"Trowel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the house with a garden hat tied over her white hair, and big garden gloves on her hands. At sight of the girl she uttered a joyful shriek, flung scissors and trowel and basket aside, and rushed forward. With catlike quickness the girl leaped to her feet and the two met and fell into each other's arms. I wished when I saw the little woman's arms close so about the girl, and the look that ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... might have been trodden upon without being perceived, and have slipped away before the sufferer could have well distinguished what foe had wounded him. Three years ago we discovered one in the same place, which the barber slew with a trowel. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... in the case of the Encyclopaedia, as we have also seen, Turgot as well as less eminent men bargained that their names should not be made public. Wherever a telling blow was to be dealt with the sword, or a new stone to be laid with the trowel, men were always found ready to spend themselves and be spent, without taking thought whether their share in the work should be nicely measured and publicly identified, or absorbed and lost in the whole of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... ravished will soon lie on the bottom of the sea, inaccessible to you. And look back at Visby, my noble lord! The woman whom you deceived is being led between the clergy and the soldiers to the town-wall. Can you hear the crowd following her, cursing, insulting? Look, the masons come with mortar and trowel! Look, the women come with stones! They are all ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... daily bread; Surprising Shakspeare fin'd the wool; Great Virgil creels and baskets made; And famous Ben employed the trowel. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... thought into Sarah's head. For three days she said nothing, but she fell into the way of going often in and out of that door, and always her eyes were hungrily fixed on one or the other of those squares. On the fourth day she bought a trowel and some flower seeds and set resolutely to work. She had dug the trowel into the earth four times, and was delightedly sniffing the odor from the moist earth when ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... natural to think that Francis, then seventeen years old, was one of the most gallant laborers of those glorious days, and it was perhaps there that he gained the habit of carrying stones and wielding the trowel which was destined to serve him so ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls a plain, every-day squash a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run a well-ordered truck-patch; ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... Alcalde with a trowel, upon whose wide silver blade was engraved the date. But His Excellency first ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... He made us come in. We entered an attic room, where we saw "the little mason" asleep in a little iron bed; his mother hung dejectedly over the bed, with her face in her hands, and she hardly turned to look at us; on one side hung brushes, a trowel, and a plaster-sieve; over the feet of the sick boy was spread the mason's jacket, white with lime. The poor boy was emaciated; very, very white; his nose was pointed, and his breath was short. O dear Tonino, my little comrade! ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,— Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... of your fire, please,' whispered Rogers, something between joy and sadness in his heart, 'for there are hills of leaves that I would burn up quickly—' but the man hurried on, tossing his trowel over the Guard's head, and nearly hitting another passenger who followed too close. This was the Woman of the Haystack, an enormous, spreading traveller who utterly refused to be hurried, and only squeezed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... slave from his master. Those who desired to set some mark on the resting-place of a relative, to distinguish it from those around, either had the name engraved upon the slab, or rudely scratched with the sharp end of a trowel in the mortar by which the slab was secured, or else a bit of ornamented glass or a ring or coin was impressed in the mortar ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... 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 love to repeat whether they are ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... remain just what they were. But there is more spleen than sense in all this, I know—and back I go to the Encyclopaedia.' And back he went—that is the great point—with courage unabated and indomitable, labouring with sword in one hand and trowel in the other, until he had set the last stone on ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... best in honor of the linden festival. The white dove-house was shining with a fresh coat of paint, and the pigeons were crooning contentedly, flying down often to drink at the drip from the water tank. Mrs. Kohler, who was transplanting pansies, came up with her trowel and told Thea it was lucky to have your birthday when the lindens were in bloom, and that she must go and look at the sweet peas. Wunsch accompanied her, and as they walked between the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, is a builder, who cuts down trees and piles log upon log until he has raised a solid, domed cabin ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... and how smoothly it makes the marital wheels go round. I don't mean false, blatant, absurd flattery, such as men often bestow on us when desirous to please, not realising that compliments laid on with a trowel are an insult to one's intelligence. Nothing of that kind, of course, but delicate, subtle, loving flattery. An attitude of gentle admiration toward your Perseus, subdued a little possibly for public use, but none the less markedly appreciative, ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, and so purposelike in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... thousand feuilletons, but we find no PURPOSE, corresponding to the expectations excited. We have every variety of miserable wretch imaginable paraded before us, without a hint of any means of curing their social disease. 