"Masonry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend Ustane, who, by the way, stuck to that young gentleman like his own shadow. As to origin, they had none, at least, so far as she was aware. There were, however, she informed us, mounds of masonry and many pillars, near the place where She lived, which was called Kor, and which the wise said had once been houses wherein men lived, and it was suggested that they were descended from these men. No one, however, dared go near these great ruins, because they were haunted: they only looked ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... carved garland depending in a series of graceful curves, or contrasted with pendants, or their rhythm punctuated, as it were, by ox-heads, as on the temple of the Sibyls, Tivoli, formed the needed contrast to the plane masonry of the wall below. Sculptured figures, with the added interest of story, as on the choragic monument of Lysicrates, fulfilled the same decorative function in a more complex ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... the bark of guns, The roar of planes, the crash of bombs, and all The unshackled skiey pandemonium stuns The senses to indifference, when a fall Of masonry near by startles awake, Tingling wide-eyed, prick-eared, with bristling hair, Each sense within the body crouched aware Like some sore-hunted creature in ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... such as were not shattered, were broken by bullets. Cannon-balls embedded themselves in the masonry and the heavy doorways. The upper windows were safe, however: the shots did not range so high. At one of these, over a watchmaker's shop, a little girl was to be seen, looking down with eager interest. Presently an ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... walking before me with his gold-knobbed staff in his hand, passed out of the shady court into the public square. Here we found a number of aged men seated on unpleasantly smooth and cold polished stones in a curious circle of masonry. They were surrounded by a crowd of younger men, shouting, laughing, and behaving with all the thoughtless levity and merriment of a Polynesian mob. They became silent as the chief approached, and the old men rose from their ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... still had perception disengaged and could admire the graceful river, the hills towering above the estuary, and the ancient town lying within their infolding and tree-clad slopes. Dominating all stood the Royal Naval College, its great masses of white and red masonry breaking the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... Mark which, by the way, should have its Venetian pictorial rendering, tells how a man who was working on the Campanile fell, and as he fell had the presence of mind to cry "S. Mark! S. Mark!" whereupon a branch instantly sprang forth from the masonry below and sustained him until help arrived. Tintoretto, who has other miracles of S. Mark in the Royal Palace here and in the Brera at Milan, would have drawn ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... away. "Hurrah!" cried Lancelot, "we shall soon bring matters to a conclusion. Look there!" Turning my eyes in the direction he pointed, I saw that our fire concentrated on one side of the fortress was producing a considerable effect. Huge pieces of masonry, earth, and stones came toppling over and slipping into the ditch, and ere long we perceived that our shot had produced a practicable breach, through which our troops would ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... rose from the short crisp turf, while a band of stately poplars stood sentry on the river bank. Through blackest shadow and over patches of moonlit sward we rambled till we came upon the ruins of a temple, of which little was left but a crumbled heap of masonry in the middle of a rectangular grassy hollow which had evidently been a tank, small detached mounds, showing where the piers of a little bridge had stood, giving access to the building from the bank. An avenue of chenars led straight to the bridge, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... new snow began to fall, and the sinister sky, heavy with clouds, took on the darkness of twilight, although night was far away. Yet the huge rents and holes in the houses and the fallen masonry seemed to grow more distinct in the gloom. The village consisted chiefly of one long street, and as John looked up and down it, he did not see a single human being. Nothing was visible to him but the iron hoof of war crushing everything under ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the tail. To the student of old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great strength of the masonry. But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... had only to break away a corner of the rock, which is now but an unsightly object, made up as it is of little pieces, and she would at once have a sweep for her walk and stone in abundance for the rough masonry work, to widen it in the bad places, and make it smooth. But this I tell you in strictest confidence. Her it would only confuse and annoy. What is done must remain as it is. If any more money and labor is to be spent there, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Postmaster of Scranton, and ever since the war a prominent citizen of this city. That bridge is now known as "Burnside's Bridge." Forty-one years afterwards, I passed over it, and was shown a shell still sticking in the masonry of one of the arches. It was a conical shell probably ten inches long, about half of it ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... strictly true: whatever subject may turn up is laid hold on, tooth and nail, by the Ins and Outs of the day, who, dividing upon it, lift banners, and under the chosen war-cry, be it "Masonry," "Indian treaties," or "Bank charter," fairly fight it out; a condition of turmoil, which, viewed on the surface, may appear anything but desirable to a man who loves his ease and quiet, and troubles himself with nothing less ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Homes. Everywhere its members visit the sick, relieve the distressed and speak words of cheer to the despairing. It has been found helpful all over the land in carrying forward the underlying principles of Masonry. It has taught woman to preside in public meetings and to make herself conversant in parliamentary law. Masonry unites the heads of families, whereas the Eastern Star unites the entire families. Its ritualistic teachings are designed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... rooms of the master's family, the banquet halls, and the baths. The great fireplaces, one for every hypocaust, built in arches under the outer walls of the villa, were approached from the outside by passages of rough masonry. From them the hot air was carried back