Blockhead

“ The numbers of immense blocks of stone also, which we continually come upon, cause great trouble and have to be got out and removed, which takes up a great deal of time, for at the moment when a large block of this kind is rolled to the edge of the slope, all of my workmen leave their own work and hurry off to see the enormous weight roll down its steep path with a thundering noise and settle itself at some distance in the Plain. ”

“ The English have been constantly boasting in the newspapers about the advantages of their blockhouses, but they have never been able to give an instance of a capture effected by them. On the contrary, when during the last stages of the war it happened, as it often did, that they drove some of our men against one or other of the great blockhouse lines which then intersected the country, and it became necessary for us to fight our way through, we generally succeeded in doing so. ”

“ On either side of this great thoroughfare were vast blocks of ruins, each block, generally speaking, being separated from its neighbour by a space of what had once, I suppose, been garden-ground, but was now dense and tangled bush. They were all built of the same coloured stone, and most of them had pillars, which was as much as we could make out in the fading light as we passed swiftly up the main road, that I believe I am right in saying no living foot had pressed for thousands of years. ”

“ From thence across the valley, Box Hill attracted and held the sight as one looked eastward: the strongest and most simple 179 of our southern hills. It stood out like a cape along our coasting journey, our navigation of the line of the Downs. The trend of the range is here such that the clean steep of this promontory hides the slopes to the east. It occupies the landscape alone.
It has been debated and cannot be resolved, why these great lines of chalk north and south of the Weald achieve an impression of majesty. They are not very high. ”

“ At Block Island the tide rises only two feet. At Hallet's Point, near the city, it rises more than seven feet. The quiet peaceful tide at Block Island becomes here a swiftly flowing stream that surges with foam and fury between the rough rocky banks, and making many a dangerous eddy and whirl-pool. It is no wonder the sailors used to call this place Hell Gate.
Let us look at this place a moment. The East River is open to the sea at each end. It is not like a real river, flowing down hill, and with a current constantly flowing in one direction. ”

“ The Blocksberg, where German as well as Norwegian witches gather for their great Sabbaths on the Eve of May Day (Walpurgis Night) and Midsummer Eve, is commonly identified with the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz mountains. But in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and probably elsewhere, villages have their own local Blocksberg, which is generally a hill or open place in the neighbourhood; a number of places in Pomerania go by the name of the Blocksberg. See J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 878 sq. ”

“ There came seconds, and sometimes minutes, when no one spoke, and the silence within the 218 block-house was so profound that the faint sifting of the snow on the roof was heard. Then an eddy of wind would whirl some of the sand-like particles through the loopholes into the eyes and faces of those who were peering out. Men and boys gathered their blankets closer about their shoulders, and set their muskets down beside them, where they could be caught up the instant needed, while they carefully warmed their benumbed fingers by rubbing and striking the palms together. ”

“ The windows are narrow loop-holes through which can be seen from time to time the blue barrels of flint-lock rifles. The second story of the blockhouse projects over the first, so that anyone approaching the wall would be subjected to rifle fire from the floor above. A cleared space in front contains the stumps of several large trees, behind one of which may be seen a crouching Indian, invisible to the blockhouse but easily seen by the audience. Well back and at the right is a small stream. Beyond both right and back the forest extends indefinitely. ”

“ A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by blocks of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone,—every house and every block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a mile, and all brilliantly lighted,—brought us at last to the principal thoroughfare. ”

“ It may be five or ten miles away, or it may be within sight of the block-house. We can get there without setting foot in the trail agin."
"You may be partly right, Larry, though if we can strike the path five miles away from the falls, I won't be afraid to keep it until we reach the block-house. The risk beyond that isn't any greater than what we have always had to run from the time we leave the settlement till we get back again." ”

“ These are prodigies to the rustic population, little accustomed to think of the dynamics of water, and totally ignorant of the deduction made in such circumstances from the specific gravity of any heavy mass carried by it. Geologists, who have looked into the great question of erratic blocks, are less apt to be startled by such phenomena.
Some of these gentlemen will, I suspect, find the transport of blocks at Holmfirth less remarkable than they could have desired. ”

“ Five years are an eventful space in the history of blocks, as of men. Within that period, they may be burnt down, blown down, or torn down to make room for grander blocks. In quick-growing American cities, the average life of blocks is less than that of the human generation that tenants them. First wood, then brick, then brownstone or marble--these are the successive forms of block life, before anything like stability is reached. Marble is the only real type of the permanent in American architecture. Nobody pulls down marble.
But five years had made little change in the exterior of our block. ”

“ Hunting, pig-sticking, big-game shooting, polo—all have their thrilling moments, but none can approach ‘running a blockade.’ Consider the dangers to be encountered, after three days of constant anxiety and little sleep, in threading our way through a swarm of blockaders, and the accuracy required to hit in the nick of time the mouth of a river only half a mile wide, without lights, and with a coast-line so low that as a rule the first intimation we had of its nearness was the dim white line of the surf. ”

“ The women and children are all in the block-house now; the men will be strongly posted at the gates and palisade, while the reserves will be in front of the block-house, in our rough outer works, ready to go to any menaced point or to cover their comrades if they have to retreat, and we are compelled to take to the block-house as a last resource.—There: I must go. You are tired, boy. You have had a long and perilous day. I’ll excuse you from everything to-night, and you had better get to the block-house and have a good night’s rest. ”

“ The banks of the Licking were from four to six feet above the surface, while along the eastern shore, in front of the block-house, was a fringe of bushes and undergrowth, which offered a tempting hiding-place to a foe. ”

“ MR. BLOCK
By Joe Hill
(Air: "It Looks To Me Like a Big Time Tonight")
Please give me your attention, I'll introduce to you
A man that is a credit to "Our Red, White and Blue";
His head is made of lumber, and solid as a rock;
He is a common worker and his name is Mr. Block.
And Block he thinks he may
Be President some day.
CHORUS:
Oh, Mr. Block, you were born by mistake,
You take the cake,
You make me ache.
Tie on a rock to your block and then jump in the lake,
Kindly do that for Liberty's sake.
Yes, Mr. Block is lucky; he found a job, by gee! ”

“ Not affording any escape to the terrestrial heat through joints, they are kept warm and open from below in most cases when block-pavements present an icy surface. Their smooth, seamless face, being almost entirely free from abrasion by attrition or atmospheric action, meets the mechanical and hygienic objections to block-pavements, both of stone and wood, as well as of macadamized roads. ”

“ Because it keeps the eyes so busy, seeing all the people that pass, one block of buildings seems very much like another the first few times the new-comer takes this walk, except, of course, for conspicuous landmarks like that of the new library on the site of the late reservoir or the Arcade on the site of the old Windsor Hotel, with its ghastly memories; but after awhile all the blocks begin to seem very different; not only the one where you saw a boy on a bicycle run down and killed, or where certain well-known people live, but the blocks formerly considered monotonous. ”

“ These are called travelled blocks, and can almost always be traced to their source in one of the higher valleys from which the glacier descended. Some of the most remarkable examples of such travelled blocks are to be found on the southern slopes of the Jura. These consist of enormous angular blocks of granite, gneiss, and other crystalline rocks, quite foreign to the Jura mountains, but exactly agreeing with those of the Alpine range fifty miles away across the great central valley of Switzerland. ”

“ There are huge circles of blocks either set close together or with an equal space dividing boulder from boulder; some of the giant circles are grouped together in twos and threes, others are isolated; one has its centre marked by a single enormous block, while another like block stands farther off in lonely vastness. Here also stands a chambered cromlech of four huge flat blocks roofed over like the cromlech under Slieve Callan across the Shannon mouth. ”

“ While he spoke we were walking on, and I now distinguished a hillock or mound of earth, with nearly perpendicular sides, on which was erected a blockhouse, formed of unhewn cypress trunks, of a solidity and thickness upon which four-and-twenty pounders would have had some difficulty in making an impression. Its roof rose about ten feet above a palisade enclosing the building, and consisting of stout saplings sharpened at the top, and stuck in the ground at a very short distance from each other, being moreover strengthened and bound together with wattles and branches. ”

“ They consist of uniform blocks, of about ten inches in thickness, having six sides,—laid one above another so as to appear like a solid pillar. But their great peculiarity is that each individual block has a similar-sized chip off the lower side on its northwest corner or angle. With this exception the blocks are flat. Occasionally one gets thrown off, and so the columns never appear at any great height above the earth ”

“ The blocks, which are shaped at such an angle that they give the most perfect mutual support, are joined to each other by oaken dowels, and laid on a hard concrete foundation, presenting a level surface, over which the impact is so equally divided, that the whole mass resists the pressure on each particular block; and yet, from being formed in panels of about a yard square, they are laid down or lifted up with far greater ease than the causeway. ”

“ It is evident that, when the blocks are placed in the box, as they are nearly circular, there will be many crevices unfilled. These openings are closely chinked with tunnel-rock, or broken slate bowlders. In doing the chinking, great care is taken that no block be left in a loose condition ”

“ In the same manner, we observe loose blocks deposited on high situations in the lateral valleys of the great transverse valleys, and dispersed over the passes into the neighbouring valleys. The height of the lateral deposites of loose blocks, and their position in the passes, and their passing into neighbouring valleys, are facts which assist us in judging of the extent of the power that may have acted during their transportation. ”

“ It is not indeed the giant block which endangers the craft, but a narrow channel to the starboard into which we are swept and in which we are hurried on towards a labyrinth of rocks through which no possible pathway can be seen. ”

“ The modern blockhouse is a building, sometimes of two storeys, which is loopholed on all sides, and not infrequently, in the case of two-storey blockhouses, provided with a mâchicoulis gallery. Blockhouses are built of wood, brick, stone, corrugated iron or any material available. ”

“ A most important part of the industry is that which actually forms another trade in itself, viz., that of blockmaking. Every shape requires its individual block of wood, iron or other material, in order that repetitions of the shape may be identical in outline and form. The earliest British “block” was that which undoubtedly gave the name to its successors. It was simply a block of wood formed from the trunk of a suitable sized tree, mounted on legs like a vaulting horse, and with ends bluntly pointed to the desired form, so that two operatives could be at work simultaneously. ”

“ Scarcely have we entered when the river, which has been swinging to the left, bends around again gradually to the right, and in a moment we are through the gorge, the river then circling around the Blockade Mountain, which has been so named because it seems always stupidly in the way. ”

“ Besides these interior buildings, two block-houses were built, each constructed so that the second story overhung the first, one of them, standing at the southeast and one at the northwest corner of the palisaded walls. A narrow wooden support, or walk, accessible only from one or the other of these block-houses, enabled its defenders to stand within the enclosure and look out over the row of sharpened logs. ”

“ While the mass is plastic I lay or spread the same upon the foundation or bed of the pavement, either in moulds or between movable joists of the proper thickness, so as to form the edges of the concrete blocks, a, a, etc. When the block, a, has been formed, I take strips of tar papor, b, of a width equal, or amost equal, to the height of the block, and place them up against the edges of the block in such a manner that they form the joints between such block and the adjacent blocks. ”

“ A block was made fast to the end of the main-yard, and a long line reved through it, to which three pieces of wood were fastened, one of which was put between the legs of the man who was to be ducked, and to this he was tied very fast, another was for him to hold in his hands, and the third was over his head, lest the rope should be hoisted too near the block, and by that means the man be hurt. ”