"Mechanism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stopped in the midst of Robert Audley's meditation, and he had to pay the cabman, and submit to all the dreary mechanism of life, which is the same whether we are glad or sorry—whether we are to be married or hung, elevated to the woolsack, or disbarred by our brother benchers on some mysterious technical tangle of wrong-doing, which is a social enigma to ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... alike to them, no doubt. If they studied us as little as we study them, if they ignored us as contemptuously as we do them, upon the theory that we, too, are part of the mechanism, the next man would be as likely as ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... it dissipates, as it ought to do, a weak and common prejudice, which often operates as a palsy upon the first idea of a great and generous undertaking. The prejudice I mean is a hasty persuasion, frequently found in the most amiable minds, that some peculiar strength of nerve, some rare mechanism of frame, and extraordinary assemblage of mental powers, are absolutely requisite for the execution of any noble design. How greatly does it redound to the true glory of Howard to have given in his successful labours ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... "All right, so none of us knows how to work the subspace mechanism. You think that would have helped? It would have killed us all, I ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... are several ways of constructing a gun-trap. Of course a gun is the principal part of the mechanism, and the trigger pulled by a string is the main point of the contrivance. In some countries the bait is tied to the string, and the animal on seizing the bait tightens the string, draws the trigger, and shoots itself. In this way, however, there is always some uncertainty ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... form was best suited to revolutionary institutions. More a man of ideas than of action, Robespierre had the sentiment of the Revolution rather than the political formula. The soul of the institutions of the future was in his dreams, but he lacked the mechanism of a popular government. His theories, all taken from books, were brilliant and vague as perspectives, and cloudy as the far distance. He contemplated them daily; he was dazzled by them; but he never touched them with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... always be enlightened, intelligence must always be present in it; but intelligence, in order thus to accompany the progress of activity and ensure its direction, must begin by adopting its rhythm. Action is discontinuous, like every pulsation of life; discontinuous, therefore, is knowledge. The mechanism of the faculty of knowing has been constructed on this plan. Essentially practical, can it be of use, such as it is, for speculation? Let us try with it to follow reality in its windings, and ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... heard it said, that where heaven may be, those who reach it will behold the mechanism of the universe in its perfection. Those stars now studding the firmament in such apparent confusion, will there appear in all their regularity, as worlds revolving in their several orbits, round suns that gladden them with light and heat, all in harmony, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... immediateness of perception, and places us in a dream-world of phantoms and spectres, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motion in our own brains. (3) That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation nor precludes the necessity of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percipient, which, at the more than magic touch of the impulse from without, creates anew for himself the correspondent object. The formation of a copy is not solved by the mere pre-existence of an original; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... from the upper world. There were shelves on the wall containing what appeared to be books, and indeed were so; mostly very small, like our diamond duodecimos, shaped in the fashion of our volumes, and bound in sheets of fine metal. There were several curious-looking pieces of mechanism scattered about, apparently models, such as might be seen in the study of any professional mechanician. Four automata (mechanical contrivances which, with these people, answer the ordinary purposes of domestic service) stood ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Members of a high group might even become, and this apparently has often occurred, fitted for simpler conditions of life; and in this case natural selection would tend to simplify or degrade the organisation, for complicated mechanism for simple actions would be ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... chronometers—sufficient to determine the longitude with almost perfect accuracy in every clime of the world—it was very different at that time, when Harrison was occupied with his laborious experiments. Although he considered his third machine to be the ne plus ultra of scientific mechanism, he nevertheless proceeded to construct a fourth timepiece, in the form of a pocket watch about five inches in diameter. He found the principles which he had adopted in his larger machines applied equally well in the smaller, and the performances of the last surpassed his utmost ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... inevitably follow this scientific discovery. And now the investigation of the aspect of the skies in past ages, and all predictions of its future, rest essentially upon the principle that no arbitrary volition ever intervenes, the gigantic mechanism moving impassively in ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and scorned the "materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... tapering off to points at the end. Capt. Murray Sueter in his book on submarines gives these and other particulars of the vessel. At either end the boat had a cabin, the air in which remained good for about three hours, and in the middle of the boat was a large paddlewheel rotated by clockwork mechanism, which, it was claimed, would run for eight hours when once wound up. The iron tips at the ends of the vessel were intended for ramming, and the inventor was confident he could sink the biggest English ship ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the little blind room in which my servant and myself had been for a time imprisoned. I had a strong impression—for which I could not account—that from that room had originated the mechanism of the phenomena—if I may use the term—which had been experienced in my chamber. And though I entered it now in the clear day, with the sun peering through the filmy window I still felt, as I stood on its floor, the creep of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... immediately. But this was easier said than done. It is simple enough for a fellow to strike splendid chords on the piano, merely by ear, or in a moment of impromptu genius he may construct some wonderful little piece of mechanism; Guy felt that he could achieve countless feats such as these, but he'd be blessed if he could master a double-locked window, or door, through any innate talent, on a dark night, when every one is just asleep sound enough to start at the slightest noise. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... sense is quite strong, and they find their greatest delight in seeing the purpose of each part in a complex mechanism. With others, this work does not afford much pleasure. These are children who, later, can take delight in the flimsy plot of a musical comedy. Such pupils should be encouraged to do their best to discover some points of beauty or skill in the arrangement ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... combination of one or more vibratory clamps, Y, the cam, E, and the two burrs or cutters, q r, for forming the notches in the needle blank such clamp or clamps, cam and cutters being provided with mechanism for operating them, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... which represents one made by Mr. J. H. Steward, of 457, West Strand, London, W.C. It consists of a drum about 5 in diameter and 10 in high, which revolves by clockwork once in twenty-four hours, the same mechanism also driving a small clock. A diagram paper divided with vertical lines into twenty-four primary spaces for the hours is fastened round the drum and a pen or pencil attached to a slide actuated by a rack or toothed wheel is free ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... feature to be mentioned is the bridge, which forms no small part of the vibrating mechanism of the instrument, and needs the utmost skill in its arrangement. Its usual position is exactly between the two small niches marked in each sound-hole, but this arrangement is sometimes altered in the case of the stop being longer or shorter. Many forms of bridges ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Germans. Some of their traits may possibly be explained by their history. Their passionate devotion to the State, their amazing vulgarity, their worship of mechanism and mechanical efficiency, are explicable in a people who are not strong in individual character, who have suffered much to achieve union, and who have achieved it by subordinating themselves, soul and body, to a brutal taskmaster. But the convulsions of war have thrown up ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... toward the ground. There was the usual propeller in front, operated by a four cylinder motor, the cylinders being air cooled, and set like the spokes of a wheel around the motor box. The big gasolene tank, and other mechanism was in front of the right-hand operator's seat, where Tom always rode. He had seldom taken a passenger up with him, though the machine would easily carry two, and he was a little nervous about the outcome of ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... endless questions, pledging him to secrecy, and urging him to wire an answer C. O. D. Little Julia was instructed as to her mother's charms and her father's virtues far beyond the point of her comprehension. And Jerry spent long hours with Connie in the car, explaining its mechanism, and making her a really proficient driver, although she had been very skilful behind the wheel before. Also, he wrote long letters to his dealer in Denver, giving him such a host of minute instructions that the bewildered agent thought ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... angrily. "The motive power is supplied by a mechanism of my own devising! It has nothing to do with rockets! It's as superior to rocket power as the electric motor is to the ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... provided for the return of slaves if they ran away. She suddenly realized that this man's future fate was in her power, and she both liked and respected him, and he had been hurt in their service. Oh! why was not James at home? Could she sit still and let things go their way while the mechanism of the law worked. Between head and heart there was much argument. Her imagination pictured Josiah's future. Had he deserved a fate so sad? She fell on her knees and prayed for help. At last she rose and went down to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... within me, and there are no judges, and there are no boundaries and no limits to me. The /de profundis,/ the effort not to die, the fall of desire with its soaring cry, all this has not stopped. It is part of the immense liberty which the incessant mechanism of the human heart exercises (always something different, always!). And its expansion is so great that death itself is effaced by it. For how could I imagine my death, except by going outside of myself, and looking at myself as if I were ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... constantly being made to set up one-to-one correspondences between simple notions and more complicated ones, or between the well-explored fields of research and fields less known. Thus, by means of the mechanism employed in analytic geometry, algebraic theorems are made to yield geometric ones, and vice versa. In geometry we get at the properties of the conic sections by means of the properties of the straight line, and cubic surfaces are studied ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... mechanism," said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his wastebasket. "A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clockwork. I have got the idea now. I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way I look I can see a golden-flame tongue ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of ammunition, examined the rifle until he had mastered its mechanism, and saw that it was loaded and ready. When the children reached him—the two smaller ones staring vacantly ahead as if walking in ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... who are working here"—he at last ventured to say—"are deeply interested. You can hardly expect them not to talk among each other and in the outside clubs and meeting-places of the wonderful mechanism on which they have been engaged. They have been at it now steadily ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... startled her, and seemed to accelerate the mechanism of her mind into the association of her surroundings ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... terror of the unknown, were kicked up the gangplank and into the caroj. Four of the huskies who had subdued and bound Jason carried him up and dumped him onto the deck where he lay quietly and examined what could be seen of the desert-vehicle's mechanism. A post projected from the front of the deck and one of the men fitted what could only have been a tiller handle over the squared top of it. If this monolithic apparatus steered with the front pair of wheels it must be driven with the rear, so Jason ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... to the former rather than to the latter type; in other words, that they have believed in God because they felt, or imagined that they felt, him stirring in their own hearts rather than because they discerned the handiwork of a divine artificer in the wonderful mechanism of nature. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... machinery, mechanism, engineering. instrument, organ, tool, implement, utensil, machine, engine, lathe, gin, mill; air engine, caloric engine, heat engine. gear; tackle, tackling, rig, rigging, apparatus, appliances; plant, materiel; harness, trappings, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on this point of genius, I should begin by requesting my adversaries to read Mr. F. W. H. Myers's papers on "The Mechanism of Genius" (in his Human Personality), and to consider the humble problem of "Calculating Boys," which is touched on also by Cardinal Newman. How do they, at the age of innocence, arrive at their amazing results? How did the child Pascal, ignorant of Euclid, work out the Euclidean propositions of ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... last-mentioned display, Russian bluejackets appeared, swimming for their lives in a rough sea;—the pasteboard waves and the swimming figures being made to rise and fall by the pulling of a string; while the crackling of quick-firing guns was imitated by a mechanism contrived with sheets ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... powder had been placed in the hollow of the stone-work, where the mechanism for opening and closing the great sluice-gates was fixed, and the result of the explosion was a huge chasm in the stone, and one of the gates blown right off, leaving the way ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... followed, and despite himself a slight shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big switchboard ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... priest came forward, and pressed upon a stone in the wall, which gave way, leaving a space sufficiently large for him to insert his hand and pull upon some hidden mechanism with all his force. Thereon a piece of the wall swung outward as though upon a pivot, revealing a flight of steps, beyond which ran a narrow passage. Soa descended first, bearing the light, which she ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... intensity—"I think she's a soulless piece of devil's mechanism." And turning abruptly, he swung out of the box, slamming ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... our wealth, and in rendering her name famous through the world. I think it is grand to know, that, while her factories re-echo with the clanking of stupendous engines, and the whirl and rattle of machinery, the immortal mechanism of God's own hand, the mind, is not forgotten in the din and uproar, but is lodged and tended in a palace of its own. That it is a structure deeply fixed and rooted in the public spirit of this place, and built to last, I have no ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... have felt the full absurdity of applying such a device to historical epic. Lucan was wise in his choice, and left Olympus severely alone. But his choice roused contemporary criticism. In the Satyricon of Petronius we find a defence of the old conventional mechanism placed in the mouth of a shabby and disreputable poet named Eumolpus (118). He complains 'that young men plunge headlong into epic verse thinking that it requires no more skill than a showy declamation at the school of rhetoric. They do not realize that ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... dates from the period when this pedal controlled three shifts: una corda, due corde and tre corde; the hammer striking respectively one, two or three strings. The whole mechanism is well implied in the German word Verschiebung, i.e., the shoving along—so frequent in Schumann's works, e.g., the middle part of his Vogel als Prophet from the Waldscenen, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers, savans, musicians, inventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest for ever and ever who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest expression is ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... vast thing, that Mr. Cave thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the causeway beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer Mr. Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... silent, he thought once more of the girl's strange attitude, of her distraught face, of her haggard eyes. And he also began to wonder what accident had released the mechanism which had hurled the formidable iron curtain upon him, craftily ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... lived in the Mercer's Lane, asking him to make the machine of full size. He requested the workman to keep it secret, merely telling him that it was a machine by the help of which he proposed to produce some masterpieces of art and mechanism, of which the marvels should be known ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... which describe the figure or outline of the musical image. The element of rhythm gives the whole body its life,—regulates the choice of varying lengths, defining the infinitely varied "tapping" of the musical mechanism. ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... the imagination to the infinitely great and the infinitely small, to vistas of time in which a thousand years are as one day; to the tremendous forces imprisoned in minute particles of matter; to the amazing complexity of the mechanism by which the organs of the human body perform their work; to analyse the light which has travelled for centuries from some distant star; to retrace the history of the earth and the evolution of its inhabitants—such studies cannot fail to elevate the mind, and only prejudice ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... taken and devices adopted to prevent a failure of the electric power and the consequent delays of traffic. An electro pneumatic block signal system has been devised, which excels any system heretofore used and is unique in its mechanism. The third rail for conveying the electric current is covered, so as to prevent injury to passengers and employees from contact. Special emergency and fire alarm signal systems are installed throughout ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... in molecular physics here arises: What is the real mechanism of this absorption, and where is its seat? [Footnote: My attention was very forcibly directed to this subject some years ago by a conversation with my ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... than we are. The astronomical telescope is constructed upon the same principles as the terrestrial one, only it is more powerful and more perfectly made. Not only the lenses, but all the details of the mechanism are more highly finished; more thought and more labour are bestowed upon them; the parts are more skilfully co-ordinated together; it is a better instrument. We do wrong to genius in connecting it with mental aberration; it is more normal, more perfectly human, than we are; more human in its ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... how the acquaintance began, from want of knowledge of mining machinery. But the gist of it was that the Baron, at that time a partner in a firm that constructed stamping-mills, was explaining the mechanism of one to Harrisson, who was standing close to a small vertical pugmill, or mixer of some sort, just at the moment the driving-engine had stopped and the fly-wheel had nearly slowed down. He went carelessly too near the still revolving machinery, and his coat-flap was caught and wound ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... body as a mechanism is far from perfect. It can be beaten or surpassed at almost every point by some product of the machine-shop or some animal. It does almost nothing perfectly or with absolute precision. As Huxley most unexpectedly remarked a score of years ago, "If a manufacturer of optical instruments ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... like a great musician, the other like a spoiled child of nature, who has endowed him with the most precious gifts. Intrepid wrestlers, both, and masters of their instrument, they each employ a different manner. M. Vieuxtemps never lets you forget that he plays the violin, that the wonders of mechanism which he