through the hypocaust and led to the rooms above by means of an ingenious system of flue tiles. The fires, burning constantly from the first approach of the keen weather of Autumn, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... detached peaks and masses of rock, numbers of which you can see as you come up the Ghaut by railway, into almost impregnable fortresses. Many of these masses of rock rise as sheer up from the hillside as walls of masonry, and look at a short distance like ruined castles. Some are absolutely inaccessible; others can only be scaled by experienced climbers; and, although possible for the natives with their bare feet, are impracticable to European troops. Many of these rock fortresses were ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... eye and beautiful with the deep life of the past, an unbounded chaos of roofs, gables, towers, campanili, and cupolas. But, in the foreground under the window, there was the new city—that which had been building for the last five and twenty years—huge blocks of masonry piled up side by side, still white with plaster, neither the sun nor history having as yet robed them in purple. And in particular the roofs of the colossal Palazzo delle Finanze had a disastrous effect, spreading out like far, bare steppes of cruel hideousness. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... before us: in fact, it could not have been improved by the sun. The fortress of Moro crouches on a bed of rock, rearing a tall lighthouse aloft. Its Moorish turrets have a soft rounded outline, and the undulations of the shore blend with the masonry of the castle; only a sharp retiring angle here and there gives an occasional glimpse of a grim purpose. When the Moro light is put out, ships in the offing may enter the bay. The mouth of the harbor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... ruin; swaying walls, heaps of fallen masonry, chevaux-de-frises of bristling gas and water-pipes, broken and protruding. A little way down, to the left, sheets of flame, golden in the gray daylight, were pouring from the face of the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... bodily into the air by a rope, and held suspended some feet exactly above the model. In the interior of the cover thus raised will, of course, be found the exact impression in hollow of the outside of the bell. The model of clay and masonry is then broken up, and its place is taken by another perfectly smooth model, only smaller—exactly the size of the inside of the bell, in fact. On this the great cover now descends, and is stopped in time to leave a ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... centre of this huge hall was a column of solid masonry coming from the chamber below, and rising some thirty feet ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Pyramids had been rifled by the Caliphs, if not by earlier hands, and no inscriptions have been found. But no doubt exists that they were the sepulchres of the Kings of Memphis. The Queens and the "princes of Noph" reposed in smaller pyramids beside the Kings. These mountains of wasted masonry belong to the earliest ages of the Pharaonic monarchy, before the time of the Sesostrian conquests, and therefore they bespeak the toil and suffering, not of captives, but of native slaves. Before them couches the Sphinx, hewn from the rock, to spare, as a Greek inscription ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... of this year it was God's will that there should be so great a fire in this city that, within two hours, there were burned one hundred and fifty houses, among them the best of the city, and the thirty-two built of masonry, one of which was mine. [15] Not having any people to help me, I could not save its contents, and only with the greatest difficulty did I save my library. The cause of the lack of people to aid in putting out ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... bet the sand was planked there in front of the hotel to the sea with spruce boards. It was very handsomely planked, but it was never afterwards touched, apparently, for any manner of repairs. Here, for half a mile the dune on which the hotel stands is shored up with massive masonry, and bricked for carriages, and tiled for foot-passengers; and it is all kept as clean as if wheel or foot had never passed over it. I am sure that there is not a broken brick or a broken tile in the whole length or breadth of it. But the hotel here is not a bet; it is a business. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as a stage-coach beside the Empire State Express when compared to the fleetness of good news. So it did not take long to start this bit like an electric fluid through the school, and what sort of "Free Masonry" filled in details so successfully I ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... The brick-work of its twisted chimney-stacks was intact, and the stone carving over its doorways and window frames; only the immense growth of the ivy on its side walls attested to its age. It takes longer to build ivy five feet thick than many castles, and though new masonry by trick and artifice may be made to look like old, there is no secret known to man by which a plant or tree can be induced to simulate an antiquity which does not rightfully belong to it. Innumerable sparrows and tomtits had built in the thick mats of the old ivy, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... roads were the fortifications. In addition to those which Agricola had built (S26), either Hadrian or Severus constructed a wall of solid masonry across the country from the shore of the North Sea to the Irish Sea. This wall, which was about seventy-five miles south of Agricola's work, was strengthened by a deep ditch and a rampart of earth. ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... terraces are washed into gullies by the rains. The palace itself is not less lamentable. The walls are crumbling. Everything movable from the interior has been looted. Trees grow outward from the upper windows, and, in the cracks of masonry and marble floors, a tropic vegetation has sprung up. Moss covers the mosaics, and the carved woodwork has become the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... built. In vain the Turks swarmed up the scaling-ladders; company after company was hurled down, a huddled mass of mangled flesh, and the ladders were cast off. Again the escalade began:—the Knights rolled huge blocks of masonry on the crowded throng below; when they got within arms' reach the scimitar was no match for the long two-handed swords of the Christians. At all three points after a splendid attack, which called forth all the finest qualities of ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... figures may be distinguished in one of them. Beneath the hall are vaulted apartments extending under most of the neighbouring houses. An aqueduct is traced as having been brought from some leagues, for the purpose it is supposed principally of supplying the baths. The masonry is alternately of stone and brick, in parts covered with a thick stucco. It seems almost incredible that a monument so ancient, and of such high interest should have been for so long a period totally disregarded by the government, and suffered ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was found, or at least in the room adjoining, when the party ascended the stairs. It is then only from these two apartments that we have to seek issues. The police have laid bare the floors, the ceilings, and the masonry of the walls, in every direction. No secret issues could have escaped their vigilance. But, not trusting to their eyes, I examined with my own. There were, then, no secret issues. Both doors leading from the rooms into the passage were securely ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... crumbling relics of a stone, O'er which the pride of masonry has smiled, Here am I wont to ruminate alone. And pause, in Fancy's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... additions and alterations made by successive Bishops, is naturally rather puzzling. The castle is a medley of the building of eight centuries. Oldest of all is the ruined keep and the framework, or foundations, of the castle buildings; the masonry of the keep is the work of Henry of Blois, and belongs to the twelfth century. Next come three pillars of the old chapel, now used as a servants' hall. I saw it when it was set for a meal, and the severe cleanliness of the white stone ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 'in prison,' in that gloomy fortress of Machaerus which Herod had rebuilt at once for 'a sinful pleasure-house' and for an impregnable refuge, among the savage cliffs of Moab. The halls of luxurious vice and the walls of defence are gone; but the dungeons are there still, with the holes in the masonry into which the bars were fixed to which the prisoners—John, perhaps, one of them—were chained. No wonder that in the foul atmosphere of a dark dungeon the spirit which had been so undaunted in the free air of the desert began to flag; nor that even he who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... men to the ground with a terrible blow, while Boduoc seizing the other hurled him through the air, and he fell head foremost among a heap of the masonry of a demolished building. The other men drew their knives, but as Beric and his companion turned upon them there was a cry, "They are gladiators," and the whole of them without a moment's hesitation took ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... living body is better understood, medical science seems obliged to accept many anomalies which it can not explain. About all that can be said of such exceptional cases is this: In the great conflagrations which at times devastate large cities, some huge mass of solid masonry is occasionally seen in the midst of the wide-spread ruin, looking down upon prostrate columns, broken capitals, shattered walls, and the cinders and ashes of a general desolation. The solitary tower unquestionably stands; but its chief ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... General Rolleston that very few ships went to Easter Island, which lies in a lovely climate, but is a miserable place; and he was telling the general that it is inhabited by savages of a low order, who half worship the relics of masonry left by their more civilized predecessors, when ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... one hundred and fifty feet high, perpendicular on each side, and the width between the two varying from forty to fifty feet. The high rocks were of black carbonate of lime in perfectly horizontal strata, so equally divided that they appeared like solid masonry. For fifty or sixty feet above the rushing waters they were smooth and bare; above that line vegetation commenced with small bushes, until you arrived at their summits, which were crowned with splendid forest trees, some of them inclining ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... mischievous boys, to reptiles, as well as to the obstructing deposits which are discharged from the drains themselves. In regular work, under the direction of engineers, iron pipes, with swing gratings set in masonry, are used, to protect permanently this important part of the system ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... ruin in the upper portions of the Coliseum which offer a very fair imitation of the rugged face of an Alpine cliff. In those days a multitude of delicate flowers and sprays of wild herbage had found a friendly soil in the hoary crevices, and they bloomed and nodded amid the antique masonry as freely as they would have done in the virgin rock. Rowland was turning away, when he heard a sound of voices rising up from below. He had but to step slightly forward to find himself overlooking two persons who had ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... lead decaying.—Ver. 122. 'Fistula' here means 'a water-pipe.' Vitruvius speaks of three methods of conveying water; by channels of masonry, earthen pipes, and leaden pipes. The latter were smaller, and more generally used; to them reference is here made. They were formed by bending plates of lead into a form, not cylindrical, but ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... expected to see it descend into the profound abyss below. But in spite of this, as he climbed down the short distance, he realised the state of affairs—that in its fall the oak had crushed in the masonry arch over some old well-like place, leaving this terrible hole securely covered till the wood had rotted away; and that now it had been Fred's misfortune to leap upon the spot, go through, and be held up by the broken wood, which ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Mirabilis, that vast pilastered cellar like an underground dissenting chapel. They say the Roman fleet was supplied with water from this huge tank; but if this had been the intention of its construction, why obstruct it with more pillars or supports of square masonry than the roof absolutely required, without which incumbrances a reservoir of half its size would have held more water,—and for water it was evidently meant? Ascending the hill we see a man or two working away at a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the fifteenth century Falaise plays a prominent part. Town and castle were taken and retaken, and the ancient fortress itself received a lasting and remarkable addition from the hand of one of the greatest of English captains. The tall round tower of Talbot, a model of the military masonry of its time, goes far to share the attention of the visitor with the massive keep of the ancient Dukes. Thence we leap back to the earliest great historical