"Plumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up again!" vociferated a delighted plumber, with a sounding slap on his own leg. "Gor blimy, if she ain't ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... may be treated with respect and courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties. It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere business character. They never take it as an ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that you show me what has been done and what you intend to do, and that you let me make myself familiar with the whole plan and manner of the work. This would be easy for me, for I have superintended house-building; and although I am neither a plumber, a mason, a carpenter, a paper-hanger, or a painter, I know how such people should do their work. Therefore, if you should be unable to attend to the matter yourself,—and in such case only,—I could go and see how the work was progressing; ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... and the pastoral care of their congregations, the brethren share between them a vast variety of constantly recurring temporal duties, for in Labrador there is no baker, greengrocer, and butcher round the corner, and no mason, carpenter, plumber, painter or glazier to be called in when repairs are needed. The missionaries must discharge all these offices, as well as be their own gardener and smith, and on occasion doctor, dentist, chemist, or anything else that may be necessary. These general remarks hold good of mission life ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... is given, and every part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. The reader can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard, with heavy extra charge ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... thousand people spread out under the sweet influence of the gold angel that tops the Town Hall spire. The other four towns are apt to ridicule that gold angel, which for exactly fifty years has guarded the borough and only been regilded twice. But ask the plumber who last had the fearsome job of regilding it whether it is a gold angel to be despised, and—you ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... his arms and legs at random, like a puppet out of order; then, drawing himself up by means of the rope, he hung suspended over the abyss, his nose against its icy side, which his breath polished, in the attitude of a plumber in the act of soldering a waste-pipe. He saw the sky above him growing paler and the stars disappearing; below he could fathom the gulf and its opaque shadows, from which rose ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... 21. A plumber's or tinner's triangular scraper for cleaning surfaces which are to be welded together. A pocketknife will do ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... to future inquiries, I have thought it desirable, in the present little treatise, to give an account of the catastrophe, that accidents of a similar nature may be avoided through this calamity allotted to us. On the day above mentioned, which was very destructive to us, a vile plumber, with his two workmen, burnt our church whilst soldering up two holes in the old lead with fresh pewter. For some days he had already, with a wicked disposition, commenced, and placed his iron crucibles, along with charcoal and ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... effort to ferret out their plans in order that fore-knowledge might suggest a sufficient safe-guard. The twins, however, were too clever to permit this, and their bloody schemes were wrapped in mystery and buried in secrecy. On the thirty-first of March, Connie labored like a plumber would if working by the job. She painstakingly hid from sight all her cherished possessions. The twins were in the barn, presumably deep in plots. Aunt Grace was at the Ladies' Aid. So when Fairy came in, about ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... affectionately known, was apt to be somewhat confused, as is natural, before an extraordinary crisis, and had made one or two lamentable blunders. In the present case, after immediately sending in a hurry call for the plumber, he departed in a panic for Foundation House, holding before him on a pair of tongs a pair of reeking football stockings which he had seized in the wash basin, while Skippy Bedelle, under strict orders, remained twenty paces to the rear and ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... plumber, you old dumb-duck!" shrieked his little daughter. "What did you come here and spoil everything for? He'd have had to marry me tomorrow if you'd minded your own business. I'll claw your eyes out." But her hands were imprisoned in her father's hard fists, and she turned and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... glove counter at Mason's years ago; she was then Maggie McKay, and a vain, pretentious thing. She married a plumber with a romantic name, and her rise has been rapid. Now, if you and I ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... public opinion, born of bitter experience, has been robbed of these prerogatives until, not long ago, the un-American and undemocratic proposition to take away the laying out of the new city park from the easy going but ignorant mercies of the so-called city forester, who had been first a plumber and later an alderman, prevailed. An enlightened civic spirit triumphed and ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... rosy young woman with "a bit o' money," as the country folks say,—and from that day had been steadily dragged down to the domestic level of sad and sordid commonplace. Instead of studying form and colour, he was called upon to examine drains and superintend the plumber, mark house linen and take care of the children—his wife believing in "making a husband useful." Of regard for his art or possible fame she had none,—while his children were taught to regard his work in that line as less important than if he ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... simple their affection was, that there was no need of hiding the passing cloud, that they both equally disliked and wished to simplify domestic details. There was, for instance, some sort of slight dispute as to who should manage a plumber, on which occasion Mary seems to have been somewhat hurt at its being put upon her, as giving an idea of her inferiority. This, with the tender jokes about Godwin's icy philosophy, and the references to a little "William" whom they ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... jobs now done in the city are well executed. He believed that the Board of Health had not been obliged to proceed against more than eight master plumbers since the new law went into force. He called upon the Association to adopt a "code of ethics," which should define what an honest plumber can do and cannot do, and he illustrated his meaning by citing an extraordinary case of fraudulent workmanship which had been recently reported to him. His remarks on this point were greeted with frequent outbursts ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... has become an interesting branch of interior decoration, whereas once it was left entirely to the architect and plumber. ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... odd how we call some persons by their profession or calling, and others not. We say "Doctor," but we do not address our gum-architect as "Dentist." We say "Carpenter," but we do not address a plumber as "Plumber." (Incidentally, all plumbers might be called Warner). We say "Gardener" and "Coachman," but we do not address an advocate as "Barrister." If we had a definite rule everything would be simple, but as we have not it is necessary to find several more names. I am not at all satisfied with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... he went on, "he'd break all speed laws getting up here, and if he came for her of his own accord—if she thought he did that she'd be in his arms so quick that she'd make a bounding antelope look like a plumber's assistant going ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... to Mr. S. Campion's farm at East Heslerton, near Malton, to search for a water supply. At that time he marked two places near the farmhouse where, he said, the presence of water was indicated by the rod. Since then Mr. E. Halliday, plumber of Malton, has bored an artesian well at one of the places indicated, and found a very copious supply of water at a depth of 87 feet, after going through sand, clay, and a bed of what Mr. Halliday says is quartz ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... to say that many—not on the pay of a dough-boy, put in a plumber from up-state in New York. For his part, he did not bother to grunt—he would make drinking motions or eating motions, and they would bring him things till they found what he wanted. One time he had met a girl that he ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... or two of those holes are left still in Park Street near the Five Points Mission, but they have not been used as living-rooms for a generation. In cellars near the river the tide rose and fell, compelling the tenants "to keep the children in bed till ebb-tide." The plumber had come upon the field, but his coming brought no relief. His was not a case of conscience. "Untrapped soil pipes opened into every floor ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... in few hands, this training has never flourished, as it has greatly in France, where nearly every adult male may own land and a large proportion will come to do so. So of processes. As a student in Germany I took a few lessons each of a bookbinder, a glassblower, a shoemaker, a plumber, and a blacksmith, and here I have learned in a crude way the technique of the gold-beater and old-fashioned broom-maker, etc., none of which come amiss in the laboratory; and I am proud that I can still mow and keep my scythe sharp, chop, plow, milk, churn, make cheese and soap, braid a palm-leaf ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... return he got work near Manchester at painting in a block of new houses where the plumbers were at work putting in the gas and water pipes. On a Saturday, when he left work at noon, he met a young plumber who was out of a job. This man said he knew where he could earn a sovereign if he had tools to do a job in a butcher shop, and told Heep that if he would go to the houses where he had been painting and borrow a few plumbers' tools and assist him ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... of Yellow Yarn, all bunched up like a mop; Z was a jagged piece of Zinc, found in a plumber's shop. ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... own. What a dream! A little home all to themselves, with six rooms and a bath, with a grass plat in front and calla-lilies. Then there would be children. He would have a son, whose name would be Daniel, who would go to High School, and perhaps turn out to be a prosperous plumber or house painter. Then this son Daniel would marry a wife, and they would all live together in that six-room-and-bath house; Daniel would have little children. McTeague would grow old among them all. The dentist saw ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... really, Mark, although that thought always seems so strange to me; since during so many years I believed myself to be a Russian. I am the daughter of English parents; my father was a very respectable London plumber of the name of Harsden, whose business went to the bad and who died, leaving my mother to face ruin and starvation with a family of five small children, of whom I was the last. When a lady who took an interest in the parish in which we lived suggested that a friend ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... path, close by the steep declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and it sways under him—the walls vanish ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... three days in the town when a man stepped up to him as he finished a job and asked him to go home with him. The man took him to a small but rather neat shop, plumber's, glazier's and painter's. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... nowadays expected to contain efficient apparatus for supplying plenty of hot water at all hours of the day. There is little romance about the kitchen boiler and the pipes which the plumber and his satellites have sometimes to inspect and put right, but the methods of securing a proper circulation of hot water through the house are sufficiently important and interesting to be noticed ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... had slipped by since he quit school, and he couldn't remember where they had gone. It was only six months after his father died that he lost his last regular job. He tried selling and was a failure. He had been carpenter's helper, plumber's helper, porter, counter-man and busboy as the months passed, but nothing steady. For the past two months he had been hunting for work, while his few dollars dwindled to where he no longer had room rent. Then it was ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... to tell you, sir; the plumber has been here, because the tap of your cistern came off in my hand. It wasn't my fault; there had been a heavy rain that ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... a problem. What I have been pondering is if it would be wise to offer to pay an increased charge. I'd do anything to get the pipes mended, but, on the other hand, it's not a sound precedent. A state of society in which everyone bid against everyone else for the first services of the plumber would be unbearable. Only the rich would ever be plumbed, and very soon the plumbers would be the millionaires. Perhaps we had better let the letter go as it is? You think so and I think so. Very well then, just Believe me, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... hearing from you!! I have torn all my hair off, and constantly beat my unoffending family. Wild notions have occurred to me of sending in my own plumber to do the drains. Then I remember that you have probably written to prepare your man, and restrain my audacious hand. Then Stone presents himself, with a most exasperatingly mysterious visage, and says that a rat has appeared in the kitchen, and it's ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... live in an old house are necessarily more concerned with paying the plumber, should his art be required, or choosing wall paper that does not clash with the chintzes, than with the traditions that may haunt its corridors. In Ireland, — and no one knows how old that is, for the gods that lived there before the ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... ground. One or two passers-by saw him drop lightly to the sidewalk, but thought nothing of it. It was not the part of the jail in which prisoners were confined, and he might have been taken for a carpenter or plumber who chose that unusual way of coming from the roof. His hat blew off in his descent, but he did not waste time in looking for it. He walked slowly till he got to the corner, and then plunged through the ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... beer," threw Elkin over his shoulder. He had walked to the window, and was gazing moodily at the sign of the "plumber and decorator" who had taken Siddle's shop. The village could not really support an out-and-out chemist, so a local grocer had elected to stock patent medicines as a ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... mechanism to one man, all form and colour to another, so to Anthony Croft the world was all melody. Notwithstanding these many gifts and possibilities, the doctor's wife advised the Widow Croft to make a plumber of him, intimating delicately that these freaks of nature, while playing no apparent part in the divine economy, ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Vladimir formulated in his mind a series of disparaging remarks concerning Mr Verloc's face and figure. The fellow was unexpectedly vulgar, heavy, and impudently unintelligent. He looked uncommonly like a master plumber come to present his bill. The First Secretary of the Embassy, from his occasional excursions into the field of American humour, had formed a special notion of that class of mechanic as the embodiment of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... For instance, if a new house is being built near by, visit it with the children, comparing it with your own house, figure out whether it is going to be easier to keep clean and to warm than your house is and why. If you need to call in the carpenter, the plumber, the paper-hanger, or the stoveman, try to have him come when the children are at home, and let them satisfy their intense curiosity as to his work. This knowledge will sooner or later be of practical value, and it is immediately of ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... pleasure but her duty, and no duty but to look after her nest and brood. She shows no affection for the male, no pleasure in his society; she only tolerates him as a necessary evil, and, if he is killed, goes in quest of another in the most business-like manner, as you would go for the plumber or the glazier. In most cases the male is the ornamental partner in the firm, and contributes little of the working capital. There seems to be more equality of the sexes among the woodpeckers, wrens, and swallows; while the contrast is greatest, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... The Missouri Pacific enjoined the Rock Island and wouldn't let it go straight through, so they built their own bridge and belted the city and went on around. I got stricken down sick in 1930 and haven't been able to do heavy work since. You know, a plumber and steam-fitter have to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... you, Stephen,' or something of that sort. I opened it as I walked down the drive, she laughing always and catching on to the handle of the front door. Of course it wasn't comic at all. But down in the village there were both cricket teams, already a little tight, and the mad plumber shouting 'Rights of Man!' They knew I was turned out. We did have a row, and kept it up too. They daren't touch Wilbraham's windows, but there isn't much glass left up at Cadover. When you start, it's worth going on, but in the end I had ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ye going to do with the Highway boy and the plumber?" inquired Mac, in a low tone of voice. "They've ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... width of the board. After cutting off the tongues, they require planing with nicety to fit the grooves, and the advantage of a grooved board (Fig. 105) will be appreciated. A glue spoon similar to a plumber's ladle is generally used to pour the glue into the grooves, and it is customary to glue the tongue into one board first; after allowing this to set, the joint is completed in the ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... what you say of art," he goes on. "And so then I must do the decorating of walls—the wreaths of roses on the ceiling. That was my profession when we lived at Peronne. But here—there is trouble about the union. The greasy plumber will not work where I am, it seems. Eh bien! I am forced out. So I return to my landscapes. Are there not many rich Americans who pay well ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... at Tinsdale improvements had been going on at the Carsons'. Bob, always handy with tools, had been putting in a tank over the bathtub. They had one at the house on the hill, only it was run by a windmill. Bob had a friend who was a plumber's son, and from him had obtained some lengths of second-hand water-pipe and an old faucet. He had conceived the idea of a tank on the roof, and his first plan had been only a rainwater tank, but gradually as his vision widened he included a force pump in the outfit of desires. He hung around ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... this summer, and the bathrooms have all been tiled and fitted up afresh, from beginning to end. I know that, in the past, you have used acid, gritty soaps on the basins and tubs, Martha, and my plumber tells me you mustn't do it. He says it's ruinous. He recommends kerosene oil for the bath-tubs and marble slabs. He says it will take any stain out, and is much safer than the soaps. So please use ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... the other hand, tastes and capacities fit for academic or professional careers, such as medicine, law, teaching, or engineering, the principle would remain the same but the program would differ. The academic work, meaningless to the prospective plumber, or dressmaker, would be full of meaning to the embryo lawyer or teacher, and the period of ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... West Salem in 1899—the plumber was still the tinner, and when the news of my ambitious designs got abroad it created almost as much comment as my brother's tennis court had roused some five years earlier. As a force making toward things high-fi-lutin, if not actually un-American, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... working week of six days, and that God sat down and looked at it on Sunday, and behold it was very good. A week is quite a long while to a child, yet a definite division rounding off a square job. The bath-taps at home usually, for some unexplained reason, went wrong during the week-end: the plumber came in on Monday and carried out his tools on Saturday at mid-day. These little analogies really do (I believe) help the infant mind, and not at all to its later detriment. Nor shall I ask you to sentimentalise overmuch upon the harm done to a child by teaching him ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... when I arrive, the husband, the plumber, he went away with his tools for his work in a sack, and his lady she says to me, 'Please sit down.' And we talk together. She was a very kind lady. And presently—she was on the sofa by the window and I was in a chair by the fire—presently her husband return. I was like a fish not in his water, ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... within the garden's island summer And heard far off the shunting of the trains, Noises of wheels, and speech of every comer Passing the entrance—heard the man of brains Talking of George's Budget, heard the plumber ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... it seem impossible for a plumber to murder anyone she panted now from a sense of reassurance and security. She could see too that he was a decent looking young fellow in overalls, off on an ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... the world before him why should a man turn dentist? He must have been a cruel fellow from his rattle. When did his malicious ambition first sprout up towards molars and bicuspids? Or who would scheme to be a plumber? He is a cellarer—alas, how shrunk from former days! Or consider the tailor! Perhaps you recall Elia's estimate. "Do you ever see him," he asks, "go whistling along the foot-path like a carman, or brush ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... scraper soared sixty dizzy stories high. Then swiftly came the stone masons and encased the giant steel frame. Swiftly in its center, men reared the plunging elevators. Swiftly worked the electrician, the plumber, the carpenter. All workmen were called and all workmen came. The world listened to the call of this sky scraper standing in the heart of the great city. From the mines of Minnesota to the swamps of Louisiana came goods to serve its need. Long, long ago, in olden days, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... journalists can never react unfavorably on the United, and it seems far from kind and proper to impede the development of members. Why is a professional author necessarily less desirable as an amateur journalist than a professional plumber or boiler-maker? But there is one sound principle at the base of Mr. Macauley's argument, which deserves more emphasis than the points he elaborates. Professionalism must not enter into the workings of the association, nor should the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... to marry me at once—and if he doesn't obey he will be disinherited and have to become a plumber or something to make a living. His father is Joshua Barnes, the mustard king—you must have heard of him. When I told Auntie who he was she almost collapsed and said something about Joshua Barnes buying and selling twenty hogs—I suppose she ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... a journeyman plumber, sir, with a good character, and don't take no second place in that business with no man. How did I get here? What banged me all up into a shame and a disgrace like this? Well, I'll tell you, sir, if you have the patience to listen, for it does me good to talk who has ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... is reached that the less fit and less efficient, or the unfit and inefficient, compose the surplus labor army. Here are to be found the men who have tried and failed, the men who cannot hold jobs,—the plumber apprentice who could not become a journeyman, and the plumber journeyman too clumsy and dull to retain employment; switchmen who wreck trains; clerks who cannot balance books; blacksmiths who lame horses; lawyers who cannot plead; in short, the failures of every trade and profession, ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... both stopped in th' newspa-apers. A well-known fi-nanceer who thravelled to Tokeeo with a letter iv inthraduction to th' Mickydoo fr'm th' Prisidint beginnin' 'Dear mick,' got a brick put through his hat as he wint to visit th' foorth assistant to th' manicure iv th' eighth assistant to th' plumber iv th' bricklayer iv th' Mickydoo, which is th' nearest to his Majesty that foreign eyes ar-re permitted to look upon. A little later a number iv Americans in private life who wint over to rayceive in person th' thanks iv th' Impror f'r what ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... horses, and was attended by a guard; nay, that a flourish of music preceded my arrival at various points of my journey; but all these little less than royal honours I shared with a plebeian butcher, a wheezing and attenuated plumber and glazier, and other of his lieges, all very useful, but hardly deemed ornamental ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... done froze last night, an' bus' loose this mo'nin', and fill the kitchen range with water an' bus' loose again. No plumber here yit. Made this breakfuss on the gas-stove. That's half-froze, tew. I tell you, ma'am, you're lucky to git your coffee nohow. Better take it before ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... youth made the discovery that if one lighted a match and stepped within the blackness, the match was immediately extinguished, but that upon emerging into daylight the flame came up again. Some one happened along with a plumber's gasoline torch. Immediately this was lighted and the experiment repeated. The bearer of the torch, astonished at the instant extinguishment of the flame, felt with his hand to see what could be the matter. ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... no janitor. The nearest plumber is two or five miles away. No gang of snow shovelers knocks at the door with offers to attack the mislocated snow at a price, albeit the highest they think the traffic will bear. Pioneer-like, some or all of the family must turn to and cope with such situations. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... is very noticeable in different men; an old plumber once told me that he had been employed upon a pump on a neighbouring farm, where the slot in which the handle works was so worn on one side that the bolt which carries the handle had given way, owing to the man, who had used it for years, not keeping it running truly in the centre. He called ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... him at balls and assemblies, had known him as a constable, plumber, and keeper of ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... night he was telling me about our newly acquired Possessions, the Philippines, being a land of Perpetual Plenty, and for a while I thought I was in the natatorium. Under the circumstances I don't know which would be more desirable, a plumber for the general, or a mackintosh ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... to say: "If the plumbing went bad in your home, doctor, you would call a plumber, for he would be the one competent to fix it." Rush shook his head slowly. "But what happens when there are no ...
— Now We Are Three • Joe L. Hensley
... as a protest against the conventions he had dispensed with a collar. As he stood there, belted about his large waist, a billycock hat on the back of his head, he looked to be anything from a broken-down publican to an out-of-work plumber. ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... get the doctor to come round again," Ann Eliza said, trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might speak of sending for the plumber ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... a milliner) of Poulder, Lord William's butler, rounded pillar of the eternal old order of things; of James, revolutionary but faithful (of course James never would in fact have kept this absurd job); of a light yellow pressman; of a feckless, torrentially eloquent plumber, whose solution of the class war was loving-kindness and the letting of the blood of ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... story of a political boss's beer-party to the bums of his ward; had it been an account of Mrs. Van Astorbilt's elopement with a plumber; had it been the life-story of a shooting show girl; had it been the description of the latest style in slit skirts; had it been a sarcastic message from some drunken, over-rated city official; had it been a sympathy-squad description of the hardships and soul-beauties ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... when told of the accident, he observed that if the boy had been provided with his lamp, his life would have been saved. On the 20th November he went over to Newcastle to order his third lamp from a plumber in that town. The plumber referred him to his clerk, whom Stephenson invited to join him at a neighbouring public-house, where they might quietly talk over the matter, and finally settle the plan of the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... be finished,' the plumber demanded scornfully, 'before hot and cold are put in?' and he put in hot and cold. Then an army of gardeners arrived with fairy carts and spades and seeds and bulbs and forcing-houses, and soon they had a flower-garden to ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... even the cleanest of us see no grandeur in soap-manufacturing, and we don't look to manicures and plumbers for social prestige. A feline race would have honored such occupations. J. de Courcy Tiger would have felt that nothing /but/ making soap, or being a plumber, was compatible with a high social position; and the rich Vera Pantherbilt would have deigned ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Here am I young and successful, And Walter and Thomas and Selwyn have nothing on me. Press agents are hired to praise me. Watch for my next big sensation, But meanwhile I hope that that play-writing plumber, Who had an idea and nothing else, ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... One is obliged to go by what these sort of people say and do. We're to have a month's honeymoon,—only just a month, because Mr Lowlad won't make himself as agreeable as he ought to do about the services; and Newface, the plumber and glazier, says he can't have the house done as Kattie would like to live in it before the end of August. Where do you think we're going to, Miss Lawrie? ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... "I'm a God-fearing sailor man who is doing the best he can to keep nice and clean in spite of the uncalled for intervention of a red-faced oaf of a plumber person who should know better than ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... what Jock said when he walked with us to the elevator was pretty nearly right. You know he said we were criticising their copy the way a plumber would criticise the Parthenon—so busy finding fault with the lack of drains that we failed to see the ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... delivers a blow which may be of great violence. The nature of this stroke may be judged by the familiar instance where the relatively slow-flowing stream from a hydrant pipe is suddenly choked by closing the stopcock. Unless the plumber provides a cushion of air to diminish the energy of the blow, it is often strong enough to shake the house. Again, when steam or other gases are by a sudden diminution of pressure enabled to expand, they may ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... sergeant and private crouched by their machine-gun ready to repel the charge, the mutual relationship being apparently somewhat that of a plumber and his assistant. They sprayed the oncoming Bavarians with a shower of steel and piled the dead high outside the French trenches. The charge had failed, and the sergeant began to act strangely. At length he broke the silence. "Did you see that last boche, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... meeting at which no Catholic has the right to vote, and tax all the lands in the parish 1s. 6d. per acre, or in the pound, I forget which, for the repairs of the church—and how has the necessity of these repairs been ascertained? A Protestant plumber has discovered that it wants new leading; a Protestant carpenter is convinced the timbers are not sound; and the glazier who hates holy water (as an accoucheur hates celibacy, because he gets nothing by it) is employed to ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... for a salve from the medicine closet in the bathroom and discovering Rosemary wearily putting the bedrooms to rights. "I've burned my finger on that silly hot water heater again. I've told the doctor and told him to have the plumber stop in and fix it, but ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... picked his way through the swarming vehicles which swung up and down Broadway, across to Seventh Avenue, where he turned into a plumber's shop. This fellow had handled small jobs on Shirley's extensive real estate holdings, and he was naturally delighted to do a favor in the hope of obtaining ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... slaves and free negroes in this group were designated merely as mechanics. The whites were classified as follows: 3 joiners, 1 plumber, 8 gas fitters, 7 bell hangers, 1 paper hanger, 6 carvers and gilders, 9 sail makers, 5 riggers, 1 bottler, 8 sugar makers, 43 engineers, 10 machinists, 6 boilermakers, 7 stone cutters, 4 piano and organ builders, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... PLUMBER One who ascertains the capacity of your purse, soaks you with a piece of lead and gets away with the money—a process vulgarly ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... evidently as mysterious as all the rest. This Mr. Perkins seldom noticed the juniors in his department, though occasionally he would select one of them to accompany him on one of his missions to clients of the firm; and they would start off together, as you may see a plumber and his apprentice sometimes in the streets,—the proud master-plumber in front, and the little apprentice plumber behind, carrying the lead pipe ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... of humour came to my aid; gave me perhaps an undue advantage over my competitors. Twelve good men and true had been asked to say how a Lascar sailor had met his death. It was perfectly clear how he had met his death. A plumber, working on the roof of a small two-storeyed house, had slipped and fallen on him. The plumber had escaped with a few bruises; the unfortunate sailor had been picked up dead. Some blame attached to the plumber. His mate, an excellent ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Mr. Jardine, kneeling down at one end of the bath, where there was a convenient mahogany door for the accommodation of the plumber, a door which lay somewhat in shadow, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... bells which tolled for Hereward and Torfrida. Those had run down in molten streams upon that fatal night when Abbot Ingulf leaped out of bed to see the vast wooden sanctuary wrapt in one sheet of roaring flame, from the carelessness of a plumber who had raked the ashes over his fire in the bell-tower, and left it ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... dry ear cartilages into warm water. In this they will quickly regain their natural shape. Using them as models make a pair of duplicates of them of thin sheet lead which may be procured from a plumber or hardware dealer. Split into the base of the cartilage so it may be spread as nearly flat as possible and lay on the lead, drawing around its outline with a nail point. Cut out the lead ears with a pair of metal-shears. Hammer into natural concave shape with a bit ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... Alexr. Moffat Parkhead there William Baxter do. there John Jarvie weaver Barony James Robertson in Eastwood Archebald Paterson there John Taylor there Robert Gilmour in Mearns John Faulds in Nethertown John Morison there Jas. Thomson wright Hackethead John Marshall do. there Peter Norris plumber Glasgow Arthur Laing wright Paisley James Philip Hackethead Matthew Laurie there Elizabeth Forrester there Sarah Gemmel there John Brown farmer Paisley John Ralston do. there William Adam in Mosslane Zach. Waterston farmer Govan Agnes Stark there Wm. Ritchie weaver ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... pressed pipes always put the thickest part of your pipe at the back. Lead, in a good plumber's hands, may be twisted into every conceivable shape; but, as in all other trades, there is a right and a wrong way of doing everything, and there are many different methods, each having a right and wrong way, which I shall describe. I shall be pleased if my readers will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... when Prince of Wales had been entertained by ancestors of the present owner, Mr. Laurence Moore, who would now act as host; and that there were baths to all but five of the bed chambers. Was it not good chance that Larry had them put in? They are not paid for yet, and the plumber, with some others, has been very unkind, making Larry a bankroot—no, a bankrupt. We shall soon be rich again with all these thirties and forties and fifties and hundreds of dollars a day (we can take forty people to say nothing of servants if some of ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... I remember, I was in a neighbour's office, when the local plumber presented himself with a bill about a yard long. This neighbour was one of those very busy men. He was connected with what seemed to me an unlimited number of enterprises. He merely glanced at this tiresome bill, turned to the bookkeeper, ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... in against this folly of the disarming as I could manage. It did not reach my ears till nearly too late. What a risk to take! What an expense to incur! And for how poor a gain! Apart from the treachery of it. My dear fellow, politics is a vile and a bungling business. I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these cases 'board' was also given. The sailor's pay was 5s. a week with board. Even compared with skilled labour on shore the sailor of the Armada epoch was well paid. Thorold Rogers gives, for 1588, the wages, without board, of carpenters and masons at 10d. and 1s. a day. A plumber's wages varied from 10-1/2d. to 1s.; but there is one case of a plumber receiving as much as 1s. 4d., which was probably for ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... with. How impartial and how ready to introduce innovations should men be in any field? Changes of certain kinds, though they may have no little bearing upon our comfort, do not threaten the existence of either state or church. Could someone devise a scheme by which the periodical visits of the plumber could be avoided, we should all welcome it, and have no ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... have unequal solvent powers on this metal. In some places the use of leaden pumps has been discontinued, from the expense entailed upon the proprietors by the constant want of repair. Dr. Lamb[19] states an instance where the proprietor of a well ordered his plumber to make the lead of a pump of double the thickness of the metal usually employed for pumps, to save the charge of repairs; because he had observed that the water was so hard, as he called it, that it corroded ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... very, very busy. Something strange and new happens every day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of the ladies was just selling soap, but I didn't buy any. It was horrid soap. The other two were calling ladies,—a silk one and a velvet one. The silk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she told me I was ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... with morocco bindings, while his wife 'sighed in vain for some old point d'Alencon lace.' He was a man who was capable of bidding fifteen pounds for a Foppens edition of the essays of Montaigne, though fifteen pounds happened to be 'exactly the amount which he owed his plumber and gas-fitter, a worthy man with a large family.' From this fictitious Thomas Blinton all the way back to Richard Heber, who was very real, and who piled up books as other men heap together vulgar riches, book-collectors have ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... had made sure that there was no one close on his heels, he stepped into the roadway, and started on a zigzag course which seemed likely to upset his balance. Crossing the avenue Henri-Martin, going straight, towards the town hall at the corner of the rue de la Pompe, the good plumber, who was staggering more than a little, began to stutter and stammer in ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... an' you hev to learn, but I'd give you pinters, all you'd need to know, I'm pretty slick myself. There's tools to open things, an' you hev to be ready to 'xplain how you come thur an' jolly up a parlor maid per'aps. It's easy to hev made a mistake in the house, er be a gas man er a plumber wot the boss sent up to look at the pipes. But night work's best pay after you get onto things. Thur's houses where you ken lay your han's on things goin' into the thousands an' lots ov um easy to get rid ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... to the information contained in this chapter, I have been recently informed by the Rev. Mr. Sankey, vicar of Wragby, that the family is quite extinct in the parish, except the wife of a plumber, who claims relationship with Harrison. The representative of the Winn family was created Lord St. Oswald in 1885. Harrison is not quite forgotten at Foulby. The house in which he was born was a low thatched cottage, with two rooms, one used as a living room, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles |
