"Masonry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visit the neighboring shrubs and there cut from the leaves oval pieces which will be made into a fit receptacle to contain the harvest. And these, clad in black velvet? They are Chalicodomae [mason bees], who work with cement and gravel. We could easily find their masonry on the stones in the harmas. And these noisily buzzing with a sudden flight? They are the Anthophorae [wild bees], who live in the old walls and the sunny banks of ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the town. A fortification, which in modern military phrase would be termed a tete-du-pont, defended the bridge head on the southern side, and two towers, called the Tourelles, were built on the bridge itself, at a little distance from the tete-du-pont. Indeed, the solid masonry of the bridge terminated at the Tourelles; and the communication thence with the tete-du-pont and the southern shore was by means of a drawbridge. The Tourelles and the tete-du-pont formed together a strong-fortified post, capable of containing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... say, seaward—the tower does lean; though but by a foot or so, and now not perilously; the salt winds, impotent against its masonry, having bitten with more effect into the earth around its base. But the church has been restored, the mischief arrested, and the danger no longer haunts its vicar as it haunted the Rev. John Flood on a bright September morning ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his thanks to Mr. E. W. Winser, Dean's Verger, for much valuable local information; to Mr. Henry Williams, Canons' Verger, for expert advice on points of masonry; and to both, as well as to the Sexton, for that general assistance which they so willingly rendered him throughout his investigation of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... right into his face, this scream came, ending in a weak, despairing, but above all else heartrending, moan; then everything grew still. Jeb could have neither moved nor uttered a cry; he had recoiled in terror, crouching as a part of the fallen masonry that littered the floor. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... passed over it since the days of Marco Polo, but I should like to say a word about it. Twelve yards or so wide, and no less than 150 yards long, it is built entirely of grey stone; with its massive piers, its excellent masonry, its good (although crude) carving, its old-time sculpturing of dreadful-looking animals at either end, its decorative triumphal arches, its masses of memorial tablets (which I could not read), its seven arches of beautiful simplicity and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... feet long, and fifty feet wide, is still one of the finest monuments of antiquity, built of stone without cement. It is still solid and strong, and gives us a vivid conception of the magnificence of Roman masonry. Narbo (Narbonne) was another commercial centre, adorned with public buildings which called forth the admiration of ancient travelers. The modern cities of Treves, Boulogne, Rheims, Chalons, Cologne, Metz, Dijon, Sens, Orleans, Poictiers, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... 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
... fittings were begun had retired from the management of the business; and when referring to the Hospital he often said that however Bulstrode might ring if you tried him, he liked good solid carpentry and masonry, and had a notion both of drains and chimneys. In fact, the Hospital had become an object of intense interest to Bulstrode, and he would willingly have continued to spare a large yearly sum that he might rule it dictatorially without any Board; but he had another favorite ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... not hitherto paid a visit to Seville; when I arrived here, he was said to be in the neighbourhood of Ronda. The city was under watch and ward, several gates had been blocked up with masonry, trenches dug, and redoubts erected, but I am convinced that the place would not have held out six hours against a resolute assault. Gomez has proved himself to be a most extraordinary man, and with his small army of Aragonese and Basques has within the last four ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... cave-dwelling, the entrance to the cave or the front of the open gallery was walled up with adobes, leaving only a small opening serving for both door and window. The cliff houses take the form and dimensions of the platform or ledge from which they rise. The masonry is well laid, and it is wonderful with what skill the walls are joined to the cliff, and with what care the aspect of the neighbouring rocks has been imitated in the external architecture." [Footnote: Nadaillac, "Prehistoric ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... again. It is worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see the bridges alone. I believe I had seen little other than wooden bridges before, and in England I saw not one such, but everywhere solid arches of masonry, that were refreshing and reassuring to behold. Even the lanes and byways about the farm, I noticed, crossed the little creeks with a span upon which an elephant would not hesitate to tread, or artillery trains to pass. There is no form so pleasing to look upon as the arch, or that ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... masonry of the balustrade, slight, lithe and graceful, she was the embodiment of vitality in repose. She stood so still, but there was a light shining in the brown eyes, that were cast down and over the parapet, keeping a careful watch ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... for leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means of bridges that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by stairways hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were filled up with solid masonry; in short, all the difficulties that beset a wild and mountainous region, and which might appall the most courageous engineer of modern times, were encountered and successfully overcome. The length ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the first lightning conductor upon a church was not put up until 1762, ten years after Franklin's discovery. The spire of St. Bride's Church in London was greatly injured by lightning in 1750, and in 1764 a storm so wrecked its masonry that it had to be mainly rebuilt; yet for years after this the authorities refused to attach a lightning-rod. The Protestant Cathedral of St. Paul's, in London, was not protected until sixteen years after Franklin's discovery, and the tower of the great Protestant church at Hamburg ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... disappointments of the weary months. In his enthusiasm he had no more thought of his caravan, and though a terrific thunderstorm burst over the place just as his men were getting into position the rude derrick by means of which they would lower the masonry into the trench cut in the side of the tell, his ardour would suffer no intermission in the work. It is true that in the trench they were in some measure protected from the storm. The lashings had been fixed on the brickwork under ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... 