accomplishes under your eye are of the greatest difficulty and have cost him immense pains, whereas M. Sivori has the air of being ignorant that he holds in his hands one of the most complicated instruments that exists, and he sings to you like Malibran. He sings, he weeps, he laughs on ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... carved upward of a hundred faces; a chessboard, the completion of which had occupied a Dutchman for eighteen years; golden carriages drawn by fleas; toys composed of porcelain or ivory in imitation of Chinese works of art; curious pieces of mechanism, musical clocks, etc., were industriously collected into the cabinets of the wealthy and powerful. This taste was, however, not utterly useless. The predilection for ancient gems promoted the study of the remains ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... been gathered in the markets and restaurants of Pekin, without much regard to their cleanliness. There is an immense quilt of thick felt the exact size of the hall, and raised and lowered by means of mechanism. When the curfew tolls the knell of parting day, the beggars flock to this house, and are admitted on payment of a small fee. They take whatever places they like, and at an appointed time the quilt is lowered. Each lodger is at liberty to lie coiled up in the feathers, or if ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... arm of her chair, as if incapable of sitting upright. Her features, with the exception of her nose, which curved slightly upward, were thin and regular; and her eyes were large, deep, and densely black, and seemed turned inward, as if gazing with a half-wondering stare at the strange mechanism which held together her queer frame-work of bones ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a most essential part of the mechanism, and its shape and height are needed in handling the long rods, piping, casting, and other fittings which have to be inserted perpendicularly. The borer or drill used is not much different from the ordinary hand arm of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... got them with you?" he gasped. A cylinder was shoved into his eager hand and with it he fled to the auditorium, not even shutting the doors behind him. What did he care now? He was sure of victory. Placing the roll in reverse order in the cylinder he started the mechanism of the organ. Slowly, as if the grave were unwilling to give up its prey the music began to whimper, wheeze and squeak. It was sounding backward and it sounded three times before the unhappy man saw failure once ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... stable, and turned their purses inside out —big, solid, leather purses with steel locks that could only be opened by pressure on a secret mechanism; but they ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... purchase the car. Having decided upon the tires, however, they can be asked to decide upon other minor points, including the terms upon which they intend to pay for the car, and thus eventually go through the entire process of purchasing the car without ever giving their delicate mental mechanism the severe shock and strain of deciding to purchase it at all. As a general rule, such people are surprised and delighted to find that they have made the decision so easily and with ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... is a large hall in the same building, wherein is preserved the armor and weapons as worn by them in actual service, besides specimens of guns and cannon of very peculiar mechanism. Here, too, is an interesting series of portraits, representing the various Grand Masters of the order of St. John. Some of the fire-arms challenge attention, from the fact that they so closely resemble designs and samples to be seen in Venice, showing that the principle of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... defective eyesight, so called, are in reality defective brain. The mechanism of the eye may be perfect, the retina and the optic nerve may faithfully perform their duties, but if the brain behind the eye be defective, the comprehension of the object or some of its properties is lost to the intelligence of the individual. Some people are "color blind." Their eyes ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... the shock of the immense development of industrial activity of which the more fortunate classes at Rome were now reaping the fruits. The trades represented by Numa's colleges would at best have formed a mere framework for a maze of instruments which formed the complex mechanism needed to satisfy the voracious wants of the new society. The gold-smithery of early times was now complicated by the arts of chasing and engraving on precious stones; the primitive builder, if he were still to ply his ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... double soles, and toes shaped like a toad's mouth, a propensity which sometimes continues throughout the career of his pupilage. He likewise takes off his hat when he enters the dissecting-room, and thinks that beautiful design is shown in the mechanism and structure of the human body—an idea which gets knocked out of him at the end of the season, when he looks upon the distribution of the nerves as "a blessed bore to get up, and no use to him after he has passed." But at first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and the floor about the mill is paved with rough pieces of stone, while in the rest of the rooms it is made of stucco or compost. The use of water-mills, however, was not unknown to the Romans. Vitruvius describes their construction in terms not inapplicable to the mechanism of a common mill of the present day, and other ancient authors refer to them. "Set not your hands to the mill, O women that turn the millstone! sleep sound though the cock's crow announce the dawn, for Ceres has charged the nymphs with the labors which employed your arms. These, dashing ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Mechanism. A Treatise on Terrestrial and Aerial Locomotion. By Professor E. J. Marey. With 117 Illustrations. Second Edition. Crown ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... moment the man straightened up, stood for an instant with his eyes still on his work, then, as he was turning to another part of the intricate mechanism, he saw them. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... strange to my readers that I have not had more to say of the wonder excited in my mind by the number and character of the great mechanical inventions and applications unknown in my day, which contribute to the material fabric and actuate the mechanism of your civilization. For example, although this was very far from being my first air trip, I do not think that I have before referred to a sort of experience which, to a representative of the last century, must naturally ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... who gave not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes;—this nature bade not,—this God blesses not,—this humanity for no long time is able ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the kind we have seen is a mystery." The scientist gestured to the TV receiver. "The transmitter is incorporated into the TV chassis, and the 'rabbit ears' act as an antenna when adjusted properly. The recorder is a simple EEG mechanism." ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... whole truth, if we did not own that we have for a long time been lying in wait for a chance to say something about the mechanism of walking, because we thought we could add something to what is known about it from a new source, accessible only within the last few years, and never, so far as we know, employed for its elucidation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... arms on parade, let the butt be brought gently to the ground, especially if the ground be hard. This will save the mechanism of the lock from shocks, which are very injurious to it, and which tend to loosen and mar the screws and split ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... weekly digest of events. Milt read much, though not too easily. He had no desire to be a poet, an Indo-Iranian etymologist, a lecturer to women's clubs, or the secretary of state. But he did rouse to the marvels hinted in books and magazines; to large crowds, the mechanism of submarines, palm trees, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... hands on the little shelf of the empty music desk, bent far forwards and looked down between the polished wooden bars at the strings below, as if she were suddenly interested in the mechanism of ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... despair that he took it and dashed it to pieces against a stone. Like a human being, his imagination was stronger than his experience; he tried to persuade himself that there might be something there; hoping against hope. Mind, you see, working in the bird's brain, and overlooking facts. A mere mechanism would have left the empty and useless shell untouched—would have accepted facts at once, however bitter, just as the balance on the heaviest side declines immediately, obeying the fact of an extra grain of weight. The bird's brain was not mechanical, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... writes, "that it belongs not to us to determine at present either the mechanism or the necessary manoeuvres. Neither shall we attempt to fix even approximately the future velocity of the aerial locomotive. Let us rather attempt to calculate the probable velocity of a locomotive gliding through the air, ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... very existence of which, strange to say, most of our best men were ignorant. Our navy had no idea how low our standard of marksmanship was. We had not realized that the modern battle-ship had become such a complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training in marksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside guns themselves. Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this was our naval attache at Paris, Lieutenant Sims. He wrote letter after letter pointing out how frightfully ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... coincides with that period of English industry when, due to the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright and Watt, powerful changes set in both in mechanism and technique, changes that affected, first of all, the cotton and linen industries, and rendered breadless the workingmen engaged in them. The concentration of capital and land assumed at the time large ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... lit. Here I was more in my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... tension of the eyeball is essential to ocular refraction, and closely related to ocular nutrition. Fully to understand the mechanism for its regulation would carry us far toward an understanding of the causes of glaucoma. Normal tension is maintained with a continuous flow of fluid into the eye and a corresponding outflow. Complete ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... and the rustic no such process is possible. His sense of humour may be there as a sense, but the mechanism for setting it in operation is limited and rudimentary. Only the broadest and most elementary forms of joke can reach him. The magnificent mechanism of the art of words is, quite literally, a sealed book to him. Here and there, indeed, ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... a round tin can on a central pivot with a revolving mechanism. Into this the full combs of honey are placed and are whirled around, throwing the honey out into the can by centrifugal force. It is then run out at the bottom into bottles or barrels, and the empty combs are replaced in the hive for the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... to me a beautifully constructed piece of mechanism, for marking minute portions of time; the three-hundredth parts of a second were indicated by it. It was a kind of watch, with a pin for stopping one of the hands. I proposed that we should each endeavour to stop it twenty times ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the whole matter of story-telling is in the first instance an expression of the complex personal product, so will this feature of it vary in perfection according to the beauty and culture of the human mechanism ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... five day's journey by indulging his fancy for getting to know how things are done. Each day he had spent two hours in a different part of the ship having its function and mechanism explained to him ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... the mechanism and settled down to wait. His trousers were wet and heavy with mud, and his legs and feet were chilled. Mosquitoes whined around his head and little gnats settled down for a meal on his exposed neck and head. He began to wonder if it was ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... inconvenient one. We may find the main herd crossing our track in their migration from the Republican to the Platte. In such case, there will be a detention of several hours, as the current of a main herd is not fordable by any known human mechanism. The halt will be taken advantage of by timid spectators looking safely out of car-windows,—by bona-fide hunters, who want fresh meat, and take along the tidbits of their game to be cooked for them at the next dinner-station,—and by excited pseudo-hunters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... four rivers. In front of him the konar trees of Bund-i-Kir showed their dark green. At the right, on top of the bluff of the eastern shore, a solitary peasant stood white against the sky. Near him a couple of oxen on an inclined plane worked the rude mechanism that drew up water to the fields. The creak of the pulleys and the splash of the dripping goatskins only made more intense the early morning silence. "Do you remember, Gaston?" asked Magin. "It was here we first had the good fortune to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... horns, tusks, wily instincts, strength, stealth, deceit, and humility—which make up character in the animal world. According to the nature and number of each being's enemies has its own special mechanism been evolved, distinguishing it from its fellows and enabling it to get a living ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of the varnish had been broken off and the reddish wood underneath was visible. The top was much better constructed than the cheap toys sold in the village. It was hollow and contained in its interior a mechanism started by a pressure on the upper end. Once set in motion the little top spun about the room for ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... the priests. From the twelfth century, small portable organs of limited compass were much used; although the tone of these instruments was necessarily slight, and, owing