worst. After considerable delay a journeyman plumber unfastened the door and explained that the caretaker had just stepped out, while he himself had been employed on a job with the cistern at the back of the house. He was not able to give Vincent much information. The family were all away; they might be abroad, but he did not know for certain; ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... all mechanism to one man, all form and colour to another, so to Anthony Croft the world was all melody. Notwithstanding these many gifts and possibilities, the doctor's wife advised the Widow Croft to make a plumber of him, intimating delicately that these freaks of nature, while playing no apparent part in the divine economy, ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... strikes the end of the opening delivers a blow which may be of great violence. The nature of this stroke may be judged by the familiar instance where the relatively slow-flowing stream from a hydrant pipe is suddenly choked by closing the stopcock. Unless the plumber provides a cushion of air to diminish the energy of the blow, it is often strong enough to shake the house. Again, when steam or other gases are by a sudden diminution of pressure enabled to expand, they may deliver a blow which is exactly like that caused by the explosion of gunpowder, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... he said; "the plumber's bin and gone, and the feller from the hardware store has swore hell be around before noon to fix the ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... he had done at first and to wash a couple of pans of gravel. The test elated him perceptibly; for while there did not seem to be the makings of a millionaire in that gravel bank, he judged roughly that he could make a plumber's wages if he worked hard enough—and that looked pretty good to a fellow who had worked all his life for forty dollars a month. "Two-bits a pan, just about," he put it to himself. "And I'll have to pack the dirt ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... guess not, or not anything serious," I answered, with an effort to throw off the weight I suddenly felt at my own heart. "People have been known to run for a plumber. But if you're anxious, let us go and see what the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... called to Mr. S. Campion's farm at East Heslerton, near Malton, to search for a water supply. At that time he marked two places near the farmhouse where, he said, the presence of water was indicated by the rod. Since then Mr. E. Halliday, plumber of Malton, has bored an artesian well at one of the places indicated, and found a very copious supply of water at a depth of 87 feet, after going through sand, clay, and a bed of what Mr. Halliday says is quartz and lead ore. Mr. Campion, who was previously without a supply of pure water, is delighted ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... manager. Better service brought more work, and new machinery made greater output possible without additional labor. The manager found labor cost too high and introduced methods which saved both labor and money. He found the machinery badly arranged. When the plumber told him it would cost twenty-five dollars to rearrange it he spent a dollar and forty cents and did it himself. After a discussion in the Board of Directors which nearly wrecked the organization, ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... other alterations are at last fixed. Winnington is to be paymaster; Sandys, cofferer, on resigning the exchequer to Mr. Pelham; Sir John Rushout, treasurer of the navy; and Harry Fox, lord of the treasury. Mr. Compton,(876) and Gybbons remain at that board. Wat. Plumber, a known man, said, the other day, "Zounds! Mr. Pultney took those old dishclouts to wipe out the 'treasury, and now they are going to lace them and lay them up!" It is a most just idea: to be sure, Sandys and Rushout, and their fellows, are dishclouts, if dishclouts there are in the world: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... thing these people could then do it so slackly. Then a certain sudden warmth in the applause about me quickened my attention, and I realized the satirical purport of drunken old father Eccles, and the moral intention of his son-in-law, the plumber. Between them they expressed the whole duty of the workingman as the prosperous Victorians conceived it. He was to work hard always at any job he could find for any wages he could get, and if he didn't he was a "drunken ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... edition de luxe of celluloid molars. Still, I wish she'd paid more attention to the dinner and less to Mr. Barlow's conversation last night. She stood a whole minute, with the salad-bowl in her hand, waiting for him to reach the point of his story about the plumber who put a gas-pipe through Shakespeare's tenor in Westminster Abbey, and when he finished, and she smiled, you'd have thought a dozen gravestones to the deceased's memory had ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... Battens was once 'had up before the gentlemen' to stand or fall by his accusations, and that an old shoe was thrown after him on his departure from the building on this dread errand;- -not ineffectually, for, the interview resulting in a plumber, was considered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... outside men. She'd caught him smugglin' home a few measly vegetables from her big garden, and after tongue lashin' him lively she fires him on the spot—him a poor Dago with a big fam'ly. Then there'd been tales told by the butcher, the plumber, and half a dozen others, all goin' to show she was a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... may be treated with respect and courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties. It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere business ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... developed an appreciation of the necessity for a bathroom. Therefore the architects placed bathrooms in the new houses, and the older houses tore out a cupboard or two, set up a boiler beside the kitchen stove, and sought a new godliness, each with its own bathroom. The great American plumber joke, that many-branched evergreen, was planted ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the day of the medicine-closet in the bath-room and the department-store patent-remedy counter is over? We've got sanatoriums now instead of family doctors. In other words, we put in good sanitation systems and don't need the plumber ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the gold angel that tops the Town Hall spire. The other four towns are apt to ridicule that gold angel, which for exactly fifty years has guarded the borough and only been regilded twice. But ask the plumber who last had the fearsome job of regilding it whether it is a gold angel to be ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... do our men beguile the interminable hours. After all it is the small things that men resent in life, not the big ones. I once asked a French soldier over a game of cards—in civil life he was a plumber, whom we shall meet again[7]—whether he could get any sleep in the trenches amid the infernal din of the guns. "Oh, I slept pretty well on the whole," he explained nonchalantly, "mais mon voisin, celui-la"—he pointed reproachfully to a comrade who was imperturbably shuffling ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... side by side with the grand duke's. As it was impossible for him ever to become a duke, his ambition had been to arrive at the next greatest thing—the bandmaster. As he neared the pavilion he laughed silently and grimly. To have grown wealthy as a master plumber instead! So ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath |
