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noun
Mortar  n.  (Arch.) A building material made by mixing lime, cement, or plaster of Paris, with sand, water, and sometimes other materials; used in masonry for joining stones, bricks, etc., also for plastering, and in other ways.
Mortar bed, a shallow box or receptacle in which mortar is mixed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mortar" Quotes from Famous Books



... them very fine, or better pound them in a mortar, moistening from time to time with orange flower water, of which you ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile

... covered with mud up to their necks—the feathers of the staff were covered with mud—every ball which was fired by the enemy sent up showers of mud; even the face of the Duc de Nemours was disfigured with it. I must say that our batteries were well situated, all except the great mortar battery. This I pointed out to Damremont when he passed me, and he was very savage. Great men don't like to be told of their faults; however, he lost his life three days afterwards from not taking my advice. ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... because your brother acts as its master. Why shouldn't he? Are you fitted to take the reins or share his responsibility? If you were at your right job, Robert Fenley, you'd be carrying bricks and mortar in a hod; for you haven't brains enough to lay a brick or ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... beach, and were there just in time to see the men from the station bring down the life-boat. It was a hard pull through the sand, but the feat was soon accomplished, and the boat was left near the water's edge, to be ready in case the line from the mortar should fail ...
— The Wreck • Anonymous

... handsfull of them every where amongst the garden stuff." Brayley mentions in his pleasant History of Surrey, that this artificial mount was levelled in 1810, and its materials employed to fill up a pond. Many human skulls and bones were found intermixed with the chalk and mortar of which it had been formed. Fragments of old tiles were also frequently found, and are still sometimes turned up. No trace even of the "Abbey house" is left; it was purchased in 1809 by a stock-broker, who in the following ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... built neither of stone nor wood. They were neatly plastered together by the Pygmy workmen, pretty much like birds' nests, out of straw, feathers, egg shells, and other small bits of stuff, with stiff clay instead of mortar; and when the hot sun had dried them, they were just as snug and comfortable as a ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... agents of old Frenchmen who have been laid up to dry in Paris, custom-house supernumeraries and court-clerks' deputies (for your second-rate Creole is a great seeker for little offices). A decaying cornice hangs over, dropping bits of mortar on passers below, like a boy at ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... 10 g. ammonium chloride, NH4Cl, in a mortar and mix with 10 g. calcium hydrate, Ca(OH)2; recently slaked lime is the best. Cover with water in a flask, and connect with Woulff bottles, as for making HCl (Fig. 22); heat the flask for fifteen minutes or more. The experiment may ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... farther end of the room, a woman was pounding taro, or bread-fruit, in a wooden mortar; another, apparently very old and infirm, was sitting upon a low stool near the wall, swaying her body slowly from side to side, and making a low, monotonous noise. I observed that Olla frequently looked ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... mortar on the fish line, twine and rope show that this was in all probability the means used by Miller's murderer. This is probably from the chimney. There is also some roof paint, from the edge of ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... of, neither did I know how to go about it; besides, I had no possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the wheel to run in, so I gave it over; and so for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a thing like a hod which the labourers carry mortar in, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... O gloriously free Am I in freedom from three crooked things:— From quern, from mortar, from my crook-back'd lord! Ay, but I'm free from rebirth and from death, And all that dragged ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... waterside stairs, follow each other continuously right up to London Bridge, and the hum of men's work fills the river with a menacing, muttering note as of a breathless, ever-driving gale. The water- way, so fair above and wide below, flows oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws, overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... distinctive characteristic of Montesquieu's ideas, as it is of the seventeenth century altogether. He was already councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux when Louis XIV. died; next year (1716) he took possession of a mortar-cap president's (president d mortier) office, which had been given up to him by one of his uncles. "On leaving college," he says, "there were put into my hands some law-books; I examined the spirit of them." Those profound ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... disease broke out among Multnomah's attendants. The howling of medicine-men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or mimaluse island. And no concoction of herbs,—however skilfully compounded with stone mortar and pestle,—no incantation of medicine-men or steaming atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... great bulk of that severe and cruel affliction, which provoked Moses (Ex. ii, 12), which made Israel "sigh" and "groan" (ib. 23, 24), and on which God looked down with compassion (ib. iii. 7). It was he especially who "made their lives bitter in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field"—service which was "with rigour." Ramesses was a builder on the most extensive scale. Without producing any single edifice so perfect as the "Pillared Hall of Seti," he was indefatigable in his constructive efforts, and no Egyptian ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... antiquity-hunter, and am fond of exploring London in quest of the relics of old times. These are principally to be found in the depths of the city, swallowed up and almost lost in a wilderness of brick and mortar, but deriving poetical and romantic interest from the commonplace, prosaic world around them. I was struck with an instance of the kind in the course of a recent summer ramble into the city; for ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... rice many a day. Yes'um, beat rice many a day for my grandmother en my mamma too. Had a mortar en a pestle dat beat rice wid. Dey take big tree en saw log off en set it up just like a tub. Den dey hollow it out in de middle en take pestle dat have block on both it end en beat rice in dat mortar. Beat it long time en take it out en fan it en den put it back. De last time it put back, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... still tugged at the track-ropes, keeping abreast of her so as to be ready with the mortar and shot-line, the ill-fated vessel swung bow on toward the beach, rose on a huge mountain of water, and threw herself headlong. When the smother cleared her foremast was overboard and her deck-house smashed. Around her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... once fairly launched in life may safely confine himself for a time to the studies that bear directly upon his own special chosen subject. The thing that Telford began closely to investigate was—lime. Now, lime makes mortar; and without lime, accordingly, you can have no mason. But to know anything really about lime, Telford found he must read some chemistry; and to know anything really about chemistry he must work at it hard and unremittingly. A strict attention to one's own business, understood in this ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... and a spacious hall to an interior part of the building. Here the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he found himself in a court dimly lighted by a single lamp. In the center was the dry basin of an old fountain, under which the stranger requested him to form a small vault, bricks and mortar being at hand for the purpose. He worked all night, but without finishing the job. Just before daybreak the stranger put a piece of gold into his hand, and having again blindfolded him, conducted ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... in a silken altar, From oaths and covenants, and being pounded in a mortar, From contributions, or free-quarter, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... mortar to a smooth paste, a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, and mix them with the yolks of six hard boiled eggs grated, mid a pint of cream, which must first have been boiled or it will curdle in the soup. Season it with nutmeg and mace. Stir the mixture into the soup, and let ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... The mortar and parrot shells rained alternately upon Fort Sumter every five minutes, day and night, but the sharp-shooters could only ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer

... it accomplished very little. The dynamite gun was brought up to the right of the regimental line. It was more effective than the regular artillery because it was fired with smokeless powder, and as it was used like a mortar from behind the hill, it did not betray its presence, and those firing it suffered no loss. Every few shots it got out of order, and the Rough Rider machinists and those furnished by Lieutenant Parker—whom we by this time began to consider ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... Rafters, crushed together, then strained apart, creaked and groaned and crunched. Walls receded with a reeling swing and advanced with a crackling rush. The paper split into shreds; the plaster skin beneath ripped open; lathes broke in splintered ends; mortar came thudding from above and swept in a swirling drive ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... preference be used. There is a good and a bad way of managing the process to ensue. To roughly seize a chump of wood and begin filing it away anyhow, collecting the residue and making a rough paste, will bring disappointment, as sure as houses built with wrongly mixed mortar. To put method into the matter, a piece of clear, knotless, soft, grained wood should be obtained and cut to a cylindrical form (diagram 19). A flat file of rather fine texture—this may be according to the size of the instrument to be repaired—should ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... vaults are often found without such ties as in the narthex of the Pantokrator. Many churches have ties to the dome-arches, and none to the main vault; but it is difficult to lay down a fixed rule. The enormous amount of mortar in the walls must have made them yield to a certain degree when newly built, and some of the larger vaults would have been the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... of dip.—Weigh out the lime, 12 pounds (or hydrated lime, 16 pounds), and sulphur, 24 pounds. Place the unslaked lime in a shallow, water-tight box similar to a mortar box, or some other suitable vessel, and add water enough to slake the lime and form a lime paste or lime putty. Sift into this paste the flowers of sulphur and stir well; then place the lime-sulphur paste in a kettle, boiler, or tank containing 30 gallons of water, the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... men, when he found that his time was by no means too valuable to be chiefly spent in very insignificant employments. Some few, it is true, never could have done this, even if they had been brayed in a mortar. I remember one fussy little cavalry adjutant, who never allowed a private to pass him without a salute, or sit down in his presence. I lost sight of the fellow soon afterward, but it was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... wheels of God's great mill may grind us small, without our coming to know or to hate our sin. About His chastisements, about the revelation of His wrath, that old saying is true to a great extent: 'If you bray a fool in a mortar, his folly will not depart from him.' You may smite a man down, crush him, make his bones to creep with the preaching of vengeance and of hell, and the result of it will often be, if it be anything at all, what it was in the case of that poor ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... bricks on the Strand site. Have first to dig snow away to get at bricks. Intense amusement of hostile crowd, from whom we are protected by a cordon of police. Bark my shins badly against wheel of cart. Chairman—who has been extremely energetic in running up and down a ladder with a hod of mortar over his shoulder, which he thinks is bricklaying—falls from ladder and is taken off to Charing Cross Hospital; amid shower of brickbats. Crowd wants to know "which is McDOUGALL." When they find out, pelt him with snowballs. BURNS—who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various

... disorderly discomfort inseparable from the process of house-building. The room they sat in was in the roughest condition which admitted of their occupying it, at all; the raw, new chimney smoked intolerably. Out-of-doors the whole place was one chaos of bricks, mortar, scaffolding, tiles, and slates. A heavy mist shrouded the whole landscape of lovely Tweed side, and distilled in a cold, persistent, and dumb drizzle. Maida, the well-beloved staghound, kept fidgeting in and out of the room, Walter Scott every five minutes exclaiming, "Eh, Adam! ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... queer inventor reached into the box for that bottle, the three silent, observing "Injuns" saw that Garwood had on the crude table before him a glass mortar and pestle, the former ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... other sacrifices brought during the festival in ancient times, while the horseradish and the salt water represented the bitter work that the Sons of Israel had to do for Pharaoh, and the mush the lime and mortar from which they made brick for him. A small book lay in front of each seat. That was the Story of the Deliverance, in the ancient Hebrew text, accompanied by ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... village was two or three miles distant, and the weather was inclement. He concluded that it "was not worth while to go so far for such a trifle." That night a vessel was wrecked within sight of the station. A line could have been given to the crew if he had been able to use the mortar; but he had no powder. He saw the drowning men perish one by one, knowing that he alone was to blame. A few days afterward he was ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... and the singing and shouting were continued by boys, who kept running round the bier as it was borne along. On reaching the grave the body was put in with the face toward the east, and covered up with stones and mortar. Then the grave was filled up with sand, a brief prayer was offered—the mourners kneeling—after ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... a heap of tiny crystals in his palm. "Here are the bricks he builds with, and the water of the brook is his mortar." ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... stones are firm and hard, which work by turning, and upon this mill are ground the cacaos grossly, and then between other stones they work that which is ground yet smaller, or else by beating it up in a mortar bring ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head

... these lines, which nobody could have written who had not been compelled, in the sunny summer-days, to bray drugs in a mortar. Yet who does not like to read a medical book?—to pore over its jargon, to muddle himself into a hypo, and to imagine himself afflicted with the dreadful disease with the long Latin name, the meaning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... is built just below the brow of the hill, so that the back of the hut is formed of the hill itself, and only the sides and front are real walls. These walls are made of rubble, or loose, unhewn stones, piled together with a kind of mortar, which is little more than clay baked hard in the heat of the sun. The chimney is a bit of old stove-pipe, scarcely rising above the top of the hill behind; and, but for the smoke, we could look down the pipe, as through the tube of a telescope, upon the family sitting round the hearth within. ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... treated with a novel dressing of earthworms lightly beaten in a mortar and mixed with warm oil, and he professes to have seen nerves not only healed (conglutinari), but even the divided nerve fibres regenerated (consolidari) under this treatment. In puncture of a nerve Gilbert surprises us ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... pundit says they are volcanic. O wondrous volcano to spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by means of coarse glass, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland in 1835. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... remind the reader that "'Arabiyyun" pl. 'Urb is a man of pure Arab race, whether of the Ahl al-Madar (people of mortar, i.e. citizens) or Ahl al-Wabar (tents of goat or camel's hair); whereas "A'rbiyyun" pl. A'rb is one who dwells in the Desert whether Arab ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... and a quart of veal gravy; let the whole simmer gently till the hare is done. Strain the meat; then pass the soup through a sieve, and put a penny roll to soak in the broth. Take all the flesh of the hare from the bones, and pound it in a mortar, till fine enough to be rubbed through a sieve, taking care that none of the bread remains in it. Thicken the broth with the meat of the hare; rub it all together till perfectly fine, like melted butter, not thicker; heat it, and serve it up very hot. Be careful not to let it ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... that was to break it was struck smartly with a steel bar, the first blow broke the blade without affecting the diamond, yet a piece of bort, or diamond dust, splinters, or defective diamonds (all these being called bort), may readily be pulverised in a hard steel mortar ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... and simple preparation of subsistence that I know of, and which is used extensively by the Mexicans and Indians, is called "cold flour." It is made by parching corn, and pounding it in a mortar to the consistency of coarse meal; a little sugar and cinnamon added makes it quite palatable. When the traveler becomes hungry or thirsty, a little of the flour is mixed with water and drunk. It is an excellent article for a ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... Timothy, if you will not reverence God's holy Sabbath and commandments according to the clear precept, do you let them alone, if you do not want a worse thing to befal you, for just so sure as you fight against them they will destroy you. This beating the air, is some like daubing with untempered mortar; you cannot make any of it stay put. If I were in your place, I should a great deal rather have been fast asleep than to be caught in such heaven-daring business—fighting against God! This looks like "following anything but 'the word of God and ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... resounded through the dark winding streets. He now strode by without stopping to speak or to look at me, his head and turban nearly reaching the roof of the streets, and his big sword, swinging from his back, extended crosswise, scraping the mortar from both sides of the walls. His iron spear, as large as an ordinary iron gas-light post, was carried in his firm fist horizontally, to prevent its catching the roof of the covered streets. The giant is one of the chiefs of a powerful tribe of Ghat Touaricks, of whom the aged Berka ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... table in five pages; medicine, topography, theology, all right, and Jones has gone home to his family some hours. Sir Christopher is the architect of St. Paul's. He has not laid the stones or carried up the mortar. There is a great deal of carpenter's and joiner's work in novels which surely a smart professional hand might supply. A smart professional hand? I give you my word, there seem to me parts of novels—let us say the love-making, the "business," the villain in the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... touching story. Whoever loiters among the ruins of a monastery will see, commonly leading out of the cloisters, rows of cellars half under-ground, low, damp, and wretched-looking; an earthen floor, bearing no trace of pavement; a roof from which the mortar and the damp keep up (and always must have kept up) a perpetual ooze; for a window a narrow slip in the wall, through which the cold and the wind find as free an access as the light. Such as they are, a well-kept dog would object to accept ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... Coulson came other unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong to the-big-city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt, underground caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs, Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on newspapers. The inblowing air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled happily everywhere ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... late. For, as poor Grimes cried and blubbered on, his own tears did what his mother's could not do, and Tom's could not do, and nobody's on earth could do for him; for they washed the soot off his face and off his clothes; and then they washed the mortar away from between the bricks; and the chimney crumbled down; and Grimes began to get out ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... of the room like a shell from a mortar, but in a moment he was seated at his place at the table again, with a broad grin on his face. "Is it down William?" shouted the old man. "Yes, Mr. Haynes, the durned thing's ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... hitherto put in force, far too successfully, to thin the numbers of this poor, harmless, unsuspecting tribe. On the ruin of the old gateway, against which, tradition says, the waves of the lake have dashed for the better part of a thousand years, I made a place with stone and mortar, about 4 ft. square, and fixed a thick oaken stick firmly into it. Huge masses of ivy now quite cover it. In about a month or so after it was finished, a pair of barn owls came and took up their abode in it. I threatened to strangle the keeper if ever, after this, he molested either ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various

... or perhaps of the haunting aroma of some national staple of food—but certainly it is there. Scattered through Manhattan, from the Battery to the Bronx, these five centers are witnesses as they stand to the effect of circumstance on bricks and mortar. And that there should be this visible effect is no doubt natural enough, for the difference between nation and nation is a salient thing. It would be far stranger were it to fail of effect even on so unimpressionable a thing as ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... notion of his amiability than by mentioning that he was known among her friends as the Cavaliere Frattanto. This praise, Odo thought, seemed scarcely to the cousin's liking; but he carried it off with the philosophic remark that it is the mortar between the bricks that holds the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... bolt, latchet[obs3], tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast[obs3], padlock, rivet; anchor, grappling iron, trennel[obs3], stake, post. cement, glue, gum, paste, size, wafer, solder, lute, putty, birdlime, mortar, stucco, plaster, grout; viscum[obs3]. shackle, rein &c. (means of restraint) 752; prop &c. (support) 215. V. bridge over, span; connect ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... top branches—is filled in with two grey tints, it matters not at all how the task is accomplished. Truly the brush has plastered that back as a trowel might, and the result reminds one of stone and mortar, as Millet's execution reminds one of mud-pie making. The handicraft is as barbarous in Chavannes as it is in Millet, and we think of them more as great poets working in a not wholly sympathetic ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... of spinach in a mortar, then tie it in a cloth, and wring out all the juice; put this in the soup you wish to color green five minutes ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... in, at last, Inside the melancholy little house We built to be so gay with. God is just. King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, The walls become illumined, brick from brick Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, That gold of his I did cement them with! Let us but love each other. Must you go? That Cousin here again? he waits outside? Must see you—you, and not with me? Those loans? More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? Well, let smiles buy me! have you more ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... opened and a low growling arose from the hall. Then a few whimpering protests, more growling, with a few words audible: "Swab"—"lubber"—"hold up!"—and then there was a scuffle, another growl, and Panama, looking white and scared, seemed to be suddenly propelled into the room as if from a mortar, the mortar making its appearance directly after in the shape of Barney, who pulled his forelock and kicked out a leg behind to each of the old officers before pointing to Pan and ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... cease, under which the people of God had been groaning up to that time. The Servant of God, however, who brings forth right to the Gentiles, forms the contrast to the worldly conqueror, of whom it was said in chap. xli. 25: "He cometh upon princes as mortar, and, just as the potter treadeth the clay."—The words: "He shall bring forth right," purposely return again in ver. 3; and equally intentionally, the words: "He shall found right on the earth," in ver. 4, refer ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... increased and multiplied. With herculean labour, under the burning sun, they conquered the sea. They walled the confines of their coral reefs and sand-banks with coral-rock stolen from the mainland on dark nights. Fine masonry, without mortar or cutting chisel, they builded to withstand the ocean surge. Likewise stolen from the mainland, as mice steal from human habitations when humans sleep, they stole canoe-loads, and millions of ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit and a kindred strength. Above all you love—though you do not know it now—the BREADTH of a country life. In the fields of God's planting there is ROOM. No walls of brick and mortar cramp one; no factitious distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches of the spirit tend toward the True and the Natural. The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all give width to your intent. The boy grows ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... at the front door, and bowed most respectfully. "Why," observed I, looking at the piles of mortar, lime, and bricks, standing about in all directions, "we shall be smothered with dust and lime ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... our plastic power... Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks

... into the farrier's garden next door. The other half had been raised by Captain Caldwell on the understanding that if he raised one half the farrier would raise the other, but the farrier had proved perfidious. The wall was built without mortar, of rough, uncut stones. Captain Caldwell had his half neatly finished off at the top with sods, but Murphy's piece was still all broken down. The children used to climb up by it on to the raised half, and dance there ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... was writing and posting this letter, Admet-el-Abdoun was gathering together in a bundle all his wearing apparel and household belongings, consisting of three old hooded mantles, two cloaks of goat's wool, a mortar for grinding alcazuz, an iron lamp, and a copper skillet full of pesetas, which he dug up from a corner of the little yard of his house. He loaded with all this his one wife, slave, odalisque, or whatever she might be, a woman uglier than an unexpected piece ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... difficult of access. The house group occupied the entire width of a cave, which was eighty feet across, and there was a foundation wall made of stone and timber underneath the front part. The walls were made of stone, with mortar of disintegrated rock that lined parts of the cave and were plastered inside and out with the same material. Lintels of wood were seen in the windows, and rows of sticks standing in a perpendicular position were found in two of the walls inside of the plastering. On one side of the cave, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... it off till the night boat. After supper they took out the skiff from the rocky landing for a last row. They pulled round under the dark cliffs that rose sheer from the water and were crowned with the wall of the old fort, the cliffs themselves seamed across with strata of white, like mortar-lines of some Titanic masonry. They gave chase to a tug puffing northward half a mile to the right, towing two or three canal-boats through the still water and the stiller night. Then a sail came ghostily out of the shadow astern, and stole on them as they drew away and waited for it. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... bed, and laid the first stone of the great work—all under the same vigorous impulse of the will. This was at eight in the morning. By the evening tide, the first "course," which formed but a small segment of a circle, was fitted with the utmost despatch, bedded in mortar and trenailed down. Next day the second course was partly landed on the rock; the men still working with a will, for moments out there were more precious than hours or days in ordinary building,—but before they ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... mortar is used for the purpose of pulverizing hard substances, and for mixing fluxes. As this mortar will not yield to abrasion, there is no danger of any foreign matter becoming mixed with the substance pulverized in it. It should be cleaned after use with pumice stone. ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... mortar bed large enough to hold the material for one course; put in unslaked quicklime in proportion to 1 to 20 or 30 of other material; throw into it plenty of water, and don't have that antediluvian idea ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... Norseman who puts trust In mortar and in stone; Who rears a wall, or builds a tower, Or makes on earth his throne; My monarch throne's the willing wave, That bears me on the beach; My sepulchre's the deep sea surge, Where lead shall never reach; My death-song is the howling wind, That bends my quivering mast,— Bid ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various

... the lodge. She took some corn. She filled the mortar and pounded the corn. She beat it fine. She thrust Pestle beyond, right on her knee. She missed the mark in pushing, sending him with force, and so she ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown

... I can remember well, how we watched from the Hartland Cliffs a great barque, which came drifting and rolling in before the western gale, while we followed her up the coast, parsons and sportsmen, farmers and Preventive men, with the Manby's mortar lumbering behind us in a cart, through stone gaps and track-ways, from headland to headland. The maddening excitement of expectation as she ran wildly towards the cliffs at our feet, and then sheered off again inexplicably;—her foremast and bowsprit, I recollect, were gone short ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... half a mile from the village. They strolled up to it. It had a tower built of flint, and clad on two sides with ivy three feet deep, and the body of the church was as snowy as the cottages, and on the south side a dozen swallows and martins had lodged their mortar nests under the eaves; they looked, against the white, like rugged gray stone bosses. Swallows and martins innumerable wheeled, swift as arrows, round the tower, chirping, and in and out of the church through an open window, and added ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... ornaments were called) were lovelier than the work of the brotherhood of St. Martin's. Gabriel felt very proud even to grind the colours for them. But as he passed over to one of the tables and began to make ready his paint mortar, the monk who had charge of the writing-room ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein

... in low tones or directing in high, Ellen and I made shift to paint the little picket-fence until it was white as new snow. At odd times Braddish himself painted the little house (it was all of old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; and my father and Mr. Sturtevant contributed a load of beautiful, sleek, rich pasture sod and the labor to lay it; so that by midsummer the little domain was the spickest, spannest little dream of a home in the whole county. The young ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... many parts of the town, less than a century back were studded with gardens, but the flowers have had to give place to the more prosaic bricks and mortar, and householders desirous of floral ornaments have now in a great measure to resort to the nursery grounds of the professed horticulturists. Foremost among the nurseries of the neighbourhood are ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... being placed in position on the rocks, is an invention by which many human lives are saved on our coasts every year. Like Manby's Mortar Apparatus, it is simple in its action and ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... had been deeply bedded in mortar, but was altogether displaced, and turned down from one to three feet beneath the surface, where several skeletons were found very entire, and in their original position, but without any remains of coffins, vestments, or other ornaments, as appeared upon a most minute investigation. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... resist our modern cannon, for if the ancients built better than we do, we destroy better than they did; this is one thing that must in justice be conceded to us. Nevertheless, we cannot but admire those masses of peperino, the points of which ascend obliquely and hold together without mortar. Originally as ancient as the city, these ramparts were destroyed to some extent by Sylla and repaired in opus incertum, that is to say, in small stones of every shape and of various dimensions, fitted to one another ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... also was on the river, but it was very small bricks-and-mortar compared with the other two. One of a semi-detached couple built close to the road, with narrow strips of garden to the river's brim, its dingy stucco front and its green Venetian blinds conveyed no conceivable attraction beyond that of a situation more likely to prove a drawback three ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... cheer. The engineer had a rope put around him and was lowered down into the surf, and other men came and had ropes put about them, and they were lowered down. And after a while the cry was heard: "More mortar and more blocks of stone!" But there were no more. "Now," said the Holland engineer, "men, take off your clothes!" and they took them off, and they stopped up the holes in the dikes. But still the stones ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... fall into. He was thirty-one. For ten years he had paid far more than there had been any necessity to keep constantly amused, constantly interested. Thanks to a shrewd ancestor who had bought large tracts of land in a part of Manhattan which had then been untouched by bricks and mortar, and to others, equally shrewd, who had held on and watched a city spreading up the Island like a mustard plant, he could afford whatever price he was asked to pay. Whole blocks were his where once ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... the vicinity was unimproved, but not rural. The adjacent lots had apparently just given up bearing scrub-oaks, but had not seriously taken to bricks and mortar. In one direction the vista was closed by the Home of the Inebriates, not in itself a cheerful-looking building, and, as the apparent terminus of a ramble in a certain direction, having all the effect of a moral lesson. To a certain ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... mere canvass would not have protected his men from the rigour of an American winter. Under these circumstances he imitated the backwoodsman's practice of hutting. Trees were felled, and log-huts wore erected, the interstices of which were filled up with earth, moss, and a rude kind of mortar, in order to render them warm and comfortable. Around them, for defence, two redoubts were erected and an intrenchment, drawn with a ditch six feet wide and three or four feet deep. His left was covered by the Schuylkill, and his rear, for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... inn (the famous Bell-Savage); and while the Lord Sussex's servant prepared the horses for their journey, Wayland, obtaining from the cook the service of a mortar, shut himself up in a private chamber, where he mixed, pounded, and amalgamated the drugs which he had bought, each in its due proportion, with a readiness and address that plainly showed him well practised in all the manual ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... reward than he who puts the idea into execution? Why should the man who works with his brain have more of the sweets of life than he who works with his hands? Why should the man who lays the brick have more of the world's goods than he who carries the brick mortar to him? These questions do not apply alone to the capitalist, but also to the laborer as well, and as long as the laboring classes champion the cutthroat policy of grading man's allowance according to his ability, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... Mr Temple coldly; and he went on calcining a piece of the soft white stone, and then placing it in a mortar to ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... the privateers was a 13-inch brass mortar weighing nearly three thousand pounds, which was taken to Cambridge, where (according to the same veracious narrator of the "powder cry," the witty Provincial colonel), it was the occasion of a great jubilation. ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober

... prayer-books, baize-lined pews, Wren-built architecture; and how, in almost all directions, you might have fired a musket through the church, and hit no Christian life. A terrible outlook indeed for the Apostolic laborer in the brick-and-mortar line!— ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... As we have said, it can be made at home, but the process, though not difficult, is troublesome. It is made as follows:—A quantity of spinach has, after being thoroughly washed, to be pounded in a mortar until it becomes a pulp. This pulp is then placed in a very strong, coarse cloth, and the cloth is twisted till the juice of the spinach is squeezed out through the cloth. The amount of force required ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... appropriating territory and in subjugating peoples—must have not only the force necessary to set up the empire, but also the force requisite to maintain it. Battleships and army corps are as essential to empires as mortar is to a brick wall. They are the expression of the organized might by which ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... Cordova, but here he was entirely successful. Indeed it is extraordinary that the two parts should be joined in such admirable harmony. It is impossible to give in words an idea of the slender grace of the Giralda, it does not look a thing of bricks and mortar, it is so straight and light that it reminds one vaguely of some beautiful human thing. The great height is astonishing, there is no buttress or projection to break the very long straight line as it rises, with a kind of breathless ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... ever knew in my life, at four o'clock in the morning of January 19th, 1857, this large steeple fell on the top of our house which was a three story brick building. It broke through the roof and smashed in all the upper tier of rooms, the bricks and mortar falling to the lower floor. We were in the second story, and some of the bricks came into our room, breaking the glass and furniture, and the heaviest part of the whole lay directly on our house. It was the opinion of all who saw the ruins that we did not stand one chance in ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... elaborately Italian on Mr. Early's domain, but spacious both, for St. Etienne had the advantage of doing most of its growth after rapid transit was invented, and had therefore never cribbed and cabined its population into solid blocks of brick and mortar, but had given everybody elbow-room, so that its residence district looked much like ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... was not until two o'clock that Captain Hardinge was able to place his ship in the position assigned; this he now did in a most judicious manner, and opened a brisk fire from his two mortars; which was returned from the mortar and gun-batteries on the heights near the town, and also from some guns on the pier, and the gun-vessels ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... in a very fine house in the east end of the town, bordering on the river, against which is a garden wall, built of oyster-shells and mortar, there being no ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... I'll tell you something. These are his tools. Someone was working in this room, so we've beaten him to it. Now, where was he working? (Hands on floor.) Mortar on floor. (Hands on mantel.) Mortar on the mantel——(Puts down tools, looking up and pointing.) Look at that! That's where he was working, Rusty, and we've beat him to ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey

... 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

... nothing, an please your honour, said Trim, but two mortars I am bringing in.—They shan't make a clatter with them here, cried my father hastily.—If Dr. Slop has any drugs to pound, let him do it in the kitchen.—May it please your honour, cried Trim, they are two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which I have been making out of a pair of jack-boots, which Obadiah told me your honour had left off wearing.—By Heaven! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he swore—I have not one appointment ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... house they saw two slave-girls pounding rice in a large wooden mortar, with two enormous wooden pestles, while the savoury steam that arose from some invisible kitchen served to put a finer edge on their already ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... dipped to the chin." A woman, in the year 1568, was "carted and banished." At Sandwich, Ipswich, and some other places, as a punishment for scolding and other offences it was not an uncommon thing to compel the transgressors to carry a wooden mortar round the town. ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... water and fine charcoal dust. A lump of charcoal should be put a second time into the fire till it is red hot, as soon as it becomes cool the external ashes should be blown off, and it should be immediately reduced to fine powder in a mortar, and kept close stopped in a phial. It takes away the bad smell from decayed teeth, by washing the mouth with this powder diffused in water immediately. The putrid smell of decaying stumps of teeth may be destroyed for a time by washing the mouth with a weak solution ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... cowgirl tells her that the milk has boiled over and Yasoda jumps up leaving Krishna alone. While she is away he breaks the pots, scatters the curds, makes a mess of all the rooms and, taking a pot full of butter, runs away with it into the fields. There he seats himself on an upturned mortar, assembles the other boys and vastly pleased with himself, laughingly shares the butter out. When Yasoda returns and sees the mess, she seizes a stick and goes to look for Krishna. She cannot find it in her heart, however, to be ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... in 1755, at the time of the great earthquake, and was riding in his carriage when suddenly the earth began to heave and tremble, and houses, churches, all came tumbling down, burying thirty thousand people. Sir Henry's horses and himself and carriage were beneath the bricks and mortar. Agnes was not with him at the moment, but showed her love by running as fast as she could and digging away the bricks with her own hands, finding him badly mangled but alive. He thought he was going to die, and made a vow that if his life was spared Agnes should ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... few machine guns are set in concealed emplacements along the trench to cover important salients. The automatic rifle is used over the parapet. Besides these there is the rifle grenade and trench mortar. The rifle grenade has a simple emplacement. After securing the proper elevation, the butt of the rifle is placed between posts or blocks of wood and the muzzle rested against a log on the wall of the trench. A trench mortar ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... of his little houses and cheap flats, sitting on saw-horses and piles of lumber, watching the carpenters at work. In the evening he came home to a late supper, completely fagged, bringing with him the smell of mortar and of pine shavings. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... took in it, was unimportant—when one day, stopping in the Quartier du Marais to view the works at the new Place Royale, I saw the boy. He was in charge of a decent-looking servant, whose hand he was holding, and the two were gazing at a horse that, alarmed by the heaps of stone and mortar, was rearing and trying to unseat its rider. The child did not see me, and I bade Maignan follow him home, and learn where he lived ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... Carnegie himself would like to do, but with his big, stiff, clumsy libraries trailing their huge, senseless brick-and-mortar bodies, their white pillars and things, about the country, unmanned, inert, eyeless, all those great gates and forts of knowledge, Coliseums of paper, and with the mechanical people behind the counters, the policemen of the books, all standing about protecting them—with ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... corrugated iron shed which had been erected in the garden, and dignified by the name of laboratory. For, to the boys' great delight, a model furnace had been made, with bellows, and a supply of charcoal was always ready. There was a great cast-iron mortar fitted on a concrete stand, crucibles of various sizes, and the place looked ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... first husband's cousin. Her grave was identified in 1875, and her remains were found enclosed in a shroud and in a tomb of solid masonry, 7 feet by 2 feet 5 inches, by 2 feet 5 inches. The covering slab had a cross incised with the words "Mercy, Lord Jhu" (Jesu). The top of the slab had traces of mortar upon it, pointing to the fact that her tomb was built immediately over it. We know from the chronicle that it was a "very handsome marble tomb, exquisitely carved." It was a table tomb bearing an effigy of the Lady ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... they are dry, is all such a kiln will hold at once. The larger the stones made use of in the construction of the kiln the better, as it will give a more steady and dense heat. The inside of the kiln should be well plastered with mortar to make it air-tight. Charcoal is the best fuel. Heat the kiln well before putting on the hops; keep a steady and regular heat while drying. Hops must not remain in bulk long after being picked, as they will heat and spoil. Do not stir them while drying. After they are ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... a crowd of little men and women the size of your finger, and they went diligently to work and cleared and leveled off a space a couple of yards square in the grass and began to build a cunning little castle in it, the women mixing the mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings in pails on their heads, just as our work-women have always done, and the men laying the courses of masonry—five hundred of these toy people swarming briskly about and working ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... he had danced there more than once or twice with Hetta Carbury. When he was shown into the hail he was astonished to find that it was not only stripped, but was full of planks, and ladders, and trussels, and mortar. The preparations for the great dinner had been already commenced. Through all this he made his way to the stairs, and was taken up to a small room on the second floor, where the servant told him that Mr Melmotte would come to him. Here he waited a quarter of ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... of these very missionaries were discovered.[105] The tope was perfect in 1819, when visited by Captain Fell,—"not a stone fallen." And though afterward injured, in 1822, by some amateur relic-hunters, its contents remained intact. It is a solid hemisphere, built of rough stones without mortar, thirty-nine feet in diameter; it has a basement six feet high, projecting all around five feet, and so making a terrace. It is surrounded by a stone railing, with carved figures. In the centre of this tope was found a small ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... to enter into reactions and relations, making great diversity and complexity possible, favouring the formation of the plastic and permeable materials that build up living creatures. We must not pursue the idea, but it is clear that the stones and mortar of the inanimate world are such that they built a ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... iron filings and powdered sulphur are thoroughly ground together in a mortar, a yellowish-green substance results. It might easily be taken to be a new body; but as in the case of the iron and salt, the ingredients can readily be separated. A magnet draws out the iron. Water does ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... which Winifred had lived and died I passed into a new world of horror. Dead matter had become conscious, and for a second or two it was not the human being before me, but the rusty iron, the broken furniture, the great patches of brick and dirty mortar where the plaster had fallen from the walls,—it was these which seemed to have life—a terrible life—and to be talking to me, telling me what I dared not listen to about the triumph of evil over ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... abominable desolation of it all, he stood and gazed. No evidence of any plan, of any continuity in building, appeared upon the waste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortar dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous clarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering a thousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, it shut down on the illimitable, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... dreamed that we two were building houses on the seashore. Carrie's was the prettier, for it was all of sea-weed and bright-colored shells that looked as though the sun were shining on them, while mine was made of clay, tempered by mortar. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to revere its interior because William Penn was baptized in it, but when we had got inside we found it so full of scaffolding and the litter of masonry, and the cool fresh smell of mortar from the restorations going on that we had no room for the emotions we had come prepared with. With the compassion of a kindly man in a plasterer's spattered suit of white, we did what we could, but it was very little. I at least was not yet armed with the facts that, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... in with great severity, and the sufferings of the army were extreme. In a few days, however, these sufferings were considerably diminished by the erection of logged huts, filled up with mortar, which, after being dried, formed comfortable habitations, and gave content to men long unused to the conveniences of life. The order of a regular encampment was observed; and the only appearance of winter quarters, was the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... flames without being burnt. Have you no scheme which can preserve marriage from the miseries of excessive cold and excessive heat? Listen to me! Here we have a book on the Art of preserving foods; on the Art of curing smoky chimneys; on the Art of making good mortar; on the Art of tying a cravat; on the Art ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... twelve feet from the ground, with a corresponding diameter. They are so firm in their texture that the weight of a horse makes no apparent indentation on their solidity; and even the intense rains of the monsoon, which no cement or mortar can long resist, fail to penetrate the surface or substance of an ant hill.[3] In their earlier stages the termites proceed with such energetic rapidity, that I have seen a pinnacle of moist clay, six inches in height and twice as large in diameter, constructed ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... which divides the upper from the lower moor. You may know the house at a good distance by the ragged tiles on the roof, and the loose stones which are ready to drop out from the chimney; though a short ladder, a hod of mortar, and half an hour's leisure time would have prevented all this, and made the little dwelling tight enough. But as Giles had never learned any thing that was good, so he did not know the value of such useful sayings as, that "a ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... making a rope ladder, and the ship's smith had got some empty shells on deck, and had made a shift to screw some iron eyes into them for fixing ropes to. The gun was taken out of the pinnace and a little mortar fixed in her, and half a dozen ropes, each a hundred fathoms long, had knots put in them ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... syllables of the Latin pistillum, otherwise more familiarly Englished into 'pestle.' The meaning of the botanical word is of course, also, that the central part of a flower-cup has to it something of the relations that a pestle has to a mortar! Practically, however, as this pestle has no pounding functions, I think the word is misleading as well as ungraceful; and that we may find a better one after looking a little closer into the matter. For this pestle is divided generally ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... women need never despair. The young doctor gave a certain friend of yours to understand that, if she chose to be Mrs. Glauber, she was welcome to ornament the surgery! I told his impudence that the gilt pestle and mortar was quite ornament enough; as if I was born, indeed, to be a country surgeon's wife! Mr. Glauber went home seriously indisposed at his rebuff, took a cooling draught, and is now quite cured. Sir Pitt applauded my resolution highly; he would be sorry to lose his little secretary, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the whole army. A battery was thrown up during the two succeeding nights on the brink of the river opposite to where the Carolina lay; and at dawn a heavy cannonade of red-hot shot and shell was opened upon her from eleven guns and a mortar. [Footnote: Gleig, 307. The Americans thought the battery consisted of 5 18- and 12-pounders; Gleig says 9 field-pieces (9—and 6-pounders), 2 howitzers, and a mortar.] She responded briskly, but very ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind, courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone to the placing of a single stone of it. This is what we have to admire,—this grand power and heart of man in the thing; not his technical or empirical way of holding the trowel and laying mortar. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... master, Captain Thorpe, was inflicting punishment; he had whipped him till exhausted,—rested himself, and returned again to the punishment. The wretched sufferer was in a most pitiable condition, and the warm blood and dry dust of the barn had formed a mortar up to his instep. Mr. Males jumped the fence, and remonstrated so effectually with Capt. Thorpe, that he ceased the punishment. It was six weeks before that slave ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... mule-meat. Rice and milk is my main food; I can't eat the mule-meat. We boil the rice and eat it cold with milk for supper. Martha runs the gauntlet to buy the meat and milk once a day in a perfect terror. The shells seem to have many different names; I hear the soldiers say, "That's a mortar-shell. There goes a Parrott. That's a rifle-shell." They are all equally terrible. A pair of chimney-swallows have built in the parlor chimney. The concussion of the house often sends down parts of their nest, which they patiently pick up ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... of trade." "Trade? Oh, I twig. My gum, Giglamps! you'll be the death of me some fine day. I didn't mean a mason with a hod of mortar; he'd be a hod-fellow, don't you see? - there's a fine old crusted joke for you - I meant a mason with a petticut, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... boys had seen pictures in plenty of shell-smashed ruins, but the actuality of the awful devastation made them hold their breath for a moment. To think that such desolate piles of brick and mortar were once rows of human habitations, peopled with men, women and children very much like the men, women and children in their own land, sobered ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... lawyer or architect," he thought; and he walked rapidly onward, pleased with himself for having put on his very best walking suit. There were many workmen on the building, and he fell into conversation with a man who was mixing mortar; but all the time he was watching Jean and her escort stepping about the great uncovered spaces of the new dwelling-house with such an air of mutual trust and happiness that ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the river's banks. The St. Mary's River is here about three-fourths of a mile wide, and the green in front of my office is covered with Indian lodges, and presents a noble expanse. I have now a building some thirty-six feet square, built of squared timber, jointed with mortar and whitewashed, so as to give it a neat appearance. The interior is divided into a room some twenty feet by thirty-six, with two small ante-rooms. A large cast iron Montreal stove, which will take in ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... the bottom suit her, the Osmia sets to work bringing pollen and honey. If the bottom do not suit her, if the sorghum-pith plug with which I have closed the rear-end of the tube be too irregular and badly-joined, the Bee coats it with a little mortar. When this small repair is made, the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... are extinct as the ashes of a fire that is gone out, and the princes of the earth are no more. He hath bruised the earth in a mortar, and the dust of it is scattered abroad in the heavens. The stars in their might hath He pounded to pieces, and the foundations of the ages to fine powder. There is nothing of them left, and their voices are dead. There are dim shapes ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... not a chasm a filling?—a queer kind of filling, but a filling still. Why seek for a glue to hold things together when their very falling apart is the only glue you need? Let all that negation which seemed to disintegrate the universe be the mortar that combines it, and the problem stands solved. The paradoxical character of the notion could not fail to please a mind monstrous even in its native {274} Germany, where mental excess is endemic. Richard, for a moment brought to bay, is himself again. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... of Moses.—The king of Egypt began to oppress them, compelling them to make mortar and bricks for the construction of his strong cities. It was then that one of them, Moses, received from God the mission to deliver them. One day while he was keeping his herds on the mountain, an angel appeared to him in the midst of a burning ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... least six or seven yards thick, all built of freestone throughout, having no packing with trumpery within, as I was told, but all solid. The stones are large and of excellent quality, and are so exactly cut to fit the places where they are laid, that no mortar is used, only a little earth being occasionally thrown in to fill up any ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... about eighty men proceeded in boats up the river for about two miles, when they descried on the bank a large Indian village. It was surrounded with a wooden palisade, having turrets and loopholes from which to hurl stones and darts. The houses within were built of tiles laid in mortar, or of sun-dried brick (adobes), and were roofed with straw or split trees. The chief temple had spacious rooms, and its dependences surrounded ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton

... a nameless thing, a shapeless hotch-potch. Instead of the bold columns which were to support the front of the building the chords came crumbling down like a building in ruins; there was nothing to be seen but the dust of mortar. For a moment Christophe was not quite sure whether they were really playing his work. He cast back for the train, the rhythm of his thoughts; he could not recognize it; it went on babbling and hiccoughing like a drunken man clinging close to the wall, and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... had set up a scaffold, upon which he wanted you to help him; would it be reasonable in you to complain that you didn't find the scaffold at all a comfortable place to live in?—that it was draughty and cold? This World is that scaffold; and if you were busy carrying stones and mortar for the palace, you would be glad of all the cold to cool the glow of ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... circle or an age. Complaint is made, and by good men, of that implicit acquiescence which keeps in existence Islam, Catholicism, and the like, long after their due time has come to die; yet, abolish the law of imitation which causes this, and the immediate disintegration of mankind will follow. Mortar is much in the way, when we wish to take an old building to pieces and make other use of the bricks; do you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... down on the stone flooring, close to the wall, and the two lads started to work without delay. In a corner of his jacket, Dick found an old jack-knife that had not been taken away from him, and this he used on the mortar. Sam had nothing but a long, rusty iron nail, so their ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... strong a keep. Such a place he met, altogether according to his mind, on mount Erir. [1] He brought masons together, the best that might be found, and set them to the work as quickly as they were able. The masons began to build, getting stones ready and making them fast with mortar, but all the work that the builders raised by day, adown it fell to the ground by night. They laboured therefore with the more diligence, but the higher they builded the tower the greater was its fall, to the very foundations they had digged. So it chanced for many days, till not one stone ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... stuff having any substance in it was indeed thrown into a kind of mortar, ground up, mixed with something that gave the mass cohesion and plasticity, then moulded into buttons as clay is moulded by the potter, and burned, dried, and hardened. Therefore, if brass and pearl buttons are in limited demand, there are other materials ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... September our house was finished, and we took possession of it. The mason work had at first caused us some difficulty; but at last, not being able to make lime for want of lime-stones, we employed blue clay as a substitute for mortar. This dwelling-house was sufficiently spacious to hold all our company, and we had distributed it in the most convenient manner that we could. It comprised a sitting, a dining room, some lodging or sleeping rooms, and an apartment for the men and artificers, all ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... works were wreathed with the smoke of battle. The glare of cannon lit the smoke-cloud; mortar shells rose, described their fiery curves, and descended in the trenches, and these were saluted as they rose and fell by the crack of musketry, the roar of artillery, the echoing cheers of the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke



Words linked to "Mortar" :   vessel, cement, bricks and mortar, howitzer, high-angle gun



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