"Trowel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fripon'i, -ajxo, (cards) preno. trickle : guteti. trifle : bagatelo, trivialajxo. tripe : tripo. triumph : triumf'i, -o. troop : trupo, bando. tropic : tropiko. trot : troti. trough : trogo. trousers : pantalono. trout : truto. trowel : trulo. tramp : (cards), atuto. trumpet : trumpeto. trunk : (animal) rostro; (tree) trunko; (box) kofro; (body) torso. trust : fidi. try : provi, peni. Tsar : Caro. tuber : tubero. tuft : tufo. tumbler : glaso. tumult : tumulto. tune : ario, melodio; agordi. turbot : rombfisxo. turkey : meleagro. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... a shocking oath, in connection with the name of Mrs. Curtis, and started forward with his trowel as if he were about to strike ...
— Berties Home - or, the Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... Foster, Sir John Macdonald—each began as a poor man. Sifton began life as a penniless lawyer. Van Horne got his foot on the first rung of the ladder hustling cars for troops in the Civil War. MacKenzie of Canada Northern fame began with a trowel; Dan Mann with an ax in the lumber woods at a period when wages were a dollar and twenty-five cents a day; Laurier with a lawyer's parchment and not a thing else in the world. Foster, the wizard of finance, taught ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... flower-beds were doing their 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 flower-beds he took ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... At trowel, a knife, fork, and spoon, of artistically painted wood, and a pair of oars, all claim a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... on the street corners and in the East Side 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 as well ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... to deposit his trowel of cement on the surface of the lower stone, to seal it to the stone held suspended by the crane when ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and prince of plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand! You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell you must have pulled, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... fish, care should be taken not to break the flakes, and this is best avoided by the use of a fish trowel, which not being sharp, divides it better than a steel knife. Examine this little drawing, and you will see how a cod's head and shoulders should be carved. The head and shoulders of a cod contain the richest and best part ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... she was storing her cell and she must go on storing, come what may. Never will she bring herself to lay aside the pollen-brush for the trowel; never will she suspend the foraging which is occupying her at this moment to begin the work of construction which is not yet due. She will rather go in search of a strange cell, in the desired condition, and slip in there to deposit her honey, at the risk of meeting with a warm reception ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... there must be a hole dug for it, in the first place; you must take a trowel and make a hole for it—But your dress will be the waur!" he exclaimed, glancing at his little mistress's ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... you! So many messages for you! So much for you to do! Look, Miss Felicia!" She held aloft a broad sun-hat and a pair of gauntleted gloves, "Just where she hung them—as if she knew you might want them! These are the things she wore when she worked in the garden—here's her wicker basket with the trowel and the hand fork— and here's the garden book—" She was standing before Felicia now holding out the treasures. "If you'll sit over there by the window I can tell you about the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... here to see if I couldn't find some clams," added Laud, as he held up a clam-digger he carried in his hand—a kind of trowel fixed in ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... emphasise the roughness by filling up the joints with conspicuous 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 a ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... assistance 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 ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... reasonably object. The foreigner felt perhaps slightly uncomfortable when the same statesman, departing for a moment from his usual objective standpoint, spoke of the German "traversing the world with a sword in one hand and a spade and trowel in the other"; but otherwise no act of Germany's world-policy need have inspired alarm, or need inspire alarm at the present time, in sensible foreign minds. The rapidity of its action probably helped to excite a feeling ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the furnace tower we see a strange sight, and one which is well worthy of our notice. This part of the wall deserves our earnest attention, for here are actually young ladies engaged in the work, standing, trowel in hand, toiling away side by side with the other workmen. Who are these girls? They are the daughters of Shallum, the ruler of the half part of Jerusalem (ver. 12) (or rather of the country round Jerusalem). Shallum was evidently a wealthy and influential man, but he did not withdraw ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... two, three, and here she did come! And in a trice Polly had the cover up, and out flew the little green tin botany case; and within it being an iron spoon and little trowel, off flew Polly on happy feet to unearth the treasures that were to beautify Phronsie's little garden; a bunch of girls ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... 