"Mechanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from day and its attendant toil, And draws his household round their evening fire, And tells the ofttold tales that never tire; Or, where the town's blue turrets dimly rise, And manufacture taints the ambient skies, The pale mechanic leaves the labouring loom, The air-pent hold, the pestilential room, And rushes out, impatient to begin The stated course of customary sin: Now, now my solitary way I bend Where solemn groves in awful state impend: And cliffs, that boldly rise above ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... slaughter spread like flame; 5 And Garry, thundering down his mountain-road, Was stopped, and could not breathe beneath the load Of the dead bodies.—'Twas a day of shame For them whom precept and the pedantry Of cold mechanic battle do enslave. 10 O for a single hour of that Dundee, [A] Who on that day the word of onset gave! Like conquest would the Men of England see; And her Foes find a like ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... held aloof. What had they in common with this charlatan who treated the abominable teachings of Walt Whitman symphonically? He could not be a respectable man, even if he were a sane. And then the unlettered tiller of the soil, drunken mechanic and gutter drab all loved his music. What kind of music was it thus to ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... and 20 from McMinnville, the bodies of two human beings, which had been covered by the dirt or ore from which copperas was made. One of these persons was a male, the other a female. They were interred in baskets, made of cane, curiously wrought, and evidencing great mechanic skill. They were both dislocated at the hip joint, and were placed erect in the baskets, with a covering made of cane to fit the baskets in which they were placed. The flesh of these persons was entire and undecayed, of a brown dryish colour, produced by time, the flesh having adhered closely to ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... 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 ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... pump water, to spin, to weave, to drive every mill; and he it was who gave it the form demanded by Stephenson, by Fulton, by the whole industrial world, for use on railway and steamboat, and in mill and factory, throughout the civilized countries of the globe. It was this great mechanic who showed how it might be made to do its work with least expense, with highest efficiency, with greatest regularity, with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... exceedingly useful," Planchette replied. "We will go to Spieghalter to-morrow, sir," he continued, with the serenity of a man living on a plane wholly intellectual. "That distinguished mechanic has just completed, after my own designs, an improved mechanical arrangement by which a child could get a thousand trusses of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... that 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 he ever makes such proficiency as will ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... refined to learn his business; but I was mistaken. Lord Edward was a sailor every inch of him: he knew a ship from stem to stern, understood the characters of seamen, and gained their confidence. He was, besides, a good mechanic—a carpenter, rope-maker, sail-maker, and cooper. He could hand, reef, and steer, knot and splice; but he was no orator: he read little, and spoke less. He was a man of no show. He was good-tempered, honest, and unsophisticated, with a large proportion of common sense. He was good-humoured and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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
... seemed, by whom Flammock was attended; "are you really come to this pass? I thought that the mere having been born on British earth, though the children of spoilers and invaders, had inspired you with too much pride to brook the yoke of a base mechanic. Or, if you are not courageous, should you not be cautious?—Well speaks the proverb, Wo to him that will trust a stranger! Still mute—still silent?—answer me by word or sign—Do you really call and acknowledge him as ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... written for the specialist, but for that restless, seething multitude known as "the masses." It is written for busy people, for workers, such as the shop-girl, the factory-girl, the clerk, the mechanic, the farmer, the merchant, and the busy housewife; but ministers, lawyers, and doctors may find food for thought within ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... pleasure-seeking, they afford a rich field to the observant man. He must not, it is true, be squeamish, and fear to let the unsavoury reek of tabac-de-caporal, or the odours of potato brandy and logwood wine come betwixt the wind and his nobility. Neither must he dread contact with the mechanic's blouse, with the cotton gown of the grisette, or the velveteen vest of the titi of the Boulevards; he must even make up his mind to see his neighbour, dispensing with his upper garment, exhibit his brawny arms in shirt sleeves of questionable purity. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... previous to that date, even back to the 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 ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... said he, "noiseless and of tremendous power. I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty. For years I have been aware of its existence, though I have never before had the opportunity of handling it. I commend it very specially to your attention, Lestrade, and also ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shadow of the tree, or in some favourite corner where you can smoke, and contemplate the motley guests, formed into calm and solemn groups, who wish to hold no communion with the Giaour. There is ample food here for the observer of character, costume and pretension: the tradesman, the mechanic, the soldier, the gentleman, the dandy, the grave old man, looking wise on the past and dimly on the future: the hadge, in his green turban, vain of his journey to Mecca, and drawing a long bow in his tales and adventures: the long straight pipe, the hookah with ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... real. His angels! silly creatures who could sing And sing again, and delicately fling The smoky censer, bow and stand aside All mute in adoration: thronging wide, Till nowhere could He look but soon He saw An angel bending humbly to the law Mechanic; knowing nothing more of pain, Than when they were forbid to sing again, Or swing anew the censer, or bow down In humble adoration of His frown. This was the thought in Eden as He trod— ... It is a lonely thing ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... of the ferryman—to keep the figure whole—was a letter from his father, a letter longer than the commonplace chronicles, and painfully written with the mechanic hand on both sides of a company letter-head. Caleb Gordon wrote chiefly of business. Mutterings of the storm of financial depression were already in the air. Iron, more sensitive than the stock-market, was the barometer, and its readings in the Southern field were growing ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Harp Maker to his Majesty, is just leaving me. A native of Ruhl, he was sent at an early age to England, where he is now working as an able mechanic, a sturdy man of good stature in which you would take delight; at the same time he manifests the most patriotic sentiments for our language and literature. Through Schiller and myself he has been awakened ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... be a real one," he went on, "should be a chemist, financier, mechanic, lawyer, engineer, and diplomat, and a dash of a clairvoyant, too. He should know everybody's business, including his own. Consider what he is expected to know: there is no class of industry which can dispense ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... building materials, and where inferior workmanship and materials can be used to an equal advantage with those of first class. To slight work and yet do it justice; to give it all the strength and endurance necessary, requires one of skillful acquirements. A mechanic may persuade a proprietor into many a long day's work, as it pays well to nurse good jobs when other work is slack, but an architect who understands such things would save the value of ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... one, all right. Otto Mekstrom had been a mechanic-tech at White Sands Space Station during the first flight to Venus, Mars and Moon round-trip with landings. About two weeks after the ship came home, Otto Mekstrom's left fingertips began to grow hard. The hardening ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... descending to the position of dogs, fallen in virtue and devoid of all religious observances. He who takes food from a physician takes that which is no better than excrement; the food of a harlot is like urine; that of a skilled mechanic is like blood. If a Brahmana approved by the good, takes the food of one who lives by his learning, he is regarded as taking the food of a Sudra. All good men should forego such food. The food of a person who is censured by all is said to be like a draught from a pool of blood. The acceptance ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... know if Protestants will be saved, in God's good time, or not," continued Michael. "I find there are different opinions among the clergy about that, and of course it is not for me, only a plain mechanic, to be sure where learned and pious scholars are in doubt. But I am sure about one thing. Those Protestants, and others too, mind you, who profess and preach good deeds, and themselves do bad deeds—they will never be saved. They will have no chance ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... man—compared with the raw material of which it is composed—is beyond price. In this respect, the distance is as great between a pair of wooden shoes and the trunk of a walnut-tree, as between a statue by Scopas and a block of marble. The genius of the simplest mechanic exerts as much influence over the materials which he uses, as does the mind of a Newton over the inert spheres whose distances, volumes, and revolutions he calculates. You ask for talent and genius a corresponding degree of honor and reward. Fix for me the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... out of the ordinary course of things, whether it be flight on a broomstick or the wrong adding of figures; so his son gives him trouble, for he is an imaginative boy, who walks alone, talking to the birds, making rhymes, picking flowers, and dreaming. That he will never be a farmer, mechanic, or tradesman is as good as certain, and one day when the child runs in with a story of a golden horse, with tail and mane of silver, on which he has ridden over land and sea, climbing mountains and swimming rivers, he turns pale with ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... only under narrow restrictions. The short Canadian summer makes that season for the habitant one of severe labour. Winter, though it has its own labours, such as cutting wood, is the great season of social intercourse. For a long time the habitant would not consider a mechanic his social equal; perhaps, still, the daughters of a farmer would spurn the advances of the village carpenter. But whatever the social distinctions, baptisms, marriages, anniversaries, are made the occasions for festivity. There are corvees recreatives, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... mechanic, and wants every man to ride like a pair of compasses slung across a rail. Don't you spoil your seat to please any of them. I like to see a man sit a horse as if he belonged to it. Then he ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... they did not wrong themselves so much, To make a god, a hero, or a king, (Stript of his golden crown, and purple robe) Descend to a mechanic dialect; Nor (to avoid such meanness) soaring high, With empty sound, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... bedding were all to have a thorough cleaning that evening, and no passenger could be allowed to come on board, before the morning. The sailor turned round, and left the wharf. When he got into the street again, the boy noticed for the first time, a man dressed like a respectable mechanic, walking on the opposite side of the road, and apparently keeping the sailor in view. The sailor stopped at an eating-house in the neighbourhood, and went in. The boy—not being able to make up his mind, at the moment—hung about among some other boys, staring ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of the great Architect of the universe are so eminently calculated to direct the mind not alone to the grandeur, the magnificence, and sublimity of the laws and principles of the material world, but to look through nature up to "Nature's God." It is truly a valuable work.—Farmer and Mechanic. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... curious," said I. "No, none else, except a poor simple mechanic, and some common ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... advantage of it to that book." Some of the sentiments of the book which particularly impressed him were as follows: "It is possible that the wisdom of a poor man may start a proposal that may save a city, save a nation." "A mean (humble) mechanic,—who can tell what an engine of good he may be, if humbly and wisely applied unto it?" "The remembrance of having been the man that first moved a good law, were better than a statue erected for one's memory." These, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... he had a sword ... but what is a carbine, even a loaded Martini-Henry carbine with its good soft man-stopping slug? There are no traditions to a carbine—nothing of the Spirit of one's Ancestors in one—a vile mechanic thing of villainous saltpetre. How should the Snake fear that? Now a sword was different. It stood for human war and human courage and human deeds from the mistiest past, and behind it must be a weight of human wrath, feats, and tradition that must make ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... handicraftsman, journeyman, mechanic, workman, laborer, operative, industrial. Antonyms: idler, drone, dabbler, sluggard, truant, dilettante, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the "Goat and Compasses." As he went out of the public-house, an elderly man, in the dress of a mechanic, who had been lounging in the bar, followed him into the street, and kept behind him until he entered Hyde Park, to cross to the Edgware Road; there the man fell back ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... life, I will go to sea and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:' no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and their hands all point ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... been wise receives interest, Savage, felon, President, judge, farmer, sailor, mechanic, literat, young, old, it is the same, The interest will ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... in nearly all kinds of business. It is next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling good material and wasting ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... such a world Plato regards with disdain; handicraft and trade and the working professions he regards with disdain; but what becomes of the life of an industrial modern community if you take handicraft and trade and the working professions out of it? The base mechanic arts and handicrafts, says Plato, bring about a natural weakness in the principle of excellence in a man, so that he cannot govern the ignoble growths in him, but nurses them, and cannot understand fostering any other. Those who ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... there was a grand discussion. "Yes, madame/," said Labassandre, addressing Charlotte; "the man of the future, the coming man, is the mechanic. Rank has had its day, the middle classes theirs, and now it is the workman's turn. You may to-day despise his horny hands, in twenty years he will ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... had found shelter, and of its several occupants, who were making such kindly efforts to relieve his distress, it is necessary to take a twenty-year glance backward. At that time Aleck Fifield, a Yankee jack-of-all-trades, who had been by turns a school-teacher, sailor, mechanic, boat-builder, and several other things as well, found himself employed as stage-carpenter in a Boston theatre. He had always been possessed of artistic tastes, though they had never carried him beyond sign-painting, and of dramatic longings, which ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... main reliance for influencing the upper classes in favour of Christianity. It is not a question of luxury or self-indulgence, but of bare respectability, of the simple decencies of life which are enjoyed by an American mechanic as distinguished from the poverty which, for a cultivated family, falls below the level of self-respect. But this requires a salary which, save in a very few places, cannot at present be paid by the churches. "Our pastors,'' writes a missionary, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... serene felicity. An irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessing of which he was himself possessed. He joined the Baptists, and became a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He knew no language but the English, as it was spoken by the common people. He had studied no great model of composition, with the exception—an important exception undoubtedly—of our noble translation of the Bible. His spelling was bad. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to take a farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he had thrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset the English farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between him and his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a fair and honest application of the successive discoveries of science to its improvement.—This has been the uniform practice in those arts which have of late been making such rapid progress. The artist and mechanic are never indifferent to the various improvements which are taking place around them; nor do they ever stand apart, till they are forced upon their notice by third parties, or public notoriety. There is, in the case of the manufacturer, no nervous timidity about innovation; ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... which marvellously astonished the inhabitants of the quarter." Noise provokes noise. "In continently," says L'Estoile, "everybody seizes his arms, goes out on guard in the streets and cantons; in less than no time chains are stretched across and barricades made at the corners of the streets; the mechanic leaves his tools, the tradesman his business, the University their books, the attorneys their bags, the advocates their bands; the presidents and councillors themselves take halberds in hand; nothing is heard but shouts, murmurs, and the seditious speeches that heat and alarm ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... accurate description; and indeed there is a print of him, supposed to be by Reginald Elstracke, pulling the press with his own hand, as it works off the sheets of his scarce edition of the Augsburg Confession. He was a chemist as well as a good mechanic, and either of these qualities in this country was at that time sufficient to constitute a white witch at least. This superstitious old writer had heard all this, and probably believed it, and in his sleep the image and idea of my ancestor ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... exultation that came into his face. For himself, Ben instantly knew that this was his own sphere. He suddenly found himself an absolute master of his craft: at the touch of the paddle controlling it as a master mechanic ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... evening the signal bell for landing on the rock was again rung, when every man was at his quarters. In this service it was thought more appropriate to use the bell than to pipe to quarters, as the use of this instrument is less known to the mechanic than the sound of the bell. The landing, as in the morning, was at the eastern harbour. During this tide the seaweed was pretty well cleared from the site of the operations, and also from the tracks leading to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swarmed to 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, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 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 ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... his innovations and reforms, was vindicated. For breadth of design and statesmanship there was not one sovereign in the coalition who could compare with this man who, Bishop Burnet thought, was better fitted for a mechanic than a Prince—and "incapable ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... D took occasion to celebrate. The battery kitchen had been thoroughly renovated by Mechanic Grover C. Rothacker and Mechanic Conrad A. Balliet, both of Hazleton, Penna., the renovation placing it in the class of "The best kitchen and mess hall in camp," to quote the words of Major General Joseph E. Kuhn, divisional commander, ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... Goddess to lift the angry heroic head over human. They gloriously transfigure. A Murillo beggar is not more precious than sight of London in any of the streets admitting coloured cloud-scenes; the cunning of the sun's hand so speaks to us. And if haply down an alley some olive mechanic of street-organs has quickened little children's legs to rhythmic footing, they strike on thoughts braver than pastoral. Victor Radnor, lover of the country though he was, would have been the first to say it. He would indeed have said it too emphatically. Open London as a theme, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said term tradesman is understood by several people, and in several places, in a different manner: for example, in the north of Britain, and likewise in Ireland, when you say a tradesman, you are understood to mean a mechanic, such as a smith, a carpenter, a shoemaker, and the like, such as here we call a handicraftsman. In like manner, abroad they call a tradesman such only as carry goods about from town to town, and from market to market, or from house to house, to sell; these in England we call ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... occupy their tranquil stations in the heart of the provinces. The most flourishing cities were oppressed by the intolerable weight of quarters. The soldiers insensibly forgot the virtues of their profession, and contracted only the vices of civil life. They were either degraded by the industry of mechanic trades, or enervated by the luxury of baths and theatres. They soon became careless of their martial exercises, curious in their diet and apparel; and while they inspired terror to the subjects of the empire, they ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... across land and sea, and connecting man with man. When I place a sack of coffee in the scales, I am weaving an invisible link between the colonist's daughter in Brazil, who has plucked the beans, and the young mechanic who drinks it for his breakfast; and if I take up a stick of cinnamon, I seem to see, on the one side, the Malay who has rolled it up, and, on the other, the old woman of our suburb who grates it over ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... knoweth well the natures of weight, of colour, of pliant and fragile in respect of the hammer, of volatile and fixed in respect of the fire, and the rest, may superinduce upon some metal the nature and form of gold by such mechanic as longeth to the production of the natures afore rehearsed, than that some grains of the medicine projected should in a few moments of time turn a sea of quicksilver or other material into gold. So it is more probable that he that knoweth the nature of arefaction, the nature of assimilation ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... hubbub began suddenly back at the house. Canalejas climbed into the passenger's seat as if looking for something. And Bell presented his now useless automatic pleasantly at the head of the nearest staring mechanic, and while he froze in horror, scrambled up into ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... 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
... Society, of the Fuel Saving Society, a director 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 ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... art and every trade that was in the least concerned in the framing or adorning of idols was polluted by the stain of idolatry; [46] a severe sentence, since it devoted to eternal misery the far greater part of the community, which is employed in the exercise of liberal or mechanic professions. If we cast our eyes over the numerous remains of antiquity, we shall perceive, that besides the immediate representations of the gods, and the holy instruments of their worship, the elegant forms and agreeable fictions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... deliberately designed works of man, and thus the vague conception of a personal god becomes transformed into that of a creator working according to plan. As we know, this conception of organic creation as the artistic work of an anthropomorphic god—of a divine mechanic—generally maintained its ground almost everywhere, down even to the middle of our own century, in spite of the fact that eminent thinkers had demonstrated its untenability more than two thousand years ago. The last noteworthy scientist to defend and apply this idea was Louis ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... challenged the powers of inventive minds as the construction of bridges. The various exigencies to be met, the possible triumphs to be achieved, the experiments as to form, material, security, and grace, have been prolific causes of inspiration and disappointment. In this branch of economy, the mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires a rare union of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results in this sphere. To invent a bridge, through the application of a scientific principle by a novel method, is one of those projects which seem to fascinate philosophical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... as Rainham sat in his river-bound office struggling, by way of luncheon, with the most primitive of chops, his eyes, wandering away from a somewhat mechanic scrutiny of the Shipping Gazette, fell upon the shifting calendar on ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and when Tee flipped the switch, the worried face of the chief mechanic sprang into focus. "Oh, there you are, Mr. Jenner. Glad I caught you before you ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... doer, actor, agent, performer, perpetrator, operator; executor, executrix; practitioner, worker, stager. bee, ant, working bee, termite, white ant; laboring oar, servant of all work, factotum. workman, artisan; craftsman, handicraftsman; mechanic, operative; working man; laboring man; demiurgus, hewers of wood and drawers of water, laborer, navvy^; hand, man, day laborer, journeyman, charwoman, hack; mere tool &c 633; beast of burden, drudge, fag; lumper^, roustabout. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of Gripe the scrivener. A lazy, lackadaisical, fine city lady, who thinks "a woman must be of mechanic mold who is either troubled or pleased with anything her husband can do" (act i. 3). She has "wit and beauty, with a fool to her husband," but though "fool," a hard, grasping, mean ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... must; nor is he in any way loth. One only contingency there is, which may serve to arrest him in his course,—he may be drawn as a conscript—and, possibly, forget in the next two or three years, as a soldier, all he has previously learned in four as a mechanic. But we suppose Hans to have escaped this peril, and to be on the eve of ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... misfortune," agreed the Tin Man, "for a one-legged woodchopper is of little use in his trade. But I would not allow the Witch to conquer me so easily. I knew a very skillful mechanic at the other side of the forest, who was my friend, so I hopped on one leg to him and asked him to help me. He soon made me a new leg out of tin and fastened it cleverly to my meat body. It had joints at the knee and at the ankle and ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Every mechanic who has had anything to do with the hardening of tools knows how necessary it is to take a cut from the surface of the bar that is to be hardened. The reason is that in the process of making the steel its outer surface has become ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... it would come to that if you did not look sharp," answered Ned. "Take my advice now. A boy like you better begin with a trade and work up to be boss mechanic; then when you are rich, buy a library and turn scholar. There's a swell carpenter's school just started down at the Institute, box and tools included in the tuition, so you'll have some property at the end of the term, if you ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... per family, while 91 respectable couples from the working class averaged only 3.7 per family. Mr. Sidney Webb examined the statistics of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, which is patronised by the best type of mechanic, and found that the birth-rate among its members has fallen 46 per cent, between 1881 and 1901; or, taking the whole period between 1880 and 1904, the falling off is 52 per cent. This decline proves that the period of industrial expansion in England is nearly over. It would be far better ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Hilderman and two other men in the boat, one a friend apparently, and the other the mechanic. I stood up and ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... envy stalked abroad, too—envy of the aristocrats' grand homes and unparalleled luxury, their fine equipages and clothing, costly foods and wines, their trains of lackeys and menials, the beauty and joie-de-vivre of their sons and daughters! The mechanic, the storekeeper, the unskilled laborer, the ranks of unemployed, and the submerged tenth obliged to live by their wits or starve, were as fuel to the spark of ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... and making moral resolutions with himself, that, should he escape now, he will execute the next burglary in a safe and virtuous state of sobriety. But we need not proceed: there was the idle and drunken mechanic, or, perhaps, the wife, whose Saturday night visits to the tap-room in order to fetch him home, or to rescue the wages of his industry from the publican, had at ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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 ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... Drawing. Designed as a Text-book for the Mechanic, Architect, Engineer, and Surveyor. Comprising Geometrical Projection, Mechanical, Architectural, and Topographical Drawing, Perspective, and Isometry. Edited by W.E. WORTHEN. New York: D. Appleton ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the young and the old, the learned doctor and the practical mechanic, for the defense of Freedom—a magnet that drew both Pomeroy and Warren to that since-famous redoubt on the summit of Breed's Hill. They offered their services to Colonel Prescott, and he gladly accepted them, demurring as to Warren, and tendering ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... experienced gang was in consequence settled in Apia; and the report of submarine explosions had long grown familiar in the ears of residents. From these artificers the president obtained a supply of dynamite, the needful mechanism, and the loan of a mechanic; the gaol was mined, and the Manono people in Vaiusu were advertised of the fact in a letter signed by Laupepa. Partly by the indiscretion of the mechanic, who had sought to embolden himself (like Lady Macbeth) with liquor for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crosses, relics, crucifixes, Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pixes,— The tools of working our salvation By mere mechanic operation. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... made a call at the flat, and behind locked doors had a long conference with Slippery and the others. After his visit Slippery became a busy man and Joe watched him oiling, filing and tempering a collection of jimmies, nippers, wedges, pliers, saws, and other such tools for which an expert mechanic could find a proper use. When Joe carelessly picked up a small bottle that stood upon the table before Slippery, the yegg's face turned pale, and then he explained to the boy who too commenced to shudder the longer he listened, that the harmless looking ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... should be turned on peace? Peace, not war, has brought our country to the high degree of prosperity it now enjoys. The energies of the people up to this time have been directed to the development of our boundless resources, to the mechanic arts, to agriculture, mining, trade, and commerce with foreign nations. Banish peace, turn these mighty energies of the people to the prosecution of the dreadful work of mutual destruction, and soon cities in ruins, fields desolate, the deserted marts ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the method of answering the accidental subjects in this allegro, as laid down by our critic in his remarks, they must have produced most shocking effects; which, though this mechanic in music, would, perhaps, have approved, yet better judges might, in reality, have imagined I had known no other art than that of the spruzzarino." There is a nice independence about this that would indicate Mr. Avison to be at least ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... be a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor, or a merchant, the one thing to do is to fix all your mental powers upon the goal you select, and then call all the forces from within and from without, to aid ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... uttered by the artist, the mechanic, and husbandman."—Chazotte's Essay, p. 24. "They may be divided into four classes—the Humanists, Philanthropists, Pestalozzian and the Productive Schools."—Smith's New Gram., p. iii. "Verbs have six tenses, the Present, the Imperfect, the Perfect, the Pluperfect, and the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Commons, and was inquisitor-general of the monasteries; he was foreign and home secretary, vicar-general, and president of the star-chamber or privy-council. The proud Nevilles, the powerful Percies, and the noble Courtenays all bowed before this plebeian son of a mechanic, who had arisen by force of genius and lucky accidents,—too wise to build a palace like Hampton Court, but not ecclesiastical enough in his sympathies to found a college like Christ's Church as Wolsey did. He was a man simple in his tastes, and hard-working like Colbert,—the great finance minister ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... patient endurance of grinding toil characteristic of the French-Canadian habitant. But he did get from his father a capacity for the knowing and handling of machinery, which amounted almost to genius. Of the father's steadiness under the grind of daily work which had made him the head mechanic in the Mill, Tony possessed not a tittle. What he could get easily he got, and getting this fancied himself richly endowed, knowing not how slight and superficial is the equipment for life's stern fight that comes without sweat of brain and body. His cleverness deceived first himself and then his ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... "wisdom of the Creator" and the design visible in his works. As a matter of fact, you will discover, on mature reflection, that on this theory the Creator is at bottom only playing the part of a clever mechanic or watch-maker; all these familiar teleological ideas of Creator and creation are based, in the long run, on ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... the reason of both, and might be of the practice, too, if his industry kept pace with his speculation; which were very commendable, and without which he cannot be said to be a complete naturalist or mechanic. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... directions 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 cents, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... obscure assassin. The letter I have read was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of January. The next thing that happens is on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his room for another during the whole day, and a skilled mechanic was introduced into it for the purpose of effecting some alterations. Asked by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving the house, what was the nature of his operations, the man replied that he had been applying a patent arrangement to the window looking out ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... all but a day since he had parted from Charlie Osborne on Charing Cross Station, and set out with eighteenpence in his pocket to seek his fortune. In that brief time he had rapidly risen to wealth and distinction. Three years ago he was a penniless mechanic, forsaken by Fortune and discontented with his life; to-day he was a rich man, smiled on and courted by Fortune and envied by all her minions, and still he was discontented with ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... nature to write herself in the life and work of man, the power of beauty struggling to manifest itself, the harmony that is always desiring to make itself known. To the merchant there are the great laws of trade, of which his works are but the immediate expression. To the mechanic there are the continual forces of nature, gravitation uttering itself in all its majesty, made no less majestic because it simply takes its expression for the moment in some particular exercise of his art. To the ship that sails upon the sea there are the everlasting winds that come ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... Panic seems to have marked them for her own; they despaired at once of all lawful defence; and, on Sunday, the day after the Chief Justice's departure, Apia was in consequence startled with strange news. Dynamite bought from the wrecker ship, an electrical machine and a mechanic hired, the prison mined, and a letter despatched to the people of Manono advising them of the fact, and announcing that if any rescue were attempted prison and prisoners should be blown up—such were the voices of rumour; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all. Fifty years and less have classified information so that science and sense are conveniently found, and humor and nonsense have their proper sphere. All branches are pretty full of lively and thoroughly competent writers, who take hold of their own special work even as the thorough, quick-eyed mechanic takes hold of his line of labor and acquits himself in a creditable manner. The various lines of journalism may appear to be crowded, but they are not. There may be too much vagabond journalism, but the road that is traveled by the legitimate ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... to the South for purposes of traffic may or may not be favored with large profits. All the products of the mechanic arts are very scarce in the interior, while in the larger towns trade is generally overdone. Large stocks of goods were taken to all places accessible by water as soon as the ports were opened. The supply exceeded the demand, and many dealers suffered heavy loss. From Richmond ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Franklin! The mechanic of his own fortune; teaching, in early youth, under the shackles of indigence, the way to wealth, and, in the shade of obscurity, the path to greatness; in the maturity of manhood, disarming the thunder of its terrors, the lightning of its fatal blast; ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... A mechanic, or a man in any small line of business, must trust his wife with the disbursement of a certain part of the family income. It passes through her hands in the way of housekeeping, and the management of it exercises ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... The unimaginative mechanic whose wits were scattered by this fantastic proposition used his bit of cotton waste as a handkerchief, and remarked with vague politeness that it was a pity the gentleman was not an engineer. But Septimus deprecated the compliment. He looked wistfully up at the girders of the glass roof and spoke ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Master has suddenly changed their family and working-life from a garden of roses into a bed of thorns. Many a young man in the city counting-house, many a mechanic at the bench, many a traveller in the commercial-room, many a student on the college-benches, is doomed to discover that the world does not love the Church better than in those days when the fires gleamed in ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... over, had called to see their relations, first, as usual, going home to their lodgings in Marylebone and making themselves as spruce as bridegrooms, according to the rules of their newly-acquired town experience. For the London mechanic is only nine hours a mechanic, though the country mechanic works, eats, drinks, and sleeps a mechanic ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... 