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Updated: May 11, 2025
About eighteen hundred shot had been fired into Fort Sumter, and the upper story was pretty well knocked to pieces. To walk around the parapet, we had constantly to climb over heaps of débris. With all this expenditure of ammunition, we had but one man dangerously wounded. This was John Schweirer, foreman of the Baltimore brick-layers.
In thinly-peopled spots, I have known brick-layers on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they themselves have sat up in that capacity, and have been unable to subside into the acceptance of a proffered share in the job, for two or three days together.
The coloured foreman of the brick-layers had been seriously ill; his place had been filled by a white man, under whom the walls were rising rapidly. Jim Green, the foreman whom the colonel had formerly discharged, and the two white brick-layers who had quit at the same time, applied for reinstatement.
The cause of a delay calculated to be particularly exasperating to an ardent lover was a series of strikes, that is to say, concerted refusals to work on the part of the brick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and other trades concerned in house building. What the specific causes of these strikes were I do not remember.
A basket I could not make by any means, having no such things as twigs that would bend to make wicker-ware; at least, none yet found out: and as to the wheel-barrow, I fancied I could make all but the wheel, but that I had no notion of; neither did I know how to go about it: besides, I had no possible way to make iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the wheel to run in; so I gave it over: and, for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a thing like a hod, which the labourers carry mortar in for the brick-layers.
So he kicked off in wind and wet and mud, wondering quite sincerely why the bubbling ditches and sucking pastures held him from day to day, or what so-lace he could find on off days in chasing grooms and brick-layers round outhouses. To make sure he up-rooted himself one week-end of heavy mid-winter rain, and re-entered his lost world in the character of Galahad fresh from a rest-cure.
Wilson owned eight slaves who were masons. These worked in the city. Being mechanics, they were let out to greater advantage than to keep them on the farm. Every Sunday evening, Mr. Wilson's servants, including the brick-layers, assembled in the kitchen, where the events of the week were fully discussed and commented upon.
After leaving school he was first made to assist his father in the tallow-chandler business; but his distaste for this trade was so great that his father, fearing the boy would run away to sea, began to look about for other employment for him. He took the lad to see "joiners, brick-layers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work," in order to discover where the boy's inclination lay.
In order to strengthen the mortar used in Sussex and Surrey houses and elsewhere, the process of "galleting" or "garreting" was adopted. The brick-layers used to decorate the rather wide and uneven mortar joint with small pieces of black ironstone stuck into the mortar. Sussex was once famous for its ironwork, and ironstone is found in plenty near the surface of the ground in this district.
I been a-totin' dis kindlin' from way up yander in Twenty-third Street where the circus useter be. Dey's buildin' a big hotel dere now de Fifth Avenue dey calls it. I'm a-carryin' mortar for de brick-layers an' somehow dese sticks is monst'ous heavy after workin' all day." "Where do you live?" asked Oliver, his eyes on the kindling-wood. "Not far from here, sah; little way dis side de Bow'ry.
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