NO HODS.
In one of the early productions of my schoolfellow and frequent playmate, Samuel Lover, he narrates an anecdote of two Dublin hodmen, one of whom expressed doubts as to the capability of the other to carry a hod, heavily laden, up a ladder to the roof of a high house. This produced, on the part of the other, a wager of a gallon of porter, that he would carry the very man who had taunted him, in a hod, and deliver him over the parapet, five stories above the street. The bet was made, and one fellow seated himself in the hod, and was carried by the other safely to the roof; he then acknowledged that he had lost, but added, "When you were about five rungs of the ladder from the top, I thought you were getting a little weak, and that I had a fine chance of winning the gallon." I do not think such a dangerous wager could arise in Paris, for although very extensive buildings were in progress during my sojourn, I never saw such an implement as a hod there. All the materials were hoisted up by ropes, pulleys, and windlasses. Horse labour was very much used, and small steam-engines were occasionally employed. The lives and limbs of the Parisian workmen were consequently safe from the risks incident to a false step or a rotten rung.