"Mechanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entirely of interference. There is, in the first place, the interference of the parent, who insists upon an artistic boy becoming a banker, puts an incipient tradesman into the army, or tries to make a scholar out of a mechanic. Then there comes the interference of the schoolmaster, who has his favourite recipe of Latin verses, quadratic equations, and what not, to stuff into every head he can get hold of for a few terms. Lastly appears the Government, which declares that nobody shall enter ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... probably be sincere. In James we can readily suppose it to have been assumed; for he was a pedant in a different sense from Lord Shaftesbury; not from undervaluing modern poetry, but from caring little or nothing for any poetry, although he wrote about its mechanic rules. Still the royal imprimatur would be influential and serviceable no less when offered hypocritically than in full sincerity. Next let us consider, at the very moment of Shakspeare's death, who were the leaders of the British youth, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Lives of the Saints" we behold the prince and the peasant, the warrior and the sage, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the peasant and the mechanic, the shepherd and the statesman, the wife and the widow, the prelate, the priest, and the recluse,—men and women of every class, and age, and degree, and condition, and country, sanctified by the grace of God, exhibiting to the faithful reader models for his imitation, and saying ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... to this gratuitous conveyance, he put himself to the trouble of inspecting the chauffeur—a capable-looking mechanic togged out in a rich black livery which, though relieved by a vast amount of silk braiding, was like the car guiltless of any sort ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... since Lettice had written a page of her story. The arrival of the Daltons at Florence had interrupted her at a critical point. She had not yet acquired the mechanic art of stopping and going on again as at the turn of a handle, in obedience to a law of demand and supply; and she would probably have been unable to gather up her threads and continue the old woof, even if she had made ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of the Civil War and the Commonwealth caused great confusion and many defects in the registers. Very often the rector was turned out of his parish; the intruding minister, often an ignorant mechanic, cared naught for registers. Registrars were appointed in each parish who could scarcely sign their names, much less enter a baptism. Hence we find very frequent gaps in the books from 1643 to 1660. At Tarporley, Cheshire, there is a break from 1643 to 1648, upon ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... you all I know. I'm not a scientist. I'm a mechanic. I've told you what they're doing. I can't tell you how they ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... 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 far as to promise to take the support ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... first book printed is a Bible. The first landing on American soil was a solemn religious occasion—and still is for the immigrant. So the first gains of money are of religious value to the poor. The first hundred dollars to a mechanic's family is invested in a dozen benefits. The first thousand dollars which a working farmer saves go into a home, a piano or books, or an education for a child. It is all moral and spiritual good. Later thousands have diminishing ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... him, is bound to earn his bread. The young woman is only so bound when happy circumstances do not befall her. Should we endeavor to make the recurrence of unhappy circumstances more general or less so? What does any tradesman, any professional man, any mechanic wish for his children? Is it not this, that his sons shall go forth and earn their bread, and that his daughters shall remain with him till they are married? Is not that the mother's wish? Is it not notorious that ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... which may be included in the category of trade memorials, though its subject was not a mechanic. Mr. John Cade was a schoolmaster at Beckenham, and appears to have been well liked by his pupils, who, when he prematurely died, placed a complimentary epitaph over his grave. The means by which he had imparted knowledge are displayed upon the stone, ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... minutes in the make-up room. When he reached Smike Street again he was no longer the spruce, upright, well-dressed official. A grimy cap covered tousled hair. His face was strained, his eyes bloodshot and his moustache combed out raggedly. A set of greasy mechanic's overalls had been drawn over his own clothes. He ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... building. Axemen were at work getting 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 and wide ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... "could not have been so far off the mark. The man with whom he was spending the evening in that cafe was a mechanic ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... amidst the Royal Family; He every day, from king to king can walk, Of all our Harries, all our Edwards talk, And get by speaking truth of monarchs dead, What few can of the living, ease and bread." "Lord, sir, a mere mechanic! strangely low, And coarse of phrase—your English all are so. How elegant your Frenchmen?" "Mine, d'ye mean? I have but one, I hope the fellow's clean." "Oh! sir, politely so! nay, let me die, Your only wearing is your Paduasoy." ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... of the new parliament as dependent on the poor-rates, now boasted a stock exchange which in the extent of its transactions rivalled that of the metropolis. And the gambling was universal, from the noble to the mechanic. It was confined to no class and to no sex. The scene which took place at the Board of Trade on the last day on which plans could be lodged, and when midnight had arrived while crowds from the country were still filling the hall, and pressing at the doors, deserved ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... glad to say. At one time she had an engagement in London for a year or two. Her people, 'poor but honest'—as the stories put it. Father was a timekeeper at Dudley; brother, a mechanic there. I was over to see her yesterday; we had only just said good-bye when I met you. She's remarkably well educated, all things considered: very fond of reading; knows as much of books as I do—more, I ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without definite aim or system. The pickaxe of his criticism demolishes, it never constructs. Thus his lassitude is that of a mechanic, not of an architect. The eyes, of a pale blue, once brilliant, are clouded now by some hidden pain, or dulled by gloomy sadness. Excesses have laid dark tints above the eyelids; the temples have lost their freshness. The ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... science, unto you The call for service now has come! Mechanic, banker, lawyer, too, Have you not heard the stirring drum? Oh, humble digger in the ditch, Bend to your spade and do your best, And prove America is rich In manhood fine for ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... ship is working at a lathe. An officer of the company comes into the shop, a gentleman in white collar and good clothes! He stands behind the mechanic and "curses him out" because his work is inefficient. When he turns away, the man at the lathe says, "Who was that guy anyway? What business has he to teach me my job?" Instead of accepting the criticism, he resents what he considers unwarranted ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... British Crown. Let them hand down their noble and good qualities to their children. But in the matter of procuring a livelihood let us, for their own good, induce them to lay aside the bow and fish-spear, and, in lieu thereof, put their hand to the plough, or make them wield the tool of the mechanic. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... History of the Royal Society, so sensible and liberal—published shortly before Glanvill's book,—also contemplates the extension of science over the world. Speaking of the prospect of future discoveries, he thinks it will partly depend on the enlargement of the field of western civilisation "if this mechanic genius which now prevails in these parts of Christendom shall happen to spread wide amongst ourselves and other civil nations, or if by some good fate it shall pass farther on to other countries that were yet ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... obedience really society event museum penal recess superior feline nausea precedence resource theater frequent negro precise sacrilegious theology mechanic ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... replied Jane, politely, "but there aren't any needles in it now. George took them all to do the things with pieces of cork—in the 'Boy's Own Scientific Experimenter' and 'The Young Mechanic.' He did not do the things, but he did for ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... chaff-cutters, root-pulpers, and grain-mills run by steam-power or in connection with horse-gears; hop-washers, separators, and other delicately adjusted novelties, the master must of necessity be something of a mechanic himself. I doubt if machinery is really quite the advantage claimed by theorists and reconstructionists at the present day. Even the thrashing machine, universally adopted, presents disadvantages in comparison with the ancient flail, generally ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage, they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons, building roofs of gold; The civil citizens kneading up the honey; The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate; The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... at Athens B.C. 495. His father, though a poor mechanic, had the discrimination as well as generosity to bestow an excellent education upon his son, whose great powers began early to unfold themselves, and to attract the notice of the first citizens of Athens. Before he had attained his twenty-fifth year he carried off the prize in a dramatic contest ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... these iron pathways will enable us to command." And again,—"We have spoken of vehicles travelling at twenty miles an hour; but we see no reason for thinking that, in the progress of improvement, a much higher velocity might not be found practicable; and in twenty years hence a shopkeeper or mechanic, on the most ordinary occasion, may probably travel with a speed that would leave the fleetest courser behind." Wonderful words these! At a first glance we may not deem them so, being so familiar with the ideas which they convey, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... half a dozen men, all in the leather uniforms with caps and goggles to match, were mounting the machines nearest. Blaine, having donned his rig on the run, as it were, was already in a triplane much like the one he had last used. Turning to the mechanic, he asked: ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... following I get upon the vapouring boat to walk so far as Douvres. It was fine day—and, after I am recover myself of a malady of the sea, I walk myself about the shep, and I see a great mechanic of wood, with iron wheel, and thing to push up inside, and handle to turn. It seemed to be ingenuous, and proper to hoist great burdens. They use it for shoving the timber, what come down of the vessel, into the place; and they tell me it was call "Jaques in the box;" and I was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... 