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Mortar   Listen
noun
Mortar  n.  A chamber lamp or light. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mortar" Quotes from Famous Books



... the very bark of trees" they esteemed as delicacies. "They would pick up old bones and cut them in pieces at the joints, ... then boil them and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar and so eat them." After some weeks of starvation Mrs. Rowlandson herself was fain to partake of such viands. One day, having made a cap for one of Philip's boys, she was invited to dine with the great sachem. "I went," she says, "and he gave me a pancake ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... it 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

... The builder has no mortar for binding the blocks together, and therefore he must make his joints smooth and even and force in loose snow to fill up the crevices. A little experience will enable one to do this work well, and the construction ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... as Tom's, boomed out over the loud-speaker of the large jet ship near the edge of the clearing. "Now hear this! You are covered by an atomic mortar. Drop your guns and ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... kinds. Sometimes the hunters dig a hole in the ground near the spot where the lion is in the habit of passing by night; over this hole they throw branches of trees, which they cover with stones and mortar; they then place some bait near, which can be commanded through holes made in the covering, and when the lion approaches to examine the carcase, he is immediately brought down. Another way of shooting is from a tree. ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... continue to employ the primitive method of treating rice-paddy for domestic and local use. The grain is generally husked by them in a large mortar hewn from a block of molave, or other hardwood, in which it is beaten by a pestle. Sometimes two or three men or women with wooden pestles work at the same mortar. This mortar is termed, in Tagalog dialect, Luzon, the name given to the largest island of the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... acquaintance, who had the superintendence of the mines in this province. A certain mineral is found in these mountains, which yields fibres resembling wool: After being thoroughly dried in the sun, this substance is pounded in a brass mortar, and then washed to remove all earthy impurities; and the clean fibrous matter is spun in the same manner as wool, and woven into cloth. When this cloth requires to be cleaned or whitened, it is thrown into the fire for an hour, and is then taken out unhurt, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. The whole is greater than the part: how exceedingly true! Nature abhors a vacuum: how exceedingly false and calumnious! Again, Nothing can act but where it is: with all my heart; only, WHERE is it? Be not the slave of Words: is not the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... rank, connections, custom, all rule only the surface of city existence. The streets, bordered by splendid houses, are kept neat; and every one behaves himself there properly enough: but, indoors, it often seems only so much the more disordered; and a smooth exterior, like a thin coat of mortar, plasters over many a rotten wall that tumbles together overnight, and produces an effect the more frightful, as it comes into the midst of a condition of repose. A great many families, far and near, I had seen already, either overwhelmed in ruin or kept miserably hanging ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... their implements exceedingly crude, and yet they were able to convey these enormous blocks of stones for vast distances, over routes most difficult, and having accomplished this, to raise them to great height, and fit them in place without the aid of either cement or mortar to cover up the errors of the stonecutter. How all this was done is one of the enigmas of modern science. It has been generally believed that inclined planes of earth were used to enable the workmen to raise the huge stones ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... 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 ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... common sort only tie a piece of cloth or skin round the middle. As for their food they boil, broil, or roast, all the meat they eat; honomy is the standing dish, and consists of Indian corn soaked, broken in a mortar, and then boiled in water over a gentle fire ten or twelve hours together. They draw and pluck their fowls, skin and paunch their quadrupeds, but dress their fish with the scales on, and without gutting; they leave ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... says Stendhal, who seized the master-idea of the reign, "there was no apothecary's apprentice in his back shop, surrounded by his drugs and bottles, filtering and pounding away in his mortar, who did not say to himself that, if he chanced to make some great discovery, he would be made a count with fifty ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... That 'twas deemed unfit to linger On its public, broad arena, In the center of the township. Down it fell one day thereafter, (In eighteen hundred and eleven, Of the ever moving cycle,) And a nobler and a better, Made of brick and stone and mortar, Reared its ghostly head among us, Reared its high and white cupola, With its bell and towering belfry, Clanging far and clanging nearer, Tolling loud and tolling softly, Ringing forth the day's proceedings. Strangers, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... which his diplomacy suggested. In fact Sir Winterton was very hard to manage; the Dean understood the Quisante position better and better; Mrs. Baxter gave up her efforts; she had an almost exaggerated belief in the inutility of braying fools in a mortar; she was content to show them the mortar, and if that were not enough to leave them alone. Only the wife persevered, for she thought neither of herself nor of what was right, but only of what might serve her husband. To the meetings he would ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... a king," said the little figure, "a great king, and I was lustful and proud and cruel. I made wars, I devastated countries, I built palaces, and the mortar was the blood of men. Hear, O God, the witnesses against me, calling to you for vengeance. Hundreds and thousands of witnesses." He waved his hands towards us. "And worse! I took a prophet—one of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... effects of manufactures and of agriculture may be seen and compared. The old cottages are such as the poet and the painter equally delight in beholding. Substantially built of the native stone without mortar, dirtied with no white lime, and their long low roofs covered with slate, if they had been raised by the magic of some indigenous Amphion's music, the materials could not have adjusted themselves more beautifully in accord with the surrounding scene; and time has still ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... abundance, 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 most part, by an abrupt precipice; but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... 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 Isabelle upon it, clad in a plain linen garment. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... of machines, on the other hand, may be compared to a complete workman. Thus, the action of the mill which grinds grain has very little resemblance to the blowing of the wind or the running of the water, whereas the rising and falling of the pestle in the small mortar for throwing grenades corresponds to the motion of the arm. (Rau, Lehrbuch I, 125.) The infinite number of functions of which our members are capable is related to their inability to attain alone the greater number ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... green and rank weeds, such as dock, thistles, hemlock, &c. to a good thickness: Thus let it continue near a fortnight, by which time 'twill become a perfect mucilage: Then pound it all exceedingly in a stone mortar, 'till it be a tough past, and so very fine, as no part of the bark be discernable: This done, wash it accurately well in some running stream of water, as long as you perceive the least ordure or motes in it, and so reserve it in some earthen-pot, to purge and ferment, scumming ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... upper layers of sooty curls Where some long lightning goes like swallows downward, But at the wider gallery next below Recognise master-masons with pricked parchments: That builder then, as one who condescends Unto the sea and all that is beneath him, His hairy breast on the wet mortar, calls 'How many fathoms is it yet to heaven!' On the next eminence the orgulous king Nimroud stands up conceiving he shall live To conquer god, now that he knows where god is: His eager hands push up the tower in thought ... Again, his shaggy inhuman height strides down Among the carpenters ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... wall was seven feet thick, and formed of bricks and stones. Trenck numbered them as he went on with the greatest care, so that the cell might present its usual appearance before the Wednesday visit of his guards. To hide the joins, he scraped off some of the mortar, which he smeared over ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... that she . . . But she is a woman of women! With a father-in-law! Just heaven! Could I have stood by her then with the same feelings of reverence? A very little, my love, and everything gained for us by civilization crumbles; we fall back to the first mortar-bowl we were bruised and stirred in. My thoughts, when I take my stand to watch by her, come to this conclusion, that, especially in women, distinction is the thing to be aimed at. Otherwise we are a weltering human mass. Women ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of the fountain Ardvi-cura, and distilling the beverage of immortality. The Aryans of India connected a similar idea with their Soma, for the fermented liquor that they produced by pounding its branches in a mortar, and offered as a libation to their gods, is named by them Amritam, "ambrosia draught that renders immortal." The Haoma and its sacred juice is also called "that which keeps off death," in the ninth chapter of the Yacna of the Zoroastrians. It is for this reason that, both with the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... platform upon the beacon, about twenty-five feet above the highest part of the rock. This platform was to be used as the site of the smith's forge, after the beacon should be fitted up as a barrack; and here also the mortar was to be mixed and prepared for the building, and it was accordingly ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Mary, produced by the successive depositions of mud during the annual inundations of the river, and covered with water only during those inundations. At all other seasons it has been used by the city immemorially to furnish earth for raising their streets and courtyards, for mortar, and other necessary purposes, and as a landing or quay for unlading firewood, lumber, and other articles brought by water. This having been lately claimed, by a private individual, the city opposed the claim on a supposed legal title in itself; but it has been adjudged that the legal title was not ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... their own means of defence, they might most materially have annoyed the invading squadron, and perhaps frustrated the impending attack; for the British ships were crowded in an anchoring ground of little extent:—it was calm, so that mortar-boats might have acted against them to the utmost advantage; and they were within range of shells from Amak Island. A few fell among them; but the enemy soon ceased to fire. It was learned afterwards, that, fortunately for the fleet, the bed of the mortar had given ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... professional opinions to advance themselves officiously to his lips whenever occasion offered. The building was, in short, a recently-erected chapel of red brick, with pseudo-classic ornamentation, and the white regular joints of mortar could be seen streaking its surface in geometrical oppressiveness from top to bottom. The roof was of blue slate, clean as a table, and unbroken from gable to gable; the windows were glazed with sheets of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... with tile; and although everyone placed decided obstacles in the way, he set about this himself, and put great effort into it, even to the seeking and opening of quarries, and procuring the making of mortar and roof-tiles. Through his diligence, the result was obtained and great increase followed therefrom to the said city, for he built houses with the utmost toil and expense. Thereupon many of the citizens began to do the same, and the city has been made ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair

... inhabitants of that earlier world are watching me, and that not far away the waters of Neva are gathering, gathering, gathering their mighty momentum for some instant, when, with a great heave and swell, they will toss the whole fabric of brick and mortar from their shoulders, flood the streets and squares, and then sink tranquilly back into great sheets of unruffled waters marked only with reeds and the sharp cry of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and when so treated it divides as it were into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded in a great copper mortar, and then washed, so as to remove all the earth and to leave only the fibres like fibres of wool. These were then spun, and made into napkins. When first made these napkins are not very white, but by putting them into the fire ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... I had found it. I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking out the procureur du roi, and I had sought in vain. He was nowhere to be found. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a deserted cloister ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... 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 to them. "We have thus"—Stier ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... with the scaffolding at the side. Take care you don't step in that mortar. These fellows seem to slap their stuff around and don't give ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... of curiosities a large pile of walnut timber which had formed John Brown's scaffold, and to make extensive inroads in prying with their bayonets from the walls of the jail in which he had been confined pieces of stone and mortar. Guards were put upon the Court House in which old John heard his doom with the dignity of a Cato, at an early date, or it would have been hewn to pieces. A fine crop of corn in full leaf was growing upon the field of execution, and for a space of ten feet from the road-side the leaves had been ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... was a bad Indian, he wanted to kill me. By this time the young squaw, the daughter of the old chief, whom I traveled in company with that evening, had prepared a good supper for me; it was hominy beat in a mortar, as white and as handsome as I ever saw, and well cooked; she fried some dried meat, pounded very fine in a mortar, in oil, then sprinkled sugar very plentifully over it. I ate very hearty; indeed, it was all very good and well cooked. When I was done eating, the old chief told me to eat ...
— Narrative of the Captivity of William Biggs among the Kickapoo Indians in Illinois in 1788 • William Biggs

... caught in a stone trough. Attention had been given to the trees. Below me stood a wall, which, though rough, was not the haphazard thing men pile up in the last recesses of the hills, but formed of chosen stones, and these bound together with mortar. On my right was a deep little dale with children playing in it—and this' I afterwards learned was called a 'combe': delightful memory! All our deeper hollows are called the same at home, and even the Welsh have the word, but they spell it cwm; it ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... knick-knacks and pieces of china; mostly droll, impudent little things. On the walls hung pictures of trades unions and assemblies and large photographs of workshops; one of a building during construction, with the scaffolding full of the bricklayers and their mortar-buckets beside them, each with a trowel or a beer-bottle can in his hand. On the wall over the sofa hung a large half-length portrait of a dark, handsome man in a riding-cloak. He looked half a dreamy adventurer, half ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... the Monkey, in high glee, carrying his pot. By-and-by he came to a place, where was a Cowherd's wife making curds in a mortar. ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... advance of the Versailles troops, had abandoned its headquarters at the mairie of the Eleventh Arrondissement, and had gone to Belleville. Amazed and confused by this intelligence, the mob followed its leaders. Only a few minutes before it left, two guns and a mortar had been brought to fire on the prison; they were now dragged away in the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... she by the crystal window, Sat and rocked, in peace and plenty, Evenings for her father's pleasure, Mornings for her mother's sunshine. Never mayest thou, O bridegroom, Lead the Maiden of the Rainbow To the mortar filled with sea-grass, There to grind the bark for cooking, There to bake her bread from stubble, There to knead her dough from tan-bark Never in her father's dwelling, Never in her mother's mansion, Was she taken to the mortar, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... their bows and arrows and flew away over the mountains to the south. The old men said to the Indian, "What do you want? Who are you?" He told his mission, and they deliberated what to do. Finally they took him and put him in a mortar and pounded him up so that all his bones were broken. Then they took him out and gave him wings and a bow and arrows, and sent him away. They told him he must not go near the trees, for if he did he would go so fast that he could not stop, but would get caught ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes

... mausoleum is built of granite, the epitaph inscribed with letters of gold, the pavement and lining marble, and tessellated with slabs of turquoise; and what is there left of your father's tomb but two or three bricks cemented together with a few handfuls of mortar?" The poor man's son heard this, and answered: "I pray you peace! for before your father can stir himself under this heavy load of stone mine shall have risen up to heaven!" And there is a tradition of the prophet, that death to the poor is a state of rest. That ass proceeds all ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... New Orleans ain't hilarious. Damned mortar boats bombard and bombard!—four ships, they say, against Fort Saint Philip, more against Fort Jackson. Air full of shells. Farragut may try to run forts and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... success, he proceeded with fresh ardour, and the rapidity of his progress was proclaimed by the heap of bricks, stones, and mortar which before long covered the floor. At the expiration of an hour, by dint of unremitting exertion, he had made so large a breach in the chimney, that he could stand upright in it. He was now within a foot of the bar, and introducing himself into the hole, speedily worked ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... 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 in the horror ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... to cut off the retreat of the garrison. The next day proving too rough for the ships to co-operate with the troops, the attack was postponed; but on the 17th the work was begun in earnest by the English mortar-boats, which first opened fire on the devoted fort. The French floating batteries followed suit, throwing their shot and shell with effective precision, while the enemy's round-shot dropped harmless from their iron sides, their shells shivering ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... iron mortar where the grains of corn were crushed to make the delicious hominy Kentuckians are so fond of. When rightly prepared each grain stands out like the beautiful white-plumed corn captains and colonels that dance up so gaily over beds of live coals. There were made also the ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... borders of the sopping sidewalks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. Here and there in the vacant lots abandoned hoopskirts defied decay; and near the half-finished wooden houses empty mortar-beds and bits of lath and slate, strewn over the scarred and mutilated ground, added their ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... except in English,—that is, in that compound of Teutonic and Romanic which derives its heartiness and strength from the one and its canorous elegance from the other. The Saxon language does not sing, and, though its tough mortar serve to hold together the less compact Latin words, porous with vowels, it is to the Latin that our verse owes majesty, harmony, variety, and the capacity for rhyme. A quotation of six lines from Wither ends at the top of the very page on which Mr. Parr lays ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... invention consists of a proposal to the Londoners of a cheap substitute for coal, devised by a "Mr. Richard Gesling, Ingineer, late deceased." Mr. Gesling's idea was that, if you take brickdust, mortar, sawdust, or the like, and make up pasteballs thereof mingled with the dust of sea-coal or Scotch coal, and with stable-litter, you will have a fuel much more economical than coal itself. But, though this is the practical proposal of the fly-sheet, its main interest lies in its ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... to know a quaint, dreamy old region in the west of London, which bricks and mortar have not, as yet, overtaken, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... from seeing what is going on behind your own scenes, he is setting the stage for the thrilling sawmill scene in Blue Jeans. You can distinctly feel the circular saw at work and you can taste a hod of mortar and a bucket of hot tar and one thing and another that have been left in the wings. You also judge that the insulation is burning off of an electric fixture ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... reaching to the wall where were the innumerable doors, all of which led to this huge, terrific court. The walls were constructed with the sculls of men, which grinned horribly with their teeth. The clay was black, and was prepared with tears and sweat; and the mortar on the outside was variegated with phlegm and pus, and on the inside with black-red blood. On the top of each turret, you might see a little death, with a smoking heart stuck on the point of ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... not known why Ffrith farm was troubled by a Ghost; but when the servants were busily engaged in cheese making the Spirit would suddenly throw mortar, or filthy matter, into the milk, and thus spoil the curds. The dairy was visited by the Ghost, and there he played havoc with the milk and dishes. He sent the pans, one after the other, around the room, and dashed them to pieces. The terrible doings of the Ghost was a topic of general conversation ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... by the thrifty Polton, dropped into an agate mortar, and speedily reduced to powder, a tiny pinch of which Thorndyke placed ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... but there was a peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along, mournful and anxious; he was distinctly aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Suddenly he stood still and saw a man ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... one could not pronounce. It was impossible to tell what was his calling and what he did. When, a fortnight before, Fyodor had gone to take his measure, he, the customer, was sitting on the floor pounding something in a mortar. Before Fyodor had time to say good-morning the contents of the mortar suddenly flared up and burned with a bright red flame; there was a stink of sulphur and burnt feathers, and the room was filled with a thick pink smoke, so that Fyodor sneezed five times; and as he returned home afterwards, he ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... safe. It seems not improbable that the old cellars of Mandvi Kolivada were originally the colouring-ponds of the fishermen, which, as building progressed and crowding set in, were enclosed with tiles and brick and mortar and utilised as store-rooms. ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... existence have stood for hundreds of years with the waves of unbelieving criticism breaking against them, never totally discrediting them in the ears of the faithful, but on the whole slowly and surely washing out the mortar from between their joints. If you have a God already whom you believe in, these arguments confirm you. If you are atheistic, they fail to set you right. The proofs are various. The "cosmological" one, so-called, reasons from the contingence of the world to a First Cause which must ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... combiner, that every house has had a builder, and that every machine has had a maker. No matter how simple the combination, if it be only two laths fastened together by a nail, or two bricks cemented with mortar, or the sole of an old pegged boot, all the atheists in the world could not convince you that those two laths, or those two bricks, or those two bits of leather existed in such a combination from all eternity. If any wise philosopher tried to persuade you that for anything you could tell they ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Roch's fulgurator is, I believe, very simple indeed. The projectile in which it is used requires neither gun nor mortar to launch it, nor pneumatic tube like the Zalinski shell. It is autopropulsive, it projects itself, and no ship within a certain zone when the engine explodes could escape utter destruction. With such a weapon as this at his command Ker ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... supposed—'but something as obscure in its way.' Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought and the two words that express it without obscurity at all—'bricks and mortar.' Of course an artist's whole problem must be, as Carlyle wrote to me, 'the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in him'—I am almost inclined to say that clear expression should be his only work and care—for he is born, ordained, such as he ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... are cut off with their twigs by a sharp crescentric knife, attached to the extremity of a long pole, which is held in the hand, and pushed upwards against the twigs, removing at the same time such as are fruitless. The capsules are gently pounded in a mortar, to loosen the seeds from their shells, from which they are separated by sifting. To facilitate the separation of the white sebaceous matter enveloping the seeds, they are steamed in tubs, having convex open wicker bottoms, placed over caldrons of boiling water. When ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... one would think, to blow away the whole peninsula. The horticultural and military mixture is indeed very queer: here and there temples, rustic summer-seats, &c. have been erected in the garden, but you are sure to see a great squat mortar look up from among the flower-pots: and amidst the aloes and geraniums sprouts the green petticoat and scarlet coat of a Highlander. Fatigue-parties are seen winding up the hill, and busy about the endless cannon-ball plantations; awkward squads are drilling in the open spaces: ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... huge fabric of the world) that it was never contrived or built, by any means, but that the stones did by chance grow into those curious figures into which they seem to have been cut and graven; and that, upon a time, (as tales usually begin,) the materials of that building—the stone, mortar, timber, iron, lead, and glass—happily met together, and very fortunately ranged themselves into that delicate order in which we see them now, so close compacted, that it must be a very great chance that parts them again. What would the world think of a man that should ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... 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 when they serve the bricklayers. This was not so difficult to me as the making the shovel: and yet this and the shovel, and the attempt which I made in vain to make a wheelbarrow, took me up no less than four days - I mean always excepting ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... the fourteen lives lost on the Italian bark Giovanni near Provincetown, Cape Cod, in a storm unprecedented for its terrors. A story found its way into the papers at the time that the powder used in the mortar was damp, and that from this trifling neglect help could not be extended from the station. A strict investigation was made, and it was proved by the testimony of the people in Provincetown that all the apparatus was in perfect order and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... illuminations (for so the painted 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 called ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein

... return march from Liemba. Slept at a village on the Lake, and went on next day to Pambete, where we first touched it. I notice that here the people pound tobacco-leaves in a mortar after they have undergone partial fermentation by lying in the sun, then they put the mass in the sun to dry ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... first month at sea—events so subtle as perhaps to seem an unimportant part of this narrative of a strange voyage, yet really as necessary to the foundation of the story as the single bricks and the single dabs of mortar at the base of a tall chimney are necessary to the completed structure. I later had cause to remember each trivial incident as if it had been written in letters ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... tumblers or teacups or tin cans with wet sand and others with clay that has been wet and then thoroughly stirred till it is about the consistency of cake batter or fresh mixed mortar. Take a tumbler of the wet sand and one of the wet clay and plant two or three kernels of corn in each, pressing the kernels down one-half or three-quarters of an inch below the surface; cover the seeds and carefully smooth the surface. In other tumblers plant peas, beans, ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... chance to invite them. Their villages are laid out, not like ours in rows of adjoining buildings; but every one surrounds his house with a vacant space, [97] either by way of security against fire, [97] or through ignorance of the art of building. For, indeed, they are unacquainted with the use of mortar and tiles; and for every purpose employ rude unshapen timber, fashioned with no regard to pleasing the eye. They bestow more than ordinary pains in coating certain parts of their buildings with a kind of earth, so pure and shining that it gives the appearance ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... 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 their ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... 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

... forcing its way into the Secunderbagh, and Captain Peel, with the Naval Brigade, brought up the heavy guns against it. He took up his position within a few yards of the wall and opened a heavy fire, assisted by that of a mortar battery and a field battery of Bengal Artillery; the Highlanders covering the sailors and artillerymen as they worked their guns, by a tremendous fire upon the enemy's loopholes. So massive were the walls that it was several hours before even the sixty-eight ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... than fifteen minutes. But now the projectiles were again commencing to fall upon the houses, the crash that told of ruin and destruction was heard more frequently. One exploded in the Rue des Voyards, another grazed the tall chimney of the factory, and the bricks and mortar came tumbling to the ground directly in front of the shed where the surgeons were at work. Bouroche looked up ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... symbols, the shank bone being a memorial of the pascal lamb, and the egg of the 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

... become part of a group spirit permeating the organization and reaching their fulfilment in the succession of leaders. The life and growth and happy self-realization of an institution is not the bricks and mortar—it is a living and elastic entity—never too stable, never too finished, a growing and plastic plant—to use a metaphor that has slipped in perhaps without arousing all the implications the term plant might ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... out beyond the walls. Even the light-hearted students were sobered by the sight beyond. Thousands of men were engaged on the work of demolition. Where but ten days since stood villas surrounded by gardens and trees, there was now a mere waste of bricks and mortar stretching down to the Forts of Issy and Vanves. The trees had all been felled and for the most part cut up and carried into Paris for firewood. Most of the walls were levelled, and frequent crashes of masonry showed that these last vestiges of bright and happy homes would ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... the time," and she pointed to large square blocks of stone, which, to the height of two courses (about two feet three), had been placed across the passage with a view to walling it up. Along the side of the passage were similar blocks ready for use, and, most curious of all, a heap of mortar and a couple of trowels, which tools, so far as we had time to examine them, appeared to be of a similar shape and make to those used by ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... coral in a mortar, with half an ounce of butter, and rub it through a hair sieve. (If spawn is used it need ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison

... awoke every morning in my life by the noise of their trowels at work, and their singing and noise before day; and do you suppose, sir, that they stop or leave off work at sundown? No, sir, but they work as long as they can see to lay a brick, and then they carry tip brick and mortar for an hour or two afterward, to be ahead of their work the next morning. And again, sir, do you think that they walk at their work? No, sir, they run all day. You see, sir, those immensely long, ladders, five stories in height; do you suppose they walk up them? No, sir, ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... eat and go. But if you like, as you are in a greater hurry than I am, I will change my rice for your sathu." The other traveller unsuspectingly consented, thinking he was getting the best of the bargain, and while he was still looking for a mortar in which to pound his rice, the first traveller had mixed and eaten the sathu and proceeded on his journey. In the vernacular the point is brought out by the onomatopoeic character of the lines, which cannot be rendered in English. The caste are now also ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... some fish to make his family a repast, the spirit transported the fish to the garden which was behind the house, put half of it on a tile (scandula), and the rest in a mortar, where it was found again. Another time, Hugh desiring to be bled, told his daughter to get ready some bandages. Immediately the spirit went into another room, and fetched a new shirt, which he tore up into several bandages, presented them to the master of the house, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... the corners, until the walls have reached the required height. The chimney is formed by four poles of the proper length, interlaced with a wicker-work of small branches. A hole or pit is dug, near at hand, and, with a mixture of clay and water, a sort of mortar is formed. Large wisps of hay are filled with this thick substance, and fashioned with the hands into what are technically called "clay cats," and these are filled in among the frame-work of the chimney until not a chink is left. The whole is then covered with a smooth ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... again! Oh, I love this old kitchen so! Baby dear, only look at it wid him pitty, pitty eyes, and him tongue out of his mousy! But who put the flour-riddle up there. And look at the pestle and mortar, and rust I declare in the patty pans! And a book, positively a dirty book, where the clean skewers ought to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... searchlights, and rockets—wherein we followed him feebly and at a great distance; for where he sent up 100 (say) light balls at night, we could only afford five or six; and other things in proportion. Later on came the Minenwerfer, an expanded type of trench mortar, and its bomb, but up to the end of February his efforts in this direction were not very serious, though I allow that he did us more harm thereby than we him. For our trench mortars were in an experimental stage, made locally by the R.E., and constructed of thin gas-pipe iron and home-made ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen

... and a half after they begin to boil, skimming well all the while. It will be an hour upon the fire before it boil. When it is clear and enough boiled, pour it out into woodden vessels to cool. When you are ready to Tun it, have four Gallons of Black-currants, bruise them in a stone mortar, that they may the more easily part with their juyce to the Liquor. Put them and their juyce into the barrel, and pour the cool Liquor upon them, so as the vessel be quite full. Cover the bung with a plate of lead lying loose on, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... goes back to the morning of the world. The glassblower is a classic, like the sower who goes forth to sow, the potter at his wheel, and the grinding of grain with mortar and pestle. Thus, too, the art of the mosaicist—who places bright bits of stone and glass in certain positions so as to form a picture—goes back to the dawn. The exquisite work in mosaic at Pompeii is the first thing that impresses the visitor to that silent ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 chamber, made of six stones, containing ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... far from Wandsworth, in the green pasturelands of Southfields, that great magician was already casting into bricks and mortar his tremendous dream—the city of dreams, the Paradise ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... great risk, millions of citizens went to the polls and elected 275 men and women to represent them in a new Transitional National Assembly. A young woman in Baghdad told of waking to the sound of mortar fire on election day, and wondering if it might be too dangerous to vote. She said, "Hearing those explosions, it occurred to me — the insurgents are weak, they are afraid of democracy, they are losing. So I got my husband, and I got my parents, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... wall-stone laid waste by the fates. The burg-steads are burst, broken the work of the giants. The roofs are in ruins, rotted away the towers, The fortress-gate fallen, with frost on the mortar. 5 Broken are the battlements, low bowed and decaying, Eaten under by age. The earth holds fast The master masons: low mouldering they lie In the hard grip of the grave, till shall grow up and perish ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... forbearance of the union that he was allowed to carry on business at all. He spiked Brother McGinnis's guns by informing him that if he was harbouring the idea that he owned a foundry all on his own, he was labouring under a hallucination. All he owned was a heap of brick and mortar and some iron and steel junk arranged in some peculiar way. In fact, there was no foundry there till the workmen came in and started the wheels going round. Old McGinnis sat gasping like a chicken with ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... built of sticks of wood, the largest at the bottom, and the smallest at the top, and laid up with a supply of mud or clay mortar. The interstices between the logs are chinked with strips of wood and daubed with mortar both outside and in. A double cabin consists of two such buildings with a space of 10 or 12 feet between, over which ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... how a house is built upon the bare ground?" he said. "The mason lays down one stone, and then another on that; and if he cannot have his choice of stones he takes just what come to hand—little and big, putting in plenty of mortar to bind all together. Now that's the way you must build up a happy year for yourself,—and in that way every one can." The words were spoken very brightly, without ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... exceeding cleanness are sadly at war with the picturesque. To whatever the hand of man builds the hand of Time adds a grace, and nothing is so prosaic as the rawly new. Fancy for a moment the difference for the worse, if all the grim, browned, rotted walls of Rome, with their peeling mortar, their thousand daubs of varying grays and yellows, their jutting brickwork and patched stonework, from whose intervals the cement has crumbled off, their waving weeds and grasses and flowers, now sparsely fringing their top, now ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... gasped Hughie with the dot fever flaring in his honest eyes. "That ain't mortar. It's ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... were getting richer, and Nancy, hardly more than eighteen or nineteen miles from the trenches, forgot its danger till, on the first day of January, 1916, the Germans fired several shells from a giant mortar or a marine piece into the town, one of which scattered the fragments of a big five-story apartment house all over Nancy. And on that afternoon thirty thousand people left ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... road, in the same row as the Benyon dower-house, but well within sight of the window, was the Mansion-House Collegiate Day and Boarding School for the Sons of Gentlemen. Beth kept looking in that direction, and presently the boys came pouring out in their mortar-boards, and, among them, she soon discovered the one she was thinking of. She discovered him less by sight than by a strange sensation in herself, a pleasure which shot through her from top to toe. For no ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

