Rolling stone

“ Good old Mother has come again to prophesy Things that will surely occur as the days go rolling by, So listen to me if you wish to know, For I'll let you into the know, you know, And tell you some wonders before I go To home, sweet home. ”

“ He was sitting outside on the sill, whistling under his breath, polishing his last casement, when he heard, through the half-open door, a clear young voice talking with animation, and a girl came into the room laughing—followed by an Aberdeen terrier on a leash. As she advanced, he noticed that she had wild rose colouring, wavy dark hair, merry dark eyes, and an expression of radiant vitality. Tom was right! Here, no doubt, was Miss Aurea, the prettiest girl in ten parishes!
As Wynyard looked again at this arresting vision something strange seemed to stir in his heart and come to life. ”

“ Wynyard roamed hither and thither as the freak took him, and surrendered himself to the intoxication that comes of motion in the open air—a purely animal pleasure shared with his companion.
They surprised the dozing cattle, and alarmed astonished sheep, sent families of grazing rabbits scuttling to their burrows; they heard the night-jar, the owl, and the corn-crake; bats flapped across their path, and in narrow lanes the broad shoulders of Wynyard broke the webs of discomfited spiders. ”

“ Masham had not overstated the case when he declared that he “took risks.” Once or twice, when they hummed along wide, empty roads, as the wind roared past their ears, and the engine vibration was such that every nerve was ajar, it appeared to the chauffeur that he was trusting his life to a madman! Speed, his employer’s passion, seemed to grow insatiable with time—his appetite for eating up, with furious haste, miles and miles and miles, and ever hurrying onwards to the unattainable horizon, increased with indulgence. ”

“ In autumn, the village urchins pillaged the orchard; in winter, wandering tramps encamped in the outhouses. Never again would there be a sound of lowing cows, the humming of threshing gear, the shouts of carters encouraging their horses, or children’s voices calling to their dogs.
The newcomer leant his arms upon the gate and surveyed the low, flat country with its distant, dark horizon. Then he turned to contemplate the hills behind the church, dotted with sheep and lambs and scored with lanes; he must learn his bearings in this new locality, as behoved his duty as chauffeur. ”

“ It was about four o’clock on a lovely afternoon in April; the air was sweet and stimulating, and the newcomer was conscious of a sense of exhilaration and satisfaction, as he looked across the stretch of meadows lying in the sunlight.
Wynyard was country-bred, and the familiar sights and sounds awakened pleasant memories. He noted the bleating of lambs, the cries of plover, the hedges powdered with thorn, and the patches of primroses. Everything was so rural and so restful—such a contrast to the roar of London, the skimming taxis, the hooting and clanking of motors, and the reek of petrol ”

“ ON YAMPTON HILL
It was not the horse, but the horse’s rider that was of consequence. Where was she? What had happened? Spurred by an agony of apprehension, Wynyard ran in the direction from which the runaway had appeared. In five minutes’ time a speck, and then a figure came into sight, and this presently resolved itself into Miss Morven—apparently unhurt. She, too, had been running; her habit was splashed, she carried her hat in her hand, her beautiful hair was becomingly loosened, and she had a brilliant colour. ”

“ Lady Kesters had removed her cap and motor coat, and was seated at the table in a careless attitude, leaning her head on her hand and smoking a cigarette. The door was exactly opposite to the taproom, and the assembled crowd enjoyed a rare and unexpected spectacle. A woman smoking—ay, and looking as if she were well used to it and enjoying herself—a lady, too—there was a string of pearls round her throat, and the hand that supported her dark head was ablaze with diamonds. ”

“ Aurea debated the puzzle in the abysmal depth of her own heart, and when a girl once allows her thoughts to dwell persistently upon a man—no matter what his station—her interest in him is bound to develop far beyond the bounds of everyday acquaintance! ”

“ The grinding-stones met with in Denmark and Scandinavia are gene- rally of compact sandstone or quartzite, and are usually of two forms—flat slabs, often worn hollow by use, and polygonal prisms smallest in the middle, these latter having frequently hollow facets in which gouges or the more convex-faced hatchets might be ground, and sometimes rounded ridges such as would grind the hollow part of gouges. ”

“ Those who have seen the modern Arabs in excavation work move huge blocks with wooden levers and palm-leaf rope will realize that for the building of the dolmens little was needed except numbers and time.
The other method of moving the stones is as follows: a gentle slope of hard earth covered with wet clay is built with its higher extremity close beside the block to be moved. As many men as there is room for stand on each side of the block, and with levers resting on beams or stones as fulcra, raise the stone vertically as far as possible. ”

“ Rocking-stones.—Just on the borderland between the works of Nature and Art comes the so-called Rocking-stone, or Logan-stone, which is usually nothing more than an ice-transported boulder, poised so nicely on its rocky bed that gentle pressure by the hand may cause it to rock, or oscillate. ”

“ In selecting a rock for axe purposes, other things being equal, he would take first of all a quartzless type. If it were a question between granite, which contains quartz, and syenite, which has little, he would almost invariably select the latter. You very rarely see an axe made of quartz-bearing rock in this region. The axe-maker was aware apparently of the hardness of the mineral, of the difficulty with which it was worked, and he naturally avoided rocks that contained it in abundance when seeking axe material. ”

“ The brick-earth is of great thickness, in places fully 50 feet, and overlies the Chalk. The upper portion of the beds is much contorted, and has in it occasional seams of flint gravel or tenacious clay, in which cream-coloured or brownish palæolithic implements occur. In the gravel, brown, ochreous, slightly abraded implements and flakes are found, and at the base in many cases is the old land-surface or "Palæolithic floor" resting on and surmounted by brick-earth. In one pit were three heaps of flints brought by hand in Palæolithic times from flint-bearing beds either above or in the Chalk. ”

“ The stronger and more skillful workmen hewed great blocks of granite, which were dragged to the place on wooden sledges; and, as they had no cranes to lift the stones into their places on the walls, they were obliged to build mounds of sand and rough bricks, and roll up each stone gradually with wooden levers, until they got it into its proper place. ”

“ The chipping out of celts and some other tools formed, not of flint, but of other hard rocks, must have been effected in the same manner. The stone employed is almost always of a more or less silicious nature, and such as breaks with a conchoidal fracture. ”

“ They cut the stone into cubical blocks, and throw them into troughs, into which is poured a stream of running water. The blocks are kept in motion, and the grinding makes each block help the rest to grind off the eight corners and the twelve ridges of each one. The water becomes muddy with the fine particles, just as the drip from a grindstone becomes unclean when an axe is ground. Pretty soon all the blocks in the trough are changed into globes—the marbles that children buy at the shops when marble season comes around. ”

“ Many of the forms described by Sir William Wilde, [11] under the name of sling-stones, may also, I think, be more properly placed in some other category. The carefully polished lenticular disc of flint (Wilde, Fig. 9) seems better adapted for a cutting tool; and the flat oval stones, usually with "a slight indentation, such as might be effected by rubbing with a metal tool," were, as I have already observed, more probably used for obtaining fire, like those of the same class belonging to the early Iron Age of Denmark, [12] which they much resemble in character. ”

“ In places, the gravel is from 12 to 16 feet in thickness, [65] the largest stones, as usual, occurring towards its base, in which part of the gravel the greater number, but by no means all, of the flint implements occur, as some are dispersed throughout the whole thickness of the mass. Occasionally they have been found in pipes of gravel, let down into the chalk by means of water charged with carbonic acid eroding its upper surface. ”

“ The place where the lower or 12 inch course is above the Rock, should be made up with stone of the same quality as the Rock itself. These stones should be dove-tailed into the rock, and laid with pozzolano mortar, secured by the Roman cement, the same as the other; for if done with harder stone (should the [468] rock waste at all) it would resist the waves better than the soft, and occasion a more speedy waste of the other parts of the Rock than the Tower. ”

“ In all countries the fundamental rock on which the boulder formation reposes, if it consists of granite, gneiss, marble, or other hard stone capable of permanently retaining any superficial markings which may have been imprinted upon it, is smoothed or polished, and exhibits parallel striae and furrows having a determinate direction. ”

“ Then came the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when granite was in demand for gateposts, and every standing stone serviceable was ruthlessly carried away. Almost every circle of upright stones has lost some of its finest blocks in this way, and all that is left to show where they were is the hole cut in the "calm" from which they were extracted, and the spalls or chips made by the quarrymen as they knocked the block into shape. ”

“ Judging from the section given by Sir Joseph Prestwich, [36] the highest point which the gravel attains is about 59 feet above the river, and its surface in the pit, where the implements are found, is 40 feet above it. The gravel rests upon the Cornbrash, or upper member of the Lower Oolite; but the valley itself, though partly in the limestone rock, has been cut through a considerable thickness of Oxford Clay and of Boulder Clay, which here overlies it. The gravel consists of subangular stones in an ochreous matrix, interspersed with irregular seams of sand and clay. ”

“ The centre of the slope was paved with polished stone, so that the blocks would slide easily along, but in spite of this attempt to ease the burden, the moving of the stones must have been a heart-breaking task. As the Pyramid rose, so the road grew higher.
The blocks would be heaved out of the barges by dozens of men. Great wooden levers would be inserted under the stones to prise them up to allow the rollers to be slipped under; then hundreds of men would take hold of the long ropes, harnessing themselves like beasts of burden, and drag the stones along. ”

“ That manufactured objects of stone and iron have fallen from the sky:
That they have been brought down from a state of suspension, in a region of inertness to this earth's attraction, by atmospheric disturbances.
The "thunderstone" is usually "a beautifully polished, wedge-shaped piece of greenstone," says a writer in the Cornhill Magazine, 50-517. It isn't: it's likely to be of almost any kind of stone, but we call attention to the skill with which some of them have been made. ”

“ It is clear that in this way each block or slab is made to provide the maximum of wall area at the expense of the thickness of the wall. Naturally, in districts where the rock is of a slabby nature blocks of a more or less uniform thickness lay ready to the builders' hand, and the appearance of the structure was much more finished than it would be in places where the rock had a less regular fracture or where shapeless boulders had to be relied on. ”

“ The gentleman has compounded a cement or mortar, which, by the mere action of the air, assumes in a week or two the durability and consistence of the hardest marble and the firmest stone, and may be applied to all the purposes to which the strongest grained freestone is usually applied. Bridges, aqueducts, houses, and we suppose pavements and roads, can be as well constructed of this material as of the ordinary matters used in their composition. ”

“ It has often been commented on as a matter of wonder that a people living in the stone age, or at the best possessing a few simple tools of metal, should have been able to move and place in position such enormous blocks of stone. With modern cranes and traction engines all would be simple, but it might have been thought that in the stone age such building would be impossible. Thus, for instance, in the 'temple' of Hagiar Kim in Malta, there is one block of stone which measures 21 feet by 9, and must weigh many tons. ”

“ Limestone, granite, and sandstone were used for building at a very remote period in much the same way as wood, large blocks, fresh from the quarry, of all manner of different shapes, being piled up horizontally or stood on edge, no cement being employed, though in certain cases crushed stone was used to fill up the spaces between the blocks. ”

“ The Stone-cutter.—Stone-cutters procure their materials from the quarry-men, whose business it is to get out the stones from the quarries, in which they lie in beds, consisting either of strata piled upon each other, or of solid masses. Stones of any desirable dimensions are detached from the great mass of rock, by first drilling holes at suitable points, and then driving into them wedges with a sledge. ”

“ Of the terrible difficulties of the excavations, where such large pieces of stone are met with, only those can have any idea who have been present at the work and have seen how much time and trouble it takes, especially during the present rainy weather—first to get out the small stones round one of the many immense blocks, then to dig out the block itself, to get the lever under it, to heave it up and roll it through the mud of the channel to the steep declivity. ”