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, describing a very close circle with scarcely ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... one of them informed her; "so you are too! Everybody's looking." And they crowded round to examine the objects in her hand—a dirty earth-stained trowel and a fern. They knew she collected ferns on the sly, but never before had they seen her bring home such a prize. Usually she found only crumpled things like old bits of wrinkled brown paper which she called "specimens." This one was marvellously beautiful. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... and warlocks, Smiting the heathen horde,— One hand on the mason's trowel And one ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... 'tis built on British soil! 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. Such ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... That will stand. It was otherwise with the Pharisees. When they did their alms, they made a noise and called attention to it. That was like putting a stone in the wall that stuck a long way out, so that all might see it. When the Lord comes with His plumbline, He will knock it off with His trowel, and it will go all to pieces like a bit of slate, and be no good at all. You come to church, and you take my sermon home. What will you do with it? Toss it away on your road home, and make no use at all of ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... dig 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 ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... made of air, though in the midst of the water, that this spider has been looked upon as the inventor of the diving-bell. Then there is the industrious Mason, which bores a hole in the earth, makes the walls of its little tunnel as smooth as if it worked with trowel and mortar, and then hangs them with delicate silken curtains of its own spinning and weaving; the Trap-door spider, so called because the mouth of its burrowed nest is fitted with a cleverly hinged door, which ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... piece of slate; I can scrape holes with that,' said Allan. 'Take this old trowel, Marjorie; it hasn't a handle, but I ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... laugh passed David's lips. "Men are not made so easily. I think I know the trowel and the mortar that built that wall! Thee ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 be about them none of the prestige of fallen ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... by the lower end of the pond, when, to my horror, I perceived a boy groping on the grass on all fours, apparently digging up the ground with a trowel. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... House at Foston was building, the Rector was wholly engrossed in the work. "I live," he wrote, "trowel in hand. My whole soul is filled up by lath and plaster." He laid the foundation-stone in June 1813, and took possession of the completed edifice in March 1814. "My house was considered the ugliest in the county, but all admitted that it was one of the most comfortable."[68] ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the back of his hand. 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
... if bricks were the order of the day; or a slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered before the wet weather set in, and nobody was near who could do it better. Indeed, on one or two occasions in the depth of winter, when frost peremptorily forbids all use of the trowel, making foundations to settle, stones to fly, and mortar to crumble, he had taken to felling and sawing trees. Moreover, he had practised gardening in his own plot for so many years that, on an emergency, he might have made a ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... wall of the house had been closed in at a later period would be preposterous, and for manifest reasons. His examination of the room's interior had been most thorough and exhaustive. The place was smoothly plastered upon the inside, and even the mason's trowel had been found upon the floor within, so that it became at once evident that those who had done the work had been self-immured. Although the reason for such an act was utterly beyond his comprehension, Paul felt a certain satisfaction in having reached this conclusion, as it showed ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... front to rear, The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks, The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; —Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... kindest gardener that ever lived, I think, and I have seen a good many. He liked nothing better than to have all the five mice trotting at his heels while he went about his work. They might hide his shears, and run off with his trowel, and take his rake and hoe for hobbyhorses, but Tomty was never ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... degrees all the surplus dirt was washed away, leaving only these stones and a kind of fine black sand, in which the gold being heavy, had stayed. This sand was carefully gathered up with a brush and iron trowel into a shallow tin basin, and then an experienced miner carefully manipulated the same with clear water. What with blowing with the breath, and allowing the water to flow gently over it, all the ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Genoa, at Campo-Marone, we find again the olive tree. Hence the produce becomes mixed, of all the kinds before mentioned. The method of sowing the Indian corn at Campo-Marone, is as follows. With a hoe shaped like the blade of a trowel, two feet long, and six inches broad at its upper end, pointed below, and a little curved, they make a trench. In that, they drop the grains six inches apart. Then two feet from that, they make another trench, throwing the earth they take out of that on ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... costume as 'Cumberland corsets,' 'Petersham trousers,' 'Brummel cravats,' 'Osbaldistone ties,' and 'Exquisite crops,' should be only sketchily rendered in paint. Of course, Mr. Opie, who affected thorough John Bullism in art, who laid on his pigments steadily with a trowel, and produced portraits of ladies like washerwomen, and gentlemen liking Wapping publicans—of course, unsentimental, unfashionable Mr. Opie denounced the degeneracy of his competitor's style. 'Lawrence makes coxcombs of his sitters, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... to a yard, having also small houses attached to it in the same manner, and a well of comparatively good water. The floors were of sand, and the walls of mud roughly plastered, and showing every where the marks of the only trowel used in the country—the fingers of the right hand. There are no windows to any of the houses, but some rooms have a small hole in the ceiling, or high ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... that followed his spirit of encouragement, the 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 were shamed ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... couldn't remember why I was placed in that chair, and Ardelia couldn't remember. So it occurred to me that I had forgotten my trowel," he said. He put the trowel, absent-mindedly, in the tea basket, and took the seat arranged ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... with climbing plants, wild grapes, Virginia jessamine. In the middle is a sun-dial. There are many plants in pots. Your child is looking at the flowers. She shows them to her nurse—she is making holes in the earth with her trowel, and planting seeds. The nurse is raking the path. The young girl is pure as an angel, but the beginning of love is there, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... neighbor girl called on me, and, finding me gone, was right peeved. She entertained herself by uprooting my posies. With a complete thoroughness she mixed plants and dirt together, stirring water into the mixture with my trowel. If her grown-up cake-making is done as conscientiously as was that job, she'll be a wonderful pastry cook! I discovered the mischief while it was still fresh, and out of the wreckage salvaged a few brave seedlings. They pouted awhile before they took heart, and root, ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... my arm, lying 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
... corner and set to work. The laboratory contained all sorts of builder's tools, used when the furnace needed repairing. He raised one of the slabs with difficulty, turned it over, propped it with a billet of beech wood, and began to scoop out a hole in the hard earth, using a mason's trowel. Beroviero watched him, holding the box in ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... I'm going to find out." She pointed to a woman, stooped to the ground and working with a trowel; in front of the tiny bungalow. "I don't know what she's like, but at the worst she can only be mean. See! She's looking at us now. Drop your load alongside of mine, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... he 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
... whistling up the road toward the new house with sickle, hoe and trowel. As he passed the Kelso cabin he whistled the tune of Sweet Nightingale. It had haunted his mind since he had heard it in the woods. He whistled as loudly as ever he could and looked at the windows. Before he had passed Bim's face looked out at ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... shimmer and sheen that dance on the leaf of the lily, Causing the bud to explode, and gilding the poodle's chinchilla, Gladys cavorts with the rake, and hitches the string to the lattice, While with the trowel she digs, and gladdens the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... out all its Directions! And follow 'em! And if it was a Bright Red Celluloid Fish she was to catch it! And take out all its Directions and follow them!—In either case her card said she would need rubbers and a trowel.—It sounded like Buried Treasure to me! Or else Iris Roots! Our Aunt Esta is very ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... second person is a—more or less—heaven-born artist out here, so there promises to be no lack of exhibits. I dreamed a dream last night, and in my dream I was walking along the bund and came upon an elderly gentleman laying Naples yellow on a canvas with a trowel. The river was smooth and golden, and reflected the sensuous golden tones of the sky. Trees arose from golden puddles, half screening a ziarat which, upon the glowing canvas, appeared remarkably like a village church. "How ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... is lately cultivated in some Physick Gardens at Mitcham. It must be kept well weeded, and the top of the Bed, where it grows, must, when we cut it, be pricked up, a little, with a small Fork, or the Earth made fine with a Trowel; because the Runners, of this sort of Mint, shoot along upon the Surface of the Ground, and so at the Joints strike Root, which is contrary to other Sorts of Mint, which shoot ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... spring he now dug a hole and worked water and clay together into mortar, then with a trowel cut out of a shingle, and mortar carried in an old bucket, he built a wall within the stakes, using sticks laid along the outside and stones set in mud till the front was closed up, except a small hole for a window and a ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... nest, which has a mound-like character, is daubed over with mud, the tail of the alligator being used as a trowel. The first duties of maternity being over, the female alligator acts as policeman until the eggs are hatched. Her office is not a sinecure, for the fowls of the air, and the creeping things upon earth, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... declaimers, he thought very much as old Cato did about them. The Greeks were a very clever people, unrivalled in the fine arts; let them keep to their strong point; they were inimitable with the chisel, the brush, the trowel, and the fingers; but he was not prepared to think much of their calamus or stylus, poetry excepted. What did they ever do but subvert received principles without substituting any others? And then they were so likely to take some odd turn themselves; you never could be sure of them. Socrates, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... let him be always helped first, and to the most elegant Tid-Bit; and when you drink together, offer him always the Place of Toast-maker; whether he be your Inferiour or your Equal, let him always choose before you, and be not ashamed to trowel him ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... Third hard at work somewhere about. Miss Mullett wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to keep the sun from her pink cheeks and a pair of Wade's discarded gloves to save her hands. The gloves were very, very much too large for her, and, when not actually engaged in using her trowel, Miss Mullett stood with arms held out in scarecrow style so as not to contaminate her gown with garden mold, and presented a strange and unusual appearance. Every afternoon, as regular as clockwork, the Doctor came down the street and through the gate to lavish advice, commendation, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... pointing out this fact, 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 schools ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... planted in a small way, it is not customary to place them in rows. A better plan is to scatter them over the ground about as far apart as they are wanted, say six or eight inches each way, and put them in one at a time with a trowel or dibble, five or six inches below the surface. They are planted at this depth, in both garden and field, to prevent their blowing over when in bloom. Those that are from one-half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter should be covered with about ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... fireplace, in which, some of the hearth-bricks are rather irregularly disposed; and we said to ourself, perhaps the brick-layer who built this noble fireplace worked like Ben Jonson, with a trowel in one hand and a copy of Horace in the other. That suggested to us that we had not read any Ben Jonson for a very long time: so we turned to "Every Man in His Humour" and "The Alchemist." Part of Jonson's notice "To the Reader" preceding "The Alchemist" struck us as equally ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... is carried on through the two years." Indispensable! No degree of proficiency at inserting calories in correct numbers in to Little Sally's stomach could atone for lack of skill at leading Little Sally herself in morning strolls through the "Child's Garden of Verses," with trowel in hand to dig up the gayest plants and reset them ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... little brass matchsafe. She began to utter long cries and lamentations like a hen in distress, raising her hands to heaven. All at once they heard some one rushing up the stairs. It was the butler, in his shirt-sleeves and his enormous apron of ticking, still carrying his trowel in his hand. He was bewildered, his eyes protruding, while all about him he spread the smell of fresh earth. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... progressed. No one could give large amounts, but many gave a little, and stone by stone the building grew. In August, 1893, the corner stone of the College building was laid. Taking up the silver trowel which had been used in laying the corner stone of The Temple, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... them during the winter. From the beaver being seen to flap its tail when moving over its work, but especially when about to plunge into the water, has arisen the idea that it uses this member as a trowel. This custom it preserves even when it becomes tame and domesticated, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... muddy knees, still gazing at the gate-post, then took a trowel from his bag and began to cut away the turf about the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... it was that he might have more for the needy. He was industrious; not a moment of his day was lost. For many years, he was one of the only two priests in the State; but when his parochial duties left him a little leisure, he was seen to handle the trowel and use the broom. He paid cash for everything he bought, and whoever worked for him received full pay on the day and hour agreed upon: no cutting down of rates. If they wished to give to the church, very well; but they must take their pay from him to the last farthing. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... in these days about the value or valuelessness of logic. In the main, indeed, logic is not a productive tool so much as a weapon of defence. A man building up an intellectual system has to build like Nehemiah, with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. The imagination, the constructive quality, is the trowel, and argument is the sword. A wide experience of actual intellectual affairs will lead most people to the conclusion that logic is mainly valuable as a weapon wherewith to ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 acquisition of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... hive, applied the pincers of one of its legs to its side, detached a scale of wax, and immediately began to mince it with the tongue. During the operation, this organ was made to assume every variety of shape; sometimes it appeared like a trowel, then flattened like a spatula, and at other times like a pencil, ending in a point. The scale, moistened with a frothy liquid, became glutinous, and was drawn out like a riband. This bee then attached all the wax it could concoct to the vault of the hive, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... thousands of victims of his will, had a fad or fancy. It was for raising red and white roses, and while the mad throngs were fluttering in frenzy around the tables in his halls at Homburg, Wiesbaden and Monte Carlo, he, hoe or trowel in hand, would be training and transplanting his roses, solicitous over an opening bud or deploring the ravages of an insect; or, again, refusing all invitations, would sit down with his wife to a dinner of boiled turnips ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... torment their farmers or tenants; others again become usurers or stock-jobbers. As for the scheme of the Rogrons, brother and sister, we know what that was; they had to satisfy an imperious desire to handle the trowel and remodel their old house ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... been suspected of being a travelling musician, and also a colporteur for the Salvation Army; in fact, of being almost everything but a tiler or plasterer. But this shrewd woman had evidently come to the conclusion that, if I did not work upon the housetops, I must perforce be an artist of the trowel. I assured her that I was as incapable of fixing a tile as of making a ceiling; whereupon ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... an orchard-house—was being built. There was always something new, and Mr. Miller was superintending the building of it. He stood over the workmen who were laying the foundation, watching every brick that was laid down with delighted and absorbed interest. He held a trowel himself, and had tucked up his shirt cuffs in order to lend a helping hand in the operations. There was nothing that Andrew Miller loved so well. Fate and his Caroline had made him a member of Parliament, and had placed him in the position of a gentleman, but nature ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... 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 ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... between financial allotments—to wrest from the soil of Jamestown the physical evidence of 17th-century life. The job is not yet complete. Only 24 out of 60 acres estimated to comprise "James Citty" have been explored; yet a significant amount of information has been revealed by trowel and whiskbroom ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... off, Joe washed down the walls with water, and having swept the paper into a heap in the middle of the floor, he mixed with a small trowel some cement on a small board and proceeded to stop up the cracks and holes in the walls and ceiling. After a while, feeling very tired, it occurred to him that he deserved a spell and a smoke for five minutes. He closed the door and placed ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... 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
... the mason of whom Borrow enquired the way, and who "stood for a moment or two, as if transfixed, a trowel motionless in one of his hands, and a brick in the other," who on recovering himself replied in "tolerable Spanish."—Wild ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... curious fact in connection with the tails of these two animals. Both are almost naked of hair, and covered with "scales," and both are flat. The tail of the beaver, and the uses it makes of this appendage, are things known to every one. Every one has read of its trowel-shape and use, its great breadth, thickness, and weight, and its resemblance to a cricket-bat. The tail of the muskrat is also naked, covered with scales, and compressed or flattened; but instead of ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... 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 the kingdom of nature, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... cinch, this breakin' into public life, is it? The obscure guy with the dinner pail and the calloused palms thinks he has hard lines; but when the whistle blows he can wipe his trowel on his overalls and forget it all until next day. But here I tosses around restless in the feathers, and am up at daybreak goin' over my piece again, trembly in the knees, with a vivid mental picture of how cheap I'd feel if I should ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... the practice of the most successful cultivators. In Zilla, N. Mooradabad, in April, about six weeks after planting, the earth on each side of the cane-rows is loosened by a sharp-pointed hoe, shaped somewhat like a bricklayer's trowel. This is repeated six times before the field is laid out in beds and channels for irrigation. There, likewise, if the season is unusually dry, the fields in the low ground are watered in May and June. This supposes there are either nullahs, or ancient pucka wells, otherwise ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... 