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 ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... with jagged and clear-cut outlines into the sky, with gorges and valleys retreating in between, full of deep blue shade, and often horizontal bands of strata, showing like regularly built courses of white masonry along the flanks of the mountains. It is very fine, though gaunt, bare, and untenanted. We have had nothing but level veldt to march on for weeks past, and the change to the eye is a pleasant one. Nevertheless, it is a bad country for our business. To us mountain ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... we're completely out of our entire solar system. Those twin purple suns up there prove that. We may even be in another universe, or another dimension from our own. A piece of apparatus that could whisk us up through fifty feet of earth and masonry as that green net did obviously works in dimensions of which we've never dreamed. The only thing we're sure of is that we were brought to this purple world deliberately and intentionally by an intelligent being of some kind, scooped up like tadpoles from a ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... thoroughfare, Within a city's confines, where were met All classes and conditions, and surveyed, From a secluded niche or aperture, The various, ever-changing multitude Which passed along in restless turbulence, And, as a human river, ebbed and flowed Within its banks of brick and masonry. ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... between the traditions of the Greek residents and the alleged hand-mark of the first Sultan, is actuated by a laudable desire to be truthful so far as possible; for there is nothing improbable about the story of the hand-mark, inasmuch as a hole chipped in the masonry, an application of cement, and a pressure of the Sultan's hand against it before it hardened, give at once something for visitors to look at through future centuries and shake their heads incredulously about. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... 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 ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... finally vanished from the little opening in the floor above and the darkness became absolute. They had matches in their kits, but they feared to use them lest some prowling sentry might see the light through some rift in the masonry. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... bridge which landed him in a black pocket between walls. But now his pursuers were at his back, reinforced by the yelping mob. The walls were too high to scale, and for all his courage Tony's breath came short as he paced the masonry cage in which ill-luck had landed him. Suddenly a gate opened in one of the walls, and a slip of a servant wench looked out and beckoned him. There was no time to weigh chances. Tony dashed through the gate, his rescuer slammed and bolted it, and the two stood ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... performed by this particular rifle, I cannot help recounting a curious chance with a large rogue elephant in Topari tank. This tank or lake is, like most others in Ceylon, the result of vast labour in past ages. Valleys were closed in by immense dams of solid masonry, which, checking the course of the rivers, formed lakes of many miles in extent. These were used as reservoirs for the water required for the irrigation of rice lands. The population who effected these extensive works have long since ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... cold. I struck out, and began to swim round the great walls which frowned above me. I could see only three yards ahead; I had then good hopes of not being seen, as I crept along close under the damp, moss-grown masonry. There were lights from the new part of the Castle on the other side, and now and again I heard laughter and merry shouts. I fancied I recognized young Rupert Hentzau's ringing tones, and pictured him flushed ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... be called a picturesque ruin, except inasmuch as every ruin is picturesque. Its bare walls rose gaunt and black out of the ground, not out of a heap of tumbled moss-grown masonry, or covered over with ivy. There were very few signs of decay about the place, ruinous as it was, and very little examination was enough to show that it had suffered not from old age, or from the cannon of an enemy, but ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... let the top of the openings be arched, but a low arch of one arc or two is often preferable to a high one. If, for economy's sake, you wish to make the top of the sash square, do so, curving the upper portion of the frame as a sort of centre on which the masonry may rest; but do not attempt this if the openings are wide, and in any case relieve the wood segment by ornamental cutting or some other device, otherwise you will have a weak and poverty-stricken effect. Or ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... 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 to convince ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 of eleven hundred, from the extent ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... scene spread before us, the vast piling of masonry that is New York. The dying beams of the setting sun glinted golden from the roofs of the pleasure palaces topping the soaring structures. Lower, amid interlacing archings of the mid-air thoroughfares, darkness had already piled its blackness. Two thousand feet below, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the wheel was a gap in the masonry, an opening roughly square that had been a window, mayhap, whence shone ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... this side of the island was full of those gigantic statues so often mentioned; some placed in groupes on platforms of masonry, others single, fixed only in the earth, and that not deep; and these latter are, in general, much larger than the others. Having measured one, which had fallen down, they found it very near twenty-seven feet long, and upwards ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... hot morning—my fourth, I think—as I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing: Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... these stupendous monuments of a former age were not the actual handiwork of the Incas. It is now considered practically certain that these Incas, themselves enlightened and progressive, were merely using the immense structures both of material masonry and of theoretical civilization left behind by a previous race whom the Children of the Sun had conquered and subdued. It is not improbable that this race was that of the Aymaras; in any case it is certain that the Empire of the Incas was not of old standing, and that they had not occupied ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... and looked up and down both streets. A few desultory pedestrians went walking hither and yon, leisurely, with no apparent purpose. It was the lull of supper hour and there was an orange glow that penetrated even down to the streets which were mere canyons between sombre, artificial cliffs of masonry. To the west a small patch of open sky glowed sulphurously through a smoke pall. A city was a poor place to spend time in—really live in, he thought. And Mary Louise—he wondered if she thought ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... nature presents to the view of the traveler vast ranges of walls of tolerable workmanship, so perfect indeed are those walls that I should have thought that nature had attempted here to rival the human art of masonry had I not recollected that she had first began her work. These walls rise to the hight in many places of 100 feet, are perpendicular, with two regular faces and are from one to 12 feet thick, each wall retains the same thickness at top which it possesses at bottom. The stone of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... beautiful wife on his arm. He marvelled at the vast white pile of the Fifth Avenue Hotel; he frowned at the Worth Monument; he stared inexhaustibly into the shop-windows; he exclaimed with admiration at the stupendous piles of masonry which contained the goods of New York's merchant princes. It seemed to be his opinion that the possessors of so much palpable wealth must be the true ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... which is a large garden, where beautiful masonry, flowers, trees and birds equally flourish, commemorates the capture of Delhi by Muhammad bin Sam in 1193, the battle being directed by his lieutenant, Kutb-ud-din. From that time until the Mutiny in 1857 Delhi was under Mohammedan rule. One of the ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... could be that frowned upon him he did not know, and he staggered around it, feeling it with his hands. It was of masonry and presently he came to what was evidently a door, which opened as he leaned against it. Its silent hospitality was not agreeable to him; the very thought of a possible German habitation roused him out of his fatigue and despair, ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... of size to fit the waistcoat pocket, we find the following brief sketch of the History of Freemasonry in England. This little Manual is "By a Brother of the Apollo Lodge, 711, Oxford," who acknowledges his obligation to Oliver and Preston, an article on Masonry, in the Encyclopaedia ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... but are now again hidden by plaster. At the south end of the south transept a low building seems to have existed: the walls of this were raised when the south transept was lengthened in the fourteenth century. The Norman masonry may be seen under the south window of the transept, and a Norman string course runs round the sides and ends of the present transept. The aisles of the nave were not only narrower, but were also lower, than those now existing. It is also probable that these aisles did not originally extend ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... to realize that there is any other life possible for them than a continuous nightmare existence amid monstrous buildings, noisy traffic, and the tainted air of unsanitary streets. They seem to have forgotten that the same sun that in summer scorches the towering masonry and paved sidewalks until the canyon-like streets become unbearable also shines on green woods, tumbling waters, and mirror-like lakes; or, if they are dimly conscious of this fact, they think such places are so far distant as to be practically out of their reach in every sense. ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... we saw the roofless towers of Dunluce Castle, on the sea-shore. It stands on an isolated rook, rising perpendicularly two hundred feet above the sea, and connected with the cliffs of the mainland by a narrow arch of masonry. On the summit of the cliffs were the remains of the buildings where the ancient lords kept their vassals. An old man, who takes care of it for Lord Antrim, on whose property it is situated, showed us the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... his hand; for that is an easy masonry, and its exercise need never be regretted even if it never be repeated. My wife once spent a plaintive day because she had wasted a hand-shake upon a caller whom she took to be an applicant for matrimony, whose emoluments were hers, ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... prefer mechanical pursuits, we have a printing-office, book-bindery, stereotype-foundry, lithographing and wood-engraving establishment, paint-shop, silk-weaving manufactory, and shoe-shop, as well as those trades which are carried on for the most part out of doors, such as masonry and carpentry. The girls are mostly employed in household duties, and are in great demand as servants and assistants in the households ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... with the sickly little trees—with a certain emotion, as men are wont to contemplate, after a long absence, the places familiar to their youth. Above the scattered growth the ancient church of Los Jeronimos, with its gothic masonry, outlined against the blue sky its twin towers and ruined arcades. The wintry foliage of the Retiro served as a background for the white mass of the Cason. Renovales thought of the frescos of Giordano that decorated its ceilings. Afterwards, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... questions about the physical state of the people. We ought to be able to say that the different orders of society were bound together by links of gratitude and regard: that they were not like layers of various coloured sand, but that they formed one solid whole of masonry, each part having its relation of use and ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... used almost exclusively as a structural material. It is an essential ingredient of concrete. Originally used chiefly for the bonding of brick and stone masonry and for foundation work, its uses have grown rapidly, especially with the introduction of reinforced concrete. It is being used in the construction of roads, and its latest ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... indicates to the drivers the location of the end of the culvert. The endwall extends a foot or more below the floor of the culvert to prevent water from cutting under the barrel. Plain concrete or stone masonry are most commonly used for ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... clattering drawbridges, looking down into the stagnant ditches, I become a prisoner of state, escaping. I am confined with a comrade in a fortress. Our room is in an upper story. We have tried to get up the chimney, but there's an iron grating across it, imbedded in the masonry. After months of labour, we have worked the grating loose with the poker, and can lift it up. We have also made a hook, and twisted our rugs and blankets into ropes. Our plan is, to go up the chimney, hook our ropes to the top, descend hand over hand upon the roof of the guard-house far ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... If your home basement—or one corner of it—is below ground level, your best and easiest action would be to prepare a permanent-type family shelter there. The required shielding material would cost perhaps $100-$200, and if you have basic carpentry or masonry skills you probably could do the work yourself ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense
... the bricks for this chapel. A large part of the timber is sawed by students at our own sawmill, the plans are drawn by our teacher of architecture and mechanical drawing, and students do the brick-masonry, plastering, painting, carpentry work, tinning, slating, and make most of the furniture. Practically, the whole chapel will be built and furnished by student labor; in the end the school will have the building for permanent use, and the students will have a knowledge of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Antonio came into very great credit with the Court. After this, the genius of Antonio repaired a great mischief brought about in the following manner: Raffaello da Urbino, in executing the Papal Loggie and the apartments that are over the foundations, had left many empty spaces in the masonry in order to oblige some friends, to the serious damage of the whole building, by reason of the great weight that had to be supported above them; and the edifice was already beginning to show signs of falling, on account of the weight being too great for ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... short time she found herself scrambling over bare rocks, with shrubbery on either hand and a looming mass of masonry stencilled against the sky ahead. This surely could not be the way. She turned back, lost herself, half stumbled and half fell down a sharp slope, plodded across another lawn and found another path, which led her northwards (though she had no means of knowing ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... liberate them from this oppression by suggesting that they join our army of socialists, anarchists, communists, to whom we always extend our help under the guise of the fraternal principles of the universal solidarity of our social masonry.... (Prot. 3.) ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... sound asleep. She had found comfort by twisting sideways in her chair and resting her shoulder against the warm rock-masonry of the outer edge of the fireplace. She awoke with a start. What had recalled her to consciousness she did not know. Perhaps a new voice in her ears, perhaps Poke Drury's tones become suddenly shrill. Or it may be that just a sudden sinking and ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... the hardest jobs I ever took on. My shoulder and arm ached like hell, and I was so sick and giddy that I was always on the verge of falling. But I managed it somehow. By the use of out-jutting stones and gaps in the masonry and a tough ivy root I got to the top in the end. There was a little parapet behind which I found space to lie down. Then I proceeded to go off ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... Dale's forehead deepened. Somewhere in the masonry of the fireplace, of course, was where old Luther Doyle had hidden his money. That was quite plain enough; and that Connie Myers, in some way or other, had made sure of that fact was equally obvious. But how did old Luther Doyle get his money IN there from time to ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... only kept him out of mischief for a time. No sooner had he obtained his freedom than he set his mind to work to turn his house in Worcestershire into a harbour of refuge for the followers of the older rites. In the quaint irregularities of the masonry free scope was given to "Little John's" ingenuity; indeed, there is every proof that some of his masterpieces were constructed here. A few years before the "Powder Plot" was discovered, it was a hanging matter for a priest to be caught celebrating the ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... we saw the spectres of the great pile of masonry on lower and mid-Manhattan. Spectres of the giant buildings; the familiar skyline, and mingled with it the ghostly gray outlines of the mountains and valley depths of Tako's world. All intermingled! The mountain peaks rose ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... man told him of a buried treasure, and gave him directions by means of which he could find the place. In the course of a year Smith did find it, and, visiting it by night, "I by some supernatural power" was enabled to overturn a huge boulder under which was a square block of masonry, in the centre of which were the articles as described. Taking up the first article, he saw others below; laying down the first, he endeavored to secure the others; but, before he could get hold of them, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... palisades, here and there armed with small batteries, were formed round the crown of the lofty headland, and the gates of the city were barricaded with massive beams of timber and casks filled with earth. A number of cannon were mounted on advantageous positions, and a large wind-mill of solid masonry was fitted up as a cavalier. The lower town was protected by two batteries each of three guns, and the streets leading up the steep, rocky face of the height were embarrassed with several intrenchments and rows of "chevaux de frise." Subsequently during the siege two other batteries ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... loungers, whose toes and heels had from year to year made restless movements against these parapets, as they had stood there meditating on the aspect of affairs. In the case of the more friable bricks and stones even the flat faces were worn into hollows by the same mixed mechanism. The masonry of the top was clamped with iron at each joint; since it had been no uncommon thing for desperate men to wrench the coping off and throw it down the river, in reckless defiance of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... would not be acceptable. Besides these esthetic conditions, wooden piles were rejected because the teredo, in this part of the Sound, is very active. At the same time, the owner did not care to incur the expense of a masonry pier of the size involved. Also, it was desired to unload on the pier all material for the house and grounds during construction, and coal and other supplies thereafter, thus necessitating a pier wide enough to allow access ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Reinforced Concrete Pier Construction • Eugene Klapp
... a crackling sound in the night on the Cathedral roof and a noise as of falling masonry. The belfry jackdaw said the frost was affecting the fabric, and as he had experienced many frosts it must have been so. In the morning it was seen that the Figure of the Lost Soul had toppled from its cornice and lay now in a broken mass on the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... across the vault, which was not a large place, a 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 Man • Bram Stoker
... cloisters of the Convocation House, raised the latch of a small wooden shed fixed in the angle of a buttress. Evidently well acquainted with the place, she was not long in finding a lantern and materials to light it, and inserting her fingers in a crevice of the masonry, from which the mortar had been removed, she ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... extended his hand toward the table, on which 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 of ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... in the garden, and whose resentment toward the village improvements of a paleface civilization found vigorous expression in kicking down the wall. It was at last decided to replace the retaining wall with one of heavier proportions and more solid masonry. On tearing down the wall the tradition of former years was recalled, for there sat the grim skeleton of an Indian, fully armed for war! The new wall included him as before, but to this day there is a point in the wall where stone and mortar cannot long contain the Indian spirit's wrath. This ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... stone of the lighthouse