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 late. Her lover ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... make out how things work is common to most healthy boys; to probe deep into the reasoned "why" is rare. It makes the practical mechanic into the man of science. Possessing both these qualities as he did, it is easy to understand his own description of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... sum, will claim credit for their profusion, and harass the General Government for increased supplies. Practically there would soon be but one taxing power, and that vested in a body of men far removed from the people, in which the farming and mechanic interests would scarcely be represented. The States would gradually lose their purity as well as their independence; they would not dare to murmur at the proceedings of the General Government, lest they should lose their supplies; all would be merged in a practical ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... say, on minds, and hearts, and souls, Alas, 'tis true, but what can e'er atone For dry, mechanic thought, and lifeless coals, Which light not up, but turn the ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... the man of letters must in some way reconcile himself to the paradox that he is at once the acolyte and the rival of the ancients. Young is optimistic enough to believe that it is possible to surpass them. In the mechanic arts, he complains, men are always attempting to go beyond their predecessors; in the liberal arts, they merely try to follow them. The analogy between the continuous advance of science and a possible continuous advance in literature ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... of summer changes now to the cobwebbed ceiling of an attorney's office. Books of law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow, speak dully to the flush of your vanities. You are seated at your side-desk, where you have wrought at those heavy, mechanic labors of drafting which go before a knowledge of ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... could trust his man absolutely, and was quite sure that the Mercury would then be in the drying stage after a thorough cleaning. Thus far he was justified, but he had not counted on the pride of the born mechanic. Though the car was housed for the night, when he entered the garage the hood was off, and Dale was annoying two brothers of the craft by explaining the superiority of his engine to every other ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... least prevented your own country from being devastated by war. It is true, you send out your army, but the war will not lay waste the fields of Prussia; it will not trample in the dust the crops of the Prussian farmer, interrupt the labors of the mechanic, or carry its terror into our cities and villages, our houses and families. The enemy is at least far ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... putting the unlucky tricycle in order. Jeffreys was not a mechanic. All he could do was to put the parts together in a makeshift way, and by straightening some of the bent parts and greasing some of the stiff parts restore the iron horse into a gloomy semblance ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... whose adoration made amends for his lack of romance. Maud knew she was not liked in the school, and being, of course, unable to attribute it to any fault of her own, she ascribed it to the fact that her father was a mechanic and poor. This thought did not tend to make her home happier. She passed much of her time in her own bedroom, looking out of her window on the lake, weaving visions of ignoble wealth and fashion out ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... 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 name ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... people were in that car, and on one end of it there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye—a beautiful eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had a vocation. He had with him a very fine little child of about four or five years. I was watching the affection which existed between those two. I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It was really a pretty child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Public Library Catalogue reveals, no doubt, a certain proportion of "serious" books available, but, as a rule, that "serious side" is a quite higgledy-piggledy heap of fragments. Suppose, for example, an intelligent mechanic has a proclivity for economic questions, he will find no book whatever to guide him to what literature there may be upon those questions. He will plunge into the catalogue, and discover perhaps a few publications of the Cobden Club, Henry ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... the mechanic: he cranked the engine and it got off to a fine start and before throwing in the clutch that hooked it up with the stripper I looked out over the silent, brown-faced crowd. I had to grin at their ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... worthy of much note—at least, I can only hear of one or two. They have fine voices as a rule, and except some half-dozen Gipsies no first-rate musicians have sprung from their midst. No engineer, no mechanic—in fact, no nothing. The highest state of their manufacturing skill has been to make a few slippers for the feet, as some of them are doing at Lynn; skewers to stick into meat, for which they have done nothing towards feeding; pegs to hang out other people's linen, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... seat, whose face was withstanding a drouth. And jolly Jack Gibbs just behind him, with a rainy new moon for a mouth; There were both of the Smith boys, as studious as if they bore names that could bloom, And Jim Jones, a heaven-built mechanic, the slyest young knave in the room, With a countenance grave as a horse's, and his honest eyes fixed on a pin, Queer-bent on a deeply-laid project to tunnel Joe Hawkins's skin. There were anxious young novices, drilling their spelling-books into their brain, Loud-puffing each half-whispered ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Thomas: "I infer a motor!" This reasoning, which may be fifty thousand years old, is as strong as ever it was; stronger than some more modern inferences of science; but the average mechanic stated it differently. "I see motion," he admitted: "I infer energy. I see motion everywhere; I infer energy everywhere." Saint Thomas barred this door to materialism by adding: "I see motion; I cannot infer an infinite series ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employments to which he is educated, is very different in different occupations. In the greatest part of mechanic trades success is almost certain; but very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes; but send him to study the law, it as at least twenty to one if ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... had begun to sag a little; but Mr. Sherwood had blocked them up. The front fence had got out of alignment, and the same able mechanic had righted it and set the necessary ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... DIARY FOR 1851; containing a List of Government Officers. Commerce and Resources of the Union, Exports of Cotton, and General Information for the Merchant, Tradesman, and Mechanic, together with a Complete Memorandum for every day in the year. ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... notice didn't know Deadwood Dick, or he would never have 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
... the windows to catch a glimpse of the belated engine. When the rays of its electric headlight pierced the Western night they shouted like boys, ran to the telephones, and while the roundhouse, the superintendent, and the master-mechanic were getting the news the Special engine steamed slowly into sight through the whirling snow and stopped at the semaphore. So a liner shaken in the teeth of a winter storm, battered by heading seas, and swept by stiffening spray, rides at last, ice-bound, staggering, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... Angeles Casey drove placidly as a load of oranges in February. He put up at a cheap place on San Pedro Street, with his car in the garage next door and a five-dollar tip in the palm of a rat-faced mechanic with Casey's injunction to clean 'er dingbats and ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... change these two years had wrought! Now an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, the ribbon of the Military Cross bearing witness to many a risky reconnaissance over the Rufigi Valley; but then a dirty mechanic in the French Aviation Corps and a prisoner. But in December, 1914, there were no fat or clean ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... up her basket; she had not risen from her chair, however, but held it on her knees with a dreary look in her eyes, as if the words of the young mechanic had awakened in her mind strange thoughts of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Hermann, his bewilderment gaining life once more, and this calm, unruffled man, whose hair was whiter than his own, a veteran of the bloodiest civil war in history, this prosperous mechanic, was his little ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... that everybody could understand his statements; secondly, his power of so framing his arguments that all the steps, from one point to another, in a logical series, could be clearly apprehended by every intelligent farmer or mechanic who had a thoughtful interest in the affairs of the country; and thirdly, his power of inflaming the sentiment of patriotism in all honest and well-intentioned men by overwhelming appeals to that sentiment, so that, after convincing their understandings, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... 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, perish ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... improved means of internal communication and the increased facilities of intercourse with other nations; for the general prevailing health of the year; for the prosperity of all our industries, the liberal return for the mechanic's toil affording a market for the abundant harvests of the husbandman; for the preservation of the national faith and credit; for wise and generous provision to effect the intellectual and moral education of our youth; for the influence upon the conscience of a restraining and transforming religion, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... A mechanic turned the propeller of the airship until there was an accumulation of gas in the different cylinders. Then he stepped back while Tom threw on the switch. This was not one of the self-starting types, of which Tom possessed one ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... plantation would be sold "at vendue," or, as we say, at auction; that a reward of five pistoles would be paid for the arrest of "a lusty negroe man" or an "indented servant" or an "apprentice lad," who had run away from his owner or master. Very rarely is a call made for a mechanic or a ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... abstract question, who first conceived the principle involved in sewing by machinery, or in respect to who first constructed a machine that would fulfill that idea; but so far as great results are concerned the world must be considered as indebted to Elias Howe, Jr., a New England mechanic, born and reared in obscurity, and at an early age thrown upon his own resources. He was born at Spencer, Massachusetts, July 9th, 1819. His father was a farmer and miller, but at sixteen he left home, engaging in a cotton mill. Space ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... no regard, alas, my maiden, For love and loss like mine - No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden; Only with fickle eyne. To her mechanic artistry My dreams are all unknown, And why I wish that thou ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... belief that the worker must go through all possible experiences in order to acquire "judgment" as to best methods. If the worker must pass through all the stages of the training of the old-fashioned mechanic, and this is seriously advocated by some, he may fail to reach the higher planes of knowledge afforded by training under Scientific Management, by reason of sheer lack of time. If, therefore, by artificial conditions caused by united agreement and collective bargaining, workmen insist ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... useless art of dressing decaying teeth and of filling holes, know how to pull the stubbornest stump with an unequalled rapidity. There, the office is opened early in the morning and one is not required to wait. Seven o'clock struck at last. He hurried out, and recollecting the name of a mechanic who called himself a dentist and dwelt in the corner of a quay, he rushed through the streets, holding his cheek with his hands ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... establishment wherein they assembled had no knowledge of either their names or places of abode. They pay him his rent regularly, and he deems that enough. All that we really know of the sect is, that their chairman is either a mechanic or a blacksmith somewhere, is plain, muscular, solemn looking, bass-voiced, and dreamy; and that his flock are a small, earnest, and preciously-fashioned parcel of sincere, yet ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... 