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So I had written in an essay on Senancour during the days when the little white house was but a dream, and Irma had never come to me across the cleared space in front of Greyfriars Kirk amid the thud of mallets and the "chip" of trowels. But Irma taught me better things. She knew when to be silent. She understood, also, when speech would slacken the tension of the mind.

You are never there, for I have never met you, or seen you once at the building. Why, sir, I am an early riser, getting up before day; and do you think that I am not awoke every morning in my life by the noise of their trowels at work, and their singing and noise before day; and do you suppose, sir, that they stop or leave off work at sundown?

As you will infer from this, Romeo is not only of a gentle, meditative disposition, but his harness is destitute of a check rein, overdraw, or otherwise. "Have you put in the trowels?" I asked, as we drove out the gate, the reins hanging so loosely from between Bart's knees, as he lit his pipe, that it was by mere chance that Romeo took the right turn.

Without going into further details, it is enough to say that the rest of Arthur's plan was carried out with the same success. The cement was made, and a thick layer of it spread over the floor of the house, as evenly and smoothly as could well be done, with no better trowels than gigantic oyster-shells. In three days it was hard as marble, and our house was now as complete as we could make it.

The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny has rarely been more strikingly illustrated than in the case of this statesman. Blackened daily all over by a thousand trowels, the purest and noblest character must have been defiled, and it is no wonder that the incrustation upon the Advocate's fame should have lasted for two centuries and a half.

All the old whitewash had to be washed off the ceilings and all the old paper had to be scraped off the walls preparatory to the house being repainted and decorated. The air was full of the sounds of hammering and sawing, the ringing of trowels, the rattle of pails, the splashing of water brushes, and the scraping of the stripping knives used by those who were removing the old wallpaper.

Still, would he like to know that the public have no access to the lake at any place where the tracks lie between the shore and this wall? Perhaps he would see that this occupancy correctly exemplifies the fate that the free-soil doctrine has met with throughout the country. There are sounds of trowels, voices of workmen behind me.

And so the hammers and trowels were heard again; and old Brattle would sit perfectly silent, gazing at the men as they worked. Once, as he saw two men and a boy shifting a ladder, he turned round, with a little chuckle to his wife, and said, "Sam'd 'a see'd hisself d d, afore he'd 'a asked another chap to help him with such a job as that." As Mrs. Brattle told Mrs.

The walls and ceilings were covered with the plaster which would dry the quickest, and the paper-hangers entered the rooms almost before the plasterers could take away their trowels and their lime-begrimed hats and coats. Cleaners with their brooms and pails jostled the mechanics, as the latter left the various rooms, and everywhere strode Mr. Burke.

Blinds were closed up and down the avenues, where people had either long left their houses vacant or were sheltering themselves in depths of gloom in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels and hammers had a sound that made you think of sparks struck out, as if the world were a great forge and all its matter at a white heat.