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 thought ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... bed of crown-imperials, bareheaded, a trowel in her gloved hand, her smooth cheek flushed with the unwonted exertion of planting seeds, caught the exquisite breath of the box, and sighed; then, listlessly, she turned to walk back towards the house. Before she ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the kind. Her candid gaze merely expressed dismay, subtly mingled with commiseration. "I don't see how we're to clean you," she said; "only scraping would do it—a trowel's best, but, then, I don't suppose ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... purpose it was necessary that exact measurements be made of the height at which the bricks were lying and of the height of the wall on which they must be laid, and of the number of bricks which should be carried to the masons at once. He studied how the trowel should be shaped and how the mortar should be used and how the bricks should be carried to the bricklayers. In short, everything which usually is left to tradition, to caprice, and to an economy which looks out only for the most immediate saving, was on the basis of experiments ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... 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, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 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 rude ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... measurements on the scrap of paper, nudged Harker as the master-mason began to take up the last of the small flags. And suddenly there was a movement amongst the watchers, and the master-mason looked up from his job and motioned Mitchington to pass him a trowel which lay at ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... a 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 ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... own shapely hands twitch to be at the fascinating work. And the masons' work grew so surely, course upon course, and when done seemed so solid, so eternal!... This morning she lingered longer than usual watching the young mason wield his hammer and trowel. Archie had ruffled her badly with his talk about money losses, and now she felt soothed, freed from stupid perplexities. The mason's large hands, she noted, were supple and dexterous—he made no useless movements. Occasionally he turned his head to spit tobacco or drew ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... 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
... therefore, for the hard work of unpacking, and the yet harder work of sowing our flower-seeds in a huge bed shaped like a palm-leaf. But, with M.'s help, it was done before one o'clock to-day—a herculean task, as the ground had to be thoroughly dug up with a trowel; stones, sticks, and roots got out, and the earth sifted in our hands. The back of my neck and my ears are nearly blistered. M. is standing behind me now anointing me with cocoa butter. Our place looks beautifully. Some of the trees set out are twelve or fifteen feet high, and when ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... how, before being appointed to the See of Ripon, he once married a young couple with the assurance that he was not only a Carpenter but a Joiner. Only a few months ago he was about to lay the foundation stone of a new vicarage. The architect handed him the trowel, etc., inviting him to become "an operative ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... brother-in-law to Erpenius, having married his sister[112]. When every body was gone, the maid opened the chest. Grotius had felt no inconvenience in it, though its length was not above three feet and a half. He got out, dressed himself like a mason, with a rule and a trowel, and went by Dazelaer's back-door, through the market-place to the gate that leads to the river, and stept into a boat which carried him to Valvic in Brabant. At this place he made himself known to some Arminians; and hired a carriage to Antwerp, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... fought over with great bitterness, but they are not fought over in the Hall of the Unions-once the Club of the Nobility, with on its walls on Congress days the hammer and spanner of the engineers, the pestle and trowel of the builders, and so on-but in the Communist Congresses in the Kremlin and throughout the country. And, in the problem with which in this book we are mainly concerned, neither the regular business of the Unions nor their internal squabbles ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... of a trowel, denotes you will experience reaction in unfavorable business, and will vanquish poverty. To see one rusty or broken, unavoidable ill ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... caprices of the weather could interrupt. He would lift himself from their ranks, which he scarcely overtopped, as you came up the footway to his door, and peer purblindly across at you. If he knew you at once, he traversed the nodding and swaying bushes, to give you the hand free of the trowel or knife; or if you got indoors unseen by him he would come in holding towards you some exquisite blossom that weighed down the tip of its long stem with a succession of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... according to M. Place, this stucco was formed by an intimate mixture of burnt chalk with plaster, by which a sort of white gum was made that adhered very tightly to the clay wall.[340] Its peculiar consistence did not permit of its being spread with a brush; a trowel or board must have been used. The thickness of this cement was never more than one or two millimetres.[341] Its cohesive force was so great that in spite of its thinness it acted as an efficient protector. It has often been found in excellent ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... the loud strains of martial music, and the cheers of her followers, the empress laid the first stone of the city of Caterinoslaw, and after her, the emperor took up the mortar and trowel, and laid the second one. He performed his part of the drama with becoming solemnity; but, about an hour later, as he was taking his customary afternoon walk with the French ambassador, M. de ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... liked the sound which the trowel made when it struck against the wall. Harry picked up one of the bricks and looked at it, and then Dora ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... in and destroy him. The houses were all plastered over with mud, which, by the flapping of the tails and the constant paddling of the broad web-feet, had become as smooth as if the mud had been laid on with a trowel. We knew that they were also plastered inside, so as to render them ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... if not always devoutly 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
... believe, on your account. He is going to lay a foundation-stone at Corte. I should fancy the ceremony will be very imposing, and I am very sorry not to see it. A gentleman in an embroidered coat and silk stockings and a white scarf, wielding a trowel—and a speech! And at the end of the performance manifold and reiterated shouts of 'God save the King.' I say again, sir, it will make you very vain to think I have written you four whole pages, and on that account I give you leave ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... precisely such a shout in just such sandy gullies, but Sile felt as if he were the first being on earth to whom such an experience had ever happened. He at once began to dig and sift among the gravel fiercely. He took out his hunting-knife and plied it as a trowel. Little bits of dull yellow metal rewarded him every now and then until he worked along to where a ledge (or the edge of one) of quartz came nearly to the surface. On the upper side of that, and lying closely against it, he pried out something that made him shout "Hurrah!" ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... mixture all lumps and stones; the whole may be then worked up with a due proportion of water, observing that this kind of mortar cannot be too much worked or mixed together, nor too little wetted, just sufficient to work freely with the plastering trowel; the whole floor should, if possible, be laid in one day, and for this purpose several hands should be employed; in which case it will dry more equally and firmly. As soon as the floor begins to set, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... plate, platter, dish, trencher, calabash, porringer, potager, saucer, pan, crucible; glassware, tableware; vitrics. compote, gravy boat, creamer, sugar bowl, butter dish, mug, pitcher, punch bowl, chafing dish. shovel, trowel, spoon, spatula, ladle, dipper, tablespoon, watch glass, thimble. closet, commode, cupboard, cellaret, chiffonniere, locker, bin, bunker, buffet, press, clothespress, safe, sideboard, drawer, chest of drawers, chest on chest, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Sabrina dropped her 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 ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the Christian Church. For others it must be enough to say, "the Holy Ghost fell on those that believed." No man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard the chink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended out ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... air of icy indifference, turning her back upon the soldier, and digging her trowel into a little heap of soil. "I do not take any interest in merchant ships, and do not want the letter." When she glanced round again she was just in time to see Sergeant Burt standing in the roadway with a lot of tiny pieces of ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... ladies), and try to force the place, I refused decidedly to do so. The garrison were strengthening their position by plastering and renewed renovation, and I doubt that by this time the original rafters are no longer to be seen. A plasterer's boy, with a fine sense of humor, stood clapping his trowel on his board, inside the house, while we debated retreat, and derisively invited us to enter: "Suoni pure, O signore! Questa e la famosa casa del gran pittore, l'immortale Tiziano,—suoni, signore!" (Ring, by all ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... The additions were carried out in 1873, and the library is now 130 feet long, but shuts out a large part of the view northward through the gardens. It is believed that Ben Jonson worked here as a bricklayer, and we are told by Fuller that he had a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket. Aubrey says his mother had married a bricklayer, and that he was sent to Cambridge by a bencher who heard him repeating Homer as he worked. Of actual members of eminence, Lincoln's ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... to grasp the architect's grave problem? The Osmia is measuring; and her measure is her body. Has she quite done, this time? Oh dear no! Ten times, twenty times, at every moment, for the least particle of mortar which she lays, she repeats her mensuration, never being quite certain that her trowel is going just where ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... erected by a contractor who was almost celebrated, towards 1866, at the moment of the great transformations of Paris, when whole blocks were leveled to the ground, and rose again so rapidly, that one might well wonder whether the masons, instead of a trowel, did not make use of a ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... house near the side of the road, I saw a woman working with a trowel in her sunny garden. It was good to see her turn over the warm brown soil; it was good to see the plump green rows of lettuce and the thin green rows of onions, and the nasturtiums and sweet peas; it was good—after so many days in that desert of a city—to get a whiff of blossoming things. I ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker |
