"Mechanism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been known to entangle himself in the little swing window, and to hang there all the night, sending forth unearthly caterwaulings, to the unspeakable terror of Miss Wendover's guest, unfamiliar with the mechanism of the room, and wondering what breed of Hampshire demon or afrit was thus making ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... type-setting machine, which he was paying the inventor a salary to bring to a perfection so expensive that it was practically impracticable. We were both printers by trade, and I could take the same interest in this wonderful piece of mechanism that he could; and it was so truly wonderful that it did everything but walk and talk. Its ingenious creator was so bent upon realizing the highest ideal in it that he produced a machine of quite unimpeachable efficiency. But it was so costly, when finished, that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... concerning possible damages. So, without pause, the automobile shot forward past mill and store, and went clambering along the trail toward the northern coves. The driver ran cautiously enough, despite Zeke's impatience, but, at the best, the trip was a strain on the men and on the mechanism that bore them, for the car lurched and bounced over the uneven surface, and more than once was near to being overturned. Their ultimate safety was due, in great measure, to Zeke himself. Familiar with every ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... and discreet use of it, encourage me ere I quit this world, to entrust you with the grand arcanum of our art; as yet, you know not the secret of my success, but take then this hint and improve upon it. Can he repair a piece of mechanism, who is ignorant of its make, its parts, and how they act upon, and affect one another? Behold this key; it is that of my laboratory, and may it indeed open the door of knowledge ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot doubt that there have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his judgment until he has read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences. In this paper the mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which I have been subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in language not hard to understand. It will be seen that such a change of polarity in the nervous ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... keep one's feet from going through the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my conjecture about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had seen from beneath hung down from this place. There were more of them hanging shorter above, and there was yet enough of a further mechanism remaining to prove that those keys, by means of the looped and cranked rods, had been in connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining also, which struck the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as upon any other keyed instrument. This was the first contrivance of ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... the necessity of gearing to reduce the number of revolutions to those possible for a large screw, this member is made very small, and allowed to revolve three thousand times a minute, so that the requisite power is obtained with great simplicity of mechanism, which further decreases friction. The shafts, and even the wires connecting the batteries with the motors, are made large and hollow. Though the primary battery pure and simple, as the result of great recent advances in chemistry, seems to be again coming up, the best aeroplane batteries ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... (1632-1723), and of Jan Swammerdam (1637-80). Leeuwenhoek was a life-long observer of minute life. The microscope (the invention of which was due to a Dutchman, Cornelius Drebbel) was the favourite instrument of his patient investigations, and he was able greatly to improve its mechanism and powers. Among the results of his labours was the discovery of the infusoria, and the collection of a valuable mass of information concerning the circulation of the blood and the structure of the eye and brain. Swammerdam was a naturalist who devoted himself ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... see that on the machine. Part of it, you see, is a Horsten psychomat (stolen from one of my ideas, by the way) and you, the user, become part of the device. Your own mind is necessary to furnish the background. For instance, if George Washington could have used the mechanism after the signing of peace, he could have seen what you suggest. We can't. You can't even see what would have happened if I hadn't invented the thing, but I can. Do ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... you something quite different, something equally novel but more seasonable; no less, in fact, than a nose-muff or nose-warmer. It is a little idea of my own, the Melbrook "Rhinotherm." Briefly, the mechanism consists of pieces of heated charcoal, potato or what-not, encased in some non-conducting material, the whole being then unostentatiously affixed to the frigid end of the nose. Stupidly, I forgot to take a plaster cast of your nose. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... means and methods by which these enterprises were combined and carried out; the world of commerce and speculation is as aloof from the scholar and the recluse as the rings of Saturn or the sun of Aldebaran. Its mechanism, its intentions, its combinations, its manners of action, its ways of expenditure, its intrigues with banks and governments: all these, to men who dwell in rural solitudes, aloof from the babble of crowds, are utterly unknown; ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... was known to the ancients. That was a form of organ, in effect and appearance not very dissimilar to a small portable modern organ, with one bank of keys. Its mechanism, however, was very different in respect to the construction of the pipe stops and bellows. In particular, the steady flow of air to the pipes was obtained from the pressure of water, and a receptacle partly filled with water was an essential part of every Roman organ. From this feature it was called ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... down the furrow, keeping the seeder on course. Near the wheel, and all around the drum, are 13 evenly spaced holes through which the cotton seeds fell into the furrow as the drum revolved. No counting or tripping mechanism was involved, so the device undoubtedly wasted seed. A mule or a horse pulled the planter and the farmer walked behind it. James Nelson of Greenwood, South Carolina, made this planter about 1895. Gift of Ruben F. Vaughn, Honea ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... five cylinders, not arranged directly one above another but in a zig-zag manner, the centres of the first, third and fifth being in one line, and the centres of the others in another line. The cylinders are made to revolve by suitable driving mechanism, and into them is sent steam at about 5 lb. to 10 lb. pressure, which heats up the cylinders, whereby the warp passing over them is dried. This drying may be partial or complete, being regulated by the speed at which the warps pass over the ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... not to punish the past, but to illuminate the future. Many months before being carried out, the coup d'etat had been accomplished. The day having come, the hour having struck, the mechanism being completely wound up, it had only to be set going. It was bound not to fail, and nothing did fail. What would have been an abyss if the majority had done its duty, and had understood its joint responsibility with the Left, was not even a ditch. The inviolability had been demolished by those ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... level on a substantial bracket and in a place, if possible, where it will not require an artificial light to read its dial. The dry meter is usually used in dwellings. The interesting construction and mechanism of this meter cannot ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... he cried; "why, of course I can; there is never any difficulty about that. The finest workmanship in the world is that of the Indian jewelers. I have been among them often; I know all their devices and mechanism, of which the European are bad copies. I have only to look round this thing twice, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... people I have round me here. Poor old Grealy is quite impracticable, though he means well. He talks about nothing but the Fianna and Finn McCool, and can't see that my fellows must have riding lessons, and must be got somehow to understand the mechanism of a rifle. Tim Halloran has been in a sulk ever since I told him what I thought of his conduct at the Rotunda. He never comes near me, and Mary O'Dwyer told me the other day that he called my volunteers a "pack of blackguards." I dare say it's perfectly true, but they're a finer ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... ways of constructing a gun-trap. Of course a gun is the principal part of the mechanism, and the trigger pulled by a string is the main point of the contrivance. In some countries the bait is tied to the string, and the animal on seizing the bait tightens the string, draws the trigger, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... too bad Indians don't write books! If my people had been putting their internal mechanism on paper for a thousand years, you'd have no more trouble getting my point of view than I ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... plainly, now. Its single wing was thick and queerly unlike the air-foils of Earth. A framework hung below it, but it had no balancing tail. And there was a glittering something before it that obviously was its propelling mechanism, but as obviously was not a screw propeller. It swept overhead, with a man in it looking downward. Tommy watched coolly. It was past him, sweeping toward the jungle. It swung sharply to the right, banking steeply. Smoking things dropped from ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... tassels that reach from their humps to their heels. The decorative idea seems to prevail over everything in Jeypore. Nothing is without an ornament, no matter how humble its purpose or how cheap its material or mechanism, its owner embellishes as much as money and imagination will allow. Everything pays tribute to the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Goujet, whose red eyes had evidently been weeping, all faces turned to her at once. The two agents hoped as much as the household feared to see Laurence enter. This spontaneous movement of both masters and servants seemed produced by the sort of mechanism which makes a number of wooden figures perform the same gesture or wink the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism which he had set in operation to get rid of the "recitation" for him. At all events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... which we think so highly developed, is, after all, but a great decadence which has lost even the historical remembrance of the gigantic societies which have disappeared. We are stupidly proud of a few ingenious pieces of mechanism which we have recently invented, and we forget the colossal splendours and the vast works impossible to any other nation, which are found in the ancient land of the Pharaohs. We have steam, but steam is less powerful ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Bowker, hysterical from Roxana—Molly gushed out: "Just as we left home, Josh Craig came tearing in. If possible, madder than a hatter— yes—really—" Molly was still too young to have learned to control the mechanism of her mouth; thus, her confused syntax seemed the result of the alarming and fascinating contortions of her lips and tongue—"and, when we told him where we were going he shouted out, 'Give ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of these mirrors catches the sunshine direct and reflects it on the other, which, as you see, is so arranged that it transmits the rays down the natural funnel or chimney into the cave. By means of chains connected with the mechanism, and extending below, I can change the direction of the mirrors as the sun changes its place in the sky, without requiring to come ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... special branch of study which Wallace himself set going—the inquiry into the local variations, races, and species of insects as evidence of descent with modification, and of the mechanism by which that modification is brought about—there is still great work in progress, still an abundant field to be reaped.... Several able observers and experimenters have set themselves the task of improving, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... but find attractive, somehow. He said: "Why, but this heart thumping here inside me may stop any moment like a broken clock. Here is Euripides writing better than I: and here in my body, under my hand, is the mechanism upon which depend all those masterpieces that are to blot the Athenian from the reckoning, and I have no control ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... nervous," directed the inventor, after he had explained the mechanism to Paul, and also to the city officials who had gathered to pass ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... let it roll down. As the pencil was not round, but polygonal in its form, it made a curious clicking sound in rolling down, which amused Marco, though it disturbed and troubled Forester. Whatever may have been the nice peculiarities in the delicate mechanism of Forester's ear, and of the nerves connected with it, compared with that of Marco's, by which the same sound produced a sensation of pleasure in one ear, while it gave only pain in the other, it would require a very profound philosopher to explain. But the effect ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... skill, or more than a very moderate outlay on tools. I may say here that I have been over the ground myself to find out its difficulties for my readers, and that I made an engine similar to that described in Chapter XV (the most elaborate mechanism included in the book) with very simple tools. Some of the items which I had on my original list were abandoned, because they presupposed the possession ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... which Lucan was born, would have felt the full absurdity of applying such a device to historical epic. Lucan was wise in his choice, and left Olympus severely alone. But his choice roused contemporary criticism. In the Satyricon of Petronius we find a defence of the old conventional mechanism placed in the mouth of a shabby and disreputable poet named Eumolpus (118). He complains 'that young men plunge headlong into epic verse thinking that it requires no more skill than a showy declamation at the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... ground runs in an aeroplane. He had gone up in the Baby Racer twice with Dave, and had proven himself a model passenger. As he had just hinted, too, he had been familiar enough with the mechanism of the biplane to operate some of its auxiliary machinery so ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... she had blundered fatally. She had been a fool, rushing in. And with almost a feeling of dismay she realised it was beyond her ability now to stay what she had put in motion. She was as one who, having wantonly released some complex mechanism, stands aghast and powerless at the consequence of his rashness. And yet, despite the seeming setback to her hopes, the conviction that had urged her to this step was still strong in her; she still ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... undertaking consisted in the concurrence of the largest banking-houses of France and abroad, which would hinder all competition, and prevent hostility on the part of the great money-handlers. It was very curious, and Madame Desvarennes would feel great satisfaction in knowing the mechanism of this company, destined to become, from the first, the most important in the world, and yet most easy ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the mechanism. When the rifle has been wet or exposed to unfavorable climatic conditions, the bolt should be withdrawn and all working parts carefully wiped with a dry cloth, and then gone over ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... by a root in contact with that which would refuse to yield the ordinary food of plants. And as he thus marked all these peculiar adaptations of plants to their respective situations, his mind was by a constant train of thought directed from the beauty and wondrous mechanism of the creature, to contemplate the supreme and ineffable glory ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... modern war that comes to one actually in touch with it is a destruction of illusion: this thing is a thing of mechanism rather than of brilliance; perhaps Petain has led a regiment, a brigade, or a division to the charge. You knew instinctively in seeing the man that you would go or come, as he said, but there was neither dash nor fire, ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... over in my mind for a long time this uncertainty of the traditional mathematical methods of calculating the motions of the celestial bodies, I began to grow disgusted that no more consistent scheme of the movements of the mechanism of the universe, set up for our benefit by that best and most law abiding Architect of all things, was agreed upon by philosophers who otherwise investigate so carefully the most minute details of this world. Wherefore I undertook the task of rereading the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... no motive within the complicated mechanism of Cesare's mind upon which I could play? Was there nothing which he held sacred, no terror in earth or hell which could daunt ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... almost from a fixed day in each year, and continuing to rise steadily for months, it gradually spreads over the lands, covering the entire soil with a fresh coating of the richest possible alluvium, and thus securing to the country a perpetual and inexhaustible fertility. Nature's mechanism is so perfect, that the rise year after year scarcely varies a foot, and is almost exactly the same now as it was when the first Pharaoh poured his libation to the river-god from the embankment which he had made at Memphis; but though this uniformity is great, and remarkable, and ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... she took it, and with her right forefinger began to trace the lines. Her gaze had that intensity with which a little child peers into the mechanism of a watch or an astronomer ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... to control the power by which the machine is run, and is then given an intelligent understanding of the mechanism of the machine or machines she ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... An invention, too, always presents itself to an inventor at first in the most complicated form, and frequently many years are passed in attempts at simplification. What a wide interval is there between the steam locomotive with all its complex mechanism, and the magnificently simple rocket car! A century of ceaseless invention is comprehended between the two! Before the simplicity of our cars was arrived at, inventors had to give up boilers, fire-boxes, valves, ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... in the creek was barely three feet deep, Officer Valden sprang from the car, holding his right hand, which had been caught in the brake mechanism. ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... day or night, the sun's rising and setting throughout the year, its entrance into the signs of the zodiac; the arch which they and the sun in them makes above or below the horizon, with several other curious motions."[14] He was very curious in examining the mechanism of a watch, and it is said he could take one of these ingenious machines to pieces, and put it together ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... material and substantive relations between signs and language, it is to be expected that analogies can by proper research be ascertained between their several developments in the manner of their use, that is, in their grammatic mechanism, and in the genesis of the sentence. The science of language, ever henceforward to be studied historically, must take account of the similar early mental processes in which the phrase or sentence originated, both in sign and oral utterance. In ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... engine-shop—there should always be a full complement of craft for the work of instruction. When workshops are in operation in connection with a school an opportunity is usually provided, also, for a novice to gain some knowledge as to the mechanism and working of the aero-motor: and this of course will be useful ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... chain or chains stretched from harmonic post to post, which describe the figure or outline of the musical image. The element of rhythm gives the whole body its life,—regulates the choice of varying lengths, defining the infinitely varied "tapping" of the musical mechanism. ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... once known, dwells in the body until death, and Ben was a born fisherman. The old delight that can never die crept back to him the instant he felt the clumsy rod in his hands and the faint throb of the line through the delicate mechanism of his nerves. And apparently for no other reason than that the river hordes wished to welcome him home, almost at once a gigantic ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... a travelling piano was wheeled through Coombe and set up a tune in that lonesome spot. Though it was but a mechanical piece of music, with the cogs as it were of the mechanism well marked by the thump, thump, it seemed to cheer the place—till she went out to the gate to look at the Italian woman who danced about while the grinding was done, and saw that she had a sound pair of boots on. That very morning her mother in crossing the road had set the Flamma rheumatism ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... power,' if I may so describe it, must then be, not a mechanism which nothing can resist, but a living being! It must also be a creature striking panic, terrifying, formidable: you ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... recross a hundred yards. But when they reached the earthen throne again at last, and had hoisted the fakir back in position on it, there had been no casualties, and the morale of the men in Sergeant Brown's command was as good again as the breech-mechanism of the rifles ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... but it was lost. The ocean saved it, only to demolish it at leisure—like a cat playing with her prey. Its fate was to suffer there, and to be dismembered day by day. It was to be the plaything of the savage amusements of the sea. For what could be done? That this vast block of mechanism and gear, at once massive and delicate, condemned to fixity by its weight, delivered up in that solitude to the destructive elements, could, under the frown of that implacable spot, escape from slow destruction seemed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to the first drawing. "This is the barrel of the weapon, Master," he said. "As You commanded, it is rifled so that the missile will spin. Here the missile is inserted at the breech, according to Your direction. Here is the mechanism which turns and aims the weapon, as You commanded. It is shown in greater detail on this second sheet.... And here, on the third, is the missile itself. It is hollow and filled with explosive powder, as You ordered, and ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... remarks on the revolutionary government at the time of its adoption. The text of this political phoenomenon must be well known in England—I shall, therefore, confine myself to giving you a general idea of its spirit and tendency,—It is, compared to regular government, what force is to mechanism, or the usual and peaceful operations of nature to the ravages of a storm—it substitutes violence for conciliation, and sweeps with precipitate fury all that opposes its devastating progress. It refers every thing to a single principle, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... of artillery-horses—the legs that tell of muscularity and lasting stamina. Their drill was very loose, and skill in musketry left much to be desired. They had no perception of distance-judging, and some were so grossly ignorant of the mechanism of their weapons that they knocked off the back-sights of their rifles, alleging that they hindered them from taking correct aim. The Marquis de la Hormazas—a meagre, tall, elderly man—was commandant ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... brought the gladiators contending in the arena closer to the imperial canopy. Now observatories, with their revolving domes, crown the heights at every centre of civilization, and the mighty telescope, poised on exquisite mechanism, turns infinite space into a Coliseum, brings its invisible luminaries close to the astronomer's seat, and reveals the harmonies and splendors of those distant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... The mechanism of these various formations is explained in all elementary books. Polybius enters into a mechanical discussion when he contrasts the phalanx and the legion. ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... become "queer specimen sportsmen," after the pattern of Cyrus Garst; and find a more entrancing excitement in studying the live wild things of the forest than in gloating over a dying tremor, or examining a senseless mass of horn, hide, and hoofs, after the life-spring which worked the mechanism has ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... best results from any machine unless he understands its mechanism. We shall draw aside the curtain and show you the mind ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... kime was imperiously called for; and the want of it is a subtle evasion, for which Mr. Styles is fairly accountable. As he has been silent on this subject, it is for us to explain the plan and nature of this terrible and unknown piece of mechanism. Kimes, then, are neither more nor less than a false print in the Edinburgh Review for knives; and from this blunder of the printer has Mr. Styles manufactured this Daedalean instrument of torture, called ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... their province. Of course many persons would disagree with this last statement. The genius of an Edison, they assert, is precisely like the genius of a poet. But if this were true, we should be moved by the mechanism of a phonograph just as we are moved by a poem, and we are not. We may be amazed by the invention, and still find our thoughts tied to the physical world. It is not the instrument, but the voice of an artist added to it that makes us conscious of the two worlds of sense ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... She talked to me about this elephant gun, and explained its mechanism. You can imagine how she soothed my aching heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at the moment—quite unnecessarily if I had only known—because it was only a couple of days since my engagement to Wilhelmina Bennett had been broken off. Well, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... quarter-master called them on deck saying that the weather had moderated and that there was a ship in sight, and there, away across the tumbling seas, the Albatross had struck his vision, remote, storm surrounded, and sunlit, almost a vision of the past in these days of mechanism. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... than in the evening: Fasting, than after a full meal. Can we give any reason for these variations, except experience? Where then is the power, of which we pretend to be conscious? Is there not here, either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... opus, "Capital,'' added bulk and substance to the theses of the Communist Manifesto. It contributed the theory of surplus value, which professed to explain the actual mechanism of capitalist exploitation. This doctrine is very complicated and is scarcely tenable as a contribution to pure theory. It is rather to be viewed as a translation into abstract terms of the hatred with which Marx regarded the system that coins wealth out of human lives, and it is in this spirit, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... to be mentioned is the bridge, which forms no small part of the vibrating mechanism of the instrument, and needs the utmost skill in its arrangement. Its usual position is exactly between the two small niches marked in each sound-hole, but this arrangement is sometimes altered in the case of the stop being longer or shorter. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... open-circuited armature windings, grounded field windings, short-circuited field windings, open-circuit or poor connections in field circuit, one or more field coil connections reversed, wrong type of armature or field coils used in repairing generator, generator drive mechanism broken-then the generator ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... are too often forsaken for the inward and subtile analysis of motives, characters, and actions. The workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanity of parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of calling attention to the minute and tedious operations by which the movements were to be performed and the result obtained. I believe that an author is generally pleased with his work less in proportion as it is good, than in proportion as it fulfils the idea with which he ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... woman like herself, who had just consented to be a man's wife; but it was impossible to her to regard this as anything but an aping of things which at other times had a solemn meaning. She found herself gazing at Geraldine as one does at some singular piece of mechanism with a frivolous purpose. And it was not only the individuals that impressed her thus; these two represented life and the world. She had strange, cynical thoughts, imaginings which revolted her pure mind even whilst it entertained them. No ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... of the mechanism and operation of the principal types of cylinder printing machines. 64 pp.; illustrated; 47 ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... dabbed the ink by hand on the characters, and the movable table on which the form of type was placed in readiness for the sheet of paper, being made of marble, literally deserved its name of "impression-stone." Modern machinery has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion; the wooden press which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for the Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten, that something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which Jerome-Nicolas ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Athena with the brutish giants, her contest with Arachne, the deeds of the heroes of Athens—Erechtheus, Theseus, Codrus: these were some of the pictures. The car moved noiselessly on wheels turned by concealed mechanism. Under the shadow of the sail walked the fairest of its makers, eight women, maids and young matrons, clothed in white mantles and wreaths, going with stately tread, unmoved by the shouting as though themselves divine. Seven walked together. But one, their ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Glycas and their like told of mechanical birds that flew and sang and even laid eggs. More credible is the story of Aulus Gellius, who in his Attic Nights tells how Archytas, four centuries prior to the opening of the Christian era, made a wooden pigeon that actually flew by means of a mechanism of balancing weights and the breath of a mysterious spirit hidden within it. There may yet arise one credulous enough to state that the mysterious spirit was precursor of the internal combustion engine, but, however that ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... there was an inhuman, devilish deftness in the rhymes. The mighty mechanism of English verse had been employed to proclaim my remoteness ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... disk inclosed by it may indeed be made an element of decoration, though a very meager one; but its relative mass, the ball, being gradated in three dimensions, is always delightful. Here[8] is at once the simplest, and, in mere patient mechanism, the most skillful, piece of sculpture I can possibly show you,—a piece of the purest rock-crystal, chiseled, (I believe, by mere toil of hand,) into a perfect sphere. Imitating nothing, constructing nothing; sculpture for ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... manufacturer, successfully developed a number of improvements in steam engines for ocean going vessels, founded the Winton Motor Carriage Company in 1897, and patented a number of inventions in connection with automobile mechanism. The works of the company at Cleveland, Ohio, now cover more than thirteen acres. The first to expound and formulate the application of the law of conservation in illumination calculations was Addams Stratton McAllister (b. ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... Augustine's Confessions gives us the key to the whole story. "Sed ex amante alio accenditur alius" ("Confessions", iv. 14, 911). "One loving spirit sets another on fire." Jesus brings men to the new exploration of God, to the new commitment of themselves to God, simply by the ordinary mechanism of friendship and love. This, in plain English, is after all the idea of Incarnation—friendship and identification. Jesus has a genius for friendship, a gift for understanding the feelings of men. Look, for example, at the quick word to Jairus. As soon as the message comes to ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... at first between the two paths seems to us unquestionable. The indecision is visible in Cartesianism. On the one hand, Descartes affirms universal mechanism: from this point of view movement would be relative,[107] and, as time has just as much reality as movement, it would follow that past, present and future are given from all eternity. But, on the other hand (and that ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... control of only one workman, could produce blows of varying forces without alteration in the rapidity with which they were given. It was also necessary that the vibration and shock of the hammer head should not be transmitted to the driving mechanism, and that the latter should be free from noise and liability to derangement. The various uses to which the movable fulcrum hammers have been put, and their success in working[1]—as well as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... insects—and of deep coloured shells; were attractive wonders enough; but from the skeletons beside these, it was quite clear, that Delme had acquired considerable knowledge as to the internal construction of the animals themselves—that he had studied the subsisting relations, between the mechanism and the movements—the structure, and ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... in our attempt to discover the essential character of the life of the Spirit, wherever it is found, we are now to see what psychology has to tell us or hint to us of its nature; and of the relation in which it stands to the mechanism of our psychic life. It is hardly necessary to say that such an inquiry, fully carried out, would be a life-work. Moreover, it is an inquiry which we are not yet in a position to undertake. True, more and more material is daily becoming available for it: but many ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... containing what appeared to be books, and indeed were so; mostly very small, like our diamond duodecimos, shaped in the fashion of our volumes, and bound in sheets of fine metal. There were several curious-looking pieces of mechanism scattered about, apparently models, such as might be seen in the study of any professional mechanician. Four automata (mechanical contrivances which, with these people, answer the ordinary purposes of domestic service) stood ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... painter; they sit on their hips, never on their chairs. When any one speaks to them they turn their whole busts instead of simply turning their heads; and when their gowns creak one is tempted to believe that the mechanism of these beings is out of order. Mademoiselle Habert, an ideal of her species, had a stern eye, a grim mouth, and beneath her wrinkled chin the strings of her cap, always limp and faded, floated as she moved. Two moles, rather large and brown, adorned that chin, and from them sprouted hairs which ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... it too light for an emergency gun against the larger dangerous animals, such as buffalo and rhinoceros. If one has time for extreme accuracy, and can pick the shot, it is plenty big; but I refer now to close quarters in a hurry. I had no trouble whatever with the mechanism of this arm; nor have I ever had trouble with any of the lever actions, although I have used them for many years. As regards speed of fire the controversy between the lever and bolt action advocates seems to me foolish in the extreme. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... had been inducted, was all that could have been desired for the scion of a noble house, whose pampered whims and vices were to be ministered to by the lavish hand of a fond parent, and where the display of mental abilities was no more necessary than in the propulsion of the mechanism of one of Her Majesty's establishments erected for the ambulating exercises of petty delinquents, yet to a young and high-spirited nature, such as John Ferguson's, the very absence of any intellectual requirements ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding, quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... in spite of his deeply religious spirit, was also strongly opposed. It was vigorously urged against him that by his statement of the law of gravitation he "took from God that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism," and that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries "cuckoo!" and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... invisible, dissolving all, except that geometrical point, the I; bringing everything back to the soul-atom; expanding everything in God, entangling all activity, from summit to base, in the obscurity of a dizzy mechanism, attaching the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating, who knows? Were it only by the identity of the law, the evolution of the comet in the firmament to the whirling of the infusoria in the drop of water. A ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... twelfth century, small portable organs of limited compass were much used; although the tone of these instruments was necessarily slight, and, owing to the shortness of the pipes, high in pitch, the principle of the mechanism was similar to that of the larger instruments. They were hung by means of a strap passed over the shoulders; one hand pressed the keys in front of the pipes (which were arranged perpendicularly), and the other hand operated the small bellows behind ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... fortune; or those of the tender affections, love and friendship; which warm the heart, and diffuse over it similar sentiments and emotions. And though all kinds of passion, even the most disagreeable, such as grief and anger, are observed, when excited by poetry, to convey a satisfaction, from a mechanism of nature, not easy to be explained: Yet those more elevated or softer affections have a peculiar influence, and please from more than one cause or principle. Not to mention that they alone interest us in the fortune of the persons represented, or communicate ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... resolved to live, and to sustain a desperate struggle with the Rennepont family, Rodin acted in consequence. For a few moments Father d'Aigrigny and the prelate believed themselves under the influence of a dream. By an effort of unparalleled energy, and as if moved by hidden mechanism, Rodin sprang from the bed, dragging the sheet with him, and trailing it, like a shroud, behind his livid and fleshless body. The room was cold; the face of the Jesuit was bathed in sweat; his naked and bony feet left their moist ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... extremely interested in the mechanism of his own brain, and followed its workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could be more remarkable, he thought, than to thus discover that, on the instant of his formulating a desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and behold! there his mind, quite on its ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... but on account of his impersonal authority, which emanates from the Constitution and the laws. It little matters whether Cleveland favors economic reaction during his government, if the nation, in its assemblies, demands stability. The mechanism of the United States, like that of the universe, reposes on indefectible laws and uncontrollable forces. Germany is in every way the antithesis of America; it worships personal power. To this cause is due the commencement of its organization in Prussia, a country which was necessarily military ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... our smashing the dome and opening it to space killed Ku Sui and everyone inside, and destroyed all the mechanisms, including the coordinated brains. But the mechanism controlling the asteroid's invisibility was not destroyed. The ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... in fact, wise to keep the mind open and suspend the judgment. We are standing on the threshold of the Arcana, and at any hour the search-light of our intellect may penetrate the darkness, and reveal to our wondering gaze the depths of the inner mechanism of Nature. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... It may well be, as Macaulay predicts, that the enlightened world will indeed resent and cease to practise "illusions" on the imagination, or on any other faculty. It may be the case also that the stock poetical diction and mechanism of Addison's time, with the "Delias" and "Phyllises," "nymphs," "swains," "lyres," and other tinsel elegancies in which it delights, will be—nay, are already—the abomination of a discerning world. But if by "poetry" is meant what should be meant—the vivid, impassioned and rhythmical ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... would have woman industrious shut her up to a few kinds of work. My judgment in this matter is that a woman has a right to do anything that she can do well. There should be no department of merchandise, mechanism, art, or science barred against her. If Miss Hosmer has genius for sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa Bonheur has a fondness for delineating animals, let her make "The Horse Fair." If Miss Mitchell will study astronomy, let her mount the starry ladder. If Lydia will be a merchant, let her ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... these and other particulars of the vessel. At either end the boat had a cabin, the air in which remained good for about three hours, and in the middle of the boat was a large paddlewheel rotated by clockwork mechanism, which, it was claimed, would run for eight hours when once wound up. The iron tips at the ends of the vessel were intended for ramming, and the inventor was confident he could sink the biggest English ship afloat by crushing in her hull under water. The boat was duly launched, but on trial of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dependents is attached to the household of the rich Filipino. The master has his special body servant to be present at all times to do his master's bidding, in short, to be the visible mechanism of his master's volition. So, too, the lady of the house has her servant woman to do the slightest bidding of her ladyship. Then there is the cook who is almost invariably a man, a house boy or two, and the coachman. These functionaries, with their assistants ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... dare say I should understand the mechanism of a dress-suit, even if I'd never seen one," said the man, amused, yet ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... nihsratam" (All that is vibrates with life, having come out from life). When we know this world as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in our mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us to do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine has its place in this world. And not only this material universe, but human beings also, may be used as machines and made to yield powerful results. This aspect of ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... mechanism of eternal forms— The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through— Were alien ways to him: his brawny arms Had other work than posturing ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... whatever characters we trace on it. This equality of minds gave rise to the same monstrous doctrine in the science of metaphysics which that of another verbal misconception, the equality of men, did in that of politics. The Scottish metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of the mind,—an important and a curious truth; for as rules and principles exist in the nature of things, and when discovered are only thence drawn out, genius unconsciously conducts itself by a uniform process; and when this process had been traced, they inferred that what was done by some ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... understand the Germans. Some of their traits may possibly be explained by their history. Their passionate devotion to the State, their amazing vulgarity, their worship of mechanism and mechanical efficiency, are explicable in a people who are not strong in individual character, who have suffered much to achieve union, and who have achieved it by subordinating themselves, soul and ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... where the colonel took leave of the Captain; and the latter, intending to repair to his vessel, followed the course of the market almost to its lowest extreme. In one of the most public places of the market, the Captain's attention was attracted by a singular object of mechanism. It seemed so undefined in its application, that he was reminded of the old saying among sailors when they fall in with any indescribable thing at sea, that it was a "fidge-fadge, to pry the sun up with in ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... weight of the superincumbent body, the rest are thrown forwards, as fresh and more advanced points of support on to which it may be pulled. The running of the insect is a very ingenious and beautiful adaptation of the principles of mechanism to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... static tests can be used for transverse bending, compression, tension, shear, and cleavage. A common form consists of three main parts, namely: (1) the straining mechanism, (2) the weighing apparatus, and (3) the machinery for communicating ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record |