to the shortness of the pipes, high in pitch, the principle of the mechanism was similar to that of the larger instruments. They were hung by means of a strap passed over the shoulders; one hand pressed the keys in front of the pipes (which were arranged perpendicularly), and the other ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... to coordinate intercommonwealth relations and to provide a mechanism for the orderly ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding, quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to the girl, and began explaining the mechanism of the gun to her, without appearing to notice her embarrassment, for she shrank perceptibly when he spoke ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... end, if that which is without tempo may be said to have any relation with time, and the trio of Chopin's "Funeral March" was already in uneven progress. The legless man sat on the bare pavement, his back against the handsome area railing of No. 1 Fifth Avenue, and steadily revolved the mechanism of the organ with his hairy, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... is the essential reason for the efficient direction exercised by the helmsman of the Pennsylvania, and the relative impotency of generals? Is it not that the helmsman acts through the medium of mechanism, while the generals act through the medium of men? A ship is not only made of rigid metal, but all her parts are fastened together with the utmost rigidity; while the parts of an army are men, who are held together by no means whatever except that which discipline ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... of Modern Civilization.—The object of life is not to build a perfect social mechanism. It is only a means to a greater end, namely, that the individual shall have opportunity to develop and exercise the powers which nature has given him. This involves an opportunity for the expression of his whole nature, physical and mental, for the satisfaction of his normal desires for ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... supper as possible. After they had gone, Bob could not resist the temptation to go down and gaze with an approving eye on the shiny new tuner they had made, and dream of the many wonderful sounds that would soon come drifting in through that gleaming bit of mechanism. ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... Pentonville and Paradise Row. The pity of these men is, that they never lived in high life, nor in solitude: there is no medium for the knowledge of the busy or the still world. If admitted into high life for a season, it is merely as spectators—they form no part of the mechanism thereof. Now Moore and I, the one by circumstances, and the other by birth, happened to be free of the corporation, and to have entered into its pulses and passions, quarum partes fuimus. Both of us have learnt by this much which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... wishes to act so as to benefit it...."[41] He refers in another place to the majority, who "may be considered as human zeros. Thus appears the enormous difference in method," concludes Pouget, "which distinguishes syndicalism and democracy: the latter, by the mechanism of universal suffrage, gives direction to the unconscious ... and stifles the minorities who bear within them ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... regulate, and correct, and patch, and cobble a complicated machine, the principles of which are above thy comprehension, and its simplest operations too subtle for thy understanding, when thou canst not correct a trifling error in a common piece of mechanism, the whole mystery of which is open to thy inspection?—Hence with thee to the leather and stone, which are emblems of thy head; cobble thy shoes, and confine thyself to the vocation for which Heaven has fitted ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... also other writings which probably did not pay so well. In 1604 he published "A Supplement to Vitellion," containing the earliest known reasonable theory of optics, and especially of dioptrics or vision through lenses. He compared the mechanism of the eye with that of Porta's "Camera Obscura," but made no attempt to explain how the image formed on the retina is understood by the brain. He went carefully into the question of refraction, the importance ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... the sheep upon the desk and looked at it fixedly for better than a minute. Having apparently studied out its mechanism, he pulled its head and it baa-ed. He pulled it once more, and nodded. Then he took up the crumpled letter and ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... two definite ethical characters in all engraved work. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one more; that it is Obedient;—in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of the higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and in its function of interpreting the schools of painting as ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... wandered away; the engineer stepped upon the locomotive; a piercing whistle broke suddenly on the silence settling down over the whilom busy precincts, and as the rhythmic measure of the engine bell rang farewell chimes, a pyramid of sparks leaped high, and the mighty mechanism fled down the track, hunting its own echoes. The man in charge of the express office came out, looked up and down the street; yawned, lighted his pipe, and after locking the office, wended ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Doctor. "No. When this sort of clock has run down, it is no more to me than an ingenious piece of mechanism, to be investigated with the bistoury. When blood is once cold and stagnant, it is no longer human blood; when flesh is once dead, it is no longer that flesh which we desire in our lovers and respect in our friends. The grace, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more difficult. But it would be hard to say how far and how deep the sciopero went. In our hotel we knew of it only the second day through the failure of the morning rolls, for there had been no baking overnight. Most of the in-door service was of Swiss or other foreign extraction, and the mechanism of our comfort, our luxury, was operated as usual. Our floor facchino, or porter, went to the meeting of the unions in the evening, being an Italian. Otherwise the strike fell especially on the helpless and guiltless foreigner, who might be, and very often was, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the extraordinary virtues and attainments of the early Jesuits, and the wonderful mechanism of their system, would promote the growth of the order and the interests of Rome, before the suspicions of good people would be aroused. It was a long time after their piety had passed to fraud, their simplicity to cunning, their ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... other, by a simple act or effort of will, whenever he may wish to do so. Advanced occultists are often able to function on both physical and astral planes at the same time, though they do not often desire to do so. To vision astrally, the trained occultist merely shifts his sensory mechanism from physical to astral, or vice versa, just as the typewriter operator shifts from the small-letter type to the capitals, by simply touching the shift-key of ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... good yet, Massa Tom, he's good yet!" said Eradicate Sampson eagerly. "Doan't yo' all forgit dat, Massa Tom." And the colored man proceeded to fill the gasolene tank, while Tom adjusted the electrical mechanism of his aeroplane, Ned assisting by handing him the tools needed. Eradicate, who said he was named that because he "eradicated" dirt, was a colored man of all work, who had been in the service of the Swift household for several years. He and his mule ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... even before Man began, we see a fundamental principle established, and the relationship between the birth-rate and the death-rate in working order. All progressive evolution may be regarded as a mechanism for concentrating an ever greater amount of energy in the production of ever fewer and ever more splendid individuals. Nature is perpetually striving to replace the crude ideal of quantity by the higher ideal ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the existing mechanism of Government, they are unable at the same time to create a new one which might work easily and freely according to ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... and dies unnoticed in the forest is wrought with a beauty as exquisite as the skill displayed in the sturdy oak. All the wisdom of Nature is compressed and revealed in the sting of the bee; and the pride of human art is mocked by the subtile mechanism and cunning structure of a fly's foot and wing. However minute the task, it reveals the polish of perfection. Omnipotent skill is stamped on the infinitely small, as on the infinitely great. It is a moral stenography like ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... back into his chair. His red face became tinged with a sudden grey pallor. His eyes, now bloodshot, half closed like those of a prostrate doll with the eye mechanism in its stomach. There was witheredness, almost lifelessness, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... his head and if we suppose the rope to strike a vertical post, the free end will twine round it. This may serve as a rough model of twining as explained in the "Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants". It is on these points—the nature of revolving nutation and the mechanism of twining—that modern physiologists differ from Darwin. (See the discussion in Pfeffer's "The Physiology of Plants" Eng. Tr. (Oxford, 1906), III. page 34, where the literature is given. Also Jost, "Vorlesungen uber Pflanzenphysiologie", page 562, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... thrust as far as it could be with safety by many strong and willing hands. Then the men in the surf seized the launching lines, by means of which the boat could be propelled off its carriage. A peculiar adaptation of the mechanism enabled them, by pulling backward, to force the boat forward. For a moment they stood inactive as a towering wave rolled in like a great black scroll coming out of the blacker background, where the sound of the raging storm ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... turned in any direction,—"there you have the secret of my sunshine. One of these mirrors catches the sunshine direct and reflects it on the other, which, as you see, is so arranged that it transmits the rays down the natural funnel or chimney into the cave. By means of chains connected with the mechanism, and extending below, I can change the direction of the mirrors as the sun changes its place in the sky, without ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Professor Page, has from time to time been noticed in our Journal, and we have now to give a further account of this interesting mechanism, as furnished by an American periodical. It appears that several of these machines have lately been submitted to critical examination by competent authority at Washington, and with very favourable conclusions. The principle has ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... metal? What can you add to a perfect mechanism, designed for its job, and integrated with a hundred other perfect mechanisms? What can you do when a thousand schools are so perfect they have a life of their own, with no need for human guidance, and, most significant, no failures from ...
— There Will Be School Tomorrow • V. E. Thiessen
... of opinion, that at the expense of a little mechanism, some part of the labour of composing these novels might be saved by the use of steam." There was a murmur of disapprobation at this proposal, and the words, "Blown up," and "Bread taken out of our mouths," ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the difficulty was not one of mechanism, but of responsibility. Who was qualified to decide on opening the desk and drawers? Who would be answerable for the safety of those papers? The only person who volunteered was Dolly, and Dolly's idea of taking care of things was to carry them about with ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... was made.[9] It is tempting to set this down as a Johnsonian prejudice, and to deny or retort the comparison. Fielding, we might say, paints flesh and blood; whereas Richardson consciously constructs his puppets out of frigid abstractions. Lovelace is a bit of mechanism; Tom Jones a human being. In fact, however, such comparisons are misleading. Nothing is easier than to find an appropriate ticket for the objects of our criticism, and summarily pigeon-hole Richardson as an idealist and Fielding as a realist; ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... sure that the nickeled tube that carried the dripping water into the space over the glass bowl, had a second tube within it; through which his assistant from the adjoining room either blew, or sent by some mechanism, the chemicals (probably potassium) that would take fire and burn on ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... whole point of Paley's meaning; for it is evident that there would be no argument at all unless this author be understood to say what he clearly enough expresses, viz., that the evidence of design supposed to be afforded by the watch is supposed to be afforded by examination of its mechanism only, and not by any previous knowledge as to how that particular mechanism called a watch is made. Paley, I take it, only chose a watch for his example because he knew that no reader would dispute the fact that watches are constructed ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... for static tests can be used for transverse bending, compression, tension, shear, and cleavage. A common form consists of three main parts, namely: (1) the straining mechanism, (2) the weighing apparatus, and (3) the machinery for communicating ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... to say that the four cannons were in perfect order. Since they had been taken from the water, the sailor had bestowed great care upon them. How many hours he had spent, in rubbing, greasing, and polishing them, and in cleaning the mechanism! And now the pieces were as brilliant as if they had been on board a frigate ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... and most judiciously-illustrated elementary treatises on Mechanics and Mechanism which we have met with. The illustrations, diagrams, and explanations are skilfully introduced, and happily apposite—numerous and beautifully executed. As a handbook for the instruction of youth, it would be ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... be an accurate and strong shooting gun, and quite equal to Skipper Cy's recommendation. Charley found, indeed, that he could make a better target with it than with Toby's rifle. And it was well that he had taken this early opportunity to become accustomed to its mechanism, ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... the game, the best feeding grounds, the best trails, and everything else that will aid the hunter in taking the game at a disadvantage and destroying it. The big-game rifles are of the highest power, the longest range, the greatest accuracy and the best repeating mechanism that modern inventive genius can produce. It is said that in Wyoming the Maxim silencer is now being used. England has produced a weapon of a new type, called "the scatter rifle," which is intended for use on ducks. The best binoculars are used in searching out the game, and horses carry the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... craftsman's hand. But will my gold recall the vital spark into those cold forms that, stricken by my steel or bullet, are rotting in their graves? The masterpiece of God I have destroyed. His image have I defaced; the wonderful mechanism that He alone can mold, and molded for His own holy purpose, have I shattered and dismembered; the soul, an essence of His own eternity, have I chased from its alotted earthly home, and I rely for my justification upon—what?—the fact that my victim differed from me in political belief. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... reflects the disturbance of war's reaction. Herein flows the lifeblood of material existence. The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... This article was composed of a metal body screwed on to a strong tripod, with a lower tray that moved backwards and forwards, and two lateral buttresses with a steel cross-piece firmly bolted on to them above. Upon this framework were two dynamometers worked by an ingenious piece of mechanism. Juve looked ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... favourite play, and his most elaborate and masterly work, "The Alchemist" (1610); he wrote also thirty-five masques of singular richness and grace, in the production of which Inigo Jones provided the mechanism; but his best work was his lyrics, first of which stands "Drink to me only with thine eyes," whose exquisite delicacy and beauty everybody ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... doublet. He gave her that queer twisted sort of smile which the girl could not but find attractive, somehow. He said: "Why, but this heart thumping here inside me may stop any moment like a broken clock. Here is Euripides writing better than I: and here in my body, under my hand, is the mechanism upon which depend all those masterpieces that are to blot the Athenian from the reckoning, and I have no ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... with political instability in the region and economic conditions in Western Europe. Nevertheless, the economy grew a healthy 3.7% per year in 2004 and 2005, well above the EU average. Cyprus joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM2) in May 2005. The government has initiated an aggressive austerity program, which has cut the budget deficit to below 3% but continued fiscal discipline is necessary if Cyprus is to meet its goal of adopting the euro on 1 January ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... an idea by carefully examining the way the body of till-top is balanced on its needle legs. If till-tops have not been tilting forever, and shall not go on tilting forever, it is because something is wrong with the mechanism of the world outside their little spotted bodies. Surely the easiest, least willed motion in all the universe is this sandpiper's teeter, teeter, teeter, as it hurries peering and prying ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... like that.—Entre nous, surprise is always the greatest charm of the beautiful! As for the Allegri di Bravura, I must make allowance for yours. To tell you the truth, I am no great friend to that kind of thing, as it is apt to entail too much mere mechanism; at least, such is the case with those I know. I have not yet looked at yours, but I shall ask —— about them. I recommend you to be cautious in your intercourse with him. Could I not be of use to you in many ways here? These printers, or rather misprinters, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... opulent bachelor was passionately fond of weapons. He used to buy pistols, revolvers, daggers, hang them on his wall and show them to acquaintances. He prided himself on them, and was quite a specialist on the mechanism of the revolver. Mitya, without stopping to think, went straight to him, and offered to pawn his pistols to him for ten roubles. The official, delighted, began trying to persuade him to sell them outright. But Mitya would not consent, so the young man gave him ten roubles, protesting ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... invention was the automatic transmitter, in which the signals of the message are first punched out on a strip of paper, which is then passed through the sending-key, and controls the signal currents. By substituting a mechanism for the hand in sending the message, he was able to telegraph about 100 words a minute, or five times the ordinary rate. In the Postal Telegraph service this apparatus is employed for sending Press telegrams, and it has recently been so much improved, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... when it runs sweetly, gives forth a definite tone, the bee-song of work happily consummated. So this great human mechanism seemed, to Harrington Surtaine as he entered the realm of its activities, moving to music personal to itself. Through its wide halls he wandered, past humming workrooms, up spacious stairways, resonant to the tread of brisk feet, until he reached the fifth floor where cluster the main offices. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... unnecessary pain and fatigue from lifting, pulling and carrying weights in the wrong way. Ability to carry and lift or move is not so much dependent upon absolute strength as it is on knowing how. The whole body, so far as it is a physical mechanism, may be thought of as a series of levers, of which the muscles, bones, and joints make up the parts and are fulcrum, power arm or weight arm as the case may be. Without going into the details of bodily ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... I was astounded and puzzled. Had the hour been the same as when I had last seen the clock, I should have concluded that the hands had stuck in one place, while the internal mechanism went on as usual; but that would, in no way, account for the hands having traveled backward. Then, even as I turned the matter over in my wearied brain, the thought flashed upon me that it was now close upon the morning of the twenty-second, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... of modern ships of war is just one of those half-truths which, as Tennyson has it, are ever the worst of lies; it is harder to meet and fight outright than an unqualified untruth. It is true that improvement is continually going on in the various parts of the complex mechanism which constitutes a modern ship of war; although it is also true that many changes are made which are not improvements, and that reversion to an earlier type, the abandonment of a once fancied improvement, is no unprecedented incident in recent naval ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan |
