"Rubble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Keno, and work out close to the fire zone," the rider said to his horse, as they began to slither down the precipitous slope, starting rubble at every motion. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... in great detail and awaited Marie's reaction. It was even more encouraging than he had hoped for. "I understand less than before! How could anything reactivate that rubble? They put everything over five years old into the piles, and the stuff's supposed to be decrepit already. You'd almost think we were destroying wealth before its time, because if those disabled mechanisms reactivate—" She came to a dead halt. "That's madness! Oh, I wish High Holy Day were here ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... was again obtuse in the way of active furtherance, and would not even bring block-and-tackle. The old Doctor had to answer, 'Well, then!' and go on his way on more serious errands. The cattle have much undermined, and rubbed down, his poor Pedestal, which is of rubble-work; his Obelisk still lies mournfully horizontal, uninjured;—and really ought to be set up, by some parish-rate, or effort of the community otherwise." ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... had made his battalion headquarters; but I did not want to go enough to persist when I understood the situation. Formerly, my idea of a good dugout—and I always like to be within striking distance of one—was a cave twenty feet deep with a roof of four or five layers of granite, rubble and timber; but now I feel more safe if the fragments of a town hall are ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... roamed above through the waste of ash and rubble, and as they wandered abroad where the fields had been and saw how every brush and tree had been seared from the earth or poisoned by chemical brews, I knew that their fight was not merely a bitter one—it was hopeless. And I heard them muttering among themselves, "We have not even any tools!", ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... of ruin. Then the sallow winter marshes. South of the marshes were the high moors. Their flanks showed black where they have been flayed by the cuttings of old mines. At intervals, along the line of the hillside, masses of rubble rose in hummocks or hung like avalanches, black as if they had been discharged by blasting. Beyond, in the turn of the Dale, the ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... receiving the same dead, dull response. I was in the darkest corner now, beyond the stairs, still hopelessly beating the gun barrel against the stone. The dim light revealed no change in the wall formation, the same irregular expanse of rubble set in solid mortar, hardened by a century of exposure to the dry atmosphere. Then to an idle, listless blow there came a hollow, wooden sound, that caused the heart to leap into the throat. I tried again, a foot to the left, confident my ears had played me false, but this time ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... construction of dams or bulkheads outside the lining between it and the rock surface. For this purpose, at intervals of about 30 ft., the leading ring and the upper half of the preceding one were disconnected and pulled forward sufficiently to give access to the exterior. A rough dam of rubble, or bags of mortar or clay, was then constructed outside the iron, and the rings were shoved back and connected up. In sections containing both rock and soft ground, grout dams were built at the cutting edge at intervals, and were ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... cliff-like edge of the hill in a narrow coombe. The earth at the top hung over the verge, and beech-trees stood as it seemed in the act to topple, their exposed roots twisting to and fro before they re-entered the face of the precipice. Large masses of chalky rubble had actually fallen, and others were all but detached. The coombe, of course, could be overlooked from thence; but a moment's reflection convinced me there was no risk, for who would dare to go near enough to the ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... been precarious before; but now its difficulties were infinitely increased. The clay sub-soil to the rubble turned slippery and adhesive. On the sides of the mountains it was almost impossible to keep a footing. We speedily became wet, our hands puffed and purple, our boots sodden with the water that had trickled from our clothing ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... of the Sierra de Nacori, on top of another knoll, and at an elevation of 6,400 feet, we found numerous rude ground plans, some of which showed rubble walls fifteen inches thick. They formed groups of four or five apartments, each ten by twelve feet. But on the north side of that summit there was a larger plan, nearly eighteen feet square; however, the outlines of the entire settlement were not distinct enough to enable ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... he had failed again—that she had slipped through his fingers. If only for a moment she had looked up to him and believed in him the evil spirit that was climbing up on to his shoulders would have fled away. There was a stout piece of stick lying amidst the rubble at his feet, and he took it up and felt it as a swordsman ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Iewes with Pickaxes of Holme, Boxe, and Harts horne: they prooue this by the name of those places yet enduring, to wit, Attall Sarazin, in English, the Iewes offcast, and by those tooles daily found amongst the rubble of such workes. And it may well be, that as Akornes made good bread, before Ceres taught the vse of Corne; and sharpe Stones serued the Indians for Kniues, vntill the Spaniards brought them Iron: so in the infancie of knowledge, these poore instruments for want ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... resources. The chief repairs and restorations were these:—new roofs were put to the transepts and bell-tower; columns, mouldings, and ornaments in various parts of the church were renewed; several windows, till then blocked up with rubble, were opened and glazed, and in some cases the stonework made good; the pinnacles, spires, and shafts of the west front were carefully restored; two Norman doorways, which had been obscured for ages, were exposed to view. The work in the choir included new stalls and seats, pulpit, and throne; ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... absolutely dry river bed. The high embankments on either side and the width of the river bed, which, walking behind our kuruma, it took us exactly four minutes to cross, afforded yet another object lesson in the severity of the floods that afflict the country. The rock-and rubble-choked condition of the rivers inclines the traveller to severe judgments on the State and the prefectures for not getting on faster with the work of afforestation; but it is only fair to note that ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Medical Center. Out across the terraced park that surrounded the glassed towers and shining metal of the Center rose the New City, tier upon tier of smooth, functional architecture, a city of dreams built up painfully out of the rubble ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... the city, no wide and ordered spaces enhanced it. He crossed his native river upon bridges all shut in with houses, and houses hid the banks also. The sweep of the Seine no longer existed for his generation, and largeness of all kinds was hidden under the dust and rubble of decay. The majestic, which in sharp separate lines of his verse he certainly possessed, he discovered within his own mind, for no great arch or cornice, nor no colonnade had ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... and the soft should be made to bear alike, and should therefore be coursed and bonded together by the mason's art, whether the work be of stone wrought into blocks and gauged to thickness, or of rough dressed or otherwise unshaped rubble ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... bleating, as if the peril needed further advertising. As commander of the Barbados Militia, the place of Colonel Bishop was at the head of his scanty troops, in that fort which the Spanish guns were pounding into rubble. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... certain point that would be so. But suppose they are six inches thick, you may take it for granted that underneath there will be rubble, loose stuff, except where any chambers may be built. If we were to bore a hole through this top layer the powder, instead of splitting the stones up, would expend its force among the loose stuff beneath it; and besides, instead of remaining in its place, it might get scattered, and we would then ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and Illinois. That the whole extent of the copper-bearing region was mined in remote times by a race of whom the Indians preserve no tradition there is abundant evidence, such as numerous excavations in the solid rock, heaps of rubble and dirt along the courses of the veins, copper utensils such as knives, chisels, spears, arrowheads, stone hammers creased for the attachment of withes, wooden bowls for boiling water from the mines, wooden shovels, ladders, and levers ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... over a broad zone of rough rubble ice, some of my own sledges had suffered slight damage, and the entire party was now halted and the sledges ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... unsuccessful professional men, all in the first delirium fever-fit of the gold fever, had come in the expectation that hands unused to hard toil could use the pickaxe of the gold-digger, or wash the rubble for the precious ore. Ah, it was a wild, a fatal delusion! Many a gentleman and scholar pined to death with hardships and disappointments, while some, after weeks of sickness, rose to earn their bread by the humblest ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... lay white on the midsummer grass beneath the carvings of the windows. The houses were almost all built of oak frame-work filled with cob or plaster well whitewashed; though some had their lower stories of rubble-stone, with their windows and doors of well-moulded freestone. There was much curious and inventive carving about most of them; and though some were old and much worn, there was the same look of deftness and trimness, and even beauty, about every detail in them ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... walls, which are mostly in brick and rubble masonry, exhibit poor workmanship, and have undergone considerable repair, especially on the east. On the south there are two thicknesses of walling. The outer thickness has arched recesses at intervals along its length, corresponding to openings in the inner thickness, ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... line from the silt-basin, two 1-1/4-inch for the lines F and G, and one 2-1/4-inch for the main line E. These tiles should lie close to each other and be firmly cemented together, so that no water can pass outside of them, and a rubble-work of stone may with advantage be carried up a foot above them. Stone work, which may be rough and uncemented, but should always be solid, may then be built up at the sides, and covered with a secure coping of stone. A floor and sloping sides of stone work, jointed ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar, glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... by the Dominican Friars, it seems that, instead of re-opening the cloister-arch to its full extent, they contented themselves with inserting a smaller doorway within it, the jambs and lintel of which were discovered in the rubble masonry when the arch was opened out in 1905. On the suppression of the Dominicans by Queen Elizabeth, the cloisters passed again into secular hands, and disappear from history until the year 1742, when there is a record of the stabling that occupied the ruins till our own day, with the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... beast. A walk of ten minutes led down the rough line of the little water-course draining the Mar Rubayyigh to the Wady Rbigh. At a re-entering angle of the junction, a shallow pit was sunk; the sand became moist and red, and presently it was underlaid by a rubble of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... the breakwater. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not know; but indeed I had already my own private determination to be an author; I loved the art of words and the appearances of life; and TRAVELLERS, and HEADERS, and RUBBLE, and POLISHED ASHLAR, and PIERRES PERDUES, and even the thrilling question of the STRING- COURSE, interested me only (if they interested me at all) as properties for some possible romance or as words to add to my vocabulary. To grow a little catholic is the compensation of years; ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the houses in Havana are built of "mamposteria" or rubble masonry, a porous material which freely absorbs atmospheric as well as ground moisture. The mark of this can often be seen high on the walls, which varies from 2 to 7 feet in the houses generally. The roofs are ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... rubble came in handy for filling in that nullah. Hullo!" Parker's glasses went to his eyes. "You're right, by Jingo! They're gathering for an assault. Gad! what a beautiful mark for shrapnel. I wish we'd a ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, 145 Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with—so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!—within a rood, Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... noise. The castle gate shuddered and fell halfway from its hinges. The thing made a second noise. Stones splintered and began to collapse. Hoddan admired. Three more unpleasing but not violently loud sounds. Half the wall on either side of the gate was rubble, collapsing partly inside and partly outside the ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... tributaries, but is usually lower in the upper portions of tributaries. The channel of the mainstream is intrenched in its own alluvium (Dufford, 1958:36) and has high, muddy banks and mud- or sand-bottom; the upper parts of tributaries have lower banks and bottoms of gravel, rubble, or bedrock, although a few (such as Cole Creek) have areas of sandy bottom. A fringe forest of deciduous trees occurs along most streams. The topography and geology of the area have been discussed by Todd (1911), Franzen and Leonard ...
— Fishes of the Wakarusa River in Kansas • James E. Deacon
... architecture. The work you have done here happens to be of rock that has a rather smooth outline, that is, the stone broke off smooth, in the upper layers, but the large pieces near the bottom represent what is called rubble work." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... had been removed and the jambs had been widened on each side of the fireplace; it yawned empty and cold. A little rubble of mortar, newly dried, lay about the bottom of the square recess. The sight of the crude, unfamiliar scraps of dropped lime in the gaping place where warmth should have been, increased ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Changes.—Even in the most flourishing towns the houses were still mostly of wood or rubble covered with thatch, and only here and there was to be found a house of stone. So slight, indeed, were the ordinary buildings, that it was provided by the Assize of Clarendon that the houses of certain offenders should be carried outside ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... like this door with its stairway in the open. He must find another exit, and he inspected the window, opened it, and looked out. With simian agility, laughing with joy at his discovery, he sprang over the embrasure and disappeared, seeking with feet and hands the irregularities of the rubble-work, the deep, stair-like sockets left by the stones when they had fallen loose from the mortar. Febrer looked out and saw him picking up his hat and waving it with a triumphant expression. Then the boy ran around the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... tell you; and, oh Mrs. Lane, I am so sorry I behaved so, I—I never meant to, I never meant Tom and Daisy to have the blame. And, please Mrs. Lane, will you forgive me, and speak to me again? I've been so—so mis'rubble, and I didn't know how to set things right again." But here Mona's voice failed her altogether, and, worn out with the day's events, and the night's alarm, and all the agitation and trouble both had brought, she broke down completely. Mrs. Lane was quite distressed ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... completely establishes the fact, at least, under existing systems, that the best-paying reefs are those that are largely intersected with fissures—more inclined to come out in pebbles than in blocks—or, if I might coin a designation, 'rubble reefs,' as contradistinguished from 'boulder reefs,' showing at the same time a certain degree of ignigenous discoloration . . . still, where there are evidences of excessive volcanic effect . . . the reef may be set down as poor . ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... showed the clean brown earth. And at the bottom of each of these holes lay a pool of foetid green water. The walls were crumbling, decay was rampant, the place breathed corruption. Occasionally the silence would be broken by a crash, and a little heap of brick rubble would subside into the road, raising a cloud of thick choking dust. Occasionally there would be another sound, like the drone of a great beetle, followed by a dull echoing roar and a bigger cloud of dust. Occasionally would come the ping-phut of a stray ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... antiquity. There must have been a time when there was no London, but you cannot think it any more than you can think the time when there shall be none. I make so sure of these reflections that I hope there was no mistake about those modest breadths of Roman masonry; its rubble laid in concrete, was strong enough to support ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... which spring from the axils. The tendrils are three-cut, having a pair of oval leaflets; the stems are square, or four-angled, and slightly twisted and winged. This plant may be grown in any soil or situation. A specimen does well with me planted in rubble, where it covers a short rain-water pipe, the said pipe being feathered with twigs every spring; but to have flowers of extra size and luxuriant growth, plant in good loam, in a sunny site, and top dress with stable manure every spring. This large ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... picking their way along the top of a talus of rubble at the foot of the cliff, and came to where the stream gushed out of a narrow gorge. The air was wet with spray there, and loud with the roar of the waterfall. Kalvar Dard looked around; Dorita had chosen the spot well. Not even a sure-footed mountain-goat could make the ascent, once that gorge ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... household servant; while at the farther end of the Hall, the wide space between the columns, which had once given ample vista from graceful awnings into tablinum and viridarium, was filled up with rude rubble and Roman bricks, leaving but a low, round, arched door, that still led into the tablinum. But that tablinum, formerly the gayest state-room of the Roman lord, was now filled with various lumber, piles of faggots, and farming ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... value threepence, breaking the king's peace, by committing assault and battery against the heads and shoulders of his majesty's liege subjects, Geoffrey Prickle, Hodge Dolt, Richard Bumpkin, Mary Fang, Catherine Rubble, and Margery Litter; and that he saw Sir Launcelot Greaves, Baronet, aiding, assisting, and comforting the said Crowe, contrary to the king's peace, and against the form ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... holding the candle, and could scarcely check a cry of joy as I perceived that our task would henceforth be much lighter than I had supposed. At the end of the hole, instead of another stone cemented like the first, as I expected, there was a mass of rubble. I could not doubt that the whole of the interior of the wall consisted of this material, and that we should encounter no more blocks of stone until we came to the outer layer of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... so much like another, it will not be worth while describing the one at Dallington Burn. The reader will have the kindness to imagine a couple of roads crossing an open common, with an armless sign-post on one side, and a rubble-stone bridge, with several of the coping-stones lying in the shallow stream below, on ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy "rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pull down the rooks' nests lest the rooks may come back again," than the burghers of St. Edmunds. The completeness of the Bury demolitions hangs perhaps on the long serfdom of the town, and the shapeless masses of rubble that alone recall the graceful cloister and the long-drawn aisle may find their explanation in the story of the town's struggles. But the story has a pleasanter ending. The charter of James—for the town had passed into the King's hands as the abbot's successor—gave all that it ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... "was doubtless a Greek. Time, and the mutilations and additions of the Moor, have not effaced all the beauty of this structure, planned by the genius and reared by the hands of men who lived nineteen centuries ago. The rubble work and plaster wall that fills the space between those columns, so requisite in their proportions—the pinnacles which crown the structure in place of the entablature which has been destroyed, are the work of the Moors, who strove in vain to unite in harmony their own style of building with ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... still shadowy passages and interiors, speckled with fallen mortar, lay chains, rubble of brick and chipped stone; splinters, flinders and odd ends of timber; scraps of metal, broken implements and the what-not that litters the path of construction. Without, in the avenues, vaguely outlined by the slowly rising structures on ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... can take the telegraph for me, ay, all the rubble of it for me. I and mine we'll go down to the village and start on something there—you don't know what it'll be, but wait and see. What about a hotel place where folk can get coffee? You see but we'll ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Willie and Margery had often heard, only murderers were buried. There was, of course, the usual No Trespassing sign to meet and pass, the wire fence to slip under, and a short stretch of clay and rubble which ended suddenly in a thick brake of blackberry bushes. Once in the patch all that was necessary was to keep a sharp eye on the gravedigger's house, which stood on a knoll beyond, in plain sight, but far enough away to give one a good chance ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... and to him he went accordingly. The business carried on by his new master was of a very humble sort. Telford, in his autobiography, states that most of the farmers' houses in the district then consisted of "one storey of mud walls, or rubble stones bedded in clay, and thatched with straw, rushes, or heather; the floors being of earth, and the fire in the middle, having a plastered creel chimney for the escape of the smoke; while, instead ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... I will confess, too, I was feeling pleased. Here at any rate was a Guanche cupboard of sorts, and as they had taken the trouble to hermetically seal it with cement, the odds were that it had something inside worth hiding. At first there was nothing to be seen but a lot of dust and rubble, so I lit a bit of candle and cleared this away. Presently, however, I began to find that I was shelling out something that was not cement. It chipped away, in regular layers, and when I took it to the daylight I found that each layer was made up of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the long vaults, where the cobwebs trailed like rags and the dripping pendules of lime hung from the arches like dirty icicles, until he came to the foundation of the great tower. There he set down the lantern and began to dig, fiercely and silently, close to the corner-stone, throwing out the rubble with his bare hands. At last the pick broke through into a hollow niche. At the bottom of it was the skeleton of a child about five years old, and the cords that bound her little hands and feet lay in white dust upon ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... between impossibilities and great difficulties"; that "a great scheme cannot be carried unless made the business of successive administrations"; that "virtuous and able men are the fittest to serve their country"; all this I look on as no more than so much rubble to fill up the spaces between the regular masonry. Pretty much in the same light I cannot forbear considering his detached observations on commerce; such as, that "the system for colony regulations would be very simple, and mutually beneficial to Great Britain and her colonies, if ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... early central towers of many other churches were incapable of carrying their own weight. This being so, much less would it do to suppose that it could bear the addition of new weight upon the old piers; for though to all appearance sound, the cores were of rough rubble work, not solidly bedded and not properly bonded with the ashlar casing. So the question arises, did they remove the whole or part of the old central tower and piers, or were they saved this trouble by the structure having shared the fate of many others like itself, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... like the waiting-room of an unfinished railway station. The style of building is peculiar, and looks so temporary as to keep one constantly in mind of the threatening earthquake. Most of the edifices, large and small, public and private, are constructed of rubble set in cement, with an occasional big, rough-squared stone to give an appearance of solidity, and perhaps a few courses of bricks in the old Roman style. If the building is of importance, this work is hidden beneath stucco; otherwise it remains like ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... little wrinkle on the side of Two Peak, and set the bushes in the mouth of the draw, and piled an iron ledge across the top and spread barren mountainside all around it. In the hiding Injun Jim had done his share, too. He had pulled rubble down over the face of the bank of richness, and eyes less keen than Casey's would have passed it by ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... breathless for reply. Nesbit's forehead bore an ugly cut, Rudolph's bandage was red and sopping. Chantel, more rueful than either, stared down at a bleeding hand, which held two shards of steel. He had fallen, and snapped his sword in the rubble of old masonry. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... thought that, but he was not prepared to endorse Timmins's following generalization that it didn't much matter what name a man worshipped under. It penetrated down through the aforesaid rubble of disintegration and touched native granite. Stiffly enough he returned that Presbyterianism was good enough for him, but it rested on Timmins to follow the dictates ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... out to shore up the ceilings of the basement with mighty battens of wood, and to convert that region into a nest of cunningly devised bedrooms. Others reinforced the flooring above with a layer of earth and brick rubble three feet deep. On the top of all this they relaid not only the original floor, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... of the buildings there are no signs of mortar, the intervals between the beds being chinked with stones of the minutest thinness. The filling and backing are done in rubble masonry, the mortar presenting no indications of the presence of lime. The thickness of the main wall at base is within an inch or two of three feet; higher up, it is less, diminishing every story by retreating ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... they remained but as a fragment of a ruined building. A century and a half passed and the whole had disappeared, carted away to build walls and stables for the local squires, or sold by the local squires for rubble. ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... poet has said, had denied all its gifts to Holland, and the Dutch were obliged to do everything in spite of her. They began by fertilizing the sand. In some places they made the ground fruitful by placing on it layers of soil brought from a distance, just as a garden is formed; they spread the rubble from the downs over the sodden meadows; they mixed bits of the peat taken from the water with the earth that was too sandy; they dug up clay to give a fresh fertility to the surface of the ground; they strove to till the downs; and thus, by a thousand varied efforts, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... bigger task than he had anticipated. A few inches at a time, resting in between, he dragged him over the ground and up a broken rubble of ice to the side of the boat. But into the boat he could not get him. Elijah's limp body was far more difficult to lift and handle than an equal weight of like dimensions but rigid. Daylight failed to hoist him, for the body collapsed at the middle like a part-empty sack of corn. Getting into ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... could hardly hit the fort. A year later, Gillmore used 100-, 200-, and 300-pounder Parrott rifles against Fort Sumter. The big guns, firing from positions some 2 miles away and far beyond the range of the fort guns, reduced Sumter to a smoking mass of rubble. ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... present-day fauna. How on earth did they get to the place where found? There was a good deal of discussion on the point and no very satisfactory solution offered. Cannot help thinking that there is something in the thought that the glacier may have been weighted down with rubble which finally disengaged itself and allowed the ice to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... head. "No, sir. I can't let any one through. And if I did 'twould be no good. The staircase is clean gone—a great big stone staircase, too! It's all in bits, just like a lot of rubble. The front of the house ain't touched, but the center and behind—well, sir, you never ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... been killed was sometimes chosen for the site of a temple. The structure of these edifices was somewhat peculiar. Each of them was built on the top of a mound, which was raised to the height of from three to twenty feet above the ground and faced on its sloping sides with dry rubble-work of stone. The ascent to the temple was by a thick plank, the upper surface of which was cut into notched steps. The proportions of the sacred edifice itself were inelegant, if not uncouth, its height being nearly twice as great as its breadth at the base. The roof ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... to sight on an extraordinary scale of blasted grandeur. The completeness of the destruction was evident. For mile after mile nothing was left. No building was habitable and no field fit for the plow. The sameness was also striking. One devastated area was exactly like another—a heap of rubble, a morass of shell-holes, and a tangle of wire.[80] The amount of human labor which would be required to restore such a countryside seemed incalculable; and to the returned traveler any number of milliards of dollars ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... had risen on the ashes of the old, after the war's end. Use of thermo-nucs had been limited, fortunately, so radioactivity did not linger, and the vast craters hollowed out by ordinary warheads had been partially filled by rubble and debris. Artificial fill had done the rest of the job, so that now New Chicagee was merely a flat prairie as it must have been hundreds of years ago—a flat prairie on which the city had been resurrected. There were ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... excepted—but the power of extraction that must have been employed in such a process excites very painful reflections. Some legend, too, there is of a book creditor having forced his way into the Cacus den, and there seen a sort of rubble-work inner wall of volumes, with their edges outwards, while others, bound and unbound, the plebeian sheepskin and the aristocratic russian, were squeezed into certain tubs drawn from the washing establishment of a confiding landlady. In other instances the book has been recognised at large, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Across the rubble-covered flats, up the dark canyon to Sheep Camp, past the over-hanging and ever-threatening glaciers to the Scales, and from the Scales up the steep pitches of ice-scoured rock where packers climbed with hands and feet, Old Tarwater camp-cooked and packed ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... to be so. As Smiles says—"A dead fish can float with the stream, but it takes a man to swim against it." What could be more noble than the start and the starter of Christianity? How beautiful the upward struggle of an idea, like some sweet flower blossoming out amongst rubble and cinders! But, alas! to say that this idea was a final idea! That this scheme of thought was above the reason! That this gentle philosopher was that supreme intelligence to which we cannot even imagine a personality without irreverence!—all this will come to rank with the strangest ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... have stopped this time—but their charge was too late. The entire rocky projection collapsed with a final sickening lurch, and slid to the pit's floor, carrying Joan and Powell with it in a miniature avalanche of rocky rubble. ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... thus checked by friction. The main drains are duly provided with manholes for inspection, and 'are so roomy,' says Dr. Evans, 'that two of my Cretan workmen spent days within them clearing out the accumulated earth and rubble without physical inconvenience.' Those who remember the many extant descriptions of the sanitary arrangements, or rather the want of sanitary arrangements, in such a town as the Edinburgh of the end of the eighteenth century, will best appreciate the care and forethought with which the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... to pass of tragedies that were incredible in their incidence and craziness. Three children were dead in the rubble of one near villa. The ambulance that was passing was taking their father to the hospital. A woman had been blown from her bed into the street. She was unhurt, but she was insane. A long row of humbler dwellings, over which the dust was still hanging in a faint mist, had been demolished, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... the first signs of destruction. Broken rubble on the streets. The smell of greasy smoke in their nostrils. More and more people appeared, going in the same direction they were. The normally deserted streets of Hovedstad were now almost crowded. Disans, obvious by their bare shoulders, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... low, and is always hot. Quite one-third of the shipping and wholesale business quarter stands on land reclaimed from the swamp by filling up with earth and rubble. The opposite side of the creek, facing the shipping-quarter, is a low marshy waste, occasionally converted into a swamp at certain tides. The creek forms the harbour of Yloilo, which is just as Nature made it, except that ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... exclaimed Wade. Indeed, below them were villages, of crude huts made of timber and stone and mud. Rubble work walls, for they needed little shelter here, and the people ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... with no visible reinforcement other than an icy trickle from some high, belated clot of snow. Oftenest the stream drops bodily from the bleak bowl of some alpine lake; sometimes breaks out of a hillside as a spring where the ear can trace it under the rubble of loose stones to the neighborhood of some blind pool. But that leaves the lakes to be ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... Then a rumble: I see what is happening, and the sound echoes within me; the rock loosened other rocks, an avalanche goes thundering down the mountain-side, snow and earth and boulders, leaving a smoky cloud in its wake. The stream of rubble seems in a living rage; it thrusts its way on, tearing down other masses with it— crowding, pouring, pouring, fills up a chasm in the valley—and stops. The last few boulders settle slowly into place, and then no more. The thunder over, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... been wrecked, and many fellows slept under the shells. In one of them a man was selling hot coffee in the evening, at 6d. a cup. It was a striking scene, which I shall always remember—a large building, floorless and gutted inside, and full of heaps of rubble, very dimly lit by a couple of lanterns, in the light of which cloaked and helmeted figures moved. I thought of sleeping in a house, for it was the coldest night I remember; but habit prevailed, and I turned in as usual by my harness. The horses have got a head-rope-eating ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... gone cautiously over the ground beforehand, and decided that if there was any possibility of being knocked overboard unawares, he would prefer to go over the much gentler slope on the right, where one might even at a pinch find lodgment among the rubble and bushes, than over the sheer fall into Coupee Bay, where you could drop a stone almost ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... great portal of the cathedral. Rio Medio had been a place of some splendour in its time. The ruinous heavy buildings clung to the hillsides, and my eyes plunged into a broad vista of an empty and magnificent street. Behind many of the imposing and escutcheoned frontages there was nothing but heaps of rubble; the footsteps of rare passers-by woke lonely echoes, and strips of grass outlined in parallelograms the flagstones of the roadway. The Casa Riego raised its buttressed and loop-holed bulk near the shore, resembling a defensive outwork; on my ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... discovered that there was something architectural in style, that sentences had to be built up into a paragraph, and paragraphs into chapters and so on. Naturally he cried this revelation, too, from the housetops, and thus won the admiration of the journalists who had been making rubble-heaps all their lives without knowing it. I'm much afraid, Frank, in spite of all his efforts, he will die before he reaches the level from which writers start. It's a pity because he has certainly a little real talent. He differs from ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... led northwards along the lake shore; it skirted the talus that had fallen from the cliff which rose three hundred feet above him. He heard the sound of a rolling stone gathering in velocity among the rubble. He halted in order to listen; to trace, if possible, its course. The dull monotone of its rumbling rattle started a train of thought: perhaps his foot, treading the highway lightly, had caused the sensitive earth to tremble ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... underpinning of a part of the Columbus Monument near the southwest entrance to Central Park. This handsome memorial column has a stone shaft rising about 75 feet above the street level and weighs about 700 tons. The rubble masonry foundation is 45 feet square and rests on a 2-foot course of concrete. The subway passes under its east side within 3 feet of its center, thus cutting out about three-tenths of the original support. At this place the footing was on dry sand of considerable depth, ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... gap in the crowd below. The pavement was blackened and shattered to rubble. In and around the open space sprawled dozens of tiny black figures, ...
— Mutineer • Robert J. Shea
... barrier of stones, stakes, or rubble, constructed to stop or impede the course of a stream. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of all the insults, caused him to change his intention and still continue the siege. His perseverance was soon afterwards rewarded. A soldier discovered in the wall the outlet of a drain or sewer imperfectly blocked up with rubble, and, removing this during the night, found himself able to pass through the wall into the town. He communicated his discovery to Kobad, who took his measures accordingly. Sending, the next night, a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... both broke into laughter—happy laughter that died out before a sound of rushing and of thunder, as a mass slid swiftly past them, snow and mud and sand and rubble. The wind fell away from them, and when Pierre looked up he saw that a great mass of tumbled rock and soil ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... they built the walls of that thickness which can still be discerned round Piraeus, the stones being brought up by two wagons meeting each other. Between the walls thus formed there was neither rubble nor mortar, but great stones hewn square and fitted together, cramped to each other on the outside with iron and lead. About half the height that he intended was finished. His idea was by their size and thickness ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... side. We had our eyes on her as we ran, for we feared that she might catch, or capsize; and we were so intent upon our ship that we noticed nothing else. Now when we came to the end of the causeway, and turned to the right, along the shale and rubble tipped there from the quarry, we saw a man coming down the slope to the water, evidently bent on catching the Snail when she arrived. We could not see his face very clearly, for he wore a grey slouch-hat, and the brambles were so high just there that ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... advertisements to which I referred. It has had the honour of being freely utilized without acknowledgment by writers of repute; and, finally, it achieved the fate, which is the euthanasia of a scientific work, of being enclosed among the rubble of the foundations of later ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... kreutzers each upon them, for its maintenance. The castle, by his story, had descended from robber sire to robber son, till Gustavus knocked it to pieces in the sixteenth century; three hundred years later, the present owner restored it; and now its broken walls and arches, built of rubble mixed with brick, and neatly pointed up with cement, form a ruin satisfyingly permanent. The walls were not of great extent, but such as they were they enclosed several dungeons and a chapel, all underground, and a cistern which once enabled the barons ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... brightly colored with many shades of red. The color which is characteristic of E. q. hopiensis seems to be helpful in adapting this subspecies to this habitat of red sandstone, for these chipmunks are generally found in the rubble and among the pinon at the base of the cliffs. At many places in Utah above these cliffs of red sandstone there are forests predominantly composed of yellow pine. Kelson (1951:42-43) states that "these two habitats are in immediate juxtaposition, the transition from one to the other often occurring ...
— Taxonomy of the Chipmunks, Eutamias quadrivittatus and Eutamias umbrinus • John A. White
... homes. However, I was determined to see over a farm house before leaving the Island, so wandered around until we found an old woman. By shaking hands with her, and praising up her skyr, we made her understand by signs that we wished to see the house and byre. These were built of peat and rubble, with grass roofs, on one of which a cow was actually grazing at the time. Outside, drying in the sun, were pieces of peat in size about two feet by three, and about two inches thick; they were doubled, tent-fashion, to enable the air to pass ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... wire-netting. This veneering process has been successfully employed on the Missouri River; and in some cases they have so covered themselves with sediments, and have become so overgrown with willows, that they may be regarded as permanent. In securing these mats rubble-stone is to be used in small quantities, and in some instances the dressed slope between high and low river will have to be more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... above. He made his way with infinite caution, giving heed to every foothold, and feeling before him with his hands. Fortunately there was little snow to obstruct him; for what had descended into the gorge was lodged in the crevices of the stones. He crawled over heaps of rubble, digging his toes in, to keep from sliding into the water; and there were great hundred-ton boulders, over which he dragged himself on his stomach. Above the canyon there were no stars visible; and below, it was wrapped in darkness, thick, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Commonwealth, he settled finally on the top of the hill, having purchased for his residence the house of Hortensius, a simple and modest house, indeed, with columns of the commonest kind of stone, pavements of rubble-work, and simple ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Into the sky, It must come to this in the end, That we stand And watch the last friend Turn with a half-felt sigh And a wave of the hand; And silence is over the day, Shadows fall, And our happiness crumbles away Like a wall That nobody cares for, That falls stone by stone Till its grandeur is rubble once more, And ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... gloomy keels. There were intervals when the full expanse of Bougie Bay became visible, with its concourse of mountains crowded to the shore. At the base of the dark declivities the combers were bursting, and the spume towered on the gale like grey smoke. Out of the foam rose harsh rubble and screes to incline against broken precipices, and those stark walls were interrupted by mid-air slopes of grass which appeared ready to avalanche into the tumult below, but remained, livid areas of a dim mass which rose into dizzy pinnacles and domes, increasing the tumbling ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... her again; and yet again; and then some more; but always with the same result. Our hands became puffed and wrinkled with constant immersion in the water, and began to feel sore from the continual stirring of the rubble. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... proposed to "flute" the columns, but, finding that the pillars consisted of a stone casing filled with rubble, he changed his plans. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... from Lucban the river flows under a rock supported on prismatically shaped pillars, and then runs through a bed of round pebbles, composed of volcanic stone and white lime, as hard as marble, in which impressions of shell-fish and coral can be traced. Further up the river the volcanic rubble disappears, and the containing strata then consist of the marble-like pebbles cemented together with calcareous spar. These strata alternate with banks of clay and coarse-grained soil, which contain ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... calculus, concretion; flint, granite, marble, quartz, adamant, shale, flag, flagstone, cobblestone, rubble, brash, shingle; monolith, polyolith; cairn, muller, merestone; cromlech; madstone, snakestone; aerolite, meteorite; (of fruit) endocarp, pit, nut, putamen. Associated Words: petrify, petrifaction, lithology, lithography, lithic, lapidary, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... over the land. Men were being frozen in the blizzard which swept Chilkoot, and Rasmunsen frosted his toes ere he was aware. He found a chance to go passenger with his freight in a boat just shoving off through the rubble, but two hundred hard cash, was required, and he had ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... among the timber, while a dense pall of smoke entirely hid the distant ranges from view. Patches of sage-brush and bunch grass, burned sere and brown, alternated with barren stretches of sand from which piles of rubble rose here and there, telling of worked-out and abandoned mines. Occasionally a current of air stole noiselessly down from the canyon above, but its breath scorched the withered vegetation like the blast from a furnace. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour |
