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“Quarters!” rang out aboard the war-ships almost before the report of the Morro gun had died away, the flag-ship having signalled for action. The Iowa opened the bombardment with her big 12-inch gun, the missile striking Morro Castle squarely, and knocking a great hole in the masonry.
I made my way up, and about to the landward entrance. The fort is a hollow old shell. Looking upward from the beach, you see the harmless blue sky through the gaping loopholes. Its interior is choked with rocks and brambles, and masses of fallen masonry. I scrambled up to the parapet, and obtained a noble sea-view.
The work of casting, boring, masonry, transport of workmen, and their installation in an almost uninhabited country, the construction of furnaces and workshops, the manufacturing tools, powder, projectile and incidental expenses would, according to the estimates, absorb nearly the whole.
The ground trembled and rocked and boulders, fragments of concrete masonry, and masses of metal flew in all directions as that city-encircling conduit of diabolical machinery was torn from its bed.
The Cliff Dwellers liked wide canyons, where the great cliffs caught the sun. Panther Canyon had been deserted for hundreds of years when the first Spanish missionaries came into Arizona, but the masonry of the houses was still wonderfully firm; had crumbled only where a landslide or a rolling boulder had torn it.
On the west side of the northern of the two rises a mass of masonry, so high as to partly block the arch. It is built, to a great extent, at any rate, of old materials, for on both sides of it are to be seen stones with fragments of plaited Norman diapers. The purpose of this masonry has been the subject of much discussion.
Since the time when the Abbey was taken from the monks, it has been private property; and the possessor, in Henry VIII.'s days, or subsequently, built a residence for himself within its precincts out of the old materials. This has now entirely disappeared, all but some unsightly old masonry, patched into the original walls.
And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final decorations occupied a total period of sixty years.
I have spent more than a month, and that in hard work too, in merely trying to get the forms of cusps into perfect order: whereby the reader may guess that I have not space to go into the subject now; but I shall hereafter give a few of the leading and most perfect examples, with their measures and masonry.
It is as important to a brain as is physical equilibrium to a work of masonry. A man without self-control, a building out of plumb, cannot endure. It is the foundation of all reputation worth the having. It is to man as necessary as the compass to a ship. It is the compass. Justice will give reputation for greatness though you create nothing great.
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