event which we can connect, with any certainty, with any part of the existing building. It was here, in a land beyond the borders of the ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... Navarza.) an ancient Cilician city, situated in the Aleian plain about 10 m. W. of the main stream of the Pyramus (Jihun) and near its tributary the Sempas Su. A lofty isolated ridge formed its acropolis. Though some of the masonry in the ruins is certainly pre-Roman, Suidas's identification of it with Cyinda, famous as a treasure city in the wars of Eumenes of Cardia, cannot be accepted in the face of Strabo's express location of Cyinda in western Cilicia. Under the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... begins to perish. It lies another hundred years, a mouldering log, and then a mound of moss and 'arth; a sad effigy of a human grave. This is one of your genuine monuments, though made by a very different power than such as belongs to your chiseling masonry! and after all, the cunningest scout of the whole Dahcotah nation might pass his life in searching for the spot where it fell, and be no wiser when his eyes grew dim, than when they were first opened. As if that was not enough ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... here add a few observations, derived, as well as much of the preceding matter, from the valuable work of Mazois, relative to the materials and method of construction of the Pompeian houses. Every species of masonry described by Vitruvius, it is said, may here be met with; but the cheapest and most durable ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... degrees 30 minutes, and W. long. 12 degrees 11 minutes; Mabimg, beyond a very broad stream flowing north of the Rokelle; and Ma-Yosso, the chief frontier town of Timmannee. In Timmannee Laing made acquaintance with a singular institution, a kind of free-masonry, known as "Purrah," the existence of which on the borders of the Rio Nunez had ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... somewhat akin to that held by the Capitoline Hill of Rome. It was from here that the city started, though this hill has little left of former grandeur and shows nothing to compare with Rome's monuments to a glorious past. A crumbling block of masonry, the story of which is quite unknown, a round chapel dating from the days when Christianity was young among the Slavs and still found ready martyrs in its cause even among princes, and an enceinte of brick fortifications, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... remained a peculiar feature of the Fair, which I had not yet seen. This is the subterranean network of sewerage, which reproduces, in massive masonry, the streets on the surface. Without it, the annual city of two months would become uninhabitable. The peninsula between the two rivers being low and marshy,—frequently overflowed during the spring freshets,—pestilence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... white mass on the ground. He had to go carefully, lest the match should be blown out by the wind of his passage; but on coming close he saw that it was Stephen lying senseless in front of a great coffin which rested on a built-out pile of masonry. Then the match went out. In the flare of the next one he lit he saw a piece of candle lying on top of the coffin. He seized and lit it. He was able to think coolly despite his agitation, and knew that light was the first necessity. The bruised wick was slow ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him. Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent cathedral—an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run through the mill of another's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the appearance of light stone; and we mention it, as it may be frequently employed with advantage in repairing broken stone-work (as steps), by filling up the missing parts. The employment of Roman cement, plaster, &c., for masonry work, hardly comes within the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... in fitting terms. There was the Temple of the Seven Spheres, where the priests offered incense to the Houses of the Planets, to the whole host of heaven, and to Bel, Lord of the Sky. There was the Home of the Height, a sheer flight of solid masonry extending vertiginously, and surmounted by turrets of copper capped with gold. In its utmost pinnacle were a sanctuary and a dazzling couch. There the priests said that sometimes Bel came and rested. For the truth of that statement, however, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... any seats in the church. They had all been broken up for camp-fires—even the oaken pulpit had gone. The great empty space had been roughly cleared of fallen masonry, which had been flung in heaps against the wall; on the stone floor filthy straw was thinly spread. On the straw lay row upon row of wounded men—very quiet for the most part; they had found that it did not pay to make ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... shining in the starlight. After a pull of a long seven miles down the bay, the galley had rounded into the northern end of Gorumna Isle, guided by a high beacon set among the stars. As they drew nearer Brian made out that this beacon was set on the tower of a high pile of masonry black against the sky, lit here and there by cressets, and it was plain that the Bird Daughter kept good watch since they had more than once been hailed in ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... several millions of francs, is voted every year for the protection of the shores of Flanders against the encroachments of the sea, by the construction of these solid embankments of brickwork and masonry, which will, in the course of a few years, extend in an unbroken line along the whole coast from end to end. The building of these massive sea-walls is a work of great labour and expense, for what seems to be an impregnable embankment, perhaps 30 feet ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... of those suspension bridges formerly employed by the Incas, and still used in crossing the deep and turbulent rivers of South America. They are made of osier withes, twisted into enormous cables, which, when stretched across the water, are attached to heavy blocks of masonry, or, where it will serve, to the natural rock. Planks are laid transversely across these cables, and a passage is thus secured, which, notwithstanding the light and fragile appearance of the bridge, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... moved on till he stood by the broken tower, and seeing that by climbing down he could reach a more secure resting-place, with the advantage of a view, he let himself drop easily on to a projecting ledge of masonry and resumed his pipe with philosophic indifference. Before long he heard voices above him, or more properly a voice, for one of the parties confined her conversation strictly to yea and nay, while the other spoke enthusiastically, and almost as ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... nest, still capable of repair although dilapidated, it does not hesitate to take possession of it and to silence its assumed innate instinct of building. It profits by the work already done, and is content to fill up the cracks or to re-establish the masonry where defective; then it provisions the renewed cells with honey, and lays its eggs in them. In certain circumstances it shows itself still more sparing of trouble, and boldly rebels against the law which seems to be imposed on it by nature. If it feels itself sufficiently strong, ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... sure confederates as soon as they could establish a complete blockade. They rarely ventured on the attempt to storm any fortified post, for the military engines of antiquity were feeble in breaching masonry before the improvements which the first Dionysius effected in the mechanics of destruction; and the lives of spearmen the boldest and most high-trained would, of course, have been idly spent in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Hellenic Studies, vol. xvi. p. 102.] Two of the men on the silver vase are covered either with shields of a shape and size elsewhere unknown in Mycenaean art, or with cloaks of an unexampled form. The masonry of the city wall, shown on the vase in the Mycenaean grave, is not the ordinary masonry of Mycenae itself. On the vase the wall is "isodomic," built of cut stones in regular layers. Most of the Mycenaean walls, on the other hand, are of "Cyclopean" ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... contain them and give them a fit and suitable setting? The earliest stone structures in Ireland still remaining are the great stone cashels or circular walls enclosing large spaces—walls of great thickness, unmortared, in which there are vast quantities of masonry. Around their summits a chariot might be driven, inside their spaces horse races might be run. As a few examples, there are Staigue, in Kerry; Dun Angus, in Aran, off Galway; Aileach, above the walls of Derry. Of the earliest churches, cyclopean in construction and primitive in character, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Masonry worldwide that makes it possible for a Mason anywhere, in trouble or distress, to raise his hand toward the heavens with a certain sign, and if there be a brother Mason within reach, that brother, no matter of what nationality, kindred or tongue, is sworn to give him all needed ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... delighted, the fourth bell, tradition says, being that he was used to ring. The rough flagged floor, "all worn and broken with the hobnailed boots of generations of ringers," remains undisturbed. One cannot see the door, set in its solid masonry, without recalling the figure of Bunyan standing in it, after conscience, "beginning to be tender," told him that "such practice was but vain," but yet unable to deny himself the pleasure of seeing others ring, hoping that, "if ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... the subject, and quoted some which they never examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of referring,—the masonry of the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... a sound of voices beneath her feet. Low, confused words reached her through the masonry which roofed the cellar. The Prussians were beginning to suspect the trick she had played them, and presently the officer came up the narrow staircase, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and his vigor. They went to the same fencing-hall, often hunted together, and met while riding in the avenues of the Bois. Between them, therefore, had been formed a sympathy of similar tastes, that instinctive free-masonry which creates between two men a subject of conversation, as agreeable to ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... no more perhaps than five hundred yards away, was Blent Hall. Mina ran to the parapet of the levelled terrace on which the Lodge stood, and looked down. Blent Hall made three sides of a square of old red-brick masonry, with a tower in the centre; it faced the river, and broad gravel-walks and broader lawns of level close-shaven turf ran down to the ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... so far as masonry and carpenter work goes, but the plastering and painting will require two months to complete. Our neighborhood has not settled as fast as I expected, and will not afford a market for small industries. I would not ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... his revolver lay. A cruel laugh greeted him. It was the last human voice he was to hear. As if by magic the floor under his feet gave way. Down, down, down, a thousand feet he was precipitated. He tried to grasp the well-like walls of masonry, but in vain. Nothing could stay him. As he plunged into the deep water of the oubliette a fiendish laugh echoed in his ears. The Pale Avengers had destroyed one more ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... heard that morning the mutter of cannon on the horizon, and they knew the German conquerors were advancing. They were always advancing. Nothing had stopped them. The metal and masonry of the defenses at Liege had crumbled before their huge guns like china breaking under stone. The giant shells had scooped out the forts at Maubeuge, Maubeuge the untakable, as if they had been mere eggshells, and the mighty Teutonic host came on, ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Ethiopia and Egypt were the themes of the poet, and their garners, the subject of the historian. Like the present America, all the world went to Africa, to get a supply of commodities. Their massive piles of masonry, their skilful architecture, their subterranean vaults, their deep and mysterious wells, their extensive artificial channels, their mighty sculptured solid rocks, and provinces of stone quarries; gave indisputable evidence, of the hardihood ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... closed my eyes, a vast boom crashed into my ears, the table jumped beneath me, pieces of masonry fell bounding on the floor and I raised my head, staring wildly. Evidently the prince and the Croen were ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... had been kidnapped and murdered by his fellow-Craftsmen, and, indeed, it really seems the natural inference from the acknowledged facts that at least some one connected with the Brotherhood was responsible for his fate. A violent outcry against Masonry was the natural result, and, as some of the more prominent politicians of the day, including President Jackson himself, were Masons, the cry took a political form. An Anti-Masonic Party was formed, and at the next Presidential election was strong enough to carry one State and affect ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... grander. The castle is a ruin, still capable of partial habitation, and now undergoing repair—the state in which a ruin looks most sordid and forlorn. How strange it is, too, that, to enforce this sense of desolation, sad dishevelled weeds cling ever to such antique masonry! Here are the henbane, the sow-thistle, the wild cucumber. At Avignon, at Orvieto, at Dolce Acqua, at Les Baux, we never missed them. And they have the dusty courtyards, the massive portals, where portcullises still threaten, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... 15 m. SE. of Southampton. It is an unimposing town, but strongly fortified. St. Thomas's and Garrison Chapel are old churches with historical associations. The naval dockyards contain 12 docks lined with masonry, vast store-houses, wood-mills, anchor-forges, and building-slips. Some of the docks are roofed over, as also is a large building-slip on which four vessels may be constructed at once. The harbour can receive the largest war-vessels, and in Spithead ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... hearth is usually obtained as indicated—by bringing what is called a "row-lock" or "trimmer" arch between the foundation masonry of the chimney and a pair of floor joists set out at the proper distance, depending upon the desired width of the hearth. While this is the customary method, occasionally a support is secured in some other way, such as corbeling out from the masonry foundation, ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... tall houses which have tumbled inside themselves. But now they saw this destruction in the process, and stood very still, listening to the infernal clatter as shells burst at the other end of the street, tumbling down huge masses of masonry and plugging holes into neat cottages, and tearing great gashes out of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Potomac to the city. This work, under his direction between 1852 and 1860, involved devising ingenious methods of controlling the flow and distribution of the water and also the design of a monumental bridge across the Cabin John Branch—a bridge that for 50 years was the longest masonry arch in the world. At the same time Meigs was supervising the building of wings and a new dome on the Capitol and an extension on the General Post ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... precluded the construction of a central pier and double-armed swing bridge, and on the other hand they also precluded the construction of any solid masonry substructure for the turntable, either upon the quay or projected into the river. To meet these several conditions the bridge has been designed in the form of a three-span bridge, that is to say, it is only supported by the two ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... Pariahs—"dwellers in the quarter" (para) as this broken tribe is now called—live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm leaves known as the parchery, the squalor and untidiness of which present the sharpest contrasts to the trim street of tiled masonry houses where the Brahmans congregate. "Every village," says the proverb, "has its Pariah hamlet"—a place of pollution the census of which is even now taken with difficulty owing to the reluctance of the high-caste enumerator to enter ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... party will stink with dissolution before you can get it finished. No Masonry can make it solid—no art can secure it. No anchor that was ever forged in infernal stythy can go deep enough into political mud ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... "I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chiefs of the revolt and with their skins I covered this wall. Some were immured alive in the masonry, others were crucified or impaled along the wall. I had some of them flayed in my presence and had the wall hung with their skins. I arranged their heads like crowns and their transfixed bodies in the form ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... found a wooded haven, the groves and sylvan shades must long since have been destroyed, for to the new-comers the bay appeared inclosed by spits of sand, though there was a rising ground in front that cut off the view. In the centre of the bay was a low sandy islet, covered with remains of masonry, and with a fort in the midst. On this was mounted the French banner, but likewise drooping; and all around it lay the ships with furled sails and trailing ensigns, giving them an inexpressibly mysterious look of woe, like living ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over a flask of wine, such precaution was not necessary. Not delaying for further meditation, she slipped out of bed, and crept noiselessly to that side of the room against which arose the huge brick chimney above the fireplace below. Through the space between the flooring and the masonry, a glare of light came up to her as well as the voices of those beneath. Crouching against the warm bricks she listened, unmindful of the ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... you are describing free-masonry!" cried the major, who was himself a master-mason. "Have the members of this Metai signs and passwords by which they may ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... shook and bellowed. An observation-balloon climbed up to see; while an aeroplane which had nothing to do with the strife, but was merely training a beginner, ducked and swooped on the edge of the plain. Two rose-pink pillars of crumbled masonry, guarding some carefully trimmed evergreens on a lawn half buried in rubbish, represented an hotel where the Crown Prince had once stayed. All up the hillside to our right the foundations of houses lay out, like a bit of tripe, with the sunshine in their square hollows. Suddenly a band ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... in Paris, obvious to those who in their own hearts are most indifferent to the League of Nations, that we have to tie in the provisions of the Treaty with the League of Nations because the League of Nations is the heart of the Treaty. It is the only machinery. It is the only solid basis of masonry that is in the Treaty, and in saying that I know that I am expressing the opinion of all those with whom I have been conferring. I cannot imagine any greater historic glory for the party than to have it said that for the time being it is thinking ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... regain my freedom gave me something like genius. Groping about with my fingers, I spelled out an Arabic inscription on the wall. The author of the work informed those to come after him that he had loosed two stones in the lowest course of masonry and hollowed out eleven feet beyond underground. As he went on with his excavations, it became necessary to spread the fragments of stone and mortar over the floor of his cell. But even if jailers and inquisitors had ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... architecture propagated from Rome, as the Christian community which worshipped within the buildings became absorbed in the hierarchy. The Oratory of Galerus, in Kerry, is a piece of solid, well-conditioned masonry, built after a plan of no mean symmetry and proportion, yet with scarcely a feature in common with the early Christian churches of the rest of Europe. Like the ruder specimens, it struggles for as ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the masonry of your trade, by which a brother is known? Such terms as 'stemming the waves with the taffrail,' for instance, or some of those knowing ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... literary societies of the academy, distinguishing himself by his readiness in debate. His Democratic proclivities were still strong; and he became an ardent defender of Democracy against the rising tide of Anti-Masonry, which was threatening to sweep New York from its political moorings. Tradition says that young Douglass mingled much with local politicians, learning not a little about the arts and devices by which the Albany Regency controlled the Democratic organization in the State. In this school ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... reason, in the happier times of India, a number, almost incredible, of reservoirs have been made in chosen places throughout the whole country; they are formed for the greater part of mounds of earth and stones, with sluices of solid masonry; the whole constructed with admirable skill and labor, and maintained at a mighty charge. In the territory contained in that map alone, I have been at the trouble of reckoning the reservoirs, and they amount to upwards ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... of the Lyndes, with a slab of slate affixed to the brick masonry on one side, and carved with a coat ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... the three, had been born in Vermont, but removed to Pennsylvania at the age of twenty-two, and began to practice law there. In 1831, he was one of the moving spirits in the formation of the anti-Masonic party, which fancied it saw, in the spread of Masonry, a grave danger to the republic. Two years later, Stevens was chosen a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, but his career did not really begin until, in 1848, at the age of fifty-seven, he was elected a member of the national House ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... moved on as before, a Polish order was given, and a rapid fire began on the part of the enemy, exclusively directed to the important door and the windows near it. The balls thundered on the oaken planks and on the masonry, and more than one found its way through the window openings, and struck the ceiling above the heads of the garrison. Fink cried to the forester, "You shall run a risk, old man; take your people to the back door, open it, creep round close to the house, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... strength and elevation rose above what could only be surmised as the principal gateway. It was apparently designed to overlook the whole fabric, serving as a refuge to the besieged, and a stronghold in case of attack. Narrow loopholes might be traced, irregularly disposed in the heavy masonry; and at the summit stood a small turret resembling a large chair, from which, at stated occasions, waved the richly-emblazoned escutcheon of the Norris and the Bradshaigh. The staff was just visible, but unaccompanied by its glittering adjunct. It was this circumstance principally that seemed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... before we finally lose sight of it. Now if the character of an object, say the front of a house, be explained by a variety of forms in it, as the shadows in the tops of the windows, the lines of the architraves, the seams of the masonry, etc.; these lesser details, as the object falls into distance, become confused and undecided, each of them losing their definite forms, but all being perfectly visible as something, a white or a dark spot or stroke, not lost sight of, observe, but ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... touch of the language of the line appeared to warm Mr. Peck's heart considerably, establishing at once a free masonry ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... which had so long been buried under the tropical vegetation was quite unknown, nor was there any tradition of it; but when found it was called "Palenque," from the nearest inhabited village. There were substantial and handsome buildings with excellent masonry, and in many cases beautiful sculptures and ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn!— Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh Sodden of infants: and no hope alive Of rescue from this heat ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... that separating France and Piedmont was best covered. The valleys of the Stura and Suza, the passes of Argentine, of Mont-Genevre, and of Mont-Cenis,—the only ones considered practicable,—were covered by masonry forts; and, in addition, works of considerable magnitude guarded the issues of the valleys in the plains of Piedmont. It was certainly no easy matter to ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... understood, the ritual of the European craft was concocted by Cagliostro, then it follows that he must have borrowed from the Chinese, and not the Chinese from him. The use of the square and compasses as symbols of moral rectitude, which forms such a striking feature of European masonry, finds no place in the ceremonial of the Triad Society, although recognized as such in Chinese literature from the days of Confucius, and still so employed in the every-day colloquial ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved masonry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze. Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the stream. Day after day one of his herd used to disappear, coming back in the evening to join the homeward procession, very fat and well-liking. So Karl set himself to watch, and saw that the goat slipped in at a hole in the masonry. He enlarged the hole, and presently was able to creep into a dark passage. He made his way along, and soon heard a sound like a falling hailstorm. He groped his way thither, and found the goat, in the dim light, feeding on grains of corn which came splashing ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sequestered district of the county of Limerick, there stood my early life, some forty years ago, one of those strong stone buildings, half castle, half farm-house, which are not unfrequent in the South of Ireland, and whose solid masonry and massive construction seem to prove at once the insecurity and the caution of the Cromwellite settlers who erected them. At the time of which I speak, this building was tenanted by an elderly man, whose starch and puritanic mien and manners might have become ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Dominicans in the early part of the century. We'll drive over some day and take a look at it. That's the church you see,—a fine piece of masonry." ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... turned in his direction. What they saw, was a young man in flannels suddenly throw up his arms, slide into an azalea bush, from this to the balustrade, and finally land on all fours on the narrow strip of beach, a shower of pink petals and crumbling masonry falling about him. A momentary silence followed; then the washer-girls, making sure that he was not injured, broke into a shrill chorus of laughter, while the Farfalla rocked under impact of Giuseppe's mirth. The girl on ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... which was entirely immersed in the moving sand, there was established brick masonry (Figs. 1, 2, and 3). As the ends of the timbers entered the latter, and were connected by 11/2 inch bolts, they concurred in making the entire affair perfectly solid. The frame, K K, was provided with an oaken ring, which was affixed to it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... the third, a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these woman's gloves are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more confused, blushed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... two sailors appeared over the edge of the quay, and a Maltese cross of light burst into radiance at the end of a sloping gangway, whose summit was just perched on the solid masonry of the port. The sailors were clothed in blue, with white caps, and on their breasts they bore the white-embroidered sign: ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... island, from the mouth of the Tyne, on the German Ocean, to the Solway Frith—nearly seventy miles. It was twelve feet high, and eight feet wide. It was faced with substantial masonry on both sides, the intermediate space being likewise filled in with stone. When it crossed bays or morasses, piles were driven to serve as a foundation. Of course, such a wall as this, by itself, would be no defense. It was to be garrisoned by soldiers, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... thought of gloom vanished from her mind as at the touch of a magician, for before her stood the vast Temple of Serapis, founded, as it were, for eternity, on a substructure of rock and closely fitted masonry, the noblest building on earth of any dedicated to the gods. The great cupola rose to the blue sky as though it fain would greet the sister vault above with its own splendor, and the copper-plating ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "Besides the robbers, who kill for the sake of the booty they hope to find upon travellers, there is a class of assassins, forming an organized society, with chiefs of their own, a slang-language, a science, a free-masonry, and even a religion, which has its fanaticism and its devotion, its agents, emissaries, allies, its militant forces, and its passive adherents, who contribute their money to the good work. This is the community ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... account of their cost, but I hope to see rolled iron beams for brick dwelling-houses so cheaply made that they will be commonly used instead of wood. Such iron ribs, with the brick arches or other masonry between them, might well form the finish of the ceilings, and if we were accustomed to see them, our frail lath and plaster would seem stale, flat and combustible in comparison. The usual mode of making floors of thin joists set edgewise, from one to two feet apart, with ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... which I have taken through the island, I have come upon several fine tanks, enclosed by solid masonry of dark-coloured stone; but, with the exception, in some instances, of one or two insignificant pillars or minarets, they are destitute of those architectural ornaments which add so much splendour to the same works in Bengal. The broad flights of steps, the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... strong coarse grit, will bear an immense pressure, is well adapted for bridges, locks, wiers, &c. but is not to be had in blocks large enough for pier works. There is another kind of stone at Dacre-Pasture, of a much finer grit than the last, paler in colour, and well adapted for finer masonry, such as columns, pediments, &c. Blocks of this kind may be had of large dimensions. Another kind of stone is found at Wilsill, in quality similar to that at Birstwith, but may be risen in much larger blocks. When the Ouse-bridge ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee
... something to bolt. "There's naething here, miss—absolutely naething," he declared, as they both examined the wall minutely. Its depth did not admit of any chamber, for it was an inner wall; and, according to the gamekeeper's statement, he had already tested it years ago, and found it solid masonry. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Tarbolton, and one of us in the office of warden, and as we have the honour of having you for master of our lodge we hope you will excuse this freedom, as you are the proper person to whom we ought to apply. We look on our Mason Lodge to be a serious matter, both with respect to the character of masonry itself, and likewise as it is a charitable society. This last, indeed, does not interest you further than a benevolent heart is interested in the welfare of its fellow-creatures; but to us, sir, who are of the lower order of mankind, to have a fund in view ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Anders began. He looked around at the masses of masonry, the convention of streets cutting through the architectural piles. "Human life," he said, "is a series of conventions. When you look at a girl, you're supposed to see—a ...
— Warm • Robert Sheckley
... a formal garden had been built on the foundations of masonry which cost a hundred ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... of children, and her husband was the only son of a rich meat salesman, very mean, a mighty smoker—"he reeks of it," she said, "always"—and interested in nothing but golf, billiards (which he played very badly), pigeon shooting, convivial Free Masonry and Stock Exchange punting. Mostly they drifted about the Riviera. Her mother had contrived her marriage when she was eighteen. They were the first samples I ever encountered of the great multitude of functionless property owners which encumbers modern ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells |
