"Mechanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... placed his life in jeopardy by performing an act so uninteresting to the party in question. Hugh Vansevere; let me see—I don't think I've got that registered in my collection of appellatives. Perhaps he is a new tool in the employ of the old mechanic." ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... during the Theban Period, and of a graceful, decorative character, but it was rather monotonous by repetition and filled with established mannerisms. The Egyptian really never was a free worker, never an artist expressing himself; but, for his day, a skilled mechanic following time-honored ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... that occurred the first attempt to use gunpowder in the shape of a submarine torpedo. This device, which to-day threatens to overturn all established ideas of naval organization and architecture, originated with a clever Connecticut mechanic named David Bushnell. His invention covered not only submarine torpedoes, to be launched against a vessel, but a submarine boat in which an adventurous navigator might undertake to go beneath the hull of a man-of-war, and affix the torpedoes, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... go to the South for purposes of traffic may or may not be favored with large profits. All the products of the mechanic arts are very scarce in the interior, while in the larger towns trade is generally overdone. Large stocks of goods were taken to all places accessible by water as soon as the ports were opened. The supply exceeded the demand, and many dealers ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... took occasion to celebrate. The battery kitchen had been thoroughly renovated by Mechanic Grover C. Rothacker and Mechanic Conrad A. Balliet, both of Hazleton, Penna., the renovation placing it in the class of "The best kitchen and mess hall in camp," to quote the words of Major General Joseph E. Kuhn, divisional commander, when he inspected ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... those whom he left behind. Panic seems to have marked them for her own; they despaired at once of all lawful defence; and, on Sunday, the day after the Chief Justice's departure, Apia was in consequence startled with strange news. Dynamite bought from the wrecker ship, an electrical machine and a mechanic hired, the prison mined, and a letter despatched to the people of Manono advising them of the fact, and announcing that if any rescue were attempted prison and prisoners should be blown up—such were the voices of rumour; and the design appearing equally ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In New Zealand, the "mechanic" missionary only carries on his trade till he has every comfort around him—his house finished, his garden fenced, and a strong stockade enclosing all, to keep off the "pagan" savages. This done, then commences the easy ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... young man whose behavior was directly the opposite of Gassendi's: a compound of ignorance, self-conceit, and impudence. He was forward to talk in all companies. His opinion, on all subjects, was cheap—a gift that went a-begging. He could tell the farmer how to till the soil; the mechanic how to use his tools; the merchant, how to make his gains; the doctor, how to cure his patient; the minister, how to preach; and the cook, how to bake her bread. He wanted only a pair of long ears to ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... then frequented by men who came, not to talk, but to read; the smaller tradesmen and the better class of mechanic now came to the coffee-house, called for a cup of coffee, and with it the daily paper, which they could not afford to take in. Every coffee-house took three or four papers; there seems to have been in this latter phase of the once social institution no general conversation. The ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mechanick of this sort is 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
... newspapers and books there is no excuse for the wife's ignorance either about the present or the past. If you have no more than a half-hour every day to yourself you may fill your mind with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the merchant's wife read up on all mercantile questions, and the mechanic's wife on all that pertains to his style of work, and the professional man's wife on all the legal, or medical, or theological, or political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for a man, after having been amid ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... separated and closed, and which could be brought closer to or removed from the spindles on wheels, to spin several threads at the same time. On the basis of this idea and with the help of a neighboring mechanic he constructed a machine by which a man could spin eight threads at the same time. In honor of his wife he named it the "Spinning-jenny." The secret of this device soon came out and jennies spinning twenty or thirty or more ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... 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. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... meanwhile, was not inactive. He sought out the obscure retreat of a distant branch of our family, a poor widow, who lived with her only son, an active and industrious mechanic. He renewed the acquaintance which we had allowed to drop some years before, and set before her in glowing colors the chance that opened for the young man to achieve a high and glorious destiny. Fired with patriotic zeal, he even went so ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Murillo was born. His father and mother were poor people. The house they lived in had formerly belonged to a convent, and it was rented to them for a very small sum, on condition that they would keep up the repairs. Even this Murillo's father found to be a heavy burden. He was a mechanic and his income ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... been wandering upon forbidden ground; if so, in returning to my proper path, I will comfort myself with this thought:—the progress of improvement, however slow, is sure, and it is certainly advancing in this country; I require no other assurance than the establishment of Infant Schools and Mechanic's. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... girls who amidst poverty and sin has been able to keep her ideals high. Her home is poor because her father, a mechanic, who can earn good wages is a hard drinker. Her mother, an honest, clean, hard working woman, is nervous and fretful, worn out by the hard things she has had to meet. It is a quarrelsome household and when the father comes home intoxicated the law is obliged often to interfere. One of the ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... my simple language, and in a bungling manner, I have told the story of my life. I am no author, but claim a title which I consider nobler, that of a "Mechanic." Being possessed of a remarkable memory, I am able to give a minute account and even the date of every important transaction of my whole life, and distinctly remember events which took place when I was but a child, three and a half years old, and how I celebrated my fourth birthday. ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... left them as calm and casual as if they were but drilling on the turf of Hyde Park. And with it persisted that almost equally unshakable sense of class, that touching confidence in one's superiors— the young clerk's or mechanic's inborn conviction that whatever that smart, clean-cut, imperturbable young officer does and says must inevitably be right—at least, that if he is cool and serene you must, if the skies fall, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... without them? It is perfectly true that our Henries and Edwards contrived to beat their enemies unassisted by these inventions. Books, likewise, which were a luxury scarcely known to the wisdom of our ancestors, are a luxury now so indispensable, that there is hardly a mechanic who has not his little library: while a piano forte also has become as necessary to a farm-house as a mangle or a frying-pan; and there are actually more copies printed of "Cherry ripe," than of Tull's husbandry. Is not a silver fork, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... the wars, Margaret," said he. "So much of the ancient rules and customs of chivalry as can be observed in these mechanic days shall, by us at any rate, be observed. In strict law you ought to have spent a night in prayer and fasting, but your loyal service to Margaret is a good equivalent. To labour is to pray, say the parsons, and, my lad, always remember in your soldiering that a so-minded man can offer ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... knowledge have ruined their estates and their constitutions in this way. How then can we wonder that men less instructed than ourselves, and tried by privations such as we have never known, should be easily misled by mountebanks who promise impossibilities? Imagine a well-meaning laborious mechanic, fondly attached to his wife and children. Bad times come. He sees the wife whom he loves grow thinner and paler every day. His little ones cry for bread, and he has none to give them. Then come the professional ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the room, mounted his steed, and rode through the town towards the bridge. He was compelled to ride slowly through the streets, for he was recognised; and cheapman and mechanic rushed from house and from stall to hail the Man of the Land ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the ease of a boy. I think men who come with a task to do are like that. It's part of them. They don't feel the weight of what they know, because it's all through them—not localized. You might be with Spenski an hour or a week and never know that he was more than just a mechanic—if you were ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... action, and the populace, believing that they would not be punished, pursued the members of the University with continued insults and threats. After an unusually serious attack cum bombardis, (in which, "by the divine clemency," a young mechanic was wounded), the University, failing to obtain redress, appealed to Prince Maurice of Saxony, who promised to protect the University. A conference between the University and the city authorities took place, ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... this when they considered that the shipwright work must necessarily be a mere driblet, altogether unworthy the attention of one so wealthy. But that which amazed them most of all was, that such a man, in such circumstances, could waste his time in doing with his own hands the work of an ordinary mechanic—thus (as they concluded) entailing on himself the necessity of devoting much of the night to his more ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... mob. It is, it has been, and it will be a government of the people; including alike the people of great wealth, of moderate wealth, the people who employ others, the people who are employed, the wage worker, the lawyer, the mechanic, the banker, the farmer; including them all, protecting each and everyone if he acts decently and squarely, and discriminating against any one of them, no matter from what class he comes, if he does ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... been reviewed by Dr. Samuel Calvin and Dr. Frank M. Wilder of the State University of Iowa; Dr. S. W. Beyer of the Iowa College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts; Dr. U. S. Grant of Northwestern University; Professor J. A. Udden of Augustana College, Illinois; Dr. C. H. Gordon of the New Mexico State School of Mines; Principal Maurice Ricker of the High School, Burlington, Iowa; and the following former students of the author who ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... 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. ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... into the development stage scientifically, and even in this it does not yet really appear what it may be, but it is easy to see how all atmospheric energy becomes really a substance from which every skilled mechanic may ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... studies of all the great American and English inventors from Stephenson and Fulton to Edison and Westinghouse. These histories emphasize the facts that these men were self- taught and bench-trained, and that their achievements can be imitated by every intelligent mechanic in ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... Franklin should be sent to England, no longer as an agent, but as the general representative of the States. In this character he arrived in London about forty years after his first appearance in that city as a distressed mechanic. His own mind was strongly impressed by the contrast; he went to the printing-office where he had worked, introduced himself to the men employed there, and joined in a little festival in honor of printing. He officially presented to Mr. Grenville a petition against the Stamp Act, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... evidence of far-sighted judgment or conscious power, while it has shown decided glimpses of weakness and indecision. Indeed, how can an army like theirs be strong? Its members mostly unaccustomed to steady exertion or precise organization; without mechanic skill or invention; without cash or credit; fettered in their movements by the limited rolling stock of their scanty railways; tethered to their own homes by the fear of insurrection;—what element of solid strength have they, to set against these things? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Odyssean story or the King's daughter and the Efreet in the "Second Royal Mendicant's Adventure," could not more easily transform themselves than the French peasant. Husbandman to-day, mechanic on the morrow, at one season he plies the pruning-hook, at another he turns the lathe. This adaptability of the French mind, strange to say, is nowhere seen to greater advantage than in out-of-the-way regions, just where are mental torpidity and unbendable routine. Not one of Millet's ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... masculine because it denotes a male. 22. Therein consists the force and use and nature of language. 23. Neither wealth nor wisdom is the chief thing. 24. Either you or I am right. 25. Neither you nor he is to blame. 26. John, and his sister also, is going. 27. The lowest mechanic, as well as the richest citizen, is here protected in his right. 28. There are one or two reasons. [Footnote: When two adjectives differing in number are connected without a repetition of the noun, the tendency is to make the verb agree with the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... wonder! the cooking apparatus with its moveable jack, and its particular copper for hot water,—all these things, and a thousand others too minute to tell, acted so impressively on their minds, that I could hear them extolling, in barbarous grammar, to the cook the singular sagacity of an English mechanic, and the collective greatness of the English nation. They remained on board nearly three hours; and, after conversing with R——, P——, and myself as well as they could, they presented each of us with their cards, and, begging that we would honour them ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... for victory, or rather for the mere sharpening of his faculties, instead of convincing, he not unfrequently confounded his opponent; but whenever he had thus casually argued, and had obtained an acknowledged confutation, like an ingenious mechanic, he never failed to organize the discordant materials and to do homage to truth, by pointing out his own fallacies, or otherwise, by formally ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... P.M. we reached a charming little town, called Mindon, where I met an English mechanic who deplored to me that he had been such a fool as to naturalise himself, as he was in hourly dread ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... situation, where knowledge of the mechanic arts afforded the surest recommendation to notice, it may be easily conceived, that attention to the parade duty of the troops, gradually diminished. Now were to be seen officers and soldiers not "trailing the ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... how God with skillful hand Employed Himself to make them coats of skin, I saw mechanic skill take higher stand From this ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... make the studies here pursued not only introductory to professional studies, and to studies in the higher branches of science and literature, but also to embrace such studies as are more particularly adapted to agriculture, the mechanic arts, and to the industrial arts generally. Accordingly, a distinct scientific course has been added, running parallel to the classical course, extending through the same term of four years, and embracing the same number of classes with the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... furnishes a powerful motive for reformation is shown daily in this institution. You have only to watch the student over his books, or mechanic over his tools to see the effort that is being made to win that golden prize—a parole. How that motive is undermined or taken away entirely when the sentence is definite is readily perceived by taking a cursory ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... prepared his hash of potatoes 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
... tale of little ANNIE PROTHEROE. She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW; She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day - A gentle executioner whose ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... 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 the ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the signal bell for landing on the rock was again rung, when every man was at his quarters. In this service it was thought more appropriate to use the bell than to PIPE to quarters, as the use of this instrument is less known to the mechanic than the sound of the bell. The landing, as in the morning, was at the eastern harbour. During this tide the seaweed was pretty well cleared from the site of the operations, and also from the tracks leading ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what fate had in store for thee! To hide thy noble birth under the humble roof of a mechanic; to seek a refuge from insult and contempt far from thy childhood's home; to work without relaxation; to fight against privation and want, and to sink at last into shame and poverty, heart-broken by despair! Misery, doubtless, has cast a yellow tinge upon thy cheeks and ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... enterprising disposition. The most ancient families have become absorbed or overwhelmed by the mighty progress of this new element, this outpouring of wealth as from some unseen source; and in many instances their names only are recognised in these old and rickety mansions, now the habitation of the mechanic and the plebeian. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... your etching complete, it remains but to hint That with certain assistance from paper and print, Which the proper mechanic will settle, You may charm all your friends—without any sad tale Of such perils and ills as beset Lady Sale— With a fine India Proof ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... had no head 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 every laboratory in the world; ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... completest manner of writing histories and books on all sorts of subjects, and—the ninth in the mysteries, secrets, and curiosities of all sciences, faculties, disciplines and arts whatsoever, whether liberal or mechanic,—that approaching near unto them he unbent his bow, shut his quiver, and extinguished his torch, through mere shame and fear that by mischance he might do them any hurt or prejudice. Which done, he thereafter put off the fillet wherewith his eyes ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... saw the tall, strong man, with red, bloated face, playing with his children like a mechanic who had just returned from work. But he usually remained only a short time, seeming to be satisfied with having seen them again. Perhaps he merely wished to assure himself that they were comfortable with us. At any rate, no one was permitted to go near the group of plane-trees where he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... out timber for bridges, and cutting fuel for locomotives and cars. Thus every branch of railroad building, making tools to work with, and supplying the workmen with food, was all going on at once, and without the aid of a mechanic or workman except what the command itself furnished. General Dodge had the work assigned to him finished within forty days after receiving his orders. The number of bridges to rebuild was 182, many of them over deep ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... said, his glance including the attentive three before him. "One is the windmill; the door is usually locked and I don't know how it came to be left open this morning. But locked or not, keep out of it—it is no place for anyone unless a mechanic wants to oil or repair ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... occurred to me. The only reason why they can execute plans that I conceive, while I cannot, is that they have considerable money of their own and command of much greater sums not their own, while I have neither. They have the tools and the materials. I have neither. The clumsiest mechanic, who has tools and materials to work with, can do things that the most skillful mechanic who has neither tools ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States? These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... seen better stated than by Coleridge, in a passage justifying the form of Shakespeare's dramas against a mode of criticism which has now, happily, gone out of use. "The true ground," says he, "of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when on any given material we impress a predetermined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material; as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... written 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
... chickens in question, or would have been if he had known of their accessibility? What rapture was there in insisting that a case in an Alabama court eight years before furnished an exact precedent in the matter of a mechanic's lien in Carthage? ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... of the tools with which society does its work, and is the means relied upon for the production of livelihood. Like the axe of the woodsman or the lathe of the mechanic, the social tools and machinery must be kept in effective working order if society is to receive a return for its outlay of labor and materials. Three items enter into the maintenance of this efficiency: (a) current repairs, (b) periodic rebuilding, and (c) ultimate replacement. This is as ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... the born mechanic and inventor. He enjoys working with things he can handle, mold, change, construct and improve with his powerful, efficient hands. Most of the mechanics of the world are Musculars and every inventor has the Muscular element ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... to me, who am zealous in the interests of learning, to think I may have the honor of leading the town into a very new and uncommon road of criticism. As that kind of literature is at present carried on, it consists only in a knowledge of mechanic rules which contribute to the structure of different sorts of poetry, as the receipts of good housewives do to the making puddings of flour, oranges, plums, or any other ingredients. It would, methinks, make these my instructions more easily intelligible to ordinary readers, if I discoursed of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... should say to one of these fellows who speak ill of everybody, 'What service are you of to the commonwealth?' he would reply, if he spoke fairly and honestly, 'To be a sailor or a soldier, or a husbandman, or a mechanic, I think beneath me; but I can make a noise and look dirty, wash myself in cold water, go barefoot all winter, and then, like Momus, find fault with everybody else; if any rich man sups luxuriously, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... behold the very house at which my father stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar, opened his letters, and read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen and ladies where the missing hotel was; but they only stared and passed on; until I met a mechanic, apparently, who very civilly stopped to hear my questions ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... detailed discipline, the young man's intellectual and moral faculties are moulded into Jesuitical forms. He is no longer his own. He is a pliable and obedient, even though it may be a virtuous and brilliant, tool of a spiritual master-mechanic who will use him according to his own purposes, in ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... really to the aid of their fruitless amorous pain, their inconstancy and jealousy, and restores fidelity to its old rights. The extremes of fanciful and vulgar are united when the enchanted Titania awakes and falls in love with a coarse mechanic with an ass's head, who represents, or rather disfigures, the part of a tragical lover. The droll wonder of Bottom's transformation is merely the translation of a metaphor in its literal sense; but in his behaviour during the tender homage of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... my card," he replied, advancing. "I want a strong, swift biplane, and a mechanic ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... back on her way to Virginia's lodgings, re-entered the station, and journeyed townwards. It was an odd incident, by Monica unperceived, that when she was taking her ticket there stood close by her a man, seemingly a mechanic, who had also stood within hearing when she booked at Herne Hill. This same man, though he had not travelled in the compartment with her, followed her when she alighted at Bayswater. She ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... full-blooded African, whose countenance beamed with intelligence. Being a mechanic, he had by industry earned more money than he had paid to his owner for his time, and this he had laid aside, with the hope that he might some day get enough to purchase his freedom. He had in his chest about a hundred and ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dionaea, and of drosera, and the stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a sense of touch, as well as a common sensorium, by the medium of which their muscles are excited into action. Lastly, in many flowers the anthers, when mature, approach the stigma, in others the female organ approaches to the male. In a plant of collinsonia, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... preconceived plan. Hence we find special efforts made by dualists to draw our attention here to the "wisdom of the Creator" and the design visible in his works. As a matter of fact, you will discover, on mature reflection, that on this theory the Creator is at bottom only playing the part of a clever mechanic or watch-maker; all these familiar teleological ideas of Creator and creation are based, in the long run, on a ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... value; all spinning-wheels and looms, one sewing machine and other instruments of domestic labor kept for actual use; the necessary provisions and fuel for the use of the family for six months; the proper tools, instruments or books of the debtor, if a farmer, mechanic, surveyor, clergyman, lawyer, physician, teacher or professor; the horse or the team consisting of not more than two horses or mules, or two yoke of cattle, and the wagon or other vehicle with the proper harness or tackle, by the use of which the debtor, if a physician, ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... 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 a bow and arrows, and, taking me behind ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... experimented, and have given the various appliances in common use in these cases most thorough and practical tests, and have found them very defective, being generally constructed upon wrong principles. The physician who sends to a mechanic for an appliance, such as are now made in the shops of most instrument makers, and uses the same, is doing himself an injustice, and barbarously torturing his patient by forcing him to wear an apparatus which is heavy, clumsy, and inevitably injurious, instead ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... narrow type of attention belongs to a man fitted for work as a bookkeeper or mechanic, while the broad type of attention fits one for work as a foreman or superintendent or, lacking executive ability, for work requiring the supervision of mechanical operations ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... advantage of it to that book." Some of the sentiments of the book which particularly impressed him were as follows: "It is possible that the wisdom of a poor man may start a proposal that may save a city, save a nation." "A mean (humble) mechanic,—who can tell what an engine of good he may be, if humbly and wisely applied unto it?" "The remembrance of having been the man that first moved a good law, were better than a statue erected for one's memory." These, and similar thoughts, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... take the precaution of exchanging his foreign garb of a Swiss peasant for the dress of an English mechanic. The change did not make him look any more like his old self, for there was no longer any incongruity in his appearance. No soul on earth knew that he had not died many years ago, except Felicita. He might saunter down the streets of his native ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... inviting me to be the first to fly over Sydney, and asking me to go out to the Ascot Race Course at about eleven o'clock, where the machine was quartered. I drove out, and on my arrival I was told that the pilot was away but that the mechanic, a young Scotsman of about twenty years of age, who had a pilot's certificate, was available if I wished to trust myself to him. I certainly felt rather doubtful on the point when I looked at the youth, especially as ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... companions, who estimated the punishment at seven or fourteen days. A good many of these had gaol experiences, and I am forced to admit that the decent folk on tramp were few in number. But the occasional honest mechanic or skilled workman in search of employment was ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... centuries of rubbish accumulated over the remains of mediaeval culture. In 1700 the Middle Ages were not yet so very remote. The nations and languages of Europe continued in nearly the same limits which had bounded them two centuries before. The progress in the sciences and mechanic arts, the discovery and colonizing of America, the invention of printing and gunpowder, and the Protestant reformation had indeed drawn deep lines between modern and mediaeval life. Christianity, however, formed a connecting link, though, in Protestant countries, the continuity between ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and here I must needs observe, that as reason is the substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring every thing by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had tools; however, I made abundance ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... spurn me, then, because I am a mechanic. Well, be it so! though the time will come, Isabel Sawtelle," he added, and nothing could exceed his looks at this moment—"when you will bitterly remember the cooper you now so cruelly cast ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... concerns. Their dress and manners are similar to those of the society of Friends; hence they are often called Shaking Quakers. They display great skill and science in agriculture, horticulture, and the mechanic arts; and their honesty, industry, hospitality, and neatness, are proverbial. These people choose their locations with great taste and judgment. A Shaker village always presents ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... same—each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur, and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to something less than 1,000,000. A mechanic's average wage was 3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day. Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... died when he was a little boy, and his father drank himself to death, or something. He won't talk about his family much. He did say though, that his father was a mechanic. I believe that he tells Mr. Udell more about his past ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... seen a model of a new Steam Printing Press, the invention of Mr. Wm. W. Marston, a young and ingenious mechanic of this city. A mass of other matters prevents our giving a description at present; we shall probably procure an engraving, however, and publish a full description in ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... Mechanic soul, thou must not only do With Martha, but with Mary ponder too; Happy's the home where these fair sisters vary; But most, when Martha's ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... native vigour of imagination, generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty." Correctness of drawing and imagination, the one of mechanical genius the other of poetic, undoubtedly work together for perfection—"a confidence in the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic." He expresses his surprise that the race of painters, before Michael Angelo, never thought of transferring to painting the grandeur they admired in ancient sculpture. "Raffaelle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... There is no shirt front, no studs, no rings, no kid gloves. The boots are strong and thick, substantial, but not ornamental. A man with his ten or fifteen thousand perhaps will walk down the street buttoned up in an ungainly greatcoat and an old hat, not half so smartly dressed as a well-paid mechanic, and far behind the drapers' assistants in style. There is a species of contempt among them for the meretricious and showy; they believe in the solid. This very fact makes them good friends to ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Island Sound, coasting along the front yard of the nation from Portland to Savannah the steamboats made their way, tying the young nation indissolubly together. Curiously enough it was Livingston's monopoly that gave the first impetus to the extension of steam navigation. A mechanic by the name of Robert L. Stevens, one of the first of a family distinguished in New York and New Jersey, built a steamboat on the Hudson. After one or two trips had proved its usefulness, the possessors of the monopoly became alarmed and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... boy to draw the holy numbers, and a holy old priest to oversee and bless the whole precious business. The blessing of the devil would have been more appropriate, for the lotteries are the curse of Italy. What the Anglo-American mechanic puts into a savings bank, the Italian invests in lotteries. In Naples there are now fourteen tickets sold per annum for the gross amount of the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to-and-fro striding as a cat's follows a pendulum, but without the cat's curiosity about a pendulum. He never interrupted when Potter was speaking; and Canby noticed that whenever Potter talked at any length Tinker looked thoughtful and distant, like a mechanic so accustomed to the whirr and thunder of the machine-shop that he may indulge in reveries there. After a moment or two the old fellow ceased to follow the pendulum stride, and turned to ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... hand labour on our own and all other farms of the time. Even when very young I suspected that much might somehow be done in a better way. That is what took me into mechanics—although my mother always said that I was born a mechanic. I had a kind of workshop with odds and ends of metal for tools before I had anything else. In those days we did not have the toys of to-day; what we had were home made. My toys were all tools—they still are! And every fragment of ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... menial services, humiliating to themselves, and latterly felt as no less humiliating to the general name and interests of learning. The better taste, or rather the relaxing pressure of aristocratic prejudice, arising from the vast diffusion of trade and the higher branches of mechanic art, have gradually caused these functions of the order (even where the law would not permit the extinction of the order) to become obsolete. In my time, I was acquainted with two servitors: but one of them was rapidly pushed forward into a higher station; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "that a good job can't be done with bad tools,—that split shows it. No doubt the man who made it excused himself by saying that he was never intended for a mechanic. But that was a poor excuse for being without a gimlet. Every man or boy has some mechanical ability, and exercising that ability, with first-rate tools, will generally make him a good workman. Now as to what odd jobs a farmer will find to do. He steps out into the garden, and finds a post of ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right Naming. Adam's first task was giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods?—In a very plain sense the Proverb says, Call one a thief, and he will steal; in an almost similar sense may we ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... work is to afford to the student, the artisan, the mechanic, and in fact all who are interested in science, whether young or advanced in years, a ready means of acquiring a general knowledge of physics by ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee
... nephew having no such talents, we must do the best we can," Mr. Ffrench stated, with his most precise coldness. "Being well-born and well-bred, he has no taste for a mechanic's labor or for circus performances with automobiles in public. Who is your ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... begins to thrill the golden street, In the city as the sun sinks low; And in all the gaudy busses there are scores of weary feet Marking time, sweet time, with a dull mechanic beat, And a thousand hearts are plunging to a love they'll never meet, Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat, In the land where the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... expense might be saved if it were the general custom to keep in every house certain tools for the purpose of performing at home what are called small jobs, instead of being always obliged to send for a mechanic and pay him for executing little things that, in most cases, could be sufficiently well done by a man or boy belonging to the family, if the proper ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... cried Justice Millet. "The Parliament was made up of a pack of usurpers with a low mechanic fellow at their head. Gentlemen," turning with a gracious smile to the jury, "you ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... she's liftin' the hood and pawin' around among the wires and things, with Barry lookin' on puzzled and helpless, I sort of wanders about inspectin' Adelbaran curious. It's some relic, all right, and my guess is that it was assembled by a cross-eyed mechanic from choice pieces he rescued off'm a scrap heap. All of a ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... various exigencies to be met, the possible triumphs to be achieved, the experiments as to form, material, security, and grace, have been prolific causes of inspiration and disappointment. In this branch of economy, the mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires a rare union of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results in this sphere. To invent a bridge, through the application of a scientific principle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness. The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer,—all orders of men, look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils. The often-agitated question between agriculture and commerce has, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... does not own the things necessary to produce wealth must work upon the terms imposed by the other fellow in most cases. The coal miner, not owning the coal mine, must agree to work for wages. So must the mechanic in the workshop ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... second. However, if the invention of wings for mankind to fly with is sufficient amends for all the dulness and unmeaning extravagance of the author, we are willing to allow that his book has some merit, and that he deserves some encouragement at least as an able mechanic, if not as a good author." But the book was not forgotten. A new edition appeared in 1783, and again in the following year. It was included in Weber's "Popular Romances," 1812, and published separately, with some charming plates by Stothard, in 1816. Within the last fifty years it has ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... health of Monsieur Servien, your venerable father," he cried. "He enjoys a green and flourishing old age, at least I hope so; he is a man superior to his mechanic and mercantile condition by the benevolence of his behaviour to needy men of letters. And your respected aunt? She still knits stockings with the same zeal as of yore? At least I hope so. A lady of an austere virtue. I conjecture you are ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... mind that many an artisan is forced to exert to provide daily bread for himself and family; or many a shopkeeper to keep his connection together, and himself out of the workhouse. Why should the exertions of intellect be termed low, in the case of the mechanic, and vast, profound, and glorious, in that of the minister? It is the same precious gift of a beneficent power to all his creatures. As well may the sun be voted as excessively vulgar, because it, like intellect, assists all equally to perform their functions. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and mechanic, who are skilled in the works of utility, rather than of luxury, there is, as it has been already remarked, no part of the world, perhaps, which affords an equal chance of success. To any, therefore, who have the means of transporting ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... all story and adventure, those that follow it will not be wholly given up to the details of the mechanic arts. The captain has a steam-yacht; and the hero of the first story has a fine sailboat, to say nothing of a whole fleet of other craft belonging to the nabob. The boys are not of the tame sort: they are not of the humdrum kind, and they are inclined ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... precise yet symbolic; and the file had its pathetic history. It was given to him unexpectedly one evening, by a quiet, pale-faced girl. The poor creature had come out to the mines to join one of his fellow convicts, a delicate young man, a mechanic and a social democrat, with broad cheekbones and large staring eyes. She had worked her way across half Russia and nearly the whole of Siberia to be near him, and, as it seems, with the hope of helping him to escape. But she arrived too ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... something, 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 ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... but the missionary you speak of—the late lamented Williams, who was murdered not far off to the west of us—was a practical mechanic. He had studied blacksmith's work before he left England, and must have possessed a large amount of mechanical talent, such as none ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... important contributions which we owe to Rome, and which were passed on to mediaeval and modern Europe, should be mentioned certain practical knowledge in agriculture and the mechanic arts; many inventions and acquired skills in the arts and trades; an organized sea and land trade and commerce; cleared and improved lands, good houses, roads and bridges; great architectural and engineering remains, scattered all through the provinces; the beginnings of the transformation ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... of affairs in 1793, when Eli Whitney, a New England mechanic, at this time residing in Savannah, Georgia, invented his cotton-gin, or a machine to separate seed and fibre. "The invention of this machine at once set the whole country in active motion." [Footnote: ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... 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
... got up from the desk, stretching. He left the orderly-room and walked across the hall to the recreation room, where the rest of the boys were loafing. Sergeant Haines, in a languid gin-rummy game with Corporal Conner, a sheriff's deputy, and a mechanic from the service station down ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... be artificial, we are led into a vast field of conjecture. Were they made by the present race of savages, who are ignorant of all the mechanic arts, and disinclined to labor? If so, what inducement could have been placed before them, sufficiently powerful, to break down the barriers of nature, and bring men habitually indolent, to so herculean a task? The Indian, as we see him now, never works. He is the ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... be surprised at the number of solecisms committed in the course of an hour's talk by a well-to-do New Yorker whom he has met in the company of gentlemen in England. He would perhaps be more surprised to find a mechanic from the far West commit no more. The tongue of educated Englishmen is not the tongue of the masses—nor is it a difference in accent only, but in form, in taste, in grammar, and in thought. If in England the well-to-do and gentle ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... one of the soldiers and watched the entire process. The small ants scrubbed and scraped him with their jaws, licking him and removing every particle of dirt. One even crawled under him and worked away at his upper leg-joints, for all the world as a mechanic will creep under a car. Finally, I was delighted to see him do what no car ever does, turn completely over and lie quietly on his back with his legs in air, while his diminutive helpers overran him and gradually got him into shape for future ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... insisted that as soon as the difficulty with the Black Growler had been remedied they must proceed at once on their way. When it was found, however, that there was no mechanic at the club-house they were easily persuaded to abandon their project and accept the hospitality of Mr. ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... work of three, it would save strength, and make for efficiency. The reason why I have been able to go farther than my colleagues, is that I have had the privilege of using Government conveyances by land and water; to have a car and a mechanic missionary would be supplying us with a grand opportunity for multiplied service." She expatiated on the matter in letters to her friends at home, and the longer she thought of the idea, the more it fired her imagination. Within a few days she was flying over the ground in the Government ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... reach. He had also a bolt constructed in such a manner that, by aid of pulleys, he could fasten or unfasten the door of his chamber while in bed. All this was known to Philip, and he ordered the mechanic who had made it to derange the mechanism so that it would not work. To force a way into the chamber of a man like Carlos might ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... forget that to call this force into the open field,—to take the mechanic from his shop, the merchant from his counter, the farmer from his plough,—will necessarily be attended with an immense sacrifice of human life. The lives lost on the battle-field are not the only ones; militia, being unaccustomed to exposure, and ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... population, stimulated to deeds of bold emprise, grasped each the weapon that lay nearest, whether bolt, or bar, or tool of mechanic, or implement of husbandry, and then, joining their forces, went forth to do battle ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... hands of a rich merchant, who, as soon as he bought me, carried me to his house, treated me well, and clad me handsomely for a slave. Some days after, not knowing who I was, he asked me if I understood any trade. I answered, that I was no mechanic, but a merchant, and that the corsairs who sold me, had robbed me of all I possessed. 'But 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 a bow and arrows, and, taking me behind him upon ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... Damon, it was to be expected that he would be eccentric as he always was. He was not an expert mechanic, but he knew something of machinery and was of considerable help to Tom in the rush work on the airship. He would hear the dinner bell ring, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... to the status of animals, descending to the position of dogs, fallen in virtue and devoid of all religious observances. He who takes food from a physician takes that which is no better than excrement; the food of a harlot is like urine; that of a skilled mechanic is like blood. If a Brahmana approved by the good, takes the food of one who lives by his learning, he is regarded as taking the food of a Sudra. All good men should forego such food. The food of a person who is censured by all is said ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... are drawn with much boldness and energy, but it is not the fortunate audacity of Orgagna. They are much more the work of a mechanic, not self-distrustful, but with comparatively little feeling for the higher range of artistic expression. They are quite destitute of sentiment, but are not without a strong, rough, hardy humor. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... physical nature, giving and receiving, action and reaction balance each other mechanically and automatically. What we gain in power we lose in speed or volume, and vice versa. This makes it possible for the mechanic, the scientist and the astronomer to predict with mathematical precision for ages in advance the results ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... hospital Built in this city for receiving foundlings. Full of a mother's joy, a mother's fear, I hasten'd there, alas! to disappointment! All clue of him was lost, and should my boy survive, The heir of Guzman's noble house may be Some poor mechanic's slave! (In anguish throws herself ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... poisoned at its source by questions of class; and I think it might have been in the talk about precedence, and who should be what, that my boy first heard that such and such a girl's father was a mechanic, and that it was somehow dishonorable to be a mechanic. He did not know why, and he has never since known why, but the girls then knew why, and the women seem to know now. He was asked to be one ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... people know nothing of Mr. Lessingham, your ladyship, beyond the fact that he did not return last night. They received a message from Hill's Garage, however, about half an hour ago, to say that their mechanic had driven Mr. Lessingham early this morning to Norwich, where he had caught the mail train to London, The boy was to say that Mr. Lessingham would be back in a day ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hand, and incapacitated by ignorance on the other, have ever been the earliest and best friends of progress in any science. Here you find the retired scholar, the thoughtful and independent farmer, the skilful mechanic, the enlightened merchant, the curious traveller, the inquisitive philosopher—all fitted, beyond those of either extreme, for exercising a sound judgment upon such questions, and all more interested in them. It is out of these that Christianity has made its converts. They are accordingly worthy ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... in his administration is due to the ability and energy of his accomplished premier, Phya Kralahome, and even his strength has been wasted. The native arts and literature have retrograded; in the mechanic arts much has been lost; and the whole nation is given up ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... suspecting it, by listening to his father teaching his brother; observe him making a wooden watch without the slightest knowledge of mechanism; and while a shepherd, studying, like an ancient Chaldean, the phenomena of the heavens, on a celestial globe formed by his own hand. That great mechanic, SMEATON, when a child, disdained the ordinary playthings of his age; he collected the tools of workmen, observed them at their work, and asked questions till he could work himself. One day, having watched some millwrights, the child was shortly after, to the distress of the family, discovered ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... well as other structures, its own architecture, proportions, balance of parts, solidity, and even beauty, never entered their heads.—Furthermore, unable to comprehend the past, they could not comprehend the present. They knew nothing about the mechanic, the provincial bourgeois, or even the lesser nobility; these were seen only far away in the distance, half-effaced, and wholly transformed through philosophic theories and sentimental haze. "Two or three thousand"[3310] polished and cultivated individuals ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... experience has established as necessary for the perfecting of any of the arts is, a fair and honest application of the successive discoveries of science to its improvement.—This has been the uniform practice in those arts which have of late been making such rapid progress. The artist and mechanic are never indifferent to the various improvements which are taking place around them; nor do they ever stand apart, till they are forced upon their notice by third parties, or public notoriety. There is, in the case of the manufacturer, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... one boundless contiguity of books. There was only man and space and one unceasing library, and the men neither ate nor slept nor spoke. Nature was transformed into the processes and products of writing, and man was now no longer lover, friend, peasant, merchant, naturalist, traveller, gourmet, mechanic, warrior, worshipper, but only an author. All other faculties had been lost to him, and all resources for anything else had fled from his universe. Anon some wrinkled, fidgety, cogitative being in human form would add a new volume to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear what talent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attributed to a moderately bright man who is habitually drunk. Such a mechanic, such a mathematician, such a poet he would be, if he were only sober; and then he is sure to be the most generous, magnanimous, friendly soul, conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiously drunk. I ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his mechanic get out one of the safest, though a speedy, double machine, and, with Mary to watch, Tom had taken a trial flight, just to show her how easy it was. It was not the first time she had seen him take to the air, but now she watched with different emotions, ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... whether you starve or not. My lords, this age is so familiar grown, That the low peasant hardly doffs his hat, Unless you beat him; and the raw mechanic Elbows the noble in the public streets. [To the Citizens.] Still as our gentle Duchess has so prayed us, And to refuse so beautiful a beggar Were to lack both courtesy and love, Touching your grievances, ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... even been thought of. And good picked-shots have in common everywhere certain qualities, probably developed by the life in the open, and the unique influences of woodland and upland hunting. They are generous, and large in spirit, and absolutely democratic—the millionaire and the mechanic meet on equal ground—and deliberate in humour, and dry of wit. The quiet chaffing, tolerant, good-humoured, genuine intercourse of hunters cannot be matched ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... under locks so solid that no wrist could break them, and so complicated that no master-key could open them. D'Artagnan remembered that the English are masters in mechanics and conservative industry; and he determined to go in the morning in search of a mechanic who would sell him a strong box. He did not go far; Master Will Jobson, dwelling in Piccadilly, listened to his propositions, comprehended his wishes, and promised to make him a safety lock that should relieve ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to persons of distinguished literary attainments, are often held forth as a subject of "warn and scare" but Cervantes and Camoens would both have been cast into prison even though unable to read or write, and Savage, though a mechanic or scrivener, would probably have possessed the same failings and consequently have fallen into the same, or a greater degree of poverty and suffering. Alas! how many, in the flower of youth and strength, ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... farmer, because he is a farmer, only occupy an uncouth, outlandish house, any more than a professional man, a merchant, or a mechanic? Is it because he himself is so uncouth and outlandish in his thoughts and manners, that he deserves no better? Is it because his occupation is degrading, his intellect ignorant, his position in life low, and his associations ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... few days Hare learned what conquering the desert made of a man. August Naab was close to threescore years; his chest was wide as a door, his arm like the branch of an oak. He was a blacksmith, a mechanic, a carpenter, a cooper, a potter. At his forge and in his shop, everywhere, were crude tools, wagons, farming implements, sets of buckskin harness, odds and ends of nameless things, eloquent and pregnant proof of the fact that necessity is the mother of invention. He was a mason; the levee that ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... devised by Heineke and Mikulicz, and is designed to remove the mechanic obstruction in cicatricial stenoses of the pylorus, at the same time ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... few of Burns's lyrics, or even a copy of Cowper's 'Task,' one might have augured better for his prospects. But what chance was there for a man who could still be contentedly invoking the muse and stringing together mechanic echoes of Pope's couplets? How could he expect to charm the jaded faculties of a generation which was already beginning to heave and stir with a longing for some fresh excitement? For a year the fate which ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... whole difference. But please note that when a man is charged before a modern tribunal (to take a case that happened the other day) of having asserted and maintained that he was an officer returned from the front to receive the Victoria Cross at the hands of the King, although he was in fact a mechanic, nobody thinks of treating him as afflicted with a delusion. He is punished for false pretences, because his assertion is credible and therefore misleading. Just so, the claim to divinity made by Jesus was to the High Priest, who looked forward to the coming of a Messiah, one that might conceivably ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... of Gilead, and a sort of tus; rosins, hard, naval stone, liquid pitch, and tar for remedies against the cough, arthritic and pulmonic affections; are well known, and the chyrurgion uses them in plaisters also; and in a word, for mechanic and other innumerable uses; and from the burning fuliginous vapour of these, especially the rosin, we have our lamp, and printers black, &c. I am perswaded the pine, pitch and fir trees in Scotland, might yield His Majesty plenty of excellent tar, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... will not and cannot compete with other races who have a large and influential class of artisans and mechanics, and having received higher remuneration for labor, have paved the way for themselves or offsprings from the mechanic to the merchant or to the professional. These three factors, linked and interlinked, an ascending chain will be strong in its relation, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... bounded over a confusion of obstacles, and in a moment was on the landing of the first storey. Here he encountered a man who had not lost his head, a stalwart mechanic engaged in slipping clothes on to ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Services. As 1915 gave place to 1916, one by one the professional choir-men got called up for military service, and finally came the turn of the organist and choirmaster himself, he being just inside the limit of age. The organist, besides being a splendid musician, happened to be a skilled mechanic, so he was not sent abroad, but was given a commission, and sent down to Aldershot to superintend the assembling of aircraft engines. By getting up at 5 a.m. on Sundays, he was able to be in London in time to take the organ and conduct the choir of his church. Meeting ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton |
