Mason (builder)

“ Only those who have been weighed in the balance and found to be true, upright, and square have prepared themselves by their own growth to appreciate the inner meanings of their Craft. To the rest of their brethren within or without the lodge their sacred rituals must remain, as Shakespeare might have said, "Words, words, words." Within the Mason's own being is concealed the Power, which, blazing forth from his purified being, constitutes the Builder's Word. His life is the sole password which admits him to the true Masonic Lodge. ”

“ Contracts for the erection of buildings are often made with the carpenter, as master-builder or architect. In such cases, it is his business to employ persons capable of executing every kind of work required on the proposed edifice, from the bricklayer and stone-mason to the painter and glazier. It not unfrequently happens, however, that the person himself, who proposes to erect a building, chooses to employ the workmen in the different branches. ”

“ If necessary, she adds a little plaster, to tone down any inner excrescences. The solidly-embedded stonework alternates with the pure mortarwork, of which each fresh course receives its facing of tiny encrusted pebbles. As the edifice is raised, the builder slopes the construction a little towards the centre and fashions the curve which will give the spherical shape. We [8] employ arched centerings to support the masonry of a dome while building; the Eumenes, more daring than we, erects her cupola without any scaffolding. ”

“ Ravaged by the passing years, the Mason's home at last falls into ruin and becomes a hovel. Exposed as it is to the direct action of wind and weather, the dome built upon a pebble chips and cracks. To repair it would be too irksome, nor would that restore the original solidity of the shaky foundation. Better protected by the covering of a roof, the city of the sheds resists longer, without however escaping eventual decay. The storeys which each generation adds to those in which it was born increase the thickness and the weight of the edifice in alarming proportions. ”

“ I believe that no instance can be cited of a people still in their Stone Age who have surpassed that old race in the mason's art: indeed, I doubt if any such people has even approached their skill in that respect. The difficulty of constructing a great work of well-squared, hammer-dressed stones is enormously increased if the masons must work only with stone implements. Imagine the infinite, toilsome patience of a people who in such a way could rear the ancient Pueblo Bonito of New Mexico, five hundred and forty feet long, three hundred and fourteen wide and four stories high! ”

“ That is why they always cost more than machine made objects,” added Anne Mason.
“I hope my tilting stools will look like the picture given in the Manual,” now said Mildred Howell. “If they don’t work I shall give up in despair.”
“I think they look great, Mil. Maybe you’ll get a coup,” remarked Zan, who looked up from the elaborate bead-loom she was decorating, having constructed the entire machine of wood.
“I just adore that bead-loom you made, Zan,” now said May Randall, working industriously at the chest she was etching in pyrography. ”

“ As a Mason that makes a wall, sometimes meets with a stone that wants no cutting, and so only approving of it, he places it in his work: and a piece of Timber may happen to be crack'd in the very place where the Carpenter would cleave it, and he need not close it first, that he may cleave it asunder afterwards. ”

“ When one has the good fortune to have a machine to design of such extent that the masonry becomes the main part of it, what part of the glory does he give to the mason? Is the masonry part of it always satisfactory, and is not this resorting to the mason for a frame rather than a support adopted on smaller machines than is necessary? Is it necessary even in a planing machine of forty feet length of bed and a thirty foot table? ”

“ Where the work of building the home has been entrusted to an architect’s hands the latter usually appreciates the fact that the building of the fireplaces is liable more than any other part of the house to be taken into the mason’s own hands with, if he is not watched, disastrous results. Undoubtedly every mason [5] would resent most strongly any insinuation as to his lack of knowledge regarding fireplace construction. Each mason not only thinks that he knows how a fireplace should be built, but it is almost as general a rule that he feels that his particular method is the only correct one. ”

“ Many small houses in the country are built without any permanent foundation, but are temporarily supported on posts set in the ground, and “boarded down.” They are always shaky, and doubtful while they stand, and are frequently blown over altogether. As will be readily seen, the above method provides for the saving of one-half of the mason-work in the foundation. In many places stone is abundant, and will answer the same purpose as brick in this case, except for the 6 inches above ground. The laying up of a single-face wall, 21⁄2 feet high, of rough stone and mortar, would cost but a trifle. ”

“ Without leaving the house in which I live, I can enumerate stone, wood, glass, metal, paint and mortar as forming the foundation of the nests. The green-house with its furnace heat in the summer and its bright light, equalling that outside, is fairly well-frequented. The Mason-bee hardly ever fails to build there each year, in squads of a few dozen, now on the glass panes, now on the iron bars of the framework. ”

“ It is a learned importation, not a popular growth. The mason has dwindled into an unreasoning tool in the hands of the architect; hence the lack of personality, the absence of charm; and only in rare instances has the architect proved himself capable of supplying those qualities of design and proportion which to some slight degree compensate for the loss of interest on the part of the craftsman. ”

“ The masons employed were regular stone masons receiving the regular scale of wages of $3.50 per day. The number of blocks laid by each mason was 125 per day in building pilasters and 200 per day in building plain wall. Sometimes 250 blocks per day per man were laid in plain wall work. The cost per block of laying above was thus 2.8 cts. pilasters and 1.75 cts. in plain wall. This cost does not include transporting the blocks from yard or of handling them to the scaffold behind the masons, nor does it include the cost of materials and labor for mixing and delivering mortar. ”

“ Near the little mountain village of Highfield, Maryland, is one of the very few of these "crown-stones" which is to-day on the spot where Mason and Dixon planted it, and this one is enclosed in a large and very substantial, galvanized iron wire cage. It has been only within the past twelve or fifteen years that a road was cut through the heavier timber for the convenience of the guests of near-by summer hotels. ”

“ By a Speculative Mason, then, is meant a man who, though not an actual architect, sought and obtained membership among Free-masons. Such men, scholars and students, began to enter the order as early as 1600, if not earlier. If by Operative Mason is meant one who attached no moral meaning to his tools, there were none such in the olden time—all Masons, even those in the Guilds, using their tools as moral emblems in a way quite unknown to builders of our day. 'Tis a pity that this light of poetry has faded from our toil, and with it the joy of work. ”

“ The Chalicodoma of the Walls employs the same building-methods as Eumenes Amadei: in the courses of cement, she fixes, on the outside, small stones of minor bulk. Her work begins by being a turret of rustic art, not without a certain prettiness; then, when the cells are placed side by side, the whole construction degenerates into a lump governed apparently by no architectural rule. Moreover, the Mason-bee covers her mass of cells with a thick layer of cement, which conceals the original rockwork edifice. The Eumenes does not resort to this general coating: her building is too strong to need it ”

“ While laying the foundations, they not only hold on by their claws, but they fix their tail against some little projecting roughness in the wall to serve as a kind of prop; and then with their bill they carefully cram mud and bits of straw into the smallest chinks in the face of the brick or stone; and to give those materials time to harden preparatory to a fresh layer, the prudent little mason only labours early in the morning, so that his work dries sufficiently in the course of the day. ”

“ An underground passage, with a cell at the end of it; a gallery, an excavation, a shapeless cave. It is miner’s work, navvy’s work: vigorous sometimes, artistic never. They use the pick for loosening, the crowbar for shifting, the rake for extracting the materials, but never the trowel for laying. Now in the Eumenes we see real masons, who build their houses bit by bit with stone and mortar and run them up in the open, either on firm rock or on the shaky support of a bough. Hunting alternates with architecture; the insect is a Nimrod or a Vitruvius4 by turns. ”

“ They should be made of half-inch bolts at least 12 inches long, with a tee or washer at the bottom and a nut and washer at the top, and should be set approximately every 6 feet along the wall. After the carpenter has placed the roof plate and before it is bolted down, the mason should bed with cement mortar under it. ”

“ The space between the two iron rings forming the felloes, should be filled up with light wood, the tire then put on, and fastened to the felloes by bolts and glands clasping both felloes.
This is a carriage without a mortise or tenon, or wooden joint of any kind. It is, at an average, one-seventh lighter than any of those built on the ordinary construction.
The design of Mr. W. Mason’s patent invention, of 1827, is to give any required pressure to the ends of what are called mail axletrees, in order to prevent their shaking in the boxes of the wheels. ”

“ Ironstone China.—This again is a term used by Mason and others in regard to an earthenware body for which the firm of Mason, of Lane Delph, took out a patent in 1813. It is a ware, heavy in weight, and possessing great strength. In pieces of important size, such as punch bowls of huge proportions, and posts for old-fashioned bedsteads this was of no little value. We have already alluded to the Mason series of octagonal-shaped jugs of pleasing shape, undoubtedly following the Spode scheme of colour in Japanese style, but lacking the finer finish of Spode ware. ”

“ He must curb courage with common-sense. He may lay his first bricks upon the twentieth story, but not until he has made sure of the solidity of the frame below. The real tradition of our people permits the mason to place brick upon brick wherever he finds it most convenient, safest and most economical; but he must not mistake thin air for structural steel. ”

“ Besides his steel-pen trade Mason carried on for many years the business of electro-plating, copper-smelting, and india-rubber ring making, in conjunction with George R. Elkington. Mason was almost entirely self-educated, having taught himself to write when a shoemaker’s apprentice, and in later life he felt his deficiencies keenly. ”

“ Lastly, in the case of all these dwellings, the Mason-bee is man’s free tenant; her industry makes use of the products of our own industry. Can she have no other establishments? She has, beyond a doubt; she possesses some constructed on the ancient plan. On a stone the size of a man’s fist, protected by the shelter of a hedge, sometimes even on a pebble in the open air, I see her building now groups of cells as large as a walnut, now domes emulating in size, shape and solidity those of her rival, the Mason-bee of the Walls. ”

“ Upon which the hammer was placed next in Charlotte's, and then in the others' hands, to strike three times with it, and conclude, in this expression, the wedlock of the stone with the earth.
"The work of the mason," went on the speaker, "now under the free sky as we are, if it be not done in concealment, yet must pass into concealment—the soil will be laid smoothly in, and thrown over this stone, and with the walls which we rear into the daylight we in the end are seldom remembered. The works of the stone-cutter and the carver remain under the eyes ”

“ But, in every city, there are persons called stone-masons, whose business consists exclusively in constructing the walls and some other parts of buildings with stone; and their operations are considerably enlarged in those places where there are no marble-masons. In many cases, the bricklayer is also so far a stone-mason, as to lay the foundation-walls of the buildings which he may erect. This is especially the case in the country, where the divisions of labor are not so minute as in cities. ”

“ The things which we see around us are but forms-promises of a thing unnamed, symbols of a truth unknown. It is in the spiritual temple built without the voice of workmen or the sound of hammer that the true initiation is given, and there, robed in the simple lambskin of a purified body, the student becomes a Master Mason, chosen out of the world to be an active worker in the name of the Great Architect. It is there alone, unseen by mortal eyes, that the Greater Degrees are given and there the soul radiating the light of Spirit becomes a living; star in the blue canopy of the Masonic lodge. ”

“ The Master Mason does not find fault; he does not criticize nor does he complain, but with malice towards none and charity towards all he seeks to be worthy of his Father's trust. In silence he labors, with compassion he suffers, and if the builders strike him as he seeks to work with them, his last word will be a prayer for them. The greater the Mason, the more advanced in his Craft, the more fatherly he grows, the walls of his Lodge broadening out until all living things are sheltered and guarded within the blue folds of his cape. ”