"Trowel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resistance begin to weaken. The tenseness of his form relaxed; Quest's will was triumphing. Slowly in the mirror they saw a little picture creeping from outline into definite form, a picture of the Professor's library. Craig himself was there with mortar and trowel, and a ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Scenographical Geology" says of it, "an object of no little interest." My friend T., favorably known as the translator of "Undine" and as a writer of fine and delicate imagination, visited Spicket Falls before the sound of a hammer or the click of a trowel had been heard beside them. His journal of "A Day on the Merrimac" gives a pleasing and vivid description of their original appearance as viewed through the telescope of a poetic fancy. The readers of "Undine" will thank me for a passage or two ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered before the wet weather set in, and nobody was near who could do it better. Indeed, on one or two occasions in the depth of winter, when frost peremptorily forbids all use of the trowel, making foundations to settle, stones to fly, and mortar to crumble, he had taken to felling and sawing trees. Moreover, he had practised gardening in his own plot for so many years that, on an emergency, he might have made a living ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... how often destructive fires are caused by defective flues, it is surprising that more care is not taken in building chimneys. They should be intrusted to none but workmen who are conscientious as well as skilful, otherwise every brick must be watched and every trowel full of mortar; for one defect ruins the whole, and five minutes after the fault is committed it can never be detected till revealed by ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... achieved, if done cheerfully; and, to show that it can, I will add that, amidst all this labour, my young friend was building himself a dam, where the beavers, in times when that politic and hard-working little trowel-tailed race owned his property, had seen the value of collecting the waters of the brook. He was repairing their decayed labours, for the purpose of washing his sheep, of getting a good fish-pond, and of keeping a bath always full for the comfort ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... in diameter, at the top of the hive, applied the pincers of one of its legs to its side, detached a scale of wax, and immediately began to mince it with the tongue. During the operation, this organ was made to assume every variety of shape; sometimes it appeared like a trowel, then flattened like a spatula, and at other times like a pencil, ending in a point. The scale, moistened with a frothy liquid, became glutinous, and was drawn out like a riband. This bee then attached all the wax it could concoct to the vault of the hive, and went its way. A second ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... don't," said Mark merrily, snatching away his wrist. "I am not going to have my hand used as a trowel to save yours, you lazy beggar. Here, Dean, get hold of Pig and do as I do. Let's give ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... wasn't a trick in brick or stone That this young man hadn't seen or known; Nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul But this young man could use ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... cigarette. "Interesting case, Farley's," he continued, after a pause. "You remember it, Elden?" Dave nodded. "Farley blew in here from Scotland, or some such place, looking for work with his trowel. That was about the time of the beginning of things, as things are reckoned here. Some unscrupulous dealer learned that Farley had three hundred dollars—it goes to show what has happened even when the motive of ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... up the yellow one. We have brought a basket and trowel, and can examine them thoroughly. We must dig down deep so as not to break off the stem. There is a ring or collar around it near the top. There is a bulb at the base, with some slight membrane attached. The ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... sophists and declaimers, he thought very much as old Cato did about them. The Greeks were a very clever people, unrivalled in the fine arts; let them keep to their strong point; they were inimitable with the chisel, the brush, the trowel, and the fingers; but he was not prepared to think much of their calamus or stylus, poetry excepted. What did they ever do but subvert received principles without substituting any others? And then they were so likely to take some odd turn themselves; you never could be sure of ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... she said, sharply, rising from her knees and shaking her trowel at the intruder. "I don't want no apples to-day, an' I don't care how ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... from the corner and set to work. The laboratory contained all sorts of builder's tools, used when the furnace needed repairing. He raised one of the slabs with difficulty, turned it over, propped it with a billet of beech wood, and began to scoop out a hole in the hard earth, using a mason's trowel. Beroviero watched him, holding ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... ruins; many a day I cried, Ah me! I fear they never will rebuild it! Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve, As along Charles-street I prepared to walk. Just at the corner, by the pastrycook's, I heard a trowel tick against a brick. I looked me up, and straight a parapet Uprose at least seven inches o'er the planks. Joy to thee, Drury! to myself I said: He of the Blackfriars' Road, who hymned thy downfall In loud Hosannahs, and who prophesied That ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... their proper distance, examine, and pull all the old plants which have not flowered. When the fruit is nearly all gathered, examine them again, and cut off the runners; but if you want to make a fresh plantation, leave some of the two first, and cut off all the rest. Then stir up the ground with a trowel, or three-pronged fork, and in August they will be fit to transplant. If you have omitted in July, do not fail in August, that the runners may make good roots, to be transplanted in September; for, if later, the worms will draw them out of the ground, and the ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... applied to constructions made of bricks. The tools and implements employed by the bricklayer are:—the trowel for spreading the mortar; the plumb-rule to keep the work perpendicular, or in the case of an inclined or battering wall, to a regular batter, for the plumb-rule may be made to suit any required inclination; the spirit-level to keep the work horizontal, often used in conjunction with a straight-edge ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar permits us to rival the fish's fin; the sail, the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the industry of insect spinners; etc. Man thus reproduces and sums up in his technical contrivances the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... days about the value or valuelessness of logic. In the main, indeed, logic is not a productive tool so much as a weapon of defence. A man building up an intellectual system has to build like Nehemiah, with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. The imagination, the constructive quality, is the trowel, and argument is the sword. A wide experience of actual intellectual affairs will lead most people to the conclusion that logic is mainly valuable as a weapon wherewith ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... anxious to save his own from injury; the consequence was that the borrowed implement came home unfit for use, just at the very time that we wanted to plough for fall wheat. The same happened to a spade and trowel, bought in order to plaster the house. Satan asked the loan of them for ONE hour for the same purpose, and we ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... beaver, whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, is a builder, who cuts down trees and piles log upon log until he has raised a solid, domed cabin from seven to twenty feet in diameter, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... as the talent of a beaver—which can build houses, and uses its tail for a trowel—to the genius of a prophet and poet. Reason is all but extinct in this age; it ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... first stone of the Rougon Asylum, the triumphant monument destined to carry down to future ages the glory of the family. Vast preparations had been going on for a week past. There was talk of a silver hod and trowel, which the old lady was to use herself, determined to figure to triumph, with her eighty-two years. What swelled her heart with regal pride was that on this occasion she made the conquest of Plassans for the third time, for she compelled the whole ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... this out very carefully, I decided that my only course was to bury the poor animal where he fell, and say nothing about it. With some vague idea of precaution, I first took off the silver collar he wore, and then hastily interred him with a garden-trowel, and succeeded in removing all traces ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... what may be styled toast-cooking. Indeed, all the lightkeepers were equally good. The bread was cut an inch thick, and butter was laid on as plasterers spread plaster with a trowel. There was no scraping off a bit here to put it on there; no digging out pieces from little caverns in the bread with the point of the knife; no repetition of the work to spread it thinner, and, above all, no omitting of corners and edges;—no, the smallest conceivable ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... a trowel, a curved piece of steel fitted in a handle, or a three-cornered instrument similar to, but smaller than, the scraper used by shipwrights; anything, in fact, handy to carry, and efficacious in scratching up the sod at the roots of trees, or tearing off the pseudo-knots of bark which veil the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... in history which our young men and maidens will do well to saturate with holy tears."—The Sword and the Trowel. ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... hub of pipe in place is filled with cement and the straight end of the next piece of pipe is laid in place, then more cement is placed into the hub until the space between the hub and the pipe is filled. In a trench, a trowel is rather unhandy to work with, while the hands can be used to better advantage. The cement can be forced into place with the hands and then surfaced with a trowel. The rest of the operation is to swab out the inside joint to remove any cement that perchance ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... opening was made through the chimney wall leading into the underground basement room. By removing a few stones from the wall of this place, we were in a situation to commence the work of tunneling. The only implements in our possession were an old trowel and the half of a canteen. The arduous labor was commenced with only the fragment of a canteen, but with this the progress was so slow that even the most patient were disheartened. Fortunately for us a mason ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... what are called the towers, and rises to a height of three hundred and thirty feet. They are firmly braced together by tie-girders and cross tubes nearly as large as themselves. They were erected section by section, rivets and hammers being used instead of trowel and mortar. Scarcely were their summits united when, from their feet, there began to spring on either side the great tubes forming the lower part of the arch. In the cantilever construction, the bridge grows right and left from its piers at the same moment, because balance must be maintained. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... annuals and bedding plants. Mr. Brown had to get down on his hands and knees, with gardener's shears, to clip the turfed borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks. Thus he could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies, whether to spare them, give a country violet its blossoming time, and leave a screening burdock undisturbed until fledglings were out of their nests in ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... during his administration in Ireland, had discovered a rival to Ben Jonson in the person of a poetical bricklayer, one Henry Jones, whom his Lordship carried with him to London, as a specimen of the indigenous tribes of Erin. It was easier for this Jones to rhyme in heroics than to handle a trowel or construct a chimney. He rhymed, therefore, for the amusement and in honor of the polite circle of which Stanhope was the centre; the fashionable world subscribed magnificently for his volume of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to inhabit it is merely the matter of a walk in the neighbourhood. When removed from her own dwelling, which is turned topsy- turvy by my trowel, and placed in possession of the den produced by my art, the Lycosa at once disappears into that den. She does not come out again, seeks nothing better elsewhere. A large wire-gauze cover rests on the soil in ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... thrust the packet in his breast, and, taking trowel and basket, he started for his three-miles cross-country walk to Lenby, a tiny village, famous for its spire, which was invisible till it was nearly reached, the place lying in a nook in the wold hills, which, in that particular part, were clothed ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... brass matchsafe. She began to utter long cries and lamentations like a hen in distress, raising her hands to heaven. All at once they heard some one rushing up the stairs. It was the butler, in his shirt-sleeves and his enormous apron of ticking, still carrying his trowel in his hand. He was bewildered, his eyes protruding, while all about him he spread the smell of fresh earth. At every instant ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,—is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... should be taken not to break the flakes, and this is best avoided by the use of a fish trowel, which not being sharp, divides it better than a steel knife. Examine this little drawing, and you will see how a cod's head and shoulders should be carved. The head and shoulders of a cod contain the richest and best part of this ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... your sacred Guild, Save only graduates (so to speak), Experts with hod and trowel, skilled In the finesse of pure technique: And that is why No ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... sunset the steel skeleton of a twenty-story office building in process of construction stood out black and bizarre. It flung up its beams and girders like stern and yet airy music, orderly, miraculously strong, and delicately powerful. From the lower stories, where masons made their music of trowel and hammer, to the top, where steam-riveters rapped out their chorus like giant locusts in a summer field, the great building lived and breathed as if all those human energies that went to its making flowed warm through its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a short-cut, he reached the front of the house almost as soon as the car. Ricky had been working with the morning-glory vines about the terrace steps, young Sam standing attendance with a rusty trowel and one of ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... reminded me that the shepherdess had once been my ideal. She wore a broad straw hat, with artificial roses which made it hang down on one side, and, as she had been working in our garden, she wore huge gloves and carried a trowel in one hand. As she entered, my grandfather rose hastily from his chair and presented us with impressive courtesy. "Royal," he said, "this is your cousin, Beatrice Endicott." If he had not been present, I think we would have shaken hands without restraint. But he made our meeting ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Cambridge. In his seventeenth or eighteenth year, probably from a want of means, he had to give up the career of learning, in order to follow the simple calling of his stepfather. It may be easily understood that Ben was little pleased with the use of the trowel; he fled to the Netherlands, became a soldier, and took part in a campaign. After a year, the youthful adventurer, then only nineteen years old, came back to London. He talks of a heroic deed; but the truthfulness of his account may well be doubted. He pretends having killed an enemy, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... whites enjoy. They can not even ride in the cars of our city rail roads. They are snuffed at in the house of God, or tolerated with ill-disguised disgust. Can the black man be a mason in New York? Let him be employed as a journeyman, and every Irish lover of liberty that carries the hod or trowel, would leave at once, or compel him to leave! Can the black man be a carpenter? There is scarcely a carpenter's shop in New York in which a journeyman would continue to work, if a black man was employed in it. Can the black man engage ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... [laid on with a trowel] I suppose the meaning is, that there is too heavy a mass of big words laid upon a ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... covered with grape-vines on one side, and on the other he knew there were flower-beds and fruit-trees, for every once in a while Miss Rachel was to be seen emerging from there in a broad straw hat and with buck-skin gloves, trailing long bits of string or boughs of green stuff, with scissors and trowel and watering-can. ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... written a month of the year. If there be more than twenty-four guests there are many other available days, as Arbor Day, represented by a tree; a hatchet for Washington's Birthday; a flag for Flag Day; a saw, trowel or spade for Labor Day, and a ballot box for Election Day. If it be necessary to use these extra days the plain cards must be numbered to designate the different days of the same month. For instance, the card ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... foundation-stone. The vessel and its contents, enveloped in an otter's skin, were placed by Mr. Mackenzie in the cavity, the spectators looking on in quiet approval. The stone was then touched with the trowel, the deposit was covered up, and the rite was complete. An account of the proceedings found its way into the newspapers, and Sir Peregrine Maitland learned, to his intense disgust, of the part which Mackenzie had been permitted to take in the ceremony. He sent for Colonel Thomas Clark, one of the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... soil! And there, too, Joseph Coombs was found, With solemn step his march around Among the patients, pacing slowly— Disciple of the meek and lowly, Who afterwards oft turned the key On many a goodly company. In that strong work of mason's trowel, Ruled now by Alexander Powell. And William Addison, no more— As trim a soldier as e'er wore The uniform, or bravely bore His head erect, with step as light As wings that touch the air in flight. Well had he won and kept from harm The honor'd stripes upon his arm. Such ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... little carving, the fleshy parts being those principally esteemed. A cod's head and shoulders, when in season, and properly boiled, is a very genteel and handsome dish. When cut, it should be done with a fish trowel; the parts about the back-bone, or the shoulders, are by far the firmest and best. Take off a piece quite down to the bone, in the direction a, b, c, d, putting in the spoon at a, c, and with each slice of the fish give a piece of the round, which ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... little afraid of the responsibility of treasure- trove, but he was overruled by a chorus of eager voices, and dispossessed of the trowel, which he had brought to dig up some down- gentians for the garden. While Norman set to work as pioneer, some skipped about in wild ecstasy, and Ethel knelt down to peer ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... under the trowel! No, it is gone. There it is again. Dig fast, Ned. That is right. He has put it with a trowelful of sand ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... suffered no serious inconvenience from his confinement in the box, which was only three and a half feet long, was disguised as a mason, and, with a rule and trowel in his hand, was conducted to a boat, and sent into Belgium, where he ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... you mean—but deuce take me, I can't hit of her name neither. Paints, d'ye say? Why, she lays it on with a trowel. Then she has a great beard that bristles through it, and makes her look as if she were plastered with lime and ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... most distant dioceses, a rain of gold destined to increase and never end. Then came his happy years: he was to be met among the workmen at all hours, instilling activity into them like the jovial, good-natured fellow he was, constantly on the point of taking a pick or trowel in hand himself, such was his eagerness to behold the realisation of his dream. But days of trial were in store for him: he fell ill, and lay in danger of death on the fourth of April, 1864, when the first procession started from his parish church to the Grotto, a procession ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a step further and transplant the wild flowers and the weeds. A busy and successful professional friend of mine, besides having a cabinet shop in his stable, finds (or makes) time to go to the woods with his trowel. He has quite a wild-flower bank in his garden. I cannot give definite directions as to their setting out—I think he just throws them down anywhere—a fair percentage seem to thrive,—I can remember the larger bur-marigold, the red and white bane-berry, rattlesnake-weed, rattlesnake-plantain, ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... gloves and brought her trowel from under the front porch, and she and the maid began to dig up the fresh, damp earth on the sunny side ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... to inhabit it is merely the matter of a walk in the neighbourhood. When removed from her own dwelling, which is turned topsy-turvy by my trowel, and placed in possession of the den produced by my art, the Lycosa at once disappears into that den. She does not come out again, seeks nothing better elsewhere. A large wire-gauze cover rests on the soil in the pan and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... led to the stables and farm buildings. Her steps made no sound on the turf path, and she suddenly came in sight of Tom and Rhoda standing close to the archway. Rhoda had her gardening gloves and apron on, and a trowel in her hand. She had just been sowing seeds in the bed that ran along the yew hedge. Tom had come through the archway to bid her good-bye before starting ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... a wondrous picturesque figure of himself as, in a raised corner of the crowded and beflagged marquee, he had flourished a trowel, and talked about the great and enlightened public, and about the highest function of the drama, and about the duty of the artist to elevate, and about the solemn responsibility of theatrical managers, and about the absence of petty jealousies in the world of the stage. Everybody ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... snowshoes, too small for a man surely—if you could tell of a thing the size of snowshoes—hanging on the wall. There was a fishing-rod case, with something hanging near it that she imagined was a flybook. There was a little trowel, and a graceful birch-bark basket, as if some one might want to go out and bring home plants. She got up finally, her curiosity stronger than ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... no time in remonstrating with the workmen on their conduct, but, seizing a trowel, lifted a heavy stone into its ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... cannon, the loud strains of martial music, and the cheers of her followers, the empress laid the first stone of the city of Caterinoslaw, and after her, the emperor took up the mortar and trowel, and laid the second one. He performed his part of the drama with becoming solemnity; but, about an hour later, as he was taking his customary afternoon walk with the French ambassador, M. de Sigur, he laughed, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... almonds, with four to six bottles of scented water, and a little musk and amber, also forty pearls, two sapphires, a few garnets and rubies, with some gold thread, and above all a trough and a little silver trowel." Her father wondered at this extravagant demand, nevertheless he would not refuse his daughter; so he went to the fair, and on his return brought her all that ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... traitors to the land of their birth and breeding, the poor emigrant starts from the interior, where his ideas have never expanded beyond the weaver's loom or factory labour, the plough or the spade, the hod, the plane, or the trowel, and hastens with his wife and children ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... and the small window, almost blocking the light—on a platform constructed of three planks and a couple of chairs set face to face—stood Nicky-Nan, with a trowel in one hand and a bricklayer's board in the other, surprised in the act ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... empire there are two processes—the building up, and the tearing down. The plow is no less essential than the trowel. The period after Boris had been for Russia the period of the wholesome plow. The harvest was far off. But the name Romanoff was going to stand for another Russia, not like the old Russia of Kief, nor yet the new Russia of Moscow; but another and a Europeanized ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... those of the poor, of the slave from his master. Those who desired to set some mark on the resting-place of a relative, to distinguish it from those around, either had the name engraved upon the slab, or rudely scratched with the sharp end of a trowel in the mortar by which the slab was secured, or else a bit of ornamented glass or a ring or coin was impressed in the mortar ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... with living sculpture breathes, With verdant carvings, flowery wreathes Of never-wasting bloom; In strong relief his goodly base All instruments of labour grace, The trowel, spade, and loom. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... flaunting poppies sprouted right up against the sweet modest clover-pinks, while the whole paper of bachelor's-buttons was sowed over everything—which I immediately began to dig right up again, blushing furiously to myself over the trowel, and glad that I had caught myself before they grew up to laugh in my face. However, I got that laugh anyway, and I might just as well have left them, for Billy ran to the gate and called Doctor John to come in and make Molly stop digging up his buttons. Billy claims everything in this garden, and ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... University, he betook himself to the Trade of his Father-in-law; And let not any be offended herewith, since it is more commendable to work in a lawful Calling, then having one not to use it. He was one who helped in the building of the new Structure of Lincolns-Inn, where, having a Trowel in his hand, he had a Book in his pocket, that as his work went forward, so his study went ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... at the trowel, That was bred to kill a cow well: Hence the greasy clumsy mien In his dress and figure seen; Hence the mean and sordid soul, Like his body rank and foul; Hence that wild suspicious peep, Like a rogue that steals a sheep; Hence he learnt the butcher's guile, How to cut your throat and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... once at the feast of Tabernacles. And the Sanctuary (was whitewashed) once at the passover. The Rabbi said, "every Friday evening they whitewashed them with a mop on account of the blood." They did not plaster it with an iron trowel, "mayhap it will touch and defile." Since iron is made to shorten the days of man, and the altar is made to lengthen the days of man, it is not lawful, that what shortens should ...
— Hebrew Literature
... to deposit his trowel of cement on the surface of the lower stone, to seal it to the stone held suspended by the crane ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... he returned to his seat, he caught a glimpse of his wife, kneeling on the path, and making a little trench with a trowel in the ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... blackberry-vines. But the little boys had their india-rubber boots. At last they discovered the little old woman. They knew her by her hat. It was steeple-crowned, without any vane. They saw her digging with her trowel round a sassafras bush. They told her their story,—how their mother had put salt in her coffee, and how the chemist had made it worse instead of better, and how their mother couldn't drink it, and wouldn't she come and see what she could do? And she said she would, and ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... taken a harder heart than Carter's to withstand the pleading tones and the expectant little face; and the gardener set down his flower-pots, and laid down his trowel at once. ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... spider, terrine, toby, urceus. plate, platter, dish, trencher, calabash, porringer, potager, saucer, pan, crucible; glassware, tableware; vitrics. compote, gravy boat, creamer, sugar bowl, butter dish, mug, pitcher, punch bowl, chafing dish. shovel, trowel, spoon, spatula, ladle, dipper, tablespoon, watch glass, thimble. closet, commode, cupboard, cellaret, chiffonniere, locker, bin, bunker, buffet, press, clothespress, safe, sideboard, drawer, chest of drawers, chest on chest, highboy, lowboy, till, scrutoire^, secretary, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in which, some of the hearth-bricks are rather irregularly disposed; and we said to ourself, perhaps the brick-layer who built this noble fireplace worked like Ben Jonson, with a trowel in one hand and a copy of Horace in the other. That suggested to us that we had not read any Ben Jonson for a very long time: so we turned to "Every Man in His Humour" and "The Alchemist." Part of Jonson's notice "To the Reader" preceding "The Alchemist" struck us as equally ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Guy, he did not see the party set out the next morning, or the shock might so completely have overcome him as to unfit him for any business whatever. But they waited until he had gone, and then they started with their baskets, trowel, and garden-fork. ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... had acquired a fat bay horse and a double buckboard; and, in the seventh heaven now, she jogged about the country through leafy lanes and thistle-bordered by-roads long familiar to her childhood, sometimes with basket, trowel, and garden gloves, intent on the digging and transplanting of ferns, sometimes with field-glasses and books, on ornithological information bent. More often she started out with only a bag of feed for Henry ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... peers, porters, tailors, tune the reeds, And measuring words to measuring shapes succeeds; For bankrupts write, when ruin'd shops are shut, As maggots crawl from out a perish'd nut. His hammer this, and that his trowel quits, And, wanting sense for tradesmen, serve for wits. By thriving men subsists each other trade; Of every broken craft a writer's made: Thus his material, paper, takes its birth From tatter'd rags of ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... man of yours is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls a plain, every-day squash a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run a well-ordered truck-patch; though it's no more than might be expected in a country where they ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... spears into pruning hooks. And besides the consumption of wood for fires, no little amount is used for the construction of our houses or huts. Nearly every man has suddenly become a mason or a carpenter, and the hammer, the axe, and the trowel are being plied with the utmost vigor, if not with the highest skill. Many of us, however, are astonished at the ingenuity that is displayed in this department. Large logs, notched at the ends so as to dovetail together, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... suddenly as it had come, and left her at ease with the thought: "Abby has had nothing to hurt her hands. Why shouldn't they be pretty?" But not for Abby's hands would she have given up a single hour when she had washed Jenny's little flannels or dug enchanted garden beds with Harry's miniature trowel. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... straighten rapidly, rolling up her ribbons with shaking fingers, and carefully folding her clothes into compact squares. Ever since her childhood she had always begun to work at her chest of drawers when any sudden shock unnerved her. After a great happiness she took up her trowel and dug among the flowers of the garden; but when her heart was heavy within her, she shut her door and put her ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... pointed piece of slate; I can scrape holes with that,' said Allan. 'Take this old trowel, Marjorie; it hasn't a handle, but I don't suppose ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... and here she did come! And in a trice Polly had the cover up, and out flew the little green tin botany case; and within it being an iron spoon and little trowel, off flew Polly on happy feet to unearth the treasures that were to beautify Phronsie's little garden; a bunch of girls following to ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... Mr. Donald. "I'll fix a part of the house here and you can plant what you want in it"; and after that many mornings found Drusilla pottering happily around the conservatory with a trowel, planting seeds or "slipping" plants as she called it. It gave her something to do, and that was the one thing she needed. She missed the active life, the "doing something." Everything was done for her—she had no duties. She, who had passed her life in service for ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... the little picket-fence until it was white as new snow. At odd times Braddish himself painted the little house (it was all of old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; and my father and Mr. Sturtevant contributed a load of beautiful, sleek, rich pasture sod and the labor to lay it; so that by midsummer the little domain was the spickest, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... abundant supply of food and drink, the workmen never left their work; and amidst their continuous laughter the four walls were run up with incredible quickness, until one day Krespel cried, "Stop!" Then the workmen, laying down trowel and hammer, came down from the scaffoldings and gathered round Krespel in a circle, whilst every laughing face was asking, "Well, and what now?" "Make way!" cried Krespel; and then running to one end of the garden, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... builders love to raise upon some miserable fragment of waste ground hanging to the skirts of a prosperous town. Brigsome's Terrace was, perhaps, one of the most dismal blocks of building that was ever composed of brick and mortar since the first mason plied his trowel and the first architect drew his plan. The builder who had speculated in the ten dreary eight-roomed prison-houses had hung himself behind the parlor door of an adjacent tavern while the carcases were yet ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... such that it does not need a tail to tuck itself up with, as do the coon and the fox. The dog talks with his tail; the tail of the possum is prehensile; the porcupine uses his tail in climbing and for defense; the beaver as a tool or trowel; while the tail of the skunk serves as a screen behind which it masks ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the St. Paul's Freemason's Lodge, which assembled at the "Goose and Gridiron," one of the most ancient lodges in London. He presided regularly at its meetings for upwards of eighteen years. He presented the lodge with three beautifully carved mahogany candlesticks, and the trowel and mallet which he used in laying the first stone of the great cathedral in 1675. In 1688 Wren was elected Grand Master of the order, and he nominated his old fellow-workers at St. Paul's, Cibber, the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... made to work; and not made to work in the glittering and glorious sense, as generals and chiefs of staff, and legislators, and land-barons, but in the plain and humble part of laborers looking for a job; that they should carry a hod and wield a trowel and swing a pick and, at the day's end, be glad of a humble supper and a night's rest; that they should work, in short, as millions of poor emigrants out of Germany have worked for generations past; that there should be about them none of the prestige of fallen grandeur; that, if ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... his spirit of encouragement, the willingness with which he put his shoulder to the wheel everywhere that aid was needed, his boldness in defying those leagued against him, completely changed the aspect of Jamestown. The gentlemen who had refused to wield axe or spade or bricklayer's trowel because of their gentility were shamed ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... old paper being off, Joe washed down the walls with water, and having swept the paper into a heap in the middle of the floor, he mixed with a small trowel some cement on a small board and proceeded to stop up the cracks and holes in the walls and ceiling. After a while, feeling very tired, it occurred to him that he deserved a spell and a smoke for five minutes. He closed the door and placed a pair of steps against it. There were two windows ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... I remember as we climbed the steps to the speaker's platform, the Doctor whispered to me, "Courage, Eleanor, what other women have done you can do." I almost lost my equilibrium when I was presented with a silver trowel as a souvenir of the event. There was nothing about a silver trowel in my notes. However, the event passed off without any calamity but it was my first and last appearance ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... spirits when they went to climb the trees." Their crops are mountain rice, camotes or sweet potatoes, gabi or taro, maize, squash, bananas, tapioca and, in some places, sugar cane and tobacco. They are good gardeners, although all their cultivation is by hand, their tools being a short hoe or trowel and a wooden planting stick, which is ornamented ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... which has a mound-like character, is daubed over with mud, the tail of the alligator being used as a trowel. The first duties of maternity being over, the female alligator acts as policeman until the eggs are hatched. Her office is not a sinecure, for the fowls of the air, and the creeping things upon earth, are attracted to the entombed delicacies secreted in this oven-like structure in the ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... mounted the high horse, and rode away complacent with the old hand laying the court butter on his back with a trowel. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... supposed to be a bird. It came from behind the great acclivities that ran opposite his place by the pools. Brendon suddenly perceived that it was no natural noise but arose from some human activity. It was, in fact, the musical note of a mason's trowel, and when presently it ceased, he was annoyed to hear heavy footsteps in the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... great makers of conquests; and Napoleon's armies were great makers of conquests; but the modern Guerilla regiments of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln, are the greatest conquerors of all; for they hold the longest the soil that they have once possessed. How mighty the devastation which follows in the wake of these tremendous aggressors, as they march through the kingdom of nature, triumphantly bricklaying beauty wherever they ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... means it freezes as hard as stone, and prevents their common enemy, the wolverene, disturbing them during the winter. From the beaver being seen to flap its tail when moving over its work, but especially when about to plunge into the water, has arisen the idea that it uses this member as a trowel. This custom it preserves even when it becomes tame and domesticated, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon the rock or the plaster. It was the sign of victory, and he who lay within had conquered. The great rudeness in the drawing of the palm, often as if, while the mortar was still wet, the mason had made the lines upon it with his trowel, is a striking indication of the state of feeling at the time when the grave was made. There was no pomp or parade; possibly the burial of him or of her who had died for the faith was in secret; those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... pond and was out of sight behind a grassy point. There he stayed, now and then striking the water with his tail as a signal that the danger was not yet over. It isn't every animal that can use his caudal appendage as a stool, as a rudder, as a third hind leg, as a trowel for smoothing the floor of his house, and as a tocsin ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... although not a bricklayer by trade, I would offer a few hints how to construct a fire-proof chimney. Let the bed be laid of brick and mortar, iron, or stone; then the workman should take a brick in his left hand, and with the trowel, draw the mortar upon the end of the brick, from the under side, and not from the outside edge, as is usual. Then, by pressing the brick against the next one, the whole space between the two bricks will be filled with mortar; and so ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... out this fact, remarked that such a thing would be impossible in the North. So strong is the prejudice against the employment of Negro labor that the presence of the Negro workmen on a brick wall would cause every white man to throw down his trowel and quit work. This thing is true in all the remunerative avenues of life in the North. In respect to the South, it is there that the Negro will work out his industrial destiny. He has been and will be the laborer. Such schools as Tuskegee and Hampton will prepare him to compete with ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... intending his fortune to build, In his youth would have taught him the trowel to wield, But the mortar of discipline never would stick, For his skull was secured by a facing of brick; And with all his endeavours of patience and pain, The skill of his sire he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... enemy, the wolverene, from disturbing them during the winter; and as they are frequently seen to walk over their work, and sometimes to give a flap with their tail, particularly when plunging into the water, this has, without doubt, given rise to the vulgar opinion that they use their tails as a trowel, with which they plaster their houses; whereas that flapping of the tail is no more than a custom which they always preserve, even when they become tame and domestic, and more particularly ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... connection with the tails of these two animals. Both are almost naked of hair, and covered with "scales," and both are flat. The tail of the beaver, and the uses it makes of this appendage, are things known to every one. Every one has read of its trowel-shape and use, its great breadth, thickness, and weight, and its resemblance to a cricket-bat. The tail of the muskrat is also naked, covered with scales, and compressed or flattened; but instead of being horizontally so, as with the beaver, it is the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... two hundred feet from front to rear, The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks, The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; —Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... imagined their little scene ending very beautifully in a grave embrace and kiss; but no opportunity was given her for this final demonstration of her spirit of charity. Her mother gathered up her scissors, her watering-pot, her trowel, and handing Imogen the filled basket of roses said, "Will you carry these ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of it in a pecuniary point of view, 346 was encroached upon by three uncurtained beds, of most impoverished appearance,—while, exhibiting the ravages of time in divers fractures, the dingy walls and ceiling, retouched by the trowel in many places with a lighter shade of repairing material, bore no unapt resemblance to the Pye-bald Horse in Chiswell-street! Calculating on its utility and probable future use, the builder of the mansion had given to this room the appendage ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Division, of the boasted Prussian Guards, forming the very flower and kernel of the Kaiser's army. And news also must have reached the conqueror of Paardeburg and Pretoria that the German-prompted and German-paid rebellion against the Union of which he had laid the foundation-stone—not with the trowel of an architect, but with the sword of a soldier—was collapsing under the well-directed blows of such an Imperial patriot and statesman as General Botha, proud to wear the uniform of ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... the mass of the Holy Spirit is solemnly said, if not always devoutly listened to; the ambassadors of the Catholic powers utter their official exhortations to harmony and a single eye to the good of the Church; and when they withdraw, the mason of the conclave steps gravely forth, trowel in hand, to build up a solid wall of brick and mortar betwixt the electors and that world which still looks forward with curious interest, although with diminished faith, to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 'Cumberland corsets,' 'Petersham trousers,' 'Brummel cravats,' 'Osbaldistone ties,' and 'Exquisite crops,' should be only sketchily rendered in paint. Of course, Mr. Opie, who affected thorough John Bullism in art, who laid on his pigments steadily with a trowel, and produced portraits of ladies like washerwomen, and gentlemen liking Wapping publicans—of course, unsentimental, unfashionable Mr. Opie denounced the degeneracy of his competitor's style. 'Lawrence makes coxcombs of his sitters, and they make a coxcomb ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... what I'm going to find out." She pointed to a woman, stooped to the ground and working with a trowel; in front of the tiny bungalow. "I don't know what she's like, but at the worst she can only be mean. See! She's looking at us now. Drop your load alongside of mine, and ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... was in earnest, and I ran downstairs accordingly, returning with a garden trowel, a plate of cold fish, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... where should be paw, And beaver-trowel tail, And snout of beast equip'd with teeth Where gills ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... comrades to lift out the bodies of the Formicae, and others tearing them in pieces, on account of their weight being too great for a single Eciton— a number of carriers seizing each a fragment, and carrying it off down the slope. On digging into the earth with a small trowel near the entrances of the mines, I found the nests of the Formicae, with grubs and cocoons, which the Ecitons were thus invading, at a depth of about eight inches from the surface. The eager freebooters rushed in as fast as I excavated, and seized the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... majestic thought of life than this—the scaffolding by which souls are built up into the temple of God? And to care whether a thing is painful or pleasant is as absurd as to care whether the bricklayer's trowel is knocking the sharp corner off a brick, or plastering mortar on the one below it before he lays it carefully on its course. Is the building getting on? That is the one question ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... bells, and a pattern of red eggs. To the left, the wall is covered with climbing plants, wild grapes, Virginia jessamine. In the middle is a sun-dial. There are many plants in pots. Your child is looking at the flowers. She shows them to her nurse—she is making holes in the earth with her trowel, and planting seeds. The nurse is raking the path. The young girl is pure as an angel, but the beginning of love is there, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... assistance of the City Surveyor and Mr. Stanley, stone-mason, the worthy Mayor then proceeded to discharge his agreeable duty—the laying of the first stone. He used for the purpose a very elegant silver trowel {59a} with ivory handle, furnished by the Messrs. Etheridge (which had been presented to his worship by Mr. E. E. Benest) bearing the following inscription on ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... 2-in. mortar face to be placed on all exposed surfaces and the remainder to be smoothed with a trowel and straight-edge. After about 48 hours, the biats were blocked up on the bench, and all forms between the bench walls below the working ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... a cave, Or a vault in the nave When the iron door Is closed, and the floor Of the church relaid With trowel and spade. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... work. And the masons' work grew so surely, course upon course, and when done seemed so solid, so eternal!... This morning she lingered longer than usual watching the young mason wield his hammer and trowel. Archie had ruffled her badly with his talk about money losses, and now she felt soothed, freed from stupid perplexities. The mason's large hands, she noted, were supple and dexterous—he made no useless movements. Occasionally he turned his head to spit tobacco or drew off to look ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... he retorted, "I want my trowel," and, grumbling to himself, the old fellow shuffled off to the other ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... and sheen that dance on the leaf of the lily, Causing the bud to explode, and gilding the poodle's chinchilla, Gladys cavorts with the rake, and hitches the string to the lattice, While with the trowel she digs, and gladdens the heart of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... of the jib-sail are given in Fig. 194. It was such a small sail that no boom was used with it. In place of a rudder the steering oar had to be used. This was made of a rake handle with a large trowel blade fastened to the end of it. The sharp blade cut into the ice, and so steered the scow when it was running as an ice boat, and in the water the blade offered sufficient resistance ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... honor of the linden festival. The white dove-house was shining with a fresh coat of paint, and the pigeons were crooning contentedly, flying down often to drink at the drip from the water tank. Mrs. Kohler, who was transplanting pansies, came up with her trowel and told Thea it was lucky to have your birthday when the lindens were in bloom, and that she must go and look at the sweet peas. Wunsch accompanied her, and as they walked between the flower-beds ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... wagon also stopped the way; nothing was to be seen but workmen, swarming from the kitchens to the garret. Inside and outside alike; bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons; hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, trowel: all at ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... every hour in my night school. I found here a very large per cent. of foreigners and they were naturally of the more ambitious type. I found I had a great deal to learn even in the matter of spreading mortar and using a trowel. It was really fascinating work and in the instructor I made an invaluable friend. Through him I was able to arrange my scattered fragments of information into larger groups. Little by little I told him something of my plan and he was very much interested in it. He gave me many valuable suggestions ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... Salvation Army; in fact, of being almost everything but a tiler or plasterer. But this shrewd woman had evidently come to the conclusion that, if I did not work upon the housetops, I must perforce be an artist of the trowel. I assured her that I was as incapable of fixing a tile as of making ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... calling the young creation from its slumbers. The air was so sharp, so clear, so sunny, the mysterious sense of coming life so invigorating, and the sounds and aspect of nature so rejoicing, that Rachel with her gauntlets on, her white basket of flower seeds, her trowel, and all her garden implements beside her, felt her own spring of life return, and rejoiced in the glad hour that shone ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on the structure of the system and consolidate it for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... can save money by purchasing poor tools. It is quite impossible, because always one has either to buy new and better ones, or mend and remend the poor ones. The lad found out that a good trowel costs at least 50 cents although a smaller one called a transplanting trowel may be had for 15 cents; cast steel rake, 50 cents (10 teeth), 75 cents (14 teeth); hoe, 50 cents; Dutch hoe, four inches, 40 cents; spading fork, $1.25, ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... Trowel and spade and tomahawk went furiously to work, and soon cleared away the gravel from a surface of three ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... fully impressed with the value of these archeological discoveries, detailed a man to superintend the exhumation, who proceeded to remove the earth from the mould, which he reached through a layer of charcoal, and then with a trowel excavated beneath it. The clay was not thoroughly baked, and no impression of the corpse was left, except of the forehead and that portion of the limbs between the ankles and the knees, and even these portions of the mould crumbled. The body had ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... be remembered, was converted in his boyhood in his father's chapel. When grown to man's estate, he took up the trowel and thereby procured funds to secure his education. He graduated from the Lawrence University as a member of the Second Class, in 1858. He entered the Conference the same year, and was stationed ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... was building a little house of red bricks, and it was the tap-tap-tapping of his trowel, or mortar-shovel, ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... were an ebon black, as were his eyes; his features were hard and massive; his nose, which was somewhat hooked, but too much pointed, seemed as if, while in a plastic state, it had been sloped by a trowel towards one side of his face, a circumstance which, while taken in connection with his black whiskers that ran to a point near his mouth, and piercing eyes, that were too deeply and narrowly set, gave him, aided by his heavy eyebrows, an expression at once of great cruelty and extraordinary ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton |