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

... 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

... that line of mud bespattered men, patiently plodding up the communication trench. He was looking upon them sleeping with worn and weary faces, in rain and mudsoaked boots and puttees, down in their flimsy, dark dugouts. He was hearing again the heavy "crash" of the trench mortar, the earth shaking "crumph" of the high explosive, the swift rush of the whizbang. Before his eyes he saw a steady line of bayonets behind a crumbling wall, then a quick rush to meet the attack, bomb and rifle in hand. He saw the illumined ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... Brewster, his pachydermic frame draped in his gown, and his mortar-board cap on his head, for the Seniors were required to wear their regalia during Commencement week, was bellowing through a megaphone, as he stood on the steps of Bannister Hall, and Mr. Hicks, with ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... 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 record ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... endurance. The natives of the Canary Islands, an exceedingly well-developed and vigorous race, subsist almost chiefly upon a food which they call gofio, consisting of parched grain, coarsely ground in a mortar ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... the very next day after we moved out, with a peach-basket and a fire-shovel. But my poor bush was buried under seven feet of yellow sand. To-day there's seven stories of brick and mortar. So all I've got from the old place is just this furniture of ma's and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... could see that he was surprised, and presently he told the emperor that he had never heard any one who spoke such excellent Spanish. The emperor fixed his eyes upon me. 'You must have traveled a great deal,' he said. 'You should not be wasting your time with stones and mortar.' Then, turning to the officer who had spoken to me, he said, 'He understands Spanish so well that we may make him useful.' He was about to address me again, but was interrupted by the arrival of an orderly with a ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... battle, involving the relief of one brigade by another, and a successful but difficult attack, which gives a vivid idea of Staff work as carried on in the actual fighting line itself. We see, first, the night journey of the four infantry battalions and their machine-gun company and trench-mortar battery, from Albert to Pozieres by motor-bus, then the four-mile march of the troops in darkness and rain along a duck-board track, to the trenches they were to relieve. The Brigade-Major describes the elaborate preparation ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... haven't the money," remarked Euphemia, "it would be of no earthly use to look at the book. It would only make us doubt our own calculations. You might as well try to make brick without mortar, as the children of ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... of Ohio. They were, to be sure, log cabins of a finer pattern than the first settler reared. They were of logs handsomely shaped with the broadax; the joints between the logs were plastered with mortar; the chimney at the end was of stone; the roof was shingled, the windows were of glass, and the door was solid and well hung. They were such cabins as the Christian Indians dwelt in at Gnadenhutten, and such as were the homes of the well-to-do ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... an 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 city is only to be explored ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... was very much fatigued; but, terrified at my relation, they both refused. I then received fresh courage, went down a third time, taking a lighted flambeau in my hand. When I had descended into the ninth arch, a parcel of stone and mortar suddenly fell in and extinguished my light, and I immediately saw a triangular plate of gold, richly adorned with precious stones, the brilliancy of which struck me with admiration and astonishment. Again I gave the signal, and was assisted in reascending. Having ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... theirs is more important than other branches of the service, nor they braver than their comrades of other units. Nor do I want it to be thought that we undergo greater danger than machine-gunners, grenadiers, light trench-mortar men, or other specialists. But, frankly, I don't know much about any other man's job but my own, and less than I ought to about that. To introduce you to the spirit, action, and ideals of the Australian ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... fixed on the perpendicular supporters by a knob, formed on the top of the upright stone, which entered into a hollow, cut in the crossing stone. This is a proof, that the enormous edifice was raised by a people who had not yet the knowledge of mortar; which cannot be supposed of the Danes, who came hither in ships, and were not ignorant, certainly, of the arts of life. This proves, likewise, the stones not to be factitious; for they that could mould such durable masses, could do much more than make mortar, and could have continued the transverse ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... that well-known establishment and the Bayswater Road—a street which had still a few trees and small semi-detached villas, with front gardens left at one end, the relics of a past when Penrhyn Place was "quite the country"; while at the other, bricks, mortar, scaffolding, and a deeply rutted roadway indicated the commencement of mansions which would soon swallow ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... well to hope to console her by joking about it. He said gravely: "There's plenty of time yet, love. The boys are only just in trousers; and we may think of some way to spare it before we come to bricks and mortar." ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... thinly enclosed area, equipped with a large fireplace and attached to the house. Here, there were andirons, racks, a spit, hooks and bellows. Utensils for preparing food included an iron pot, a gridiron, frying-pan, dripping-pan, two brass kettles, a skimmer, a mortar and pestle, and a grater. Pewter-ware and a supply of three dozen napkins and six tablecloths made meals something of an occasion ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... even then they came but a few at a time and only as huts were ready and fully equipped to receive them. Each hut contained a combination kitchen and living-room, with a single bedchamber. A substantial fireplace, built of stone and mortar, with a tall chimney at the back, was a feature in every house. The cracks between the logs, and all chinks, were sealed with thick layers of mortar; the ceilings, made of stout saplings, were treated in a similar manner, while the roof, resting on a sturdy ridge-pole, and securely anchored, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... long way from waterproof. Imagine trying to find a place to sleep in an old ruin half full of rainwater. The dry places were piled up with brick and mortar, but we managed to clean up some half-sheltered spots for "kip" and we lived ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... suggested it, to substitute for the adobe-brick coarse rubble-stones embedded in adobe. The final stage was reached in Mexico and Yucatan, when soft coralline limestone was shaped into blocks with a flint chisel and laid in courses with adobe-mortar. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... world, and of the world of trade—the watch tower of the world whence the trade of the world and the political and economical bustle of the world may be observed, in a way impossible in any other part of the globe—here Marx found what he sought and needed, the bricks and mortar for his work. 'Capital' could be created in ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... exclaimed, 'who ever heard of anything like this before? First allow an enemy to entrench, and then fight him! See the destruction brought upon the British at Bunker's Hill—yet our troops there were only militia; raw, half-armed clodhoppers, and not a mortar, or carronade, not even a swivel—only their ducking-guns! What, then, are we to expect from regulars, completely armed, with a choice train of artillery, and ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... of the word villa is a country seat; but the reader will ask, how can a country seat be in the midst of a metropolis, or in its brick and mortar confines? The term, however, admits of various modifications. The villas of the Romans resembled large city palaces removed into the country, and some of them were four times larger than Versailles with its three thousand apartments. The villas of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various

... the city after his first long vacation and here I am alone again. He wants me to be with him and live down there in a brick and mortar gulch where the sun rises from a maze of tall chimneys and sets on oil refineries. I said no. Some day I may, but that day is a long way off. In the fall I am to go for a week and we are to have a fine time, Tim and I, but Captain and Colonel ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... reached the native village, or town rather, for it was a place of considerable dimensions. The houses were conical structures not unlike bee-hives, and were made of compressed seaweed cemented over with a rude form of mortar, there being neither stick nor stone upon the coast nor anywhere within many hundreds of miles. As we entered the town an enormous crowd of both sexes came swarming out to meet us, beating tom-toms and howling and screaming. On seeing me they redoubled their yells and assumed a threatening ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... what is made ob oyster; and as to clam soup, dat pends on de cook. Now, Massa, when missus and me went to wisit de president's plantation, I see his cook, Mr Sallust, didn't know nuffin' bout parin' de soup. What you tink he did, Massa? stead ob poundin' de clams in a mortar fust, he jist cut 'em in quarters and puts 'em in dat way. I nebber see such ignorance since I was raised. He made de soup ob water, and actilly put some salt in it; when it was sarved up—it was rediculous disgraceful—he left dem pieces ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... to gum arabic, to mortar, (for it joins words and sentences together like bricks), to Roman cement, (Latin conjunctions more especially), to white of egg, to isinglass, to putty, to ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... hand, and through the battered roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where 'want and fever hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and crowded gables, and distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick and mortar penning up deformity of mind and body, choke the murky distance. As Mr Dombey looks out of his carriage window, it is never in his thoughts that the monster who has brought him there has let the light of day in on these things: not made or caused them. It was the journey's fitting end, and might ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... of the tower, where they looked at the house-tops of Rouen close beneath, and the river Seine, broadening and glittering on one side in its course to the sea, and on the other narrowing to a blue ribbon, winding through the green expanse of fertile Normandy. They threw the pebbles and bits of mortar down that they might hear them fall, and tried which could stand nearest to the edge of the battlement without being giddy. Richard was pleased to find that he could go the nearest, and began to ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge

... agreed Big-foot, hurrying over to him. "The thing is sealed up with mortar. Hasn't been used in fifty cats' ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... effect in some degree a like result by protecting their faces from the sun and wind. Should you visit New Mexico, and as you ride along slowly in the heat of midday meet a senorita who gazes at you with a pair of jet black eyes through a hideous, ghastly mask of mud or mortar, do not be frightened from your accustomed propriety. The senorita is preparing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... seldom, if ever, see the glorious face of Nature and, when they do, gaze into it with blank unrecognising eyes; whose whole life is one long round of monotony—monotonous toil, monotonous amusements, monotonous clothes, monotonous bricks and mortar;—until the very heaven itself, with its trailing cloud-armadas and its eternal stars, is forgotten, and the whole universe becomes a cowl of hodden grey, "where-under crawling cooped they live and die." And then look at those other millions—the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,



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



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