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Updated: June 8, 2025
As they had no tools for stone-cutting, they picked out the stones, and fitted them together according to their shape; and for want of hods they carried the mortar, wherever it was required, on their backs, stooping forward and clasping their hands together behind them, to prevent it from slipping off.
They pretended to be at a standstill because their satellites their âmes damnées, the men who hold their hods and mix their mortar had not turned up. 'Don't disturb yourselves, gentlemen, I said. 'There's nothing like taking things easy. It's a time-job. I'll send you the morning papers and a can of beer. And so I did, and since that day, do you know, the fellows have worked twice as hard.
In this uncertainty he left the train, and took cab, scenting trouble ahead. The difficulty was to find Wylie Street, which was a half-built street of five cottages in a new neighbourhood of brick, and when what was supposed to be Wylie Street was discovered, the cab had to stop, for across it lay bricks, hods and barrows in mud.
All the general public knew was that men with bricks in hods had been seen staggering up the old staircase with its spindle banisters and mahogany rail; that additional operatives had been discovered clinging to the slanting roof long enough to pass up to further experts grouped about the chimneys small rolls of tin and big bundles of shingles; that plasterers in white caps and aprons, with mortar-boards in one hand and trowels in the other, had been seen chinking up cracks; while any number of painters, carpenters, and locksmiths were working away for dear life all over the place from Aunt Jemima's kitchen to Todd's bunk under the roof.
On my first tramp each season in the tropical jungle, I see the legionary army ants hastening on their way to battle, and the leaf-cutters plodding along, with chlorophyll hods over their shoulders, exactly as they did last year, and the year preceding, and probably a hundred thousand years before that.
The whole house was prettily finished and in the two rooms down stairs there were fireplaces which took my eye, although they weren't bigger than coal hods. It was heated by a furnace and lighted by electricity and there were stained glass panels either side of the front door. The rent was forty dollars a month and I signed a three years' lease before I left.
On the 5th we took the outpost line again, but in the interval we did several route marches and saw the excellent Turkish trenches at Masaid among palm trees, growing scattered over a wide area, quite unlike the little concentrated hods with which we were familiar.
Up to this he had always accepted the verdict of the people about him that he had been a foolish boy "to go wandering in strange places." He had walked along the roads to many far towns. Then he had struck his friend, the building contractor. He had been a useful worker about a building house. At first he had carried hods of mortar and cement up ladders to the masons.
"You ought to be ashamed of that," said his wife. "I'm not. I'm simply proud of your sex, my dear." "Women do nearly everything, here," said Burnamy, impartially. "They built that big new Kaiserbad building: mixed the mortar, carried the hods, and laid the stone." "That makes me prouder of the sex than ever. But come, Mr. Burnamy!
In older countries the stained and ancient stone houses are symbols of the inflexible state of society to which they belong. The dwellers are anchored to that condition. There is no "Westward ho" for them. Like father, like son. The hod-carrier's son carries hods. Even the headsman's office is hereditary.
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