was cut and nicely fitted before being conveyed to the rock. Neither shall we tell of the difficulties that arose in the matter of getting blocks of granite large enough for such masonry, and lime of a nature strong enough to withstand the action of the salt sea. All this, and a great deal more of a deeply interesting nature, must remain untold, and be left entirely ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... across the 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, being intended, in fact, only ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Brest with the rest of the duchy definitely passed to the French crown. The advantages of the situation for a seaport town were first recognized by Richelieu, who in 1631 constructed a harbour with wooden wharves, which soon became a station of the French navy. Colbert changed the wooden wharves for masonry and otherwise improved the post, and Vauban's fortifications followed in 1680-1688. During the 18th century the fortifications and the naval importance of the town continued to develop. In 1694 an English squadron under John, 3rd Lord Berkeley, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... do not perfectly understand the choice I have to offer you. Follow me, I beseech you, to this window." And he led the way to one of the large windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on, "there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that, a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words; if you should find your disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such an extremity ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Libby Prison at Richmond, and John Brown's Engine House at Harper's Ferry, this is to the stranger the most interesting piece of scenery in the Old Dominion. So firm and substantial is the masonry that it is supposed to have been standing long before the English settlement of the country. Some learned writers think that those stately abutments are too massive for the red man of the forest to have constructed. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... the hill-tops we came in sight of Orte, with its irregular lines of building clinging to the sides of its precipitous cliff in such eyrie-wise that it is difficult to say what is house and what is rock, and whether the arched passages with which it is pierced are masonry or natural grottoes; and there was the Tiber—already the yellow Tiber—winding through the valley as far as eye could follow. Here we waited for the train, which was ten minutes late, and tried to make ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... passage of birth and death from life to larger life. On the other side of the mountain lay the sun-bathed Valley and the Ridge with its silver cataracts and the opal peak with the glistening snow cross. This side, the Mountain in the Valley of the Shadow became giant beveled masonry, tier on tier, criss-crossed and scarred by the iced cataracts of a billion years—no sound but the raucous scream of the lone eagle, the hollow hush of the far River, the tinkling of the water-drip freezing as it fell. Then, where the cleft of blue ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... discovered in the vaults. These ancient kitchen offices, built to resist a siege, are exceedingly interesting in the light of our culinary arrangements of to-day. They were so constructed that if the buildings above, with their massive masonry, were destroyed, they would afford safe and comfortable refuge. The roof is arched, and, like the walls, is several feet thick, of solid stone, lighted by heavily barred windows, with strong iron shutters. In clearing out the walled-up and long-forgotten ovens, there were found bits of broken ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... a four foot masonry wall around the Gething country-place ("farm" they call it). The horse saw it and began jerking at his bit and dancing, for ever since colt-hood walls had had but one ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... too much predilection for the mechanical arts; masonry and lock-making so delighted him that he admitted into his private apartment a common locksmith, with whom he made keys and locks; and his hands, blackened by that sort of work, were often, in my presence, the subject of remonstrances and even sharp reproaches from the Queen, who would have ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... ever been known to cast a line within half a mile of that dreaded spot. For Lost Island was the "haunted castle" of the neighborhood. It was nothing more than a large, weed-and-willow- covered five acres, a wrecked dam jutting out from the east bank, and a great gaunt pile of foundation masonry standing high and dry on a bare knoll at ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... pergola is usually made of materials to match the house, sometimes masonry or stone pillars as well as those of wood. The rafters and lighter beams should be made of the most durable wood, preferably cypress, and carefully painted. The pillars may be of classic design or of more modern lines, but if they are of a thickness greater ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... splendour of white walls and a scarlet covering. But from such objects the traveller soon turns his eyes away, that he may fix them on the bold and isolated crag, the summit of which is crowned by what he naturally mistakes for masonry; but which, on a more minute inspection, he discovers to be, for the most part, the rock itself. There stands what is now described as the Einsiedlerstein,—that is, the stony dwelling of the hermit; a grievous misnomer surely,—for though the last occupant of ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... fully justify the astonishing description given of the building by Procopius. That writer informs us that in order to get a level surface for the erection of the edifice, it was necessary, on the east and south sides of the hill, to raise up a wall of masonry from the valley below, and to construct a vast foundation, partly composed of solid stone and partly of arches and pillars. The stones were of such magnitude that each block required to be transported in a truck drawn by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... surface offers facilities for this purpose,—the walks being carried through the heads of valleys which are crossed by the carriage-ways upon arches of masonry. Now with regard to these archways, if no purposes of convenience were to be served by them, the Park would not, we may admit, be beautified by them. But we assume that the population of New York is to be doubled; that, when it is so, if not sooner, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... architect who wrought this great work—traversing the Roman custom of erecting a complete building on level ground—followed the Grecian custom of hollowing out a hill-side and of facing the open cutting with a structure of masonry: which completed the tiers of seats cut in the living rock; provided in its main body the postscenium, and in its wings the dressing-rooms; and, rising in front to a level with the colonnade which crowned and surrounded the auditorium, made at once the outer facade ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... is not very deep and terminates by a segment, cut out of a masonry work outwardly square; entirely devoted to the sanctuary, it only contains the high-altar, the twenty four stalls of the chapter and a necessary room to perform divine worship. In 1878 an accompanying organ has been erected on the left side. ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... Weeds and long grass were growing over blocks of stone that lay at hand. A wallflower had forced itself into root on the sill of a giant oriel. The effect was startling. A fabric which he who conceived it must have founded for posterity,—so solid its masonry, so thick its walls,—and thus abruptly left to moulder; a palace constructed for the reception of crowding guests, the pomp of stately revels, abandoned to owl and bat. And the homely old house beside it, which that lordly hall was doubtless ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and after eight years spent in cutting down forests, in blasting rocks, in building embankments to carry the canal across swamps, and high aqueducts to carry it over the rivers, and locks of solid masonry to enable the boats to go up and down the sides of ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... had time, the matter would be easy enough. I should make a deep chamber in the solid rock, at the side of the tunnel; insert my charge, and then tamp or fasten it in, with masonry. This would ensure its destruction, at the point of explosion; but I have no hope of any great damage being done, by merely putting two barrels of nitroglycerine down upon the line, and then firing them. I can assure you the point mooted by the doctor is more serious and, as ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... celebrated, stupendous wall, which has been erected since the failure of the cones. It is just visible at low water. This surprising work is six miles in length, and three hundred french feet in breadth, and is composed of massy stones and masonry, which have been sunk for the purpose, and which are now cemented, by sea weed, their own weight and cohesion, into one immense mass of rock. Upon this wall a chain of forts is intended to be erected, as ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... in regard to the cause of the fall. According to one of these, the superstructure was suddenly wrenched from its bearings upon the pier, and was horizontally displaced by an impulse such that, when it touched the masonry, its up-stream girder struck the center of the pier, upon which it divided, while the down-stream one was already in space. The fall would have afterward continued without the superstructure meeting the face of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... builders of cities, and in their time rapid strides in civilization appear by tradition to have been made in the Peloponnesus. The Pelasgic architecture is often confounded with the Cyclopean. The Pelasgic masonry is polygonal, each stone fitting into the other without cement; that called the Cyclopean, and described by Pausanias, is utterly different, being composed by immense blocks of stone, with small pebbles inserted in the interstices. (See Gell's Topography of Rome and its Vicinity.) By some antiquaries, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eighty feet in height, gas vies with moon in chequering illuminations on the ancient walls; Etruscan mouldings, Roman letters, high-piled hovels, suburban world-old dwellings plastered like martins' nests against the masonry. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... wall to scale, nearly twice my own height, and without notch or cranny in the ancient, solid masonry. I stood against it on my toes, and I touched it with my finger-tips as high up as possible. Some four feet severed them from the coping that left only half a sky above my ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... flattened to the masonry, legs apart, and head thrown back, Darkey's companion felt more secure, and his mercurial spirits began to revive. He took off his cap, and brushing back his light brown curly hair with the hand which held it, he looked down at Darkey through half-closed eyes, the play of his features divided between ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... this piece is a city in ruins. There is massive masonry: the place was once handsomely built and decorated and held by warriors, but now all tumbled about; works of art exposed to view and forming a strange contrast with the desolation around; there is a wide pool of water, hot without fire; ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... but are likewise exercised in it themselves. Besides agriculture, which is so common to them all, every man has some peculiar trade to which he applies himself; such as the manufacture of wool or flax, masonry, smith's work, or carpenter's work; for there is no sort of trade that is in great esteem among them. Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes, without any other distinction except what is necessary to distinguish ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... conclusions; but the Dame will have none of them, though here was a creature bent on masonry-work in his act of thinking, to build a traveller's-rest for thinkers behind him; while the volatile ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was meant to be an adaptation of a Spanish villa, in two wings, with a long elevation upon the ravine connecting the two. There was also to be a complicated set of terraces and forecourt, formal gardens, pool, and orangery, which required an immense amount of masonry work that had scarce been begun. Nevertheless they attempted to install themselves in spite of the fact that the workmen were cluttered all over the place, and moved into the wing that was most nearly completed, husband and wife occupying a ground floor suite that was ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... still I see. This drear, accursed masonry, Where even the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes. Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep, Against ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... needle slimness, solid blocks of almost windowless masonry looking twice as bulky beside those same towers, archways stringing at dizzy heights above the ground from one skyscraper to the next. And here time and nature had been at work. Some of the towers were broken off, ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... an inhabited place into a rubbish heap. They could not well have chosen a brisker hour for the promised visit. The shells were coming in three and four to the minute. There was a sound of falling masonry. The blur of red brick-dust in the air, and the fires from a half dozen blazing houses, filled the eyes with hot prickles. The street was a mess over which the motor veered and tossed like a careening boat in a heavy seawash. In the other car, their leader, brave, perky little Dr. McDonnell, sat ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... House, so called, was in reality that part of the monastery which had been devoted to the use of successive generations of priors. It was, like the ruins that lay to its rear, entirely built of grey masonry, rendered greyer still by the lichens that fed upon its walls, which were of exceeding strength and thickness. It was a long, irregular building, and roofed with old and narrow tiles, which from red had, in the course of ages, faded to sober russet. The banqueting- hall ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... hope or expectation of reward. As in the oldest temples and catacombs of Egypt, so this type likewise abounds in the ruined cities of Mexico and Central America, graven as well upon the most ancient cyclopean and polygonal walls as upon the more modern and perfect examples of masonry; and is displayed in an equally conspicuous manner upon the breasts of innumerable bronze statuettes which have been recently disinterred from the cemetery of Juigalpa (of unknown antiquity) ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... but conquer you; and why not? All history shows that nothing is unconquerable except perseverance. Hannibal conquered the Alps, and I'll conquer you," cried Triplet, firmly. "Yes, this visit is not lost; here I register a vow: I will force my way into that mountain of masonry, or perish in ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... captured by the British by successive pushes in which the "tanks" again demonstrated their value. Leading the way, these monsters waddled through the village, shattering barricades, crushing their way through masonry and creating general alarm among the German troops, who saw these formidable war ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... weak and pale, but trusting the Indian girl, replied "Yes." The young artist-miner had never seen such stupendous masonry; the granite walls that surrounded the valley were a succession of peaks and domes, from three thousand to four thousand feet high, all eloquent in thought and design. Alfonso began sketching, but Mariposa motioned him to put his paper aside, and the six Indian ponies with their ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... away from human habitations, in the jungle. I have done so; but in that particular jungle, buried beneath the soil, were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin to attach itself to the works of man, to walls and buildings? And why? Does it derive peculiar sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel wondrously when the plant is ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... twenty thousand tons of earth, stone, and rubble above the turning of the arches, and the pulling down those enemies of Dr. Johnson commenced by the removal of the keystone of the second arch on the Surrey side. The masonry of the arches proved to be rather thinner than it appeared to be, and was stuffed with river ballast, mixed with bones and small old-fashioned pipes. The bridge had taken nearly ten years to build; it was entirely demolished in less than a year, and rebuilt in two. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... subterranean, the roof being but a little above the ground on the side toward the village, but as the rocky site slopes away a portion of side wall is exposed. This was roughly built, with no attempt to impart finish to its outer face, either by careful laying of the masonry or by plastering. Pl. XXXIII illustrates this kiva in connection with the southeastern portion of the village. The plan shows how the prolongation of the side rows of the village forms a suggestion of a second court. Its development ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... ribbon of light. It shone from a rock less than half a league distant: and on that rock stood a castle which was a furnace—its walls black as the bars of a grate, its windows aglow with contained fire. For the moment it seemed that this fire filled the whole pile of masonry: but presently, while we stood and stared, a sudden flame, shooting high from the walls, lit up the front of a tall tower above them, with a line of battlements at its base and on the battlements a range of roofs yet intact. As though a slide had been opened and as rapidly shut again, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... 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 still ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... in time, for his clothes, heated by his rapid flight through the air, were already beginning to singe. He came down with a forcible, but by no means injurious, bump in what appeared to be a mound of fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarily like the clock-tower in the middle of the market square, hit the earth near him, ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, and cement, like a bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocks and smashed like an egg. There was a crash that made all the most ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... senate, on the occasion of a great victory. When decreed, the general returned to Rome, and was appointed by a special edict to the supreme command in the city; on the day of his entry, a triumphal arch was erected of sculptured masonry, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... sudden crumbling shudder of masonry told the Billionaire not a moment was to be lost, for already one wing of the Administration Building was ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... their general features were the sepulchral usages connected with barrow-burial over the whole of Europe, that we find the Anglo-Saxon Saga of Beowulf describing the chambered tumulus with its gigantic masonry "held fast on props, with vaults of stone," and the passage under the mound haunted by a dragon, the guardian of the treasures of heathen gold which it contained. Beowulf's own burial is minutely described in terms which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... and I am not going to have my good Dyce buried in a cellar kitchen; and one had no bathroom, and another was all stairs; and they are all nothing but brick and mortar with a scrap of sky between. I want trees and water and fields. The poor souls have enough of masonry in their ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... fortress, a Byzantine construction covering a large expanse of ground and rebuilt by the French on theatrical lines, with bastions and crenellations and other warlike pomp; thousands of blocks of Roman masonry have been wrought into its old walls, which are now smothered under a modern layer of plaster divided into square fields, to imitate solid stonework. It looks best in the moonlight, when this childish ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... about the south-west corner, in a place they call the Devil's Elbow. I have never met that celebrity; nor (if the rest of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry, the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building. I had never the heart to look for any length of time—the thought that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me of breath; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here? That's a piece of the old city wall,' said Neigh, looking furtively around at the same time. Behind the bastion the churchyard ran into a long narrow strip, grassed like the other part, but completely hidden from it by the cylinder of ragged masonry. On rounding this projection, Ladywell beheld within a few feet of him a lady ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... homely feeling. You see where they camped and the river they looked at—a gentle-running, sapphire stream with yellow-grey stones showing across it, not much more than a hundred yards across when we saw it—and the big double masonry wall beyond it which they battered and scaled. Barring the trees and bushes that have grown on the walls, the battering looks as if it had only been done yesterday. We spent the morning going over the walls, without a guide or guide-book, trying to pick up the hang ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... she walked with no uncertain tread to the right-hand wall of the mantel and pushed back a double panel of the wainscoting, revealing the muzzle of a steel safe let into the masonry of the wall. A few deft twirls opened the combination, and the metal door swung outward. Within the recess the pigeonholes were crammed with papers and morocco jewel cases. Pressing a secret spring, a second door jarred open in the left inner wall. From this receptacle she withdrew ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... of mental development or training," said Mr. Carleton, "which must fail of pleasing many minds, because of their wanting the corresponding key of nature or experience. Some literature has a hidden free-masonry of ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mind, And through the cloud of barbarous ignorance Diffused the beams of knowledge . . . . They saw indeed, they heard, but what availed Or sight or hearing, all things round them rolling, Like the unreal imagery of dreams In wild confusion mixed! The lightsome wall Of finer masonry, the raftered roof They knew not; but like ants still buried, delved Deep in the earth and scooped their sunless caves. Unmarked the seasons ranged, the biting winter, The flower-perfumed spring, the ripening summer Fertile ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... with it, that I came in some unconscious way to regard her fate as my own; and when I began to write the sketches which go to form this book, it was as hard to speak of any ugliness in her, or of the doom written against her in the hieroglyphic seams and fissures of her crumbling masonry, as if the fault and penalty were mine. I do not so greatly blame, therefore, the writers who have committed so many sins of omission concerning her, and made her all light, color, canals, and palaces. One's conscience, more or less uncomfortably vigilant elsewhere, drowses ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... wrenched and twisted by its enormous couple of angular momentum, the hexan works came up out of the ground as a waterpipe comes up in the teeth of a power shovel. The ground trembled and rocked and boulders, fragments of concrete masonry, and masses of metal flew in all directions as that city-encircling conduit of diabolical machinery ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the city with a cloud of black smoke. It was calculated that from fifteen hundred to two thousand of the mutineers and rabble of the town were killed by the falling walls, or crushed under the masses of masonry. Lieutenants Willoughby, Forrest, Rayner, and Conductor Buckley survived the explosion, and effected their retreat in the confusion through a small sallyport on the river face. The mutineers were so enraged by their misfortune that they rushed to the palace and demanded of the king ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... 3 to 4 inches in diameter, and as a rule projected into the wall but 5 to 8 inches. In some places in the northern wall, however, they extended into the masonry as much as 3 feet 3 inches. The beams were doubtless cut by guess, at the place where trees of the requisite size were found, according to the method employed by the Pueblo Indians today, and if, as supposed, the northern room was built after the rest of the structure, the excess in length would ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... tumbledown condition) which had once vied with a palace,—we mean Nonesuch House. The other buildings stood close together in rows; and so valuable was every inch of room accounted, that, in many cases, cellars, and even habitable apartments, were constructed in the solid masonry of ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... slipped the iron bar from the masonry into which it had been fixed and began to lower himself from the window. The back of the jail faced on the bank of a creek; and into the aspens, which ran along it at this point in a little grove, the fugitive pushed his way. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... principal architectural features, and especially the "Konak" (palace), which was, beyond all disguise of light or circumstance, an eyesore and a nuisance, the more so that its foundations were fine old brown stone masonry, delicious in color, solid, and showing at one end a pointed arched vault, with its portward end fallen down to show the interior, and crowned with an enormous mass of cactus. On the south side, invisible from the port, are three fine Gothic windows, now filled up, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... apparently, in the grit by the action of water; and about halfway down the fall a mass of rock had recently slipped, leaving a bright scar, through which one saw, as it were, the inner mass of the Peak, the rectangular blocks, now thick, now thin, as of some Cyclopean masonry, wherewith the earth-forces had built it up in days before a single alp had yet risen on the face of Europe. Below the boy's feet a precipice, which his projecting stone overhung, fell to the bed of the stream. On this side at least they ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Count de Warren's very curious book, "British India in 1831:" "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
... places the solid part of the structure at the base of the Reef,—it fills in the interstices with a lighter growth,—it crowns the summit with the more delicate kinds, that yield to the action of the tides and are easily crushed into the fine sand that forms the soil,—it makes a masonry solid, compact, time-defying, such a masonry as was needed by the great Architect, who meant that these smallest creatures of His hand should help to build ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... 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
... longing to 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 not felt sure that the structure of the building was such that no watch was needed ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... fifty feet in diameter, two feet thick, and fifty-four feet high. The inner curb, or wall, is thirty-five feet in diameter and two feet thick, having a depth of ten feet. The masonry, as seen from the top of the structure, is a marvel of neatness and solidity. The water surface in the well is thirteen feet above high-tide level, and the depth of water in the well is fourteen feet. The pump foundations ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... heavy seas have often been observed, in the present state of the building, to rise to the height of fifty feet, and fall with a tremendous noise on the beacon-house, yet such seas were not likely to make any impression on a mass of solid masonry, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... themselves on it. It was screened half-way up by a sheet of iron with a toothed edge, and its rusty spikes did not rise more than ten feet above the ground. In the centre, between two pillars of masonry surmounted by cast-iron vases, the railing formed a gate opening in the middle, filled in across its lower part, and furnished, on the inside, with ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France |