'There is a hammer for tearing down, but no trowel for building up,' beyond a little empty talk on the benefits to be derived from education. The truth is that Victor Hugo writes, like too many of his nation, simply for sensation and effect. The fault to be found with this series is, that, like Jack Sheppard, it degrades the taste and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... deep tone of protest. "Not yet! Remember the walk across the fields. Plenty of time to get soil in the Amphitheatre!" And Mrs Garnett put down her trowel with quite a guilty air and resigned herself ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ejected in little spurts, and by a slow peristaltic movement when not so liquid. It is not cast indifferently on any side, but with some care, first on one and then on another side; the tail being used almost like a trowel. When a worm comes to the surface to eject earth, the tail protrudes, but when it collects leaves its head must protrude. Worms therefore must have the power of turning round in their closely-fitting burrows; and this, as it appears to us, would be a difficult feat. As soon as a little heap ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... and thriving market town. Then through an aperture that had been a window I saw three women sitting round a candle. And in the next street I found a man on his knees on the pavement, working with bricks and a trowel. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... none has ever been erected under merrier circumstances. As there was an abundant supply of food and drink, the workmen never left their work; and amidst their continuous laughter the four walls were run up with incredible quickness, until one day Krespel cried, "Stop!" Then the workmen, laying down trowel and hammer, came down from the scaffoldings and gathered round Krespel in a circle, whilst every laughing face was asking, "Well, and what now?" "Make way!" cried Krespel; and then running to one end of the garden, he strode slowly towards the square of brick-work. When he came close to the ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... to be sedulously watched, and guided or wholly repressed as the case may demand. The budding artist is supplied with pencil, the nascent musician with trumpet or tuning-fork, the florist with tiny hoe and trowel, and so on. The boy is never loosed, physically or metaphysically, quite out of leading-strings. They are made, however, so elastic as scarce to be felt, and yet so strong as never to break. Moral suasion, perseveringly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... empire there are two processes—the building up, and the tearing down. The plow is no less essential than the trowel. The period after Boris had been for Russia the period of the wholesome plow. The harvest was far off. But the name Romanoff was going to stand for another Russia, not like the old Russia of Kief, nor yet the new Russia of Moscow; but another and a Europeanized Russia, ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... miserable fragment of waste ground hanging to the skirts of a prosperous town. Brigsome's Terrace was, perhaps, one of the most dismal blocks of building that was ever composed of brick and mortar since the first mason plied his trowel and the first architect drew his plan. The builder who had speculated in the ten dreary eight-roomed prison-houses had hung himself behind the parlor door of an adjacent tavern while the carcases were yet ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... that frank but huckster-like avowal Is made continually, behind the bar. It means—though rather "laid on with a trowel"— A Trade with Public Spirit quite at jar. The "mercenary politician," making A pocket-business of a patriot's task, Recently put your Press in a great taking; But sordid selfishness here doffs all mask! Which with a patriot's conscience plays ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... Cooper boys. This master-mason took great pride in exact work, with which no trifling was permitted. No stone could be moved but his true eye would detect it in a flash, and wild was the fury with which his fiery trowel flew for the culprit, and with such convincing force that it was wise to avoid further meddling with the "gude mon's" work. Of "Jamie Allen," master-mason and staunch auld kirke mon, many an ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... near Charing Cross—having been born in Hartshorn Lane, now Northumberland Street; he attended the parish school of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields; and persons who roam about Lincoln's Inn will call to mind that he helped to build it—a trowel in one hand and a volume of Horace in the other. His residence, in his day of fame, was outside the Temple Bar, but all that neighborhood ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... two feet or thereabouts; this is filled with stiff, well-worked mud, which is dumped in by bucketsful and continually tramped by barefooted laborers; harder bricks are used for the doorways and windows. The bricklayer uses mud for mortar and his hands for a trowel; he works without either level or plumb-line, and keeps up a doleful, melancholy chant from morning to night. The mortar is handed to him by an assistant by handsful; every workman is smeared and spattered with mud from head to foot, as though glorying in covering themselves with the trade-mark ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... remarked that such a thing would be impossible in the North. So strong is the prejudice against the employment of Negro labor that the presence of the Negro workmen on a brick wall would cause every white man to throw down his trowel and quit work. This thing is true in all the remunerative avenues of life in the North. In respect to the South, it is there that the Negro will work out his industrial destiny. He has been and will be the laborer. Such ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... a convenient implement this for a froth-house builder who is compelled to work behind her back—mortar-feeder, trowel, darby, compass, and level all in one! Beginning with the first touch of the cement, the flowing point describes a very small half-circle to the right, again meeting the bark. It is now carried inward and upward, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... in the garden, which the speculator's trowel had spared by some fancy of the builder's, who believed that he was preserving these hundred feet square of earth for his own pleasure, they were admiring the first green shoots of the lilac-trees, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the top of his house, with a high north window and roughly plastered walls of uncolored sand, left as Bertrand himself had put the plaster on, with his trowel marks over the surface as they happened to come, and the angles and projections ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... somewhere in the immediate vicinity, of a mine of untold wealth. Several days were spent in unprofitable search: then more favorable indications led the shepherds to dispose of their flocks and set out in good earnest to dig for gold. A couple of spades, a trowel and a calabash were their only tools, but our adventurer was a knowing man, and "knowledge is power." His practiced eye knew just where the precious metals would be most likely to exist if at all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... trowel cuts them quite in half, It is a bitter cup; They give a sour sardonic laugh And sew the pieces up; They sew them up and wind away With seeming unconcern, But oh, be careful! one fine day I hear the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... blue plush frame, Persis passed through the house to the woodshed, found a trowel among the garden tools, and then made her way into the night. The sky was overcast, hiding the stars, but the flitting fire-flies outlined strange constellations against the velvety darkness. Persis groped her way through the dewy grass toward ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... none may join your sacred Guild, Save only graduates (so to speak), Experts with hod and trowel, skilled In the finesse of pure technique: And that is why No ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... deposit his trowel of cement on the surface of the lower stone, to seal it to the stone held suspended by the crane ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... where these industrious creatures have felled them ready for their use. They always work at night and in concert. Their long, sharp teeth are used for gnawing down the trees, but their mason-work is done entirely with their flat, trowel-like tails. In its natural state the fur is very durable, and is as full of long black hairs as that of the sable, but as sold, all these hairs have been ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... ceremony. She knew that her Grandmother Felicite was going to lay the first stone of the Rougon Asylum, the triumphant monument destined to carry down to future ages the glory of the family. Vast preparations had been going on for a week past. There was talk of a silver hod and trowel, which the old lady was to use herself, determined to figure to triumph, with her eighty-two years. What swelled her heart with regal pride was that on this occasion she made the conquest of Plassans for the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... and with miserable traitors to the land of their birth and breeding, the poor emigrant starts from the interior, where his ideas have never expanded beyond the weaver's loom or factory labour, the plough or the spade, the hod, the plane, or the trowel, and hastens with his wife and children ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... cheap trowel. They may be had for fifteen or twenty cents but a fifty-cent one will outlast a dozen of these and not break just when you need ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... were great makers of conquests; and Napoleon's armies were great makers of conquests; but the modern Guerilla regiments of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln, are the greatest conquerors of all; for they hold the longest the soil that they have once possessed. How mighty the devastation which follows in the wake of these tremendous aggressors, as they march through ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... And there, too, Joseph Coombs was found, With solemn step his march around Among the patients, pacing slowly— Disciple of the meek and lowly, Who afterwards oft turned the key On many a goodly company. In that strong work of mason's trowel, Ruled now by Alexander Powell. And William Addison, no more— As trim a soldier as e'er wore The uniform, or bravely bore His head erect, with step as light As wings that touch the air in flight. Well had he won and kept from harm The honor'd stripes upon his arm. ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... things a little. There was a kodak on her bureau. There were snowshoes, too small for a man surely—if you could tell of a thing the size of snowshoes—hanging on the wall. There was a fishing-rod case, with something hanging near it that she imagined was a flybook. There was a little trowel, and a graceful birch-bark basket, as if some one might want to go out and bring home plants. She got up finally, her curiosity stronger ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... Athalie had acquired a fat bay horse and a double buckboard; and, in the seventh heaven now, she jogged about the country through leafy lanes and thistle-bordered by-roads long familiar to her childhood, sometimes with basket, trowel, and garden gloves, intent on the digging and transplanting of ferns, sometimes with field-glasses and books, on ornithological information bent. More often she started out with only a bag of feed for Henry the horse and some luncheon for herself, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... would enter here as by a postern. At a hazard, my suspicion would fall on the iron doors that open inwards in the base of chimneys. We have been fondly credulous that there is nothing but ash inside and mere siftings from the fire above; and when, on an occasion, we reach in with a trowel for a scoop of this wood-ash for our roses, we laugh at ourselves for our scare of being nabbed. But some day if by way of experiment you will thrust your head within—it's a small hole and you will be besmirched beyond anything ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... Uncle William mounted the roof again. His face, under its vast calm, wore a look of resolve. He looked thoughtfully down the chimney hole. Then he sat down on the platform and took up his trowel. He balanced it on his palm and looked at the pile of bricks. His gaze wandered to the sky. It swept the bay and came back across the moors. A look of soft happiness filled it; the thin edges of resolve melted before ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... the most distant dioceses, a rain of gold destined to increase and never end. Then came his happy years: he was to be met among the workmen at all hours, instilling activity into them like the jovial, good-natured fellow he was, constantly on the point of taking a pick or trowel in hand himself, such was his eagerness to behold the realisation of his dream. But days of trial were in store for him: he fell ill, and lay in danger of death on the fourth of April, 1864, when the first procession started from his parish church to the Grotto, a procession of sixty thousand ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... courage of the defenders, and begging them to surrender at discretion. They answered the messenger with words of haughty defiance, and, rushing in a mass to the breastwork, began with spade, pickax, and trowel, to add to its strength. Here all the able-bodied men of the town took up their permanent position, and here they ate, drank, and slept upon their posts, while their food was brought to them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with any Stones, or that the Knife comes out clean without any sticking to it, it signifies the Lime was not will burnt; for when 'tis well Quench'd, it is Fat and will stick to the Knife; but the quite contrary happens to Mortar, for it is neither well prepar'd, nor well mix'd, if it stick to the Trowel. ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... digging, as trowels, dibbers, and spuds, may be had of dealers. In buying a trowel it is economy to pay an extra price and secure a steel blade with a strong shank that runs through the entire length of the handle. One of these tools will last several years and may be used in hard ground, but the cheap trowels are generally hardly worth the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... sort of a family he had, and whether they were worthy of the extra pains I was taking on their house—these and a thousand other wonderings and reveries kept possession of my mind; while the natural pride and hope and confidence of a young man turned to sweet music the sound of saw and hammer and trowel, and even translated the rustling of pine ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... ardent rose grower and herbaceous borderer, leaving her Mind, indeed, to damp evenings and the winter months. When I think of her at Beckenham, I always think first of her as dressed in that blue cotton stuff she affected, with her arms in huge gauntleted gardening gloves, a trowel in one hand and a small but no doubt hardy and promising annual, limp and very young-looking and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... pull all the old plants which have not flowered. When the fruit is nearly all gathered, examine them again, and cut off the runners; but if you want to make a fresh plantation, leave some of the two first, and cut off all the rest. Then stir up the ground with a trowel, or three-pronged fork, and in August they will be fit to transplant. If you have omitted in July, do not fail in August, that the runners may make good roots, to be transplanted in September; for, if later, the worms will draw them out of the ground, and the frost afterwards will prevent them from ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... up the yellow one. We have brought a basket and trowel, and can examine them thoroughly. We must dig down deep so as not to break off the stem. There is a ring or collar around it near the top. There is a bulb at the base, with some slight membrane attached. The cap is orange color, almost smooth, covered with a few spots like warts, and ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... down one of the prohibited Spanish daggers or knives which a traveller may occasionally get hold of and smuggle out of the country. The blade was broad, trowel-like, but the point drawn out several inches, so as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... this humble position he rose to a situation in the studio of Bubb, the sculptor; and through the counsel of Eugenius Roche, the former editor of the "Literary Recreations," and then the conductor of The Day newspaper, he was induced to lay aside the trowel and undertake the duties of reporter to that journal. The Day soon falling into the hands of other proprietors, Cunningham felt his situation uncomfortable, and returned to his original vocation, attaching himself to Francis Chantrey, then ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... his muddy knees, still gazing at the gate-post, then took a trowel from his bag and began to cut away the turf ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... pleasant, though I think he considered the governor-general a bit of a humbug. Speaking to me one day of men's liking for flattery, Sir John said that 'almost anybody will take almost any amount of it,' but he thought that Lord Dufferin transgressed even those wide limits. 'He laid it on with a trowel.' Sir John added that Lord Dufferin was proud of his classical acquirements. He once delivered an address in Greek at the University of Toronto. A newspaper subsequently spoke of 'His Excellency's perfect command of the language.' 'I wonder who told ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... our dulness. We have them in the place of heavenly; and he would have argued that we have a right to bother them too. He had a notion, up in the clouds, of a Sailors' Convalescent Hospital at Crikswich to seduce a prince with, hand him the trowel, make him "lay the stone," and then poor prince! refresh him at table. But that was a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... imagined their little scene ending very beautifully in a grave embrace and kiss; but no opportunity was given her for this final demonstration of her spirit of charity. Her mother gathered up her scissors, her watering-pot, her trowel, and handing Imogen the filled basket of roses said, "Will you carry ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... get an introduction to professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do to: man always feels complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you know you're not to: what's parallax? Show this gentleman ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... book that now towers aloft in my friend's library. It is a princely copy of Ben Jonson, the Illustrious. Southey lent it, when he possessed the magnifico, to Coleridge, who has begemmed it all over with his fine pencillings. As Ben once handled the trowel, and did other honorable work as a bricklayer, Coleridge discourses with much golden gossip about the craft to which the great dramatist once belonged. The editor of this magazine would hardly thank me, if I filled ten of his pages with extracts from the rambling dissertations in S.T.C.'s ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... open fields, waste places, groves and woods. They are usually more abundant in the forests. Especially in dry weather are specimens more numerous in rather damp woods, along ravines or streams. In collecting specimens which grow on the ground the trowel should be used to dig up the plant carefully, to be sure that no important part of the plant is left in the ground. After one has become familiar with the habit of the different kinds the trowel will not be necessary in all cases. For example, most species of Russula, Lactarius, ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... man's conduct, so that he shall make neither the saving of his soul nor any other private saving an excuse for indifference to the general welfare? Well and good. But the sort of public spirit that scamps its bread-winning work, whether with the trowel, the pen, or the overseeing brain, that it may hurry to scenes of political or social agitation, would be as baleful a gift to our people as any malignant demon could devise. One best part of educational ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... stupidest mortal that ever dared to live, and then—yet not so stupid as the walls, and trees, and shrubs, while he can own a tongue to answer back. Ah! wretched slug, would you devour my tender opening leaves? Ugh! I cannot touch the slimy thing. Where has my trowel gone? I wish my ears had never heard his name,—Luttrell; a pretty name, too; but we all know how little is in that. I feel absurdly disappointed; and why? Because it is decreed that a man I never have known I never shall know. I doubt my brain is softening. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Then we swore against drink of all sorts entirely. And, as I had occasionally served the masons, when I lived a labouring man in the county of Dublin, and knew something of that business, why, whatever I knew I made the most of, and a trowel felt no ways strange to me; so I went to work, and had higher wages at first than I deserved. The same with the two boys: one was as much of a blacksmith as would shoe a horse; and t'other a bit of a carpenter; and the one got plenty of work in the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... broken windows in any of the rooms; nothing but workmen, and the implements of their several trades, swarming from the kitchens to the garrets. Inside and outside alike: bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons: hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, and trowel: all at work together, in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... has been purchased by the commune of La Serve: for, standing as it does within view of the new chateau, no doubt it would have been brought to the state of that delectable domicile by the aid of the trowel and paint-brush. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... impressed with the value of these archeological discoveries, detailed a man to superintend the exhumation, who proceeded to remove the earth from the mould, which he reached through a layer of charcoal, and then with a trowel excavated beneath it. The clay was not thoroughly baked, and no impression of the corpse was left, except of the forehead and that portion of the limbs between the ankles and the knees, and even these ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... The Trowel is an instrument used by operative masons to spread the cement which unites the building into one common mass; but we, as Free and Accepted Masons, are taught to use it for the more noble and glorious purpose ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... mind about that," says MCLAUGHLIN. "I carry the keys of the Bumsteadville[1] churchyard vaults, and can tell to an atom, by a tap of my trowel, how fast a skeleton is dropping to dust in the pauper burial-ground. That's more than they can do who call me names." With which ghastly speech JOHN MCLAUGHLIN retires ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... was on his knees, trowel in hand, shouting to Riedriech, who had come outside for a few minutes' happy arguing with his good friend the doctor, that the socialist argument boiled down amounts to about this—that one should ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... if I may borrow a garden trowel I will remove some of this earth with which I am encased, and then if I may avail myself of your domestic conveniences I will have a bath. This done, we will converse more at leisure. It will be wise, I think"—he laid a muddy hand on my arm—"if nothing were said of this affair beyond ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... generation of priests there are builders. But, like the men on Jerusalem's walls, they have to grasp the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... rising from her knees and shaking her trowel at the intruder. "I don't want no apples to-day, an' I don't care how ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... frightened, and in their disquietude angled to learn what had happened. At last he told them, said he was lost, and that for a few inches the King forgot all his services, which had led to so many conquests; he declared that henceforth he would leave the trowel to the King, bring about a war, and so arrange matters that the King should ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... satisfying, more majestic thought of life than this—the scaffolding by which souls are built up into the temple of God? And to care whether a thing is painful or pleasant is as absurd as to care whether the bricklayer's trowel is knocking the sharp corner off a brick, or plastering mortar on the one below it before he lays it carefully on its course. Is the building getting on? That is the one question ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... as the talent of a beaver—which can build houses, and uses its tail for a trowel—to the genius of a prophet and poet. Reason is all but extinct in this age; it can ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... chiefly to keep in and contain their Water, which by the help of these Banks they overflow their Grounds with. These Banks they make as smooth with the backside of their Houghs, as a Bricklayer can smooth a Wall with his Trowel. For in this they are very neat. These Banks are usually not above a ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... less than three coats of sand mortar, besides the rendering coat, have been laid on, then, we must make the mixture for the layers of powdered marble, the mortar being so tempered that when mixed it does not stick to the trowel, but the iron comes out freely and clean from the mortar trough. After this powdered marble has been spread on and gets dry, lay on a medium second coat. When that has been applied and well rubbed down, spread on a finer ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... pointing. This, however, is not so destructive as much of the work which has been condemned above, because at any time the walls could be recovered with a thin coat of smooth plaster laid on with a trowel, but not "floated,"—that is, not brought to a smooth surface by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... man gave him the bricks and mortar, and a little trowel as well, and the little pig built himself a nice strong little house. As soon as it was finished the wolf came to call, just as he had done to the other little pigs, and said: "Little pig, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... high rocks, and in among huckleberry-bushes and blackberry-vines. But the little boys had their india-rubber boots. At last they discovered the little old woman. They knew her by her hat. It was steeple-crowned, without any vane. They saw her digging with her trowel round a sassafras bush. They told her their story,—how their mother had put salt in her coffee, and how the chemist had made it worse instead of better, and how their mother couldn't drink it, and wouldn't she come and see what she could do? And she said she would, and ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... on the verge of nervous prostration," whispered Rose, as his attention was claimed by Mrs. Cartright. "The effort of keeping my countenance—but the way you handle a trowel, Tiny, is a new chapter in diplomacy. Butter and molasses for fifty and after; a vaporiser and peau d'espagne for the sharp young things. I was just saying," she added hastily, as Don Roberto reclined suddenly and turned to ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... since as sword, as trowel, or as pocket-comb, the beak of the bird has to be pointed, the collection of seeds may be conveniently intrusted to this otherwise penetrative instrument, and such food as can only be obtained by probing crevices, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... said Mark merrily, snatching away his wrist. "I am not going to have my hand used as a trowel to save yours, you lazy beggar. Here, Dean, get hold of Pig and do as I do. Let's give ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... willingness with which he put his shoulder to the wheel everywhere that aid was needed, his boldness in defying those leagued against him, completely changed the aspect of Jamestown. The gentlemen who had refused to wield axe or spade or bricklayer's trowel because of their gentility ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... he threw open the lid. There they lay, the half-forgotten symbols of his old life. Worn mallets, chisels, the head of a broken hod with the plaster still caked into it, a short broad shovel for mixing mortar, a trowel, a spirit level, a plumb, all wrapped loosely in a worn leather apron. He took the mallets in his hand and turned them about with the quick little jerks that came so naturally to him. Strength for the work had come into his arms. All the old ambitions which he ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... and the limited space, to make the most of it in a pecuniary point of view, 346 was encroached upon by three uncurtained beds, of most impoverished appearance,—while, exhibiting the ravages of time in divers fractures, the dingy walls and ceiling, retouched by the trowel in many places with a lighter shade of repairing material, bore no unapt resemblance to the Pye-bald Horse in Chiswell-street! Calculating on its utility and probable future use, the builder of the mansion had given to this room the appendage of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... halls. They were stirring up the minds of the people. They were not merely making them discontented with conditions, but they were offering a programme of reconstruction—a programme that included a trowel ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... silver trowel was brought; and when the member for the Gentlemanly Interest, tucking up his coat-sleeve, did a little sleight of hand with the mortar, the air was rent, so loud was the applause. The workman-like manner in which he did it ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... timber planks That hid our ruins; many a day I cried, Ah me! I fear they never will rebuild it! Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve, As along Charles-street I prepared to walk. Just at the corner, by the pastrycook's, I heard a trowel tick against a brick. I looked me up, and straight a parapet Uprose at least seven inches o'er the planks. Joy to thee, Drury! to myself I said: He of the Blackfriars' Road, who hymned thy downfall ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... been broken up, and was full of rocks and stumps, and he was anxious to save his own from injury; the consequence was that the borrowed implement came home unfit for use, just at the very time that we wanted to plough for fall wheat. The same happened to a spade and trowel, bought in order to plaster the house. Satan asked the loan of them for ONE hour for the same purpose, and we never ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... sun rose yellow and bright, Bessie came into the woods with a basket and a trowel. It was nearly winter, and she knew that soon the snow would fall and cover all the pretty growing things. So she dug up, very carefully, roots of plumy fern and partridge berries with their leaves, and ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... workmen; they have again become workmen in exile. Nadaud has resumed his trowel, and is a mason in London. Faure (du Rhone), a cutler, and Bansept, a shoemaker, felt that their trade had become their duty, and practise it in England. Faure makes knives, Bansept makes boots. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... and princelings, is that they should be made to work; and not made to work in the glittering and glorious sense, as generals and chiefs of staff, and legislators, and land-barons, but in the plain and humble part of laborers looking for a job; that they should carry a hod and wield a trowel and swing a pick and, at the day's end, be glad of a humble supper and a night's rest; that they should work, in short, as millions of poor emigrants out of Germany have worked for generations past; that there should ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... gingham apron and sun-bonnet was digging with a trowel in her garden when he appeared upon ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... came that morning, Colonel George W. Tew was at work at his trade, a mason, on Wellington Avenue. On receiving the order he laid down his trowel and other tools, adopted the trade of a soldier, and for four long years he served his country with credit to himself and to the ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... fortune to build, In his youth would have taught him the trowel to wield, But the mortar of discipline never would stick, For his skull was secured by a facing of brick; And with all his endeavours of patience and pain, The skill of his sire he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... have that antediluvian idea that you can drown it; put in clean sand and gravel, broken stone, making it thin enough, so that when it is put into boxes the thinner portion will run in, filling all interstices, forming a solid mass. A brick trowel is necessary to work it down alongside the boxing plank. One of the best and easiest things to carry the concrete to the boxes is a railroad wheelbarrow, scooping it in with a scoop shovel. Two courses a week is about as fast as it will be safe to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... listened to; the ambassadors of the Catholic powers utter their official exhortations to harmony and a single eye to the good of the Church; and when they withdraw, the mason of the conclave steps gravely forth, trowel in hand, to build up a solid wall of brick and mortar betwixt the electors and that world which still looks forward with curious interest, although with diminished faith, to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... into the timber, the Indians followed and surrounded them, taking cover along the river banks below, and behind rocks and trees on the hill-sides above. The men dug rifle pits with their trowel bayonets and piled up rocks to protect themselves as best they could, and a sharpshooting fight was kept up from this position all day. At times, the Indians' fire was close and destructive, and here Lieutenant ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... Major, with a laugh, and pulling his front hair up. "Such things pass by me like the idle wind; or rather, perhaps, they sadden me, from my sense of my own deficiencies. But, bless me! dinner must be waiting. Look at that fellow's trowel—he knows: he turns up the point of it like a spoon. They say that he can smell his dinner two miles off. We all dine at one o'clock now, that I may rout up ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... has a small collection of silver trowels used for laying cornerstones of public buildings. There is an ivory-handled trowel (fig. 21) ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... Dickie played at houses under the table—it was not the sort of game he usually played, but the neighbors could not know that. The table happened to be set down just over the hole that had held the roots of the moonflower. Dickie dug a little with a trowel in ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... of the City Surveyor and Mr. Stanley, stone-mason, the worthy Mayor then proceeded to discharge his agreeable duty—the laying of the first stone. He used for the purpose a very elegant silver trowel {59a} with ivory handle, furnished by the Messrs. Etheridge (which had been presented to his worship by Mr. E. E. Benest) bearing the following inscription on ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... send your paviours and slaters to the poorest villages, and see that your poor are healthily lodged, before you try your hand on stately architecture. You will find its stateliness rise better under the trowel afterwards; and we do do not yet build so well that we need hasten to display our skill to future ages. Had the labour which has decorated the Houses of Parliament filled, instead, rents in walls and roofs throughout the county of Middlesex; and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... her quiet voice sent a chill to Sylvia's heart. "Why, Judy dear, after you are married of course you and Arnold can keep Lawrence with you. That'll be the best for him, a real home, with you. Oh, Judy dear," she laid down her trowel, fighting hard against a curious sickness which rose within her. She tried to speak lightly. "Oh, Judy dear, when are you going to be married? Or don't you want to speak about it now, for a while? You never write long letters, I know—but your late ones haven't had any news in ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... on a wooden trowel, consists of distinct grains of soap and a liquid portion, which will easily separate, sufficient salt or brine has been added; the boiling is stopped and the spent lye allowed to settle out, whilst the soap remains on the surface as a more ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... reply had upon the schoolmaster the effect which the mason's sign is said to produce on the brethren of the trowel. He was at once interested in the learned traveller, listened with gravity to his story of a tired horse and a lost shoe, and then replied with solemnity, "It may appear a simple thing, most worshipful, to reply to you that there dwells, within a brief mile ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... advantage to the writer, if not to the artist. In Captain Macklin, the young man's cousin makes her first appearance in a thin gown, and a white hat trimmed with roses, reminding the adventurous captain of a Dresden statuette, in spite of the fact that she wore heavy gauntlet gloves and carried a trowel. The lady had been doing a hard day's work in the garden. No woman outside the asylum ever did gardening in such a costume, and Mr. Davis evidently has the hat and gown sadly mixed ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... trowel on a heap of weeds, and cast her gardening gloves on the top. She led the way to the house, and when they were in the coolness of the big sitting-room with its air of inherited repose, she turned about and spoke again in her round, low voice. "Well?" There ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown |
