"Masonry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over the broad-gabled, Quakerly edifice, with its broad, low door, high roof, double stories of windows, and a higher window in the gable, trim rows of arch-bricks over door and windows, and belt masonry; and heard the tall trees hush it to sleep like a baby left to them. Nearly fifty feet square, and probably fifty years old, it looked to be good ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Romans, gave an imposing idea of the scale on which these royal works were conducted. It appeared, at the distance of a league or two, a vast succession of arches, displaying a broader range of masonry than I had ever before seen. So many years had passed since I was last in Europe, that I gazed ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs. The undulating downs and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of our inland chalk country, have a peacefully ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the Gulf of Boston in the eighteenth century, a tomb of masonry was discovered, in which, with the bones, was found a sword-hilt of iron. The Indians not being acquainted with this metal, it could not be one of their skeletons; it was not either, the remains ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... black outlines of a great edifice. Then we alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited. In a little while footsteps were heard, a man emerged from the darkness, and we dropped into his wake without saying anything. He led us under an archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a tall iron gate, which he locked behind us. We followed him down this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very distinctly see. At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... over twelve months they held wrecked Nieuport, and I have watched them there week after week. There is no drearier post on earth. One day in the pile of masonry thirty feet from our cellar refuge the sailors began throwing out the bricks, and in a few minutes they uncovered the body of a comrade. All the village has the smell of desolation. That smell is compounded of green ditch-water, damp plaster, wet clothing, blood, straw, and antiseptics. ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... added on to them, it is inevitable that they should break, and give way to the settling of the new wall, which will shrink one braccia in every ten, more or less, according to the greater or smaller quantity of mortar used between the stones of the masonry, and whether this mortar is more or less liquid. And observe, that the walls should always be built first and then faced with the stones intended to face them. For, if you do not proceed thus, since the wall settles more than the stone facing, the projections left on the sides of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Tor), was used as a burial place for Christian pilgrims from the 6th century A.D. till as late, apparently, as 1697, and especially in the time of the Crusades. Near it there is a very ancient charnelhouse, partly rock-cut, partly of masonry, said to be the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 882 says, "I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chiefs of the revolt and with their skins I covered this wall. Some were immured alive in the masonry, others were crucified or impaled along the wall. I had some of them flayed in my presence and had the wall hung with their skins. I arranged their heads like crowns and their transfixed bodies in the form ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... other hand, he was afraid to affront their Norman oppressors, whom he had allowed to build castles, and strengthen themselves in the very way which it had been Henry Beauclerc's policy to prevent. Almost every spot where green mounds and blocks of massive masonry remain within an ancient moat, is said by tradition to have been "a castle in Stephen's time," and we wonder, considering that he reigned but nine years, how such immense works could have been effected. Dens of thieves they seem to have been, and misery and destruction reigned round them; ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... I can gaze at him without discourtesy, and after a while the expression of his face made me forget to listen, and I lay dreamily in the sunshine letting the antique formulas of the story blend with the suggestions from the prehistoric masonry I lay on. The glow of childish transport that came over him when he reached the nonsense ending—so common in these tales—recalled me to myself, and I listened attentively while he gabbled with delighted haste: 'They found the path and I found the puddle. They were drowned and I was found. If it's ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... convent wall. Opposite to him was the window whence Rita had held her conversation with the gipsy; below it, Paco saw traces of the loophole through which he had escaped. The long grass and bushes had been cleared away, and the rusty grating which Paco had so easily removed was replaced by solid masonry. At none of the casements on that side of the convent was any person visible. Both shutters and windows were open; but Venetian blinds masked the interior of the apartments from the view of the muleteer, who stood still and listened. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... best Artillery Officer in the world,"—and is a man of great mark in military and other circles. He is Son and Successor of that fantastic Lippe-Buckeburg, by whom Friedrich was introduced to Free-Masonry long since. He has himself a good deal of the fantast again, but with a better basis of solidity beneath it. A man of excellent knowledge and faculty in various departments; strict as steel, in regard to discipline, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded one of ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... here lies the unspirited clay, Who secrets of Masonry swore to betray. He joined the great Order and studied with zeal The awful arcana he meant to reveal. At last in chagrin by his own hand he fell— There was nothing to learn, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up apparently by chance, and presenting the most incongruous appearance that could possibly be conceived. One or two pucca houses, that is, houses of brick and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah (trader) or usurious banker lived, but the majority of the houses were of the usual mud and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where the meals were cooked, and where the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... looking at Neuville-St. Vaast, I suddenly heard a tremendous explosion and saw a great mass of masonry and debris of all descriptions flying high in the air, I knew just what had happened. The French—for it is always the French who do it—had burrowed, sapped and dug themselves laboriously, patiently, slowly, by tortuous, narrow underground ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Steve," Obed replied, and his familiar use of the other's name could be easily explained by that spirit of "free masonry" that exists among all boys. "I've got a business, which looks like it was goin' to pan out right decent, and make me some money in the bargain. That's why they're meanin' to rob me, I guess; anyhow, it hinges on that same thing. ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... struck out, and began to swim round the great walls which frowned above me. I could see only three yards ahead; I had then good hopes of not being seen, as I crept along close under the damp, moss-grown masonry. There were lights from the new part of the Castle on the other side, and now and again I heard laughter and merry shouts. I fancied I recognized young Rupert Hentzau's ringing tones, and pictured him flushed with wine. Recalling my thoughts ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... the dark-haired god led the way to the high earth-barrow of Hercules, built round solid masonry, and made by the Trojans and Pallas Minerva for him fly to when the sea-monster was chasing him from the shore on to the plain. Here Neptune and those that were with him took their seats, wrapped in a thick cloud of darkness; but the other gods ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... It may percolate through the chinks of the masonry. In any case I'd rather die that way than be starved ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... built into and among weather-scarred rocks, one massive wing butting seaward, others nosing north and south among cedars and outcropping ledges—the whole silver-grey mass of masonry reddening under a westering sun, every dormer, every leaded diamond pane aflame; this was Shotover as Siward ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... (an elevated causeway) presents a double roadway on the sides of an aqueduct of strong masonry and great height, resting on open arches and massive pillars, which together afford fine points both for attack and defence. The sideways of both aqueducts are, moreover, defended by many strong breastworks at the gates, and before reaching them. ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... there ran a broad ribbon of light. It shone from a rock less than half a league distant: and on that rock stood a castle which was a furnace—its walls black as the bars of a grate, its windows aglow with contained fire. For the moment it seemed that this fire filled the whole pile of masonry: but presently, while we stood and stared, a sudden flame, shooting high from the walls, lit up the front of a tall tower above them, with a line of battlements at its base and on the battlements a range of roofs yet intact. As though a slide had been opened and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... glittered —far away down Whitehall; the traffic was released; lurched on; spun to a smooth continuous uproar; swerving round the curve of Cockspur Street; and sweeping past Government offices and equestrian statues down Whitehall to the prickly spires, the tethered grey fleet of masonry, and the large white clock ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... torrents is such, that large blocks of stone are hurled out of the bed of the stream to the height of twelve or thirteen feet. [Footnote: Surrell, Etude sur les Torrents, pp. 81-86.] The impulse of masses driven with such force overthrows the most solid masonry, and their concussion cannot fail to be attended with the crushing of the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... beheld my first view of her from the Jersey shore. The cynical American says, I know not with what truth, that the alien, clutching his bundle and gazing with anxious, frightened eyes toward the mountainous masonry of Manhattan, catching sight of the green sunlit image of Liberty with her benign unfaltering regard, holds his breath and feels within his bosom a fierce but short-lived ecstasy of joy. For one brief instant (I still quote the cynical American) faith and hope flame in his heart ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... across the island, from the mouth of the Tyne, on the German Ocean, to the Solway Frith—nearly seventy miles. It was twelve feet high, and eight feet wide. It was faced with substantial masonry on both sides, the intermediate space being likewise filled in with stone. When it crossed bays or morasses, piles were driven to serve as a foundation. Of course, such a wall as this, by itself, would be no defense. It was to be garrisoned ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... have tumbled inside themselves. But now they saw this destruction in the process, and stood very still, listening to the infernal clatter as shells burst at the other end of the street, tumbling down huge masses of masonry and plugging holes into neat cottages, and tearing great gashes out ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Tad moodily in advance, Llyn and his sons in a whispering bunch some yards behind. It had been Tad's own suggestion that he ride forward and meet the Gethins so they might be lured the more easily to the turn beyond the bridge. Now they followed on till they saw the white masonry gleaming in the moonlight, and then the dark form of Tad's horse crossing it, when there was a halt and a grim tightening of belts and loosening of swords. And as the man on the bridge threw up his arm, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... book-bindery, stereotype-foundry, lithographing and wood-engraving establishment, paint-shop, silk-weaving manufactory, and shoe-shop, as well as those trades which are carried on for the most part out of doors, such as masonry and carpentry. The girls are mostly employed in household duties, and are in great demand as servants and assistants in the households ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... lower opening, through which they were drawn off, leaving the old channels dry. Imagine one of the narrow, crooked streets in the old part of Boston, spanned by a continuous stone archway from the summits of the buildings on either hand; then close with solid masonry every window and loop-hole by which a ray of light could struggle in, and you have for proportions and sinuosity not a bad semblance of these tunnels, which constitute four fifths of the extent of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... bonzes, at their death, are burnt—a particular mark of distinction, as all other people are interred. A simple mausoleum, about thirty feet square, and a few small private monuments, were all that was to be seen. None of them had any pretensions to elegance, being built of the simplest masonry. In the former of these edifices are preserved the bones of the persons who have been burnt, and among them are also buried the rich Chinese, whose heirs pay pretty handsomely to obtain such an honour for them. At a little distance stands a small tower, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... gate of the Kasbah one comes on more waste land and on other walls—for all Moroccan towns are enclosed in circuit within circuit of battlemented masonry. Then, unexpectedly, a gate in one of the inner walls lets one into a tiled court enclosed in a traceried cloister and overlooking an orange-grove that rises out of a carpet of roses. This peaceful and well-ordered place is the interior of the Medersa (the college) ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... The mother gathers her children like Niobe. The lover clasps in the midst of horror the maiden no longer coy. Homes are shaken to dust, halls fall in ruins, the very temples of the gods are shattered. Brains are dashed out, blood flows in streams, limbs are twisted, bodies are pinned by falling masonry, cries of anguish pierce the air, groans follow, and lastly silence. Moloch then retires to his inmost sanctuary, filled and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... presents to the construction of roads were here overcome. Suspension bridges led over mountain torrents, stairways cut in the rock made possible the climbing of steep precipices, and mounds of solid masonry facilitated the crossing of ravines. Under the rule of the Spaniards the roads of the Incas went to ruin. In fact, throughout South America but little, if anything, was done by the mother country ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... The class in masonry seemed to be more in line with my present plans than any of the other subjects. It ought to prove of value, I thought, to a man in the general contracting business and certainly to a man who undertook the contracting of building construction. At any rate it ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... rock, and if the theory of Dr. Lepsius is correct, originally containing the body of the founder. The long ascending slope of the great gallery, six feet wide, is formed by successive courses of masonry overlaying each other, and thus narrowing the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... get quite up to her without actually crawling along an unguarded ridge of masonry, as she must have done to attain her present position; but they approached as near as was possible, and ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... are not really the support of the buildings. The essential elements are the columns and girders of steel forming the skeleton framework of the whole. The masonry may assist, but the piers and girders carry the principal weight. If, therefore, everything depends upon these piers, which are often of steel and masonry combined, the immense importance will be seen of basing them upon adequate ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... into gullies by the rains. The palace itself is not less lamentable. The walls are crumbling. Everything movable from the interior has been looted. Trees grow outward from the upper windows, and, in the cracks of masonry and marble floors, a tropic vegetation has sprung up. Moss covers the mosaics, and the carved woodwork has become ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... being raised above the possible action of the water, is liable to none of the casualties that operate against the old bridge, whose piers and arches, though formed of solid masonry, are not proof against the powerful battering-rams formed by huge blocks of ice and heavy logs of wood, aided by the violent opposing ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... banks of the Meuse which has been described many times? Or that citadel built by Vauban, with dynamos and electric light in its underground chambers and passages, its hospitals, shops, stores and barrack room, so safe under its walls and roof of masonry that the Germans presciently did not waste their shells on it but turned them with particular vengeance on the picturesque old houses along the river bank, neglecting the barracks purposely in view of their usefulness to the conquerors when Mecca was theirs. There must be something sacred ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... of natural masonry, for to this point they were pursued by a hostile tribe, and on reaching the gulf found themselves on the edge of a precipice that was too steep at that point to descend. Behind them was the foe; before ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... practically at an end. I might, had I chosen or found it consistent with honour, have called in my following and secured the entrance. Without pausing, however, I passed on to the foot of a gloomy stone staircase winding up between walls of rough masonry; and here Fresnoy stood on one side and stopped. He pointed upwards with a pale face and muttered,'The door ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... great storm. It was rebuilt in wood and the structure stood the buffeting of the Atlantic until it was burned down in 1755. The third, or as it was called the Smeaton Tower, was erected in 1757. It was built of masonry and stood until 1882, over a hundred years. Part of this wonderful old light, I was told by our Captain, is still in use in Plymouth. The present light is 135 feet high, and was built by Sir James W. Douglas ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... of the underground passage, leading to the river foreshore, to be securely walled up; and, with a fine disregard of possible unhealthy consequences in the shape of choke-damp, the doorways of certain ill-reputed vaults and cellars to be filled with solid masonry. Neither harborage of contraband, cruel laughter of man, or yell of tortured beast, should again defile the under-world of Tandy's!—Next he had the roof of the main building raised, and given a less mean and meagre angle. He added a wing on the left containing pleasant ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... surrounded by a moat, and there was a massive stone gateway, of older date than the Court itself—though that was old—dividing a small prim garden from the park; this gatehouse was a noble piece of masonry, of the purest gothic, rich with the mellow tint of age, and almost as perfect as in the days when some wandering companionship of masons gave the last stroke of their chisels to the delicate tracery ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... sometimes the more daring chiefs converted these detached peaks and masses of rock, numbers of which you can see as you come up the Ghaut by railway, into almost impregnable fortresses. Many of these masses of rock rise as sheer up from the hillside as walls of masonry, and look at a short distance like ruined castles. Some are absolutely inaccessible; others can only be scaled by experienced climbers; and, although possible for the natives with their bare feet, are impracticable to European troops. Many of these rock fortresses were at various times ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... Avenue, settlement was detected in the street surface above. Bench excavation was suspended and a section of the permanent lining, 35 ft. long, was placed. The space between the lining and the beams and between the beams and the roof was filled with rubble masonry. Grout pipes were built into the masonry and later all voids were filled with grout. Fig. 3, Plate LIX, shows the first section of the concrete lining completed and part of the rubble in place; and Fig. 4, Plate LIX, shows details of the work above the tunnels. A ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... water, the gates are open, and vessels allowed to enter and depart. When the tide begins to retire, the gates are closed, and the water and the vessels locked in together. Along the river for miles, the banks are flanked with this massive masonry, which in some places I should judge to be nearly forty feet in height. Meantime the town is spreading into the interior; new streets are opened; in one field you may see the brickmakers occupied in their calling, and in the opposite one the bricklayers building rows of houses. New churches ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... heaven and sea, one hundred feet above the water, on all sides were piled the immense masses of masonry, the ruins of which are all that remains of the once proud Castle of Doon. Gazing in awe down the horrid depths of the "Puffing Hole," ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... desperate tactics, and every available battalion was hurried forward to the assault. Before the San Cosme Gate the pioneers were ordered up, and within the suburb pick and crowbar forced a passage from house to house. The guns, moving slowly forward, battered the crumbling masonry at closest range. The Mexicans were driven back from breastwork to breastwork; and a mountain howitzer, which Lieutenant Grant had posted on the tower of a neighbouring church, played with terrible ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... to make a tour of the prisoners' cells and gladiators' dressing-rooms, the guide says," insinuated the chauffeur. And then, when the bride and bridegroom, reluctant but conscientious, were swimming round the vast bowl of masonry, like tea-leaves floating in a great cup, he ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... loose earth about the rent in the floor was covered with the prints of naked feet; the bottom of the hole was packed down in places by a multitude of tracks. Chase's bewildered eyes were the first to discover the presence of loose, scattered masonry in the pile below and the truth dawned upon him sharply. He gave a loud exclamation and then dropped ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... bodily by that impalpable hawser of force and cruelly wrenched and twisted by its enormous couple of angular momentum, the hexan works came up out of the ground as a waterpipe comes up in the teeth of a power shovel. The ground trembled and rocked and boulders, fragments of concrete masonry, and masses of metal flew in all directions as that city-encircling conduit of diabolical machinery was torn from ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... met All classes and conditions, and surveyed, From a secluded niche or aperture, The various, ever-changing multitude Which passed along in restless turbulence, And, as a human river, ebbed and flowed Within its banks of brick and masonry. ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... still I see. This drear, accursed masonry, Where even the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes. Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep, Against the smoky paper thrust,— With glasses, boxes, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... and died. At last an architect looked at the pillars, picked at them, took off a facing of stone, and found, what he had suspected, that it was only this facing that had given way and bulged, and that the inside was a solid pillar of masonry,—small stones grouted together so firmly that the cement was as ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... enormously destructive. Dr. Barry estimated the mortality at 70,000. At Hamburg, where new waterworks had been installed with sand filtration, only a few sporadic cases occurred until the autumn, when a sudden but limited rush took place, which was traced to a defect in the masonry permitting unfiltered Elbe water to pass into the mains. In England cholera obtained a footing on the Humber at Grimsby, and to a lesser extent at Hull, and isolated attacks occurred in some 50 different localities. Excluding a few ship-borne cases the registered number ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... sides are considerably displaced, but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over the contorted path. A short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and roof-arch of brick, again demands extra care, and it is well that the pace is slowed, for half-way through, a man becomes dimly visible running a trolley off the line. Mountains arise on the left and in front, and my old friend Croagh Patrick puts in his Nationalist appearance. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... hemispherical bowl of heavy glass in which is packed a compound containing what, according to John Carter, must be radium. The bowl is then cemented into a metal plate with a heavily insulated back and the whole affair set in the masonry of wall or ceiling as desired, where it gives off light of greater or less intensity, according to the composition of the filling material, for an ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fortress was drawn across the base of the tongue of land from the harbor on one side to the sea on the other,—a distance of about twelve hundred yards. The ditch was eighty feet wide and from thirty to thirty-six feet deep; and the rampart, of earth faced with masonry, was about sixty feet thick. The glacis sloped down to a vast marsh, which formed one of the best defences of the place. The fortress, without counting its outworks, had embrasures for one hundred and forty-eight cannon; but the number in position was much less, and is variously stated. ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... humanity. As we rolled in the cars by Ecclefechan, I strained my eyes to take in every point of the landscape, every cottage, every spire, if by any chance I could find one in that lonely region. There was not a bridge nor a bit of masonry of any kind that I did not eagerly scrutinize, to see if it were solid and honest enough to have been built by Carlyle's father. Solitary enough the country looked. I admired Mr. Emerson's devotion in seeking his friend in his bare home among what he describes as the "desolate ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... antagonists and struggle is needed to overcome; and to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious indwelling life works without effort and almost without consciousness, but it is also likened to the erection of a building, in which there is continuity, and each successive course of masonry is the foundation for that above it. That work of building is work that must be done in silence. If we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must silently drink in the sunshine and dew, and so prosperously pass from blade to ear, and thence to full corn ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "emergency dam" of peculiar construction. It is essentially a skeleton gate, which ordinarily lies uplifted along the top of the lock-wall, but can be swung across, lowered, and gradually closed against the water by letting down panels. In its ordinary position it lies high above the masonry—conspicuous from some distance out at sea as a large ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the ruins of the Christian church, where they had left their mules, it was cold and sunny, and the light seemed curiously blue, almost grey and dusty, after the yellow illumination below. Before them, interrupted here and there by a mass of ruined masonry, or a few arches of aqueduct, waved the grey-green, billowy plain, where the wind, which rolled the great winter cloud-balls overhead, danced and sang with the tall, dry hemlocks and sere white thistles, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... great victory. When decreed, the general returned to Rome, and was appointed by a special edict to the supreme command in the city; on the day of his entry, a triumphal arch was erected of sculptured masonry, under which ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... inhabitants, and a few almost unintelligible ruins scattered among vineyards, olive-groves, and fields of corn, or over the high wastes of the barren Epipole, on the summit of which the curious will find ruined walls and fortresses of massive and beautiful masonry. From these the eye commands the whole site of the ancient city. There lies, at the distance of three miles, the small island of Ortygia, on which is the modern town; on its right is the narrow entrance ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... belonged to a priory. Little is left of the adjoining monastery except some subterranean vaults and the gaping oven of the ruined bakery; all ferny, mossy, given up to the faun and the dryad. The upper masonry was carried away years ago to build a chapel upon the hill. A bit of green slope, where the sunbeams wantoned with yellow mulleins, wild carrot, and bracken, was the cemetery, as a few stone crosses almost buried in the soil plainly told. These crosses doubtless mark the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... jewel, embellished only by a few Greek characters, but it was the emblem of one of those college societies, in which secrecy and mystery add a charm to the ties of brotherhood. And it was this fraternal tie, stronger than that of Free-Masonry, because more exclusive, that made Hugh's a pleasant imprisonment, and made him happy in the love of one faithful among the faithless, loyal among many traitors. For of course the reader has surmised—for poetic justice demands it—that Hugh fell desperately ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... entrance is at the south front from Duncan-street, on each side of which are three large shops fronting the street, with a suite of six offices above. Over this entrance is an entablature richly embellished with fine masonry, and supported with two Ionic columns, and two pilasters or antaes, 30 ft. high. In the centre of the front, as well as within the market, it is intended to place a clock. The outer boundary of the market, which forms three sides of the square, and is separated from the enclosed market ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... and texture of youth. The landscape and the mountains look young, because they look unfinished, like a house half up. The workmen have but just knocked off work to go to dinner; their great trenches, their freshly opened quarries, their huge dumps, their foundations, their cyclopean masonry, their half-finished structures breaking the horizon-lines, their square gashes through the mountains,—all impress the eyes of a traveler from the eastern part of the continent, where the earth-building and earth-carving forces ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... a few dropped words that they were engaged on some work over at the church—masonry, no doubt—and, as they left the breakfast-table, in a laughing knot, to begin the day's work, they suggested our giving a look in at them on our way. This we promised to do, for a merrier, better-hearted lot of fellows it would be hard to find. To meet them was to feel a warm glow of human ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... broken-hearted. His successor, bound by no ties of association to the spot, and rightly judging the residence to be much too large for the diminished estate, immediately sold the superb fixtures, and would have entirely taken down the house, if, on making the attempt, the masonry had not been found so solid that the materials were not worth the labour. A great part, however, of one side is laid open, and the splendid chambers, with their carving and gilding, are exposed to the wind and rain—sad ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... that the walls of the ancient Mexican and Peruvian edifices are often vertical; but where this is the case the pyramidal form is attained by piling, one on the other, successive tiers of masonry, each receding from the other and leaving a parapet or ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... Cap'n, in his best sea tones. The sailor beamed delighted recognition of marine masonry. "The fact of the matter is, my friend here has some ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... he saw the cause of the exclamation. From where they stood—directly east from the ancient grove—they could see for the first time that the trees stood in a wide double semi-circle, and, directly in the center, perhaps fifteen feet in height, arose a column of masonry. It was snow white in color and ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... an imposing gate of masonry, and the pony languidly drew them along a wide driveway toward the Whipple mansion, an experience which neither of the twins had ever hoped to brave; but only one of them was deriving any pleasure from the social elevation. The Merle twin looked blandly over the wide expanse of lawn and flower beds ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... eye that looks wisely and lovingly on such sights, there is the same keen sense of enjoyment in finding here and there in the Prayer Book suggestions of forgotten customs, reminders of famous persons and events, that there is in detecting in the masonry of an old castle or minster tell-tale stones which betray the different ages, the "sundry times and divers manners" which the fabric represents. Who, for instance, that has traced the history of that apostolic ordinance, "the kiss of peace," down through the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... despised by the negroes, who do not even deign to eat with them. They are occupied in trade, and keep the sabbath so strictly that they do not even converse on that day; they have a separate burying-ground, very far from any habitation. The tombs are constructed with masonry, and ornamented with Hebrew inscriptions, the singularity of which excites the laughter of the negroes, who discern in these hieroglyphics only serpents, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... against it, slowly the two sides of the casement opened out. As the dusty panes of glass swung away from before me my eye caught a singular irregularity in the surface of the wall. About on a level with the window-sill was a niche in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark substance—darker than the bricks—through which shone twinkling glimpses ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... when, in 1346, Edward III had beaten Philippe VI at the battle of Crecy, the first use he made of his victory was to march upon Calais, and lay siege to it. The walls were exceedingly strong and solid, mighty defenses of masonry, of huge thickness and like rocks for solidity, guarded it, and the king knew that it would be useless to attempt a direct assault. Indeed, during all the middle ages, the modes of protecting fortifications were far more efficient than the modes of attacking ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... thick walls of the London post-office, and three fourths of a mile through a hill. Jagadis Chunder Bose, of India, has fired a pistol by an electric vibration seventy-five feet away and through more than four feet of masonry. Since brick does not elastically vibrate to such infinitesimal impulses as electric waves, ether must. It has already been proven that one can telegraph to a flying train from the overhead wires. Ether ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... his father's name and possessed many of his traits, inherited the seigneury. Soon he made it one of the most valuable properties in the whole colony. The old manor-house gave way to a pretentious chateau flanked by four imposing towers of solid masonry. Its dimensions were, as such things went in the colony, stupendously large, the structure being about two hundred feet in length by one hundred and seventy in breadth. The great towers or bastions were loopholed in such way as to permit a flanking fire in the event of an armed assault; ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... mosquitoes. I looked a second time at the moving thing in the grass. It was clothed in innocent black; but, being a son of Adam, I rose with involuntary politeness to let it pass. An instant more, and it slipped into the masonry at my side, and I sat down again. It had been out taking the sun, and had come back to its hole in the wall. How like the story of my own day,—of my whole winter vacation! Nay, if we choose to view it so, how like the story ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... not. That was just one of the advantages of being "David." As "David" she could form a sincere and inspiring friendship with Rossiter which would be utterly beyond her reach as "Vivie." How pale beside the comradeship of Honoria now appeared the hand-grips, the hearty male free-masonry of a man like Rossiter. How ungrateful however even to make such an ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... distinctly perceptible grade. It was clear from this that the prisons must be below the level of the water in the moat, and already the moving light showed that the walls were dripping with moisture. Presently the passage emerged into a sort of crypt, in which huge masses of masonry supported low arches that in turn carried the cross vaulting. The floor, if it was anything but beaten earth, was slippery with a thin film of ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... in Norfolk, built in the year 1655 by James Peck, a Merchant of Norwich, which cost 1057l., humbly Dedicated to James Betts Gent by his most Obed't Serv't Harwin Martin." The sign springs on one side from a mass of masonry, and was joined to the house on the other: it was sufficiently high to enable carriages to drive under it. As it would trespass too much on your columns were I to particularise each of the figures, I will content myself with giving ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... blood. I do not know how I found my road over the marble floors and out into the air. I only remember that I felt my way feebly with my hands, as though the golden sunlight were all darkness, and that I groped my way down the steps and out under an angle of the masonry, staring stupidly upon the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... books on Architecture, Building, Carpentry, Masonry, Heating, Warming, Lighting, Ventilation, and all branches of industry pertaining to the art of Building, is supplied free of charge, sent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... moved on as before, a Polish order was given, and a rapid fire began on the part of the enemy, exclusively directed to the important door and the windows near it. The balls thundered on the oaken planks and on the masonry, and more than one found its way through the window openings, and struck the ceiling above the heads of the garrison. Fink cried to the forester, "You shall run a risk, old man; take your people to the back door, open it, creep ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Marcellus is on the traveller's way home to lunch; but he will always be passing the segment of its arcaded wall, filled in with mediaeval masonry; and he need not stop, especially if he has his cab by the hour, for there is nothing more to be seen of the circus. A glimpse, through overhanging foliage, of the steps to the Campidoglio, with Castor and Pollux beside their ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... was correct. Through a grating of iron bars, straight at the side and semi-circular at the top, set in massive masonry of some building, in the foundation of which he crouched, he saw, in the vagueness of clouded starlight, the domain ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... loveliness—not masonry! Not architecture! as all others are, But the proud passion of an Emperor's love Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars With body of beauty shrining soul and thought, Insomuch that it haps as when some face Divinely fair unveils before our eyes— Some woman beautiful ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... de Ville, the Arsenal, the Temple, and the Pantheon that we had not carefully explored with the most fervent interest. What joy it was to us one day when we were trying to trace the Hotel St. Paul, the old palace of our kings, to come upon a course of masonry which had undoubtedly belonged ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... I, a forester's son, and living in the country all my life, do not know the names of our native song birds, but know the foreign ones from seeing them in pictures," said Franz. They gazed long at the wise looking owls who were blinking on a wall of masonry, which represented an old tower; then turned their attention to the swan and spoonbills, and other aquatic fowl sporting in the clear water of the lake, while on the shore marched the stately flamingoes, resembling ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... of a railway in China, gives the following account of this wonderful work. The wall is 1728 miles long, 18 feet high, and 15 feet thick at the top. The foundation throughout is of solid granite, the remainder of compact masonry. At intervals of between two hundred and three hundred yards towers rise up, twenty-five to thirty feet high, and twenty-four feet in diameter. On the top of the wall and on both sides of it are ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... building while the wiseacres wagged their heads and prophesied disaster, was named "The Clermont." She was 130 feet long, 18 feet wide, half-decked, and provided with a mast and sail. In the undecked part were the boiler and engine, set in masonry. The wheels were fifteen feet in diameter, with buckets four feet wide, dipping ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the chevroned doorway—a bold and quaint example of a transitional style of architecture, which formed the tower entrance to an English village church. The graveyard being quite open on its western side, the tweed-clad figure of the young draughtsman, and the tall mass of antique masonry which rose above him to a battlemented parapet, were fired to a great brightness by the solar rays, that crossed the neighbouring mead like a warp of gold threads, in whose mazes groups of equally lustrous gnats danced and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... admiration and distrust, but she had received a sufficient number of hints from Mrs. Bodine to understand her hostess quite well. She saw Clancy enter, and Miss Ainsley's welcome, and quickly observed that there was a sort of free-masonry between them. Then some one appeared who almost took away her breath. It was the stranger to whom she had spoken so unexpectedly, even to herself. She saw that Mr. Clancy, Miss Ainsley, and Mrs. Willoughby greeted him cordially, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... a little balloon; the openings being closed at pleasure by means of valves. The bite of all is extremely sharp; and we seldom hear of an instance of one being tamed. They try to shelter themselves from chilly winds, and frequent sheltered spots, abounding in masonry, rocks, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... or quicksands, as it appears to have lost the confidence resulting from an independent freedom among the jungles, and marshy valleys teeming with aquatic vegetation. It will also refuse to cross a bridge unless of solid masonry, and it is curious to observe the extreme care with which it sounds the structure, either by striking with the coiled extremity of the trunk or by experimenting with the pressure of one foot, before it ventures to trust its whole ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... and heavy seas have often been observed, in the present state of the building, to rise to the height of fifty feet, and fall with a tremendous noise on the beacon-house, yet such seas were not likely to make any impression on a mass of solid masonry, containing about ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wide, And closely bordered either side With cottages or mansions, Or marked by blocks of masonry That might defy a century To loosen from ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... city proper stands, rose that higher clump of the great buildings, the Singer, the Woolworth, and the rest. Their strength, almost severity, of line and the lightness of their colour gave a kind of classical feeling, classical, and yet not of Europe. It had the air, this block of masonry, of edifices built to satisfy some faith, for more than immediate ends. Only, the faith was unfamiliar. But if these buildings embodied its nature, it is cold and hard and light, like the steel that is their ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... room to squaze in wid ye, I'll take my stand a little out here, where I can secure the protection of a similar piece of masonry, and where the spalpeens can't git by me without giving the ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... horizon yonder, is the limed bronze Statue of Mary the Virgin, rising on its sable pedestal, and looking, from this distance, like a candle in a bronze candle-stick. That Statue, fifty years hence, the people of the Lebanons will rebaptise as the Statue of Liberty. Masonry, even to-day, raises around it her mace. But whether these sacred mountains will be happier and more prosperous under its regime, I can not say. The Masons and the Patriarch of the Maronites are certainly more certain. Only this I know, that between the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... own country, and among his own people, yet the feature which they have specially come to observe is not to be found in the castle itself. On an extensive lawn, sweeping down from the moat towards the lake, stand two noble masonry walls. They are turreted and clad with ivy, and considerably loftier than any ordinary house. As the visitor approaches, he will see between those walls what may at first sight appear to him to be the funnel of a steamer lying down horizontally. On closer approach he will ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Assyrian custom, and was adopted by the Romans as a mode of disposing of their prisoners of war. Woltmann and Woermann appear to lean to the suggestion that permanent imitations of hangings were carried out in painted or encaustic tiles covering the masonry of Chaldean buildings at Nimroud and Khorsabad. The pale ones associated with low reliefs, and really resembling them, as they were partly raised, and the reliefs in alabaster and stone, which were partly coloured, were in harmony, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... little more closely at Henry Martyn's Pagoda. It is now a picturesque ruin, which the peepul tree that is entwined among its fine brick masonry, and the crumbling river-bank, may soon cause to disappear for ever. The exquisite tracery of the moulded bricks may be seen, but not the few figures that are left of the popular Hindoo idols just where the two still perfect arches begin ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... the great pyramid at Nimroud, had penetrated a mass of masonry, within which he had discovered the tomb and statue of Sardanapalus, with full annals of that monarch's ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hollowed by the rain, in which the spring-tide brought forth fragile flowers, timid creeping plants, and sparse herbage. Moss carpeted the roof and draped its supports. The corner pillar, with its composite masonry of stone blocks mingled with brick and pebbles, was alarming to the eye by reason of its curvature; it seemed on the point of giving way under the weight of the house, the gable of which overhung it by at least half a foot. The municipal authorities ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... was almost universally made that the Masons had taken him off. There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, and witnesses were nearly all Masons. An intense and widespread feeling was developed that Masonry held itself superior to the laws, was therefore a foe to the Government and must be destroyed. The Anti-Masons became a mighty political party. Masons were driven from office. In 1832 anti-masonic nominations were made ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... standing by the ruinous foundations of an old mill in the midst of a meadow. Between grey and half-overgrown stonework—the only signs of masonry remaining—the water gurgled down from the old millpond to a lower level, under the cloak of rank broad leaves—the sensuous natures of the vegetable world. On the right hand the sun, resting on the horizon-line, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... and well bred indifference to the distress about her. Or in strode the private secretary of some distinguished being in London, S.W. He invariably carried his glass to the door, drank it off in languid sips as he leaned indolently against the masonry, and capped the event by purchasing a rose for his buttonhole, so making a ceremony which smacked of federating the world at a common public drinking trough into a little fete. Or there were the ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... centre and ends were projecting wings, large buildings in themselves. In the middle and at the four corners rose towers. In spite of its size the building seemed light and almost graceful. Its brick sub-structure, seven feet high, stood upon massive masonry foundations. The rest of the building was mainly glass and iron. The iron trusses of the roof rested upon 672 slender iron pillars. This hall had been erected in a year, at a ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... wants were supplied by Dutch ships, which thus maintained the enemies of their country, but received in return specie which was welcome in the Amsterdam exchange. In America, the Spanish protected themselves as best they might behind masonry, unaided from home; while in the Mediterranean they escaped insult and injury mainly through the indifference of the Dutch, for the French and English had not yet begun to contend for mastery there. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... a Palais de Justice. The altered structure served also as a residence for the King's judicial proxy, and was commonly known as the Palace of the Intendant.[10] It was an imposing mixture of timber and masonry, and at the close of the seventeenth century was the most considerable building in Quebec. While lacking the glorious site of the Castle of St. Louis, in point of interior decoration it far eclipsed this ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... taken and retaken, and the ancient fortress itself received a lasting and remarkable addition from the hand of one of the greatest of English captains. The tall round tower of Talbot, a model of the military masonry of its time, goes far to share the attention of the visitor with the massive keep of the ancient Dukes. Thence we leap back to the earliest great historical event which we can connect, with any certainty, with any part of the existing building. It was here, in ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... Perseus, and the sleek Diana With her nymphs bathing; at the farther end A door that gave upon a starlit grove Of citron and clipt palm-trees; then a path As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of leaves Stamped black upon it; next a vine-clad length Of solid masonry; and last of all A Gothic archway packed with night, and then— A sudden gleaming ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... admit sex indiscretions—wild horses could not drag the truth out of them. The attractive ones, those who have had emotional experiences with men, will hide them, following the feminine free masonry of centuries. And unattractive women will call high heaven to witness that nothing of that sort has ever happened to them. They have always found men ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... which spans the Adige at Verona, of which we publish illustrations, has been recently completed to replace an old masonry bridge built in the fourteenth century, and which was destroyed by the celebrated flood of 1882. In designing the new work two leading conditions had to be fulfilled, namely, that there should be a single opening of 291 ft. between abutments, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... inside the stern, forbidding walls. In the apartment in question some rude attempt had been made to render things more habitable than in the rest of the grim establishment. A few pieces of tapestry covered the rough masonry, and the floor was strewn with fresh rushes. On a carved wooden bench by the window sat a fair and beautiful girl of seventeen, who was occupying herself with a piece of needlework, and talking earnestly meanwhile ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... were several miles down the valley, the thunder of the bursting masonry now echoed in their ears. And up from the bottom of the wall, near its center, a great geyser spouted. In a moment the wall crumbled and they saw tons upon tons of the masonry melt away. The waters of the pond burst ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... pronounces this tower to be of unusual interest. He tells us that it is probably pre-Norman, but certainly was erected before the end of the 11th century. Traces of characteristic, rough, wide-jointed masonry and a small, round-headed doorway should be specially noted. Let us linger in the church itself for a few moments. In the north Chantry (13th century) we shall find an interesting ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... orange and twanging white sparks from invisible wires with their invisible arms; at its further edge a long procession of lights stood with a certain pomp along a dark margin, beyond which were black flowing waters. To the left, from behind tall cliffs of masonry pierced with innumerable windows that were not lit, yet gleamed like the eyes of a blind dog, there jutted out the last spans of a bridge, set thickly with large lights whose images bobbed on the current beneath like vast yellow water-flowers. On another bridge to the right a train ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Callander the line is ballasted entirely by sand, and, with the exception of a few settlements, is entirely without fencing. Most of the bridges are of timber; but there are one or two of the larger ones of iron or steel, with masonry abutments. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... sea with spruce boards. It was very handsomely planked, but it was never afterwards touched, apparently, for any manner of repairs. Here, for half a mile the dune on which the hotel stands is shored up with massive masonry, and bricked for carriages, and tiled for foot-passengers; and it is all kept as clean as if wheel or foot had never passed over it. I am sure that there is not a broken brick or a broken tile in the whole length or breadth of it. But the hotel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... grand discoveries in Alchemy, of the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life, or Waters of Perpetual Youth. These and many similar wonders were declared to be the result of his investigations under the Arch of Old Egyptian Masonry, which degree he claimed to have revived. This notion of Egyptian Masonry, Cagliostro is said to have found in some manuscripts left by one George Cofton, which fell into our quack's hands. This degree was to give perfection to human beings, by means ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... completed by that night, and Friday the masons were to have come. Thursday night we had a tremendous deluge of rain, and Friday morning I found my cellar a frog-pond and the walls quite washed down. My daughter, who had come out to view the disaster with me, called my attention to a corner of masonry laid bare by the crumbling away of one of the walls. I cleared a little earth from it, and, finding that it seemed part of a large mass, determined to investigate it. The workmen I sent for unearthed an oblong vault some eight feet below the surface, and set ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... sound in the night on the Cathedral roof and a noise as of falling masonry. The belfry jackdaw said the frost was affecting the fabric, and as he had experienced many frosts it must have been so. In the morning it was seen that the Figure of the Lost Soul had toppled from its cornice and lay now in a broken mass on the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... stood on a narrow ledge of stone that jutted out of the water. This wall of stone was the first, outer or retaining wall of masonry—-the first work of constructing a great breakwater. At high tide, this ledge was just fourteen inches above the level surface of the Gulf of Mexico, and at the time of the above conversation it was within twenty minutes of high tide. The ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... elephants were bought and sold. The litter, in charge of the chief mahout, proceeded to the slave mart. Kathlyn glanced at the wall, wondering. Was her father alive? Was he in some bleak cell behind that crumbling masonry? Did he know that she was here? Or was he really dead? Ah, perhaps it were better that death should have taken him—better that than having his living heart wrung by the tale ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... mission was to revere its interior because William Penn was baptized in it, but when we had got inside we found it so full of scaffolding and the litter of masonry, and the cool fresh smell of mortar from the restorations going on that we had no room for the emotions we had come prepared with. With the compassion of a kindly man in a plasterer's spattered suit of white, we did what we could, but it was very little. I at least was not yet armed with the facts ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a vague and confused mass of ruin. Spinola conducted his imperial guests along the edge of extinct volcanoes, amid upturned cemeteries, through quagmires, which once were moats, over huge mounds of sand, and vast shapeless masses of bricks and masonry, which had been forts. He endeavored to point out places where mines had been exploded, where ravelins had been stormed, where the assailants had been successful, and where they had been bloodily repulsed. But it was all loathsome, hideous rubbish. There were no human habitations, no hovels, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... of the conventual buildings but a few scanty patches of masonry. The history of the Abbey was not a very edifying one and, although every effort was made to save the house at the Dissolution, chiefly by the exhibition of the imposing royal charters of foundation and re-endowment, the many scandals recorded gave the despoilers ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... be alarmed, lady," she said, smiling, as she turned to Ada. "You may also quiet the fears of your attendant, for the masonry with which we are surrounded has already stood firm for several hundred years through many a fiercer storm than this; and the shocks we now feel are not likely to shatter these old towers. They are caused ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the first walled and fortified city. The sons of Lycaon were great builders of cities, and in their time rapid strides in civilization appear by tradition to have been made in the Peloponnesus. The Pelasgic architecture is often confounded with the Cyclopean. The Pelasgic masonry is polygonal, each stone fitting into the other without cement; that called the Cyclopean, and described by Pausanias, is utterly different, being composed by immense blocks of stone, with small pebbles inserted in ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... third, a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these woman's gloves are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew embarrassed. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of the island was full of those gigantic statues so often mentioned; some placed in groupes on platforms of masonry, others single, fixed only in the earth, and that not deep; and these latter are, in general, much larger than the others. Having measured one, which had fallen down, they found it very near twenty-seven feet long, and upwards of eight feet over the breast or shoulders; and yet this appeared ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the spring that made this panel work; but that was impossible in spite of all the efforts we made for two long hours. In vain did we try to shake the panel; it gave forth the same sound as the others. They were all sonorous, showing that the wainscot was not in immediate contact with the masonry. Still, there might be a gap of only a few inches between them. At last Marcasse, perspiring profusely, stopped, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... terms of Mystic Masonry the conflict between the Sons of Cain and the Sons of Seth, and unravels the allegory dealing with the building of Solomon's Temple, the Queen of Sheba, and the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... of care, Stanley made his way along to a point where the ledge stopped, abruptly. Looking down, he saw the remains of a wall of solid masonry, and perceived that he had been correct in his surmise as to the purpose of the ledge. Then they turned, and went back to the other end of the ledge. A few feet before they reached this, Meinik—who was now leading ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... over against a mooring-post, where the parapet and the pier itself made a needful turn toward the south, there was an equally needful thing, a gully-hole with an iron trap to carry off the rain that fell, or the spray that broke upon the fabric; and the outlet of this gully was in the face of the masonry outside. Carroway, not being gifted with a crooked mind, had never dreamed that this little gut might conduct the pulses of the air, like the Tyrant's Ear, and that the trap at the end might be a trap ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Aristella grows. Certain features prevail in the vegetation similar to those of the Coromandel coast. Fig trees often surrounded at base with brick-work; this never lasts long, the roots tearing up the masonry in every direction. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... (despite the afterthought of the spire) certainly helps to impart an air of modernity to the building, that is lacking in far less ancient work, for oddly enough it is often the decaying features of the latest decorated style that impress the vulgar by their apparent age. The extreme care in the masonry has imparted a machine-like finish. As Professor Willis wrote: "The regularity of the size of the stones is astonishing. As soon as they had finished one part, they copied it exactly in the next, even though the additional expense was considerable. The masonry ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... l'Horloge; the other, the so-called Tour Charlemagne, was erected (two centuries after her death) over the tomb of Luitgarde, wife of the great Emperor, who died at Tours in 800. I do not pretend to understand in what relation these very mighty and effectually detached masses of masonry stood to each other, but in their grey elevation and loneliness they are striking and suggestive to-day; holding their hoary heads far above the modern life of the town and looking sad and conscious, as they had outlived all uses. I know not what is supposed ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... come—do come," she said, rising. The huge threat of New York was imminent now, dwarfing, under long reaches of embattled masonry, the great deck she stood on and all the little specks of life it carried. One of them, drifting nearer, took the shape of her maid, followed by luggage-laden stewards, and signing to her that it was time to go below. As they descended to the main ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... phrase would be termed a tete-du-pont, defended the bridge head on the southern side, and two towers, called the Tourelles, were built on the bridge itself, at a little distance from the tete-du-pont. Indeed, the solid masonry of the bridge terminated at the Tourelles; and the communication thence with the tete-du-pont and the southern shore was by means of a drawbridge. The Tourelles and the tete-du-pont formed together a strong-fortified post, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to his conclusions; but the Dame will have none of them, though here was a creature bent on masonry-work in his act of thinking, to build a traveller's-rest for thinkers behind him; while the volatile were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... used very little stone and showed no knowledge of masonry. But they built so massively out of the earth, that their works have lasted to this day in many places, just as they left them, except for the heavy growth of trees, which the first settlers found covering ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... about the town, where they not only see others at work but are likewise exercised in it themselves. Besides agriculture, which is so common to them all, every man has some peculiar trade to which he applies himself; such as the manufacture of wool or flax, masonry, smith's work, or carpenter's work; for there is no sort of trade that is in great esteem among them. Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes, without any other distinction except ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... Potsdam, [Had a kind of quarrel with Friedrich in 1766 (rough treatment by Adjutant von Anhalt, not tolerable to a Captain now become so eminent), and quietly withdrew,—still on speaking terms with the King, but never his Officer more.] and living here among works of Art, and speculations on Free Masonry, "was very kind to me, I went to Celle, in Hanover, to pay my respects to the Queen of Denmark [unfortunate divorced Matilda, saved by my friend Keith,—innocent, I will hope!]... She is grown extremely fat.... At Magdeburg, the Prussian Frontier ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not if you bridge the seas, Or ride secure the cruel sky, Or build consummate palaces Of metal or of masonry. ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... arriving here, went to look at the precise spot chosen for the grave. I could see by the clear full moon ... that it was exactly right. Yule was there superintending the workmen, and before daylight this morning a solid masonry ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... with an agreeable party, I spent a long summer day in exploring the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the town and county overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost recess which tourists visit,—a niche or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, I believe, Serena's Bower. I lost the light of one day. I saw high domes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... rapidly, and the fleet, with a terrific roar, replied. It seemed to Dick that the whole earth shook with the confusion. Through the smoke and flame he saw the water gushing up in fountains, and he also saw earth and masonry ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... reached, and then peered about amongst the dense growth in search of some trace of masonry; but though again and again the blocks of stone wore the appearance of having been piled together, I could find nothing definite—nothing but that ever-recurring dense foliage creeping over and hiding everything, till we ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... question as by an uneasy ghost, for whom he had no exorcising formula, Captain Whalley stopped short on the apex of a small bridge spanning steeply the bed of a canalized creek with granite shores. Moored between the square blocks a seagoing Malay prau floated half hidden under the arch of masonry, with her spars lowered down, without a sound of life on board, and covered from stem to stern with a ridge of palm-leaf mats. He had left behind him the overheated pavements bordered by the stone frontages that, like the sheer face of cliffs, followed the sweep of the quays; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... vii., p. 149.).—In the church of Milton near Cambridge, the font is built into the north pier of the chancel arch; and from the appearance of the masonry, &c., this is evidently the original position. I have visited some hundreds of churches, and this is the only instance I have observed of a font in this position. Numerous instances occur where it is built into the south-western ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... without a word to give his orders to the men below- ground, whose duty it was to drag the cages to the openings of tunnels in the masonry through which the animals emerged into the sunlight. There were ten such openings on either side of the arena, closed by trapdoors, set in grooves, that could be raised by ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... of the ruin is one great cross-shaped room, thirty-eight feet wide and one hundred and thirty-one feet long. A gate fifteen feet wide and eleven feet high opens to the eastward. A mighty timber forms an arch supporting fifteen feet of solid masonry. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... Kasbah or fortress, a Byzantine construction covering a large expanse of ground and rebuilt by the French on theatrical lines, with bastions and crenellations and other warlike pomp; thousands of blocks of Roman masonry have been wrought into its old walls, which are now smothered under a modern layer of plaster divided into square fields, to imitate solid stonework. It looks best in the moonlight, when this childish cardboard effect ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... began to lay the balcony floor; on the 17th the main column was completed, and on the 26th the masonry was finished. It only remained that the lantern should be set up. But this lantern was a mighty mass of metal and glass, made with great care, and of immense strength and weight. Of course it had to be taken off to the rock in pieces, and we may almost ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Arizona in remote ages whole tribes lived in caves, some natural, but more often made habitable by the aid of masonry. Most of these are high up on shelves edging precipitous cliffs, and were clearly chosen as places of refuge ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... of masonry (the "tabby" just described) was a tract of twelve acres devoted to the cultivation of flowers and tropical fruits. This wall, now broken down in places and overgrown with ivy-and trumpet-vines, yet divides the garden from the larger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... 1826 a Mason named William Morgan, living at Batavia, in western New York, threatened to reveal the secrets of masonry. But about the time his book was to appear, he suddenly disappeared. The Masons were accused of having killed him, and the people of western New York denounced them at public meetings as members of a society ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster |