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 him ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... come to that if you did not look sharp," answered Ned. "Take my advice now. A boy like you better begin with a trade and work up to be boss mechanic; then when you are rich, buy a library and turn scholar. There's a swell carpenter's school just started down at the Institute, box and tools included in the tuition, so you'll have some property at the end of the term, ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... 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 of ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... 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
... say 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 wholly or in part. And better yet, eighty-three per cent. of the graduates ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... dismantled, cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one part after another. Then maintenance supervisors had checked over the ship with a gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, so they could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The Inspection Department, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from there and inspected every part as if it had been slapped together by a bunch of army goof-offs who knew that pilots were expendable in peace or war and, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... images from our own past experience or those gleaned from the work of others and puts them together in new and original forms. The inventor, the writer, the mechanic or the artist who possesses the spirit of creation is not satisfied with mere reproduction, but seeks to modify, to improve, to originate. True, many important inventions and discoveries have come by seeming accident, by being stumbled upon. Yet it holds that the person who thus stumbles ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... camp. So I finally turned back for our camp, having to fly very low and against a strong northern wind, on account of low clouds just forming. I got back at a quarter to eleven and my first question to my mechanic was: ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... peerage—a man who was himself always something of a trickster, now mystifying a blind old woman at Paris; now sending open letters, privately nullified, recommending the bearers to his friend the envoy at Florence; now, with the mechanic aid of village carpenters and bricklayers, rearing a frail edifice bristling with false points, and persuading the world that it was all pure Gothic, perhaps chuckling at his assurance—even this shrewd mummer gravely shook his head at Chatterton, and frowned on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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: ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... when, for his first artist, she would have presented him with his nephew! How different a figure did the same prince make in a reign of dissimilar complexion! The philosophic warrior, who could relax himself into the ornament of a refined court, was thought a savage mechanic, when courtiers were only voluptuous wits. Let me transcribe a picture of Prince Rupert, drawn by a man who was far from having the least portion of wit in that age, who was superior to its indelicacy, and who yet was so overborne by its prejudices, that he had the complaisance to ridicule ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... misfortunes to Katy, she always asked why he did not sell candy. Once she suggested that he should learn a trade, to which Master Simon always replied, that he was born to be a gentleman, and would never voluntarily demean himself by pursuing a degrading occupation. He was above being a mechanic, and he would never soil his hands with dirty work. Katy began to think he was really a fool. She could scarcely think him "poor and proud"; he was only ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... walked behind the carriage, when going down hill, in order to hold it back, and that only by a lucky chance he invented the tongue; would we conclude that this man, from the very first, had been an infinitely ingenious and perfect mechanic? Suppose we found him living in an elegant mansion, and he should inform us that he lived in that house for five hundred thousand years before he thought of putting on a roof, and that he had but recently invented windows and doors; would we say that from the beginning ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... frescoes or pictures, nor aids to monastic devotion like Angelico's Gospel histories at St. Mark's—they are illustrations to the book which every one is reading, things to be framed in the chamber of every burgher or mechanic, to be slipped into the prayer-book of every housewife, to be conned over during the long afternoons, by the children near the big stove or among the gooseberry bushes of the garden. And they are, therefore, much more than the Giottesque inventions, the expression of the individual artist's ideas ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... that such a thing is not his place, his excuse is analogous to that of the Hindu servant when he pleads his caste. When an Englishman of birth or profession, which is held to confer gentility, refuses to associate with a tradesman or mechanic; or when members of a secret society exclude all others from their meetings; or when any other social distinction arises, it would present itself to the mind of the Hindu as ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... for obtaining United States patents, sent free. A handsomely bound Reference Book, gilt edges, contains 140 pages and many engravings and tables important to every patentee and mechanic, and is a useful handbook of reference for everybody. Price 25 ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... chiefly by those who can afford 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 extend those ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... was, how incomprehensible. I pinched myself until I could have cried out with pain, and at that very instant a voice saluted me, calling me by name and a rushing figure encountered me. I stood transfixed. Before me was Chapman, the mechanic, workman, and photographer for Mr. Rutherford, in New York in the seventies, a man whom I knew well, from whom I had learned much, and whose skill helped so largely in the production of Rutherford's negatives of the Moon. My repulsion was ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... suffrages of the Syphogrants, privileged from labour, that they may apply themselves wholly to study; and if any of these fall short of those hopes that they seemed at first to give, they are obliged to return to work; and sometimes a mechanic that so employs his leisure hours as to make a considerable advancement in learning is eased from being a tradesman and ranked among their learned men. Out of these they choose their ambassadors, their priests, their Tranibors, and the Prince himself, anciently called ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... a word as to the personality of the author of this epoch-making statement. Joyce-Armstrong, according to the few friends who really knew something of the man, was a poet and a dreamer, as well as a mechanic and an inventor. He was a man of considerable wealth, much of which he had spent in the pursuit of his aeronautical hobby. He had four private aeroplanes in his hangars near Devizes, and is said to have made no fewer ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was in Lincolnshire. It was headed by Dr. Mackrel, prior of Barlings, who was disguised like a mean mechanic, and who bore the name of Captain Cobler. This tumultuary army amounted to above twenty thousand men;[**] but notwithstanding their number, they showed little disposition of proceeding to extremities against the king, and seemed still ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... a vehicle of consciousness, or an instrument of consciousness; that in which consciousness is carried about, as in a vehicle, or which consciousness uses to contact the external world, as a mechanic uses an instrument. Or, we may liken it to a vessel, in which consciousness is held, as a jar holds liquid. It is a form used by a life, and we know nothing of consciousness save as connected with such forms. The form may be of rarest, subtlest, materials, may be so diaphanous that ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... thought something was wrong when Jacob Simmons first met me in the mill. He seemed fairly startled on seeing me. I decided then to keep my eyes open. In a few days I saw him use a peculiar knife—called a mechanic's pocket knife—which is in itself quite a kit of tools. I managed to have Jack Hickey borrow it so I could examine it. The minute I had it in my hands I recognized it as the very one that was in Mr. Rexford's show case when I left his store. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... have got me in the family way." Something led to my remarking that I should like to fuck a woman in the family way, and her saying that she knew one who would be confined in a fortnight, a nice woman, a fine woman, her sister, the wife of a mechanic, but badly off just now. I can't tell what had made me take such a desire, but I said I would give a sovereign to see her cunt and big belly, and fuck her, and would give five shillings if she would get this for me, not ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the usual subjects with young men, turned principally on literary topics, religion, morality, belles-lettres, etc., and to this conversation my mind owed its first bias towards such subjects in which they were all my superiors, I never having attended a college, and being then but a mechanic."[74] According to this account religion was not proscribed, but Professor Traill's assertion is so explicit that probably Watt's recollection errs. It is, however, another sign of the liberal spirit that then animated these ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... in the Matteawan Cotton and Machine Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, the Eagle Fire Insurance Company, the National Insurance Company, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, a manager of the Literary and Philosophical Society, of the Mechanic and Scientific Association, a founder and a governor of the Union Club, and a vestryman of Trinity Church—the wonder is that he found time to write in his Diary at all. According to Bayard Tuckerman, who edited the Diary and wrote the Introduction to it, an ordinary day's work for Hone was ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... thousand which the city at present contains; who contrasts the cheap and humble dwellings of that earlier date, with the costly and magnificent edifices which now beautify the metropolis; who studies the sluggish state of the mechanic arts at the dawn of the Republic, and the mighty demonstrations of skill which our Fulton, and our Stevens, our Douglas, our Hoe, and our Morse, have produced; who remembers the few and humble water-craft ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... laying of the underground line which he had decided upon. Professors Gale and Fisher became his assistants. Vail was put in charge, and Mr. Ezra Cornell, who founded the Cornell University on the site of the cotton mill where he had worked as a mechanic, and who had invented a machine for laying pipes, was chosen to supervise the running of the line. The conductor was a five-wire cable laid in pipes; but after several miles had been run from Baltimore to the house intended for the relay, the insulation broke down. Cornell, it is stated, injured ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... exceptionally kindly and amiable nature. "Germans are much more industrious than our people are, and they are content with less wages. Also you must forgive me if I say, dear Miss Forsyth, that I don't quite see what the jealousy of the average working-man, or, for the matter of that, of the average mechanic, has to do with my good old Anna, especially at such a time ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... territorial days, a society had been in existence covering the main features of this organization. In 1867 the state recognized this society by appropriating $1,000 for its encouragement. Its object was the promotion of agriculture, horticulture and the mechanic arts. The society held annual fairs in different localities in the state, with varying success, until 1885, when the county of Ramsey offered to convey to the State of Minnesota, forever, two hundred acres of land adjoining the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... attacked the tariff of 1842 in a manner which might well be termed savage. He arraigned the manufacturers as enjoying unfair advantages,—advantages held, as he endeavored to demonstrate, at the expense and to the detriment of the agriculturist, the mechanic, the merchant, the ship-owner, the sailor, and indeed of almost every industrial class. In reading Mr. Walker's report a third of a century after it was made, one might imagine that the supporters of the tariff of 1842 were engaged in a conspiracy to commit fraud, and that the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the crank boss on the shaft and the insertion of the crank pin into the boss might well be entrusted to an expert mechanic, as absolute "squareness" is essential for satisfactory working. Screw-thread attachments should be used, and the crankshaft should project sufficiently to allow room for a flat lock nut. The crank pin will be rendered immovable ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... continual victim of physical and moral evils? This human machine, which is shown to us as the masterpiece of the Creator's industry, has it not a thousand ways of deranging itself? Would we admire the skill of a mechanic, who should show us a complicated machine, liable to be out of order at any moment, and which would after a ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... my entrance in over the Turkish rugs of the private office. I was lined up with a couple of dozen others against a fence about tenth from a window where there was a "Men Wanted" sign out. Being about as much of a mechanic as I am a brunette, I made no wild bluffs. I just said I wanted a job. And I got it—riveter's helper, whatever that might be. By eight-thirty my name and number was on the payroll, and the foreman of shop No. 19 was introducin' me to my ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... gaze curiously at them from the row of hangars. The mechanic, starting back on foot, the four people getting out of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... was writing the message he wished his son to take to the village, the young mechanic inspected the motor-cycle he had purchased. Tom found that a few repairs would suffice to put it in good shape, though an entire new front wheel would be needed. The motor had not been damaged, as he ascertained by a test. Tom rode into town on ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... prejudice, and has been propagated for these sixteen hundred years, that arts and sciences cannot flourish under an absolute government; and that genius must necessarily be cramped where freedom is restrained. This sounds plausible, but is false in fact. Mechanic arts, as agriculture, etc., will indeed be discouraged where the profits and property are, from the nature of the government, insecure. But why the despotism of a government should cramp the genius of a mathematician, an astronomer, a poet, or an orator, I confess ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... in his first annual message to the Congress of the United States,] the powers enumerated may be effectually brought into action by laws promoting the improvement of agriculture, commerce and manufactures, the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic arts, and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound, to refrain from exercising them for the benefit of the people would be to hide in the earth the talent committed ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... something like a revolution in its economic and educational status. The noblest monument to its labours is the State College in Raleigh, an institution which now has more than a thousand students, for the most part studying the mechanic arts and scientific agriculture. To this one college most North Carolinians to-day attribute the fact that their state in appreciable measure is realizing its great economic and industrial opportunities. From it in the last thirty years thousands of young men have gone: in all sections ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... people from Ireland?" said I to a decent-looking man, seemingly a mechanic, who stood near me, and was also looking at them, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... through the space, gleaming with brass, splendid in their purpose. Before the thrill in the heart had time to die, or the traffic to close up, swung through an immense open motor-car driven by a young mechanic. It was luxuriously appointed, and had the air of a private car being returned from repairing. The man in it had an almost Swinburnian mane of red hair, blowing back in the wind, catching the last lights of day. He was clad, as such ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke |
