"Mechanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must surely be a pleasant thing to sing to princes, warriors, and statesmen—all that the country holds most in honour, love, and reverence. The impulse thus given is felt throughout the land. Classes are formed in every town, almost in every village; the labourer, the mechanic, young men and maidens, old men and children, may be seen, after their daily toil is done, busy with the do, re, mi, fa, &c., of the class-book. Although the system may not prove all that might be desired, yet much is taught ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the Civil War and the Commonwealth caused great confusion and many defects in the registers. Very often the rector was turned out of his parish; the intruding minister, often an ignorant mechanic, cared naught for registers. Registrars were appointed in each parish who could scarcely sign their names, much less enter a baptism. Hence we find very frequent gaps in the books from 1643 to 1660. At Tarporley, Cheshire, there ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Davie resolved to be a mechanic. "I won't be a good-for-nothing man in the world. If I can't be a learned professor, I may be a good carpenter or a blacksmith. If I learn to make a good horseshoe, I'll be worth something." So the next morning he asked his father's leave to enter a machine-shop. His father said he might, ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... assembly and found one small hole in the fabric of the stabilizer. A shell fragment had gone through when the war rockets exploded nearby. The pilot verified that the fragment had hit no strengthening member inside. He nodded. The mechanic made very neat fabric patches over the two holes, upper and lower. He began to go over the fuselage. The pilot ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... Collins, the progress of the colony was barely perceptible. There were no roads in the interior; no public buildings: the house of the governor was a mere cottage, too mean for the accommodation of a modern mechanic. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... ago at a suburban book stall, a perfect copy of Moxon's Mechanic Exercises, now a scarce work. The volumes were uncut, and had the original marble covers. They looked so attractive in their old fashioned dress, that I at once determined to preserve it. My binder soon made for ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... necessary per se, since exactly the same end is gained in ten thousand other flowers which do not possess them. Is it not then an extraordinary idea, to imagine the Creator of the Universe contriving the various complicated parts of these flowers, as a mechanic might contrive an ingenious toy or a difficult puzzle? Is it not a more worthy conception that they are some of the results of those general laws which were so co-ordinated at the first introduction of life upon ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the hands of a rich merchant, who, as soon as he bought me, took me to his house, treated me well, and clad me handsomely as a slave. Some days after he asked me if I understood any trade. I answered that I was no mechanic, but a merchant, and that the pirates who sold me had robbed me of all I possessed. "Tell me," replied he, "can you shoot with a bow?" I answered that the bow was one of my exercises in my youth. He gave me ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... to co-operate with us. Tell him to start calling Zurb temple on his radio about noon tomorrow, and keep it up till he gets an answer. Or, better, tell him to run his conveyer to his First Level terminal, and bring with him an extra suit of clothes appropriate to the role of journeyman-mechanic. I'll want to talk to him, and furnish him with special equipment. Got all that? Well, carry on with it, and bring your own paratimers, priests and mining operators, back with you as soon as you've taken care of everything. Brannad, you come ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... out all this before Max could form any opinion as to the identity of the dead man. He was short of stature, and apparently between fifty and sixty years of age, slightly built, but muscular. The body was dressed in the clothes of a respectable mechanic. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... at the highest, there flourished in the city of London an ingenious but whimsical and self opinioned mechanic, much devoted to abstract studies, David Ramsay by name, who, whether recommended by his great skill in his profession, as the courtiers alleged, or, as was murmured among the neighbours, by his birthplace, in the good town of Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, held in James's household ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... splendour of his Ulysses and Polyphemus, or that he painted his Rain, Speed, and Steam in absolute ignorance of the impression it would produce and the idea it should convey. Goldsmith reminded Miss Reynolds of 'a low mechanic, particularly . . . a journey-man tailor'; but that he was unconsciously the most elegant and natural writer of his age is a position which has not yet been advanced. And surely it is high time that Boswell should take that place in art which is his by right of conquest, and that Macaulay's paradox—which ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... with the tea, on a lower shelf. This could be pushed on to the ground at 4.15 and pushed back again at 4.20 without any serious injury to the match. That is my idea at the moment; but I am a poor mechanic and should be glad if some properly qualified person—someone with a HEATH ROBINSON mind—would take the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... our schooling is simply to train the mind to work, fitting it, so to speak, with necessary tools like a well-equipped mechanic." ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... detective story. The man or woman who can do it can also write a good play (according to modern ideas of plays), and possesses force of character, individuality, and mental ability. He or she must combine the intuition of the artist with the talent of the master mechanic, but will seldom be a poet, and will generally care more for things and events than for fellow creatures. For, although the story is often concerned with righting some wrong, or avenging some murder, yet it must be confessed that the author commonly ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... and unique weapon," said he, "noiseless and of tremendous power. I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty. For years I have been aware of its existence, though I have never before had the opportunity of handling it. I commend it very specially to your attention, Lestrade, and also the bullets ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meanest of our species are the most strongly addicted to this vice—men who are a scandal to their sex, and women who disgrace human nature; for the basest mechanic is so far from being exempt that he is generally the most guilty of it. It visits ale-houses and gin-shops, and whistles in the empty heads ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... With military promptness, the mechanic was carried to the hospital, and the school doctor was soon working over him. Meanwhile, dry garments had been supplied to Larry and Mr. Vardon. A messenger came from Colonel Masterly to learn what was going on, and, when he heard of the rescue, Dick ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... cylinders, instead of one as in Trevithick's engine. The invention of the double cylinder was due to Matthew Murray, of Leeds, one of the best mechanical engineers of his time; Mr. Blenkinsop, who was not a mechanic, having consulted him as to all the practical arrangements. The connecting-rods gave the motion to two pinions by cranks at right angles to each other; these pinions communicating the motion to the wheel which worked ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... needle book," replied Jane, politely, "but there aren't any needles in it now. George took them all to do the things with pieces of cork—in the 'Boy's Own Scientific Experimenter' and 'The Young Mechanic.' He did not do the things, but ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... for the specialist, but for that restless, seething multitude known as "the masses." It is written for busy people, for workers, such as the shop-girl, the factory-girl, the clerk, the mechanic, the farmer, the merchant, and the busy housewife; but ministers, lawyers, and doctors may find food for ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... of the States. Every banking association whose bonds are deposited in the treasury of the Union; every individual who holds a dollar of the circulation secured by such deposit; every merchant, every manufacturer, every farmer, every mechanic, interested in transactions dependent for success on the credit of that circulation, will feel as an injury every attempt to rend the national unity, with the permanence and stability of which all their interests are so closely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... these learned disputants, these all-knowing doctors, it was to the unscholastic statesman that the governments of the world owed their peace, defence, and liberties; and from the illiterate and contemned mechanic (a name of disgrace) that they received the improvements of useful arts. Nevertheless, this artificial ignorance, and learned gibberish, prevailed mightily in these last ages, by the interest and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... young man, an honest, honourable fellow, a good liver, a diligent mechanic, and handsome to boot, and, which is the main thing, he has for a long time loved ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... but he forms a rare backbone for K(1). There are others, of more parts—Killick, for instance. Not long ago he was living softly, and driving a Rolls-Royce for a Duke. He is now a machine-gun sergeant, and a very good one. There is Dobie. He is a good mechanic, but short-legged and shorter-winded. He makes an ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... mechanic, having wrought at the business for upwards of thirty years, feels confident that he can meet the wants of those who may ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... scrivener. A lazy, lackadaisical, fine city lady, who thinks "a woman must be of mechanic mold who is either troubled or pleased with anything her husband can do" (act i. 3). She has "wit and beauty, with a fool to her husband," but though "fool," a hard, grasping, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... with confidence, attempt to do away the reproach?—Let us use our endeavours to have the children of the emancipated, and even of the enslaved Africans, instructed in common literature—in the principles of virtue and religion, and in those mechanic arts which will keep them most constantly employed, and, of course, will less subject them to idleness and debauchery; and thus prepare them for becoming good citizens of the United States: a privilege and elevation to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... advantages—be that as it may, the children of the one go to school, and become qualified for the duties of life. One daughter becomes school-teacher, another a mantua-maker, and a third a fancy shop-keeper; while one son becomes a farmer, another a merchant, and a third a mechanic. All enter into business with fine prospects, marry respectably, and settle down in domestic comfort—while the six sons and daughters of the other family, grow up without educational and business qualifications, and the highest aim they have, is to apply ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... willing to be guided by them; the other indolent, and inclined to follow the leadings of his own will. Now, at the age of thirty-five, Mr. Wheeler is an intelligent merchant, in an active business; while Mr. Allen is a journeyman mechanic, poor, in embarrassed circumstances, and possessing but a small share of ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... also, of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, an institution doing splendid work, and doing it efficiently, both in its own buildings and through extension courses. Fifty-two per cent. of the students at this college earn their way through, either wholly or in part. And better yet, eighty-three ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... mechanic, and had invented a machine for making chenille. Sad to say, this invention he used for the purpose of inveigling the girl into his workshop, which was situated on the second floor of an extensive range of warehouses in a yard at Nottingham. He asked her to come ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... you how surprised I was; I had only known him as a mechanic, a member of this Society. I spent an hour and a half there I shall never forget; I asked the privilege of bringing my ...
— Silver Links • Various
... a curse no more; Since He, whose name we breathe with awe, The coarse mechanic vesture wore, A poor man toiling with the poor, In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... least prevented your own country from being devastated by war. It is true, you send out your army, but the war will not lay waste the fields of Prussia; it will not trample in the dust the crops of the Prussian farmer, interrupt the labors of the mechanic, or carry its terror into our cities and villages, our houses and families. The enemy is at least far ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the said term tradesman is understood by several people, and in several places, in a different manner: for example, in the north of Britain, and likewise in Ireland, when you say a tradesman, you are understood to mean a mechanic, such as a smith, a carpenter, a shoemaker, and the like, such as here we call a handicraftsman. In like manner, abroad they call a tradesman such only as carry goods about from town to town, and from market to market, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... master of the reason of both, and might be of the practice, too, if his industry kept pace with his speculation; which were very commendable, and without which he cannot be said to be a complete naturalist or mechanic. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... my tools of trade. A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the British Crown. Let them hand down their noble and good qualities to their children. But in the matter of procuring a livelihood let us, for their own good, induce them to lay aside the bow and fish-spear, and, in lieu thereof, put their hand to the plough, or make them wield the tool of the mechanic. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... their fathers' deeds and sufferings that had led me to undertake this rather fatiguing enterprise; and long before I reached the Barricata, or Pra del Torno, I had a great enjoyment in being taken by a Vaudois mechanic, who left his work at Angrogna, and would have no acknowledgment but my thanks, in order to show me one of those wonderful hiding-places in the very heart of the mountains, where the God of the hill and of the Vaudois so effectively succoured his people. The particular ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... knapsack on his back and a stout staff in his hand, was seen approaching the village of M——, on that side on which lay the church-yard we have already described as the resting-place of the little shoemaker's parents. The young man was robust, and seemingly a mechanic, for his hands were rough, as though accustomed to labour, and his face gave plain evidence of acquaintance with the summer sun. He could not have been altogether a stranger to the place, for after he passed the few houses in the suburbs ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... attractive in Peter Henlien's watch. Moreover, since such objects failed to keep good time, what earthly inducement was there for owning one? Nevertheless horologers themselves were not discouraged. They kept right on trying to turn out something better, and in 1525 Jacob Zech, a Swiss mechanic from Prague, hit on a remedy to prevent these crude watches from running fast when first wound up and slower when they began to run down. In other words he discovered something that would ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... a rich field to the observant man. He must not, it is true, be squeamish, and fear to let the unsavoury reek of tabac-de-caporal, or the odours of potato brandy and logwood wine come betwixt the wind and his nobility. Neither must he dread contact with the mechanic's blouse, with the cotton gown of the grisette, or the velveteen vest of the titi of the Boulevards; he must even make up his mind to see his neighbour, dispensing with his upper garment, exhibit his brawny arms in shirt sleeves of questionable purity. If he dare encounter these little imaginary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and sister himself into a better practice. The lawyer expected to get large fees from avaricious and contentious church litigants. For church members will engage in lawsuits, the authority of John Wesley, and the still higher authority of St. Paul to the contrary, notwithstanding. The mechanic too, must have the patronage and influence of the church. Neighbor B., over the way, is a regular church member in good standing; and I must become one too, in order to compete with him in business. Dear me, says the farmer to his beloved spouse, don't you see ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... severe restrictions, and industry and enterprise are checked by the regulations of the incorporated trades, which place the rod of oppression in the hands of ignorance and self-interest; and which bring home its influence to the work-bench of the mechanic, and too often paralyze the arm of laborious poverty. Within ten years, and in one of the most enlightened cantons, men and women have been arrested, and fined, and imprisoned, in the most cruel manner, for assembling to read the word of God; have even been banished ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... existence covering the main features of this organization. In 1867 the state recognized this society by appropriating $1,000 for its encouragement. Its object was the promotion of agriculture, horticulture and the mechanic arts. The society held annual fairs in different localities in the state, with varying success, until 1885, when the county of Ramsey offered to convey to the State of Minnesota, forever, two hundred acres of land adjoining the city limits of St. Paul, for the purpose of holding annual exhibitions ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... a mechanic, and I am not unhandy with tools, so that between us, under the inspiration of Pilar's bright eyes and sayings, we had the pinions out of Don Cipriano's car by the time the champagne was cold. Then, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... see a man standing near one of the entrances to the projectile—an entrance that would be closed when the Annihilator was finished. The man was a stranger, and from his appearance Jack judged that he was a mechanic. ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... Hundred and First Pennsylvanian, who had taken up his quarters near me, was an object of peculiar interest. Reasonably intelligent and fairly read, I presume that he was a respectable mechanic before entering the Army. He was evidently a very domestic man, whose whole happiness ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... stone towers ("walls fourteen feet thick"), to seize any herd of "six hundred swine," and convoy of Luebeck or Hamburg merchant goods, that had not contented them in passing. What were pedlers and mechanic fellows made for, if not to be plundered when needful? Arbitrary rule, on the part of these noble robber lords! And then much of the crown domains had gone to the chief of them—pawned (and the pawn-ticket lost, so ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... nine-o'clock gun. For there were not only taps to signify each new fire-district,—one for the first, two for the second, three, four, five, six seven, eight, and nine,—but there was also one lone toll at mid-day for the hungry mechanic, and nine at the evening hour when the tired workman called his children in from the street and turned to his couch, and the slave must show cause in a master's handwriting why he or she was not under ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the arcade round the angle of the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining are ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... keep the figure whole—was a letter from his father, a letter longer than the commonplace chronicles, and painfully written with the mechanic hand on both sides of a company letter-head. Caleb Gordon wrote chiefly of business. Mutterings of the storm of financial depression were already in the air. Iron, more sensitive than the stock-market, was the barometer, and its readings in the Southern field were growing ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... of Labor, the Negro wanted change because he was regarded in 1914 as the man requiring a boss of another color. He was not regarded as a master mechanic, manufacturer, artist or journeyman, unless the labor union, to which he ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... with the ardent and glowing imagination of Madame Roland should not, at times, feel inwardly the spirit of exultation in the consciousness of this vast power. From the windows of her palace she looked down upon the shop of the mechanic where her infancy was cradled, and upon those dusty streets where she had walked an obscure child, while proud aristocracy swept by her in splendor—that very aristocracy looking now imploringly to her for a smile. She possessed that peculiar tact, which enabled her often ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... by it, plagued and tormented by it; full of abominations starting boldly out without pretense of concealment, from every phase of private, social and civil life. But he does not approach these as a mechanic would an old building, saying, "this beam is rotten and must come down; this roof is decayed and must be stripped off; this floor is unsafe and must be pulled up." He does not propose to his disciples to enter upon a wholesale denunciation of profanity and licentiousness. ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... The master mechanic and artist of our souls who wants trustworthy timepieces and keen blades, will not be deceived by these gaudy trinkets, and will reject them. Others may esteem you for this or that quality, admire this or that qualification you possess, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... applause which I have recorded came chiefly from the husbandman, the shepherd, and the mechanic: the approbation of the magnates of the west, though not less-warm, was longer in coming. Mrs. Stewart of Stair, indeed, commended the poems and cheered their author: Dugald Stewart received his visits with pleasure, and wondered at his vigour of conversation as much as at his muse: the door ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... which industry will have to put together will try the nerves and temper of the whole community. In the French army the peasant soldier is jealous and sore because he has had to bear the chief burden of the fighting, while the mechanic has to a great extent been kept for munition making, transport, and essential civil industry. With us it is if anything the other way. In the French army, too, the feeling runs high against the "embusqu," ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... stood, it was plainly evident that, however economical, industrious and thrifty she might be, Nanna would be compelled to be content with her lot, should she wed an honest mechanic or a sloop captain, which were the highest prizes which she, or any of the neighboring maidens, might ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... a great genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts and the mechanic arts. He had a vast imagination, equal to the comprehension of the greatest objects, and capable of a cool and steady comprehension of them. He had wit at will. He had humor that when he pleased was delicate and delightful. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... which was the kitchen mechanic, she says the perfessor's wife's been over to her mother's while this smallpox has been going on, and they is a nurse in the house looking after Miss Margery, the little kid that's sick. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... have been so far off the mark. The man with whom he was spending the evening in that cafe was a mechanic from Kroten." ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whereas, he who needs to buy desires to have it cheaply; and the selling price depends on the relation between the necessity to buy on one hand, or to sell on the other. Diminish suddenly and largely the competition for the purchase of food, and the farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the anvil, and both farmer ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Lords, whose grandmother had been a washerwoman and whose father an innkeeper, was to him every whit as good a peer as himself. And he would as soon sit in counsel with Mr. Monk, whose father had risen from a mechanic to be a merchant, as with any nobleman who could count ancestors against himself. But there was an inner feeling in his bosom as to his own family, his own name, his own children, and his own personal self, which was kept altogether apart from his grand political ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... well be termed savage. He arraigned the manufacturers as enjoying unfair advantages,—advantages held, as he endeavored to demonstrate, at the expense and to the detriment of the agriculturist, the mechanic, the merchant, the ship-owner, the sailor, and indeed of almost every industrial class. In reading Mr. Walker's report a third of a century after it was made, one might imagine that the supporters of the tariff of 1842 were engaged in a conspiracy to commit fraud, and that the manufacturers who ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... certain substances, to disunite the solid bodies which are not soluble, but which, in having been consolidated by fusion, are naturally separated by veins and cutters, and to carry those detached bodies, by the mechanic force of moving water, successively from stage to stage, from places of a higher ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... practical uses to which Adam designed its application. But as a mere model, as a marvellous essay, for the suggestion of gigantic results, it was, perhaps, to the full as effective as the ingenuity of a mechanic of our own day could construct. It is true that it was crowded with unnecessary cylinders, slides, cocks, and wheals—hideous and clumsy to the eye—but through this intricacy the great simple design accomplished its main object. It contrived to show what force and skill man ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "putting things" that everybody could understand his statements; secondly, his power of so framing his arguments that all the steps, from one point to another, in a logical series, could be clearly apprehended by every intelligent farmer or mechanic who had a thoughtful interest in the affairs of the country; and thirdly, his power of inflaming the sentiment of patriotism in all honest and well-intentioned men by overwhelming appeals to that sentiment, so that, after convincing their understandings, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... A mechanic of Nuremberg, in the fourteenth century, invented a machine for the purpose; and this art of drawing wire was introduced into England 200 years ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... that fine building recently completed in St. Andrew Square. Instead of pitching our scale of remuneration at the rate of labourers' wages, we would at once pitch it at the highest rate assigned to the skilled mechanic; and this not in order, primarily at least, that the masons engaged should be comfortable, but in order that they should be masters of their profession, and that their work should be of the completest and most finished kind. For labourers' wages would secure the services of only bungling workmen, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the orthodox view. Soul, when it is allowed an existence at all, sits somewhat vaguely within the machine, never defined. If anything goes wrong with the machine, why, the soul is forgotten instantly. We summon the arch-mechanic of our day, the medicine-man. And a marvelous earnest fraud he is, doing his best. He is really wonderful as a mechanic of the human system. But the life within us fails more and more, while we marvelously tinker at the engines. Doctors are not ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... passed the thirty-third degree, or have acquired embonpoint with their other graces. Or you can shove back against the windows and let your feet stick out straight toward the infinite. It isn't the fault of a railway corporation or the master mechanic of a car factory if they don't reach the floor. It is a defect for which nature is responsible. President Lincoln once said every man's legs ought to be long enough to reach ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Edinburgh intending to return to Glasgow, when Mr. ——, accompanied by a friend suddenly joined me. I saw they were a good deal agitated. They told me a Scotch mechanic who had been formerly in Dublin had seen me in the streets of Glasgow opposite Wellington statue, and that the news was "all round town." They added that the magistrates were in secret sitting, and as the writ of Habeas Corpus is ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... of science in America. It is now the oldest as well as the most complete institution of its kind in the country. The Franklin Institute, founded in Philadelphia in 1824, was the result of a similar scientific interest. It was the first institution of applied science and the mechanic arts in America. Descriptions of the first 2900 patents issued by the United States Government are to be found only on the pages of its Journal, which is still an ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... now to appear, would be almost universally regarded as disloyal to their sex. A masculine woman and an effeminate man are in equal disesteem. We instinctively pronounce her to unsex herself, who arms for the battle-field, or engages in those agricultural, mechanic, or other manual pursuits, which demand great bodily vigor. God hath made the sexes herein to differ, and man, we feel, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... depended on his religious work—on his statue of Here, for instance, in ivory and gold—that too, doubtless, expressive, as appropriately to its subject as to himself, of a passive beauty. We see it still, perhaps, in the coins of Argos. And has not the crowned victor, too, in that mechanic action, in his demure attitude, something which reminds us of the religious significance of the Greek athletic service? It was a [295] sort of worship, you know—that department of public life; such worship as Greece, still ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of his fate might be assuaged: he scorns to execute the lowest offices of menial services, particularly in attending those who are the objects of contempt or abhorrence; he is incapable of exercising any mechanic art, which might afford a happy though a scanty independence: shrunk within his dismal cell, surrounded by haggard poverty, and her gaunt attendants, hollow-eyed famine, shivering cold, and wan disease, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... you it would come to that if you did not look sharp," answered Ned. "Take my advice now. A boy like you better begin with a trade and work up to be boss mechanic; then when you are rich, buy a library and turn scholar. There's a swell carpenter's school just started down at the Institute, box and tools included in the tuition, so you'll have some property at the end of the ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.' CHAP. IX. Tsze-kung asked about the practice of virtue. The Master said, 'The mechanic, who wishes to do his work well, must first sharpen his tools. When you are living in any state, take service with the most worthy among its great officers, and make friends of the most virtuous among its scholars.' CHAP. X. 1. Yen Yuan asked how the government of a country should be administered. ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... that such a ruffian could not be Prince Roland. He was indeed the rude mechanic he proclaimed himself. No man of noble blood would ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... Jerry. "He's a great chap, Mr. Dick is! About your age, too, I guess. Quite a mechanic and always tinkering with tools and machinery. If there's anything wrong with the motor boat he can usually fix her up all right. As for mending a car, he beats all the chauffeurs out. They know it and have to say so. Likely you've seen him fluking ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... ills? Is it desirable to find some new vantage ground, and some more effective weapons? There can be but one answer. While surgery has been making rapid strides toward the position of an exact science, confidence in materia medica is on the wane. The surgeon is only a marvellously skilful mechanic who adjusts the parts, and then the divine, recuperative forces vitalize and complete his work. He only makes the figures, while the principle solves the problem. The adaptability of drugs to heal disease ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... while the Emperor Mu of the Chou dynasty was making a tour of his empire, a skillful mechanic, Yen Shih by name, was brought into his presence and entertained him and the women of his seraglio with a dance performed by automaton figures, which were capable not only of rhythmical movements of their limbs, but of accompanying ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the island, but many of them were mere vagabonds, who remained there in hopes of leading a lazy and an easy life. For such Tamaahmaah had a great contempt; those only had his esteem and countenance who knew some trade or mechanic art, and were ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... superciliously he sifts Through coarsest boulter others' gifts; For all men live and judge amiss, Whose talents jump not just with his. 1240 He'll lay on gifts with hands, and place On dullest noddle Light and Grace, The manufacture of the Kirk. Those pastors are but th' handy-work Of his mechanic paws, instilling 1245 Divinity in them by feeling; From whence they start up Chosen Vessels, Made by contact, as men get meazles. So Cardinals, they say, do grope At th' other end ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... introduced aimed at the start to break down the characters of Dr. Foster, Higbee, and the Laws. A mechanic testified that the Laws had bought "bogus"—(counterfeit) dies of him. The prophet told how William Law had "pursued" him to recover $40,000 that Smith owed him. Hyrum Smith alleged that William Law ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... turned to good account. This you may see in his public speeches, but I am more completely convinced of it since I have heard him converse. His illustrations are drawn from the workshop, the manufactory, the mine, the mechanic, the poet—from every art and science, from every thing in nature, animate ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... for mechanics, but Overholt had already made an invention which was considered very successful, though he had got little or nothing for it. The mechanic who had helped him in its construction had stolen his principal idea before the device was patented, and had taken out a patent for a cheap little article which every one at once used, and which made a fortune for him. Overholt's instrument took its place in ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... arrive fast enough. The bubble burst, several suffered, and Le Blon was heard of no more." Walpole adds, "It is said he died in an hospital at Paris in 1740:" and observes that Le Blon was "very far from young when he knew him, but of surprising vivacity and volubility, and with a head admirably mechanic, but an universal projector, and with at least one of the qualities that attend that vocation, either a dupe or a cheat; I think," he continues, "the former, though, as most of his projects ended in air, the sufferers believed the latter. As he was much ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... inspiring. A machinist, or a mechanic, or a day laborer might have found a foot-hold. A man without handicraft was not in request in Stillwater. "What is your trade?" was the staggering question that met Richard at the threshold. He went from ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... day's duties being over, had called to see their relations, first, as usual, going home to their lodgings in Marylebone and making themselves as spruce as bridegrooms, according to the rules of their newly-acquired town experience. For the London mechanic is only nine hours a mechanic, though the country mechanic works, eats, drinks, and sleeps a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... of Building the Houses in Nootka Sound. Inside of them described. Furniture and Utensils. Wooden Images. Employments of the Men. Of the Women. Food, Animal and Vegetable. Manner of preparing it. Weapons. Manufactures and Mechanic Arts. Carving and Painting. Canoes. Implements for Fishing and Hunting. Iron Tools. Manner of procuring that Metal. Remarks on their Language, and a Specimen of it. Astronomical and Nautical Observations made in Nootka ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... adorning of idols was polluted by the stain of idolatry; [46] a severe sentence, since it devoted to eternal misery the far greater part of the community, which is employed in the exercise of liberal or mechanic professions. If we cast our eyes over the numerous remains of antiquity, we shall perceive, that besides the immediate representations of the gods, and the holy instruments of their worship, the elegant forms and agreeable fictions consecrated ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... companion, stepping out in front of him, 'but can't you give a fellow a lift? I'm a mechanic by ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... understand by what means chemistry can facilitate labour; is not that rather the province of the mechanic? ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... destruction, not by a powerful invader at the head of twenty thousand men, not by a plague or a famine, not by a tyrannical prince (for we never had one more gracious) or a corrupt administration, but by one single, diminutive, insignificant, mechanic. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... survey the world through the narrow slits. This man had always an air of being profoundly interested in the smallest affairs of life, perhaps because the slits through which he gazed magnified the objects gazed upon, and he peered about him now with profoundest solicitude. This was Watt Brooks, a mechanic, and hanger-on about the mills, where he did an occasional bit of odd work, and employed the balance of his time in gossiping among the women, or lounging at the drinking saloons, talking a great deal about the wrongs of the working classes, and ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... under some conditions; for they are citizens, though imperfect ones: for in former times among some people the mechanics were either slaves or foreigners, for which reason many of them are so now: and indeed the best regulated states will not permit a mechanic to be a citizen; but if it be allowed them, we cannot then attribute the virtue we have described to every citizen or freeman, but to those only who are disengaged from servile offices. Now those ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... rivals the volumes of our old friends Weld, Ashe, Fearon, &c. It is entitled "A Visit to North America and the English Settlements in Illinois, with a winter residence in Philadelphia; solely to ascertain the actual prosperity of the Emigrating Agriculturist, Mechanic, and Commercial Speculator"—by Adlard Welby, Esquire, of South Rauceby, Lincolnshire. This esquire has said enough, should he be believed, to settle ultimately the point of the truth or falsehood of Godwin's ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... disconsolately beside two huge cars, patching tires and tightening bolts. Their way had been marked by a succession of motor troubles and they were almost discouraged. Woe to the men who venture into the desert with an untried car and without a skilled mechanic! There are no garages just around the corner—and there are no corners. Lucander's Chinese boy expressed it with laconic completeness when some one asked him how he liked ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... is yet always energetic, and fresh, and alive with that spontaneous reality and independence of interest which distinguishes the genuine writer from the mere weaver of sentences and the servile mechanic of the pen. The matter and form alike of M. Taine's best work—and we say best, for his work is by no means without degrees and inequalities of worth—prove that he has not shrunk from the toil and austerity of the student, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... known an ex-dragoon officer working as a clerk in an attorney's office at fifteen shillings a week, who lived like a mechanic, and yet spake and stepped like his old self; one listened involuntarily for the clink of the sabre and spur whenever he moved ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... factors into the domain of physics, the scientific mind never could have swerved from the search for a law of growth, or allowed itself to accept the anthropomorphism which regarded each successive stratum as a kind of mechanic's bench for the manufacture of new species out of all ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... did not end by Nelson's urn Where an immortal England sits— Nor where your tall young men in turn Drank death like wine at Austerlitz. And when the pedants bade us mark What cold mechanic happenings Must come; our souls said in the dark, "Belike; but ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... wood, and whether Master Swift would be willing to have leaf- pictures painted on that table in the window. Then he found that the old man was speaking, though he only heard the latter part of what he said. "—a celebrated inventor and mechanic, and that's what you'll be, maybe. Ay, ay, a Great Man, please the Lord; and, when I'm laid by in the churchyard yonder, folks'll come to see the grave of old Swift, the great man's schoolmaster. Ye'll be an inventor ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and bread, and went out of the hut to work—on the land, with cattle, with wood, stone and iron. He was honest, careful, and laborious. While still a lad of five he had, while driving from the station, helped a stranger in a mechanic's overalls to a seat; the man had told him all were equal in the sight of God, that the land belonged to the peasants, that the proprieters had stolen it from them, and that a time would come when he would ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... ascertained where Joshua Iden was employed, betook himself that way just at the noon hour. Iden, like so many other Middleville citizens, gained a livelihood by working for the rich Swann. In his best days he had been a master mechanic of the railroad shops; at sixty he was foreman of one of the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... prevailing system of selling millions of acres to companies or individuals. The new system, it announced, was to be one adapted to the interests of both capitalist and poor man. Land was thereafter to be sold in small quantities on credit. Could the mechanic or farmer demand a better law? Did it not hold out the opportunity to the poorest to get land for which payment ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... polka for the benefit of some twelve or fifteen couples, who were dancing with all their might in the space before the orchestra. On they came, round and round and never weary, two at a time—a mechanic and a grisette, a rustic and a Normandy girl, a tall soldier and a short widow, a fat tradesman and his wife, a couple of milliners assistants who preferred dancing together to not dancing at all, and ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... years back, instituted a series of experiments with a view to ascertain the comparative amounts of resistance developed by bodies of different forms in passing through the air; the results of which he communicated to the world in an essay first published in the Mechanic's Magazine, and afterwards in a separate pamphlet. According to these experiments it appears, that the opposition which an ellipsoid or oval (of the nature of the Balloon, if we may so call it, in the model) is calculated ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... impossible, so the trio gazed eagerly around them. Just ahead, sat a shop girl in a shabby best dress, with a head of blonde, mismatched hair, and beside her, her escort, an Irish mechanic, who shifted his head from time to time as the unaccustomed collar scraped his neck. Across the aisle was a family of towheaded Swedes, the father self-conscious in his carefully pressed black suit; the mother, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely |