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, he clinched ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... said I to a decent-looking man, seemingly a mechanic, who stood near me, and was also looking at them, but ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... load of sugar-canes—a convincing proof that they grew in the neighbourhood. We all tried them; and for several days each member of our community was to be seen walking about with a piece of sugar-cane in his mouth. Sambo was an ingenious mechanic, and forthwith set to work to construct a sugar manufactory. It was very simple, consisting of a number of our largest clay pots for boiling the juice, and a long trough with sides, and a board at each end, slightly inclining towards the ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mechanic soul, thou must not only do With Martha, but with Mary ponder too; Happy's the home where these fair sisters vary; But most, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... that the interpretation of the impressions must differ according to the character of our present knowledge. In other words, the more important the aspects read into any presentation, the more valuable will be the present experience. Although when the child apperceives a stick as a horse, and the mechanic apperceives it as a lever, each interpretation is valuable within its own sphere, yet there is evidently a marked difference in the ultimate significance of the two interpretations. Education is especially valuable, in fact, in that it so adds to the experience ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... from a public library. An inspection of a 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 ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... in the last instance is affirmed, is not always realised in the experiment. The humblest mechanic, who works con amore, and feels that he discharges his office creditably, has a sober satisfaction in the retrospect, and is able to express himself perspicuously and well on the subject that has occupied his industry. He has a just ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... solitary countries; rushing out from their stone towers ("walls fourteen feet thick"), to seize any herd of "six hundred swine," and convoy of Luebeck or Hamburg merchant goods, that had not contented them in passing. What were pedlers and mechanic fellows made for, if not to be plundered when needful? Arbitrary rule, on the part of these noble robber lords! And then much of the crown domains had gone to the chief of them—pawned (and the pawn-ticket lost, so to speak), or sold for what trifle of ready money was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... than his fist, and as infantile as Saint George in the picture, endeavoured to curb the ardour of the flying, steel-tipped pinions with which they thundered along the ground. Alas! there was nothing now but motor-cars driven each by a moustached mechanic, with a tall footman towering by his side. I wished to hold before my bodily eyes, that I might know whether they were indeed as charming as they appeared to the eyes of memory, little hats, so low-crowned as to seem no more than garlands about the brows of women. All the hats now were immense; ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... 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 workman ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... David, sent an agent from England to manage the business, and convey them to Philadelphia, having first supplied them with all necessaries; where, under the fostering hand of his friends in the city, with the assistance of the Abolition Society, they were apprenticed to mechanic trades, and the children sent to school to be properly instructed. This benevolent act was rewarded with extraordinary success. Except two, these liberated slaves prospered, and became useful ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... you may depend upon it. Every journeyman mechanic, if he be industrious and have a prudent, economical wife, as you have, may accumulate a snug little property, and live quite at his ease, when he passes the prime of life. Is it not all very plain ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... will the owners of the means of production consent to their being used. The worker who does not own the things necessary to produce wealth must work upon the terms imposed by the other fellow in most cases. The coal miner, not owning the coal mine, must agree to work for wages. So must the mechanic in the ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... at the White House, many persons noticed three little girls, poorly dressed, the children of some mechanic or laboring man, who had followed the visitors into the White House to gratify their curiosity. They passed around from room to room, and were hastening through the reception-room, with some trepidation, when the President called ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Master Swift would be willing to have leaf- pictures painted on that table in the window. Then he found that the old man was speaking, though he only heard the latter part of what he said. "—a celebrated inventor and mechanic, and that's what you'll be, maybe. Ay, ay, a Great Man, please the Lord; and, when I'm laid by in the churchyard yonder, folks'll come to see the grave of old Swift, the great man's schoolmaster. Ye'll be an inventor yet, lad, a benefactor to your kind, and an honor to your country. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... numbers, gases had been liquefied and solidified, and the range of useful heat and cold indefinitely extended. The safety-lamp had been given to the miner, the caisson to the bridge-builder, the anti-friction metal to the mechanic for bearings. It was already known how to vulcanize rubber, and how to galvanize iron. The application of machinery in the harvest-field had begun with the embryonic reaper, while both the bicycle and the automobile were heralded in primitive prototypes. The ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and now he alone employs 150! M. Charriere in fact possesses one quality which generally ensures success, a passion for his art; he is not to be regarded simply as a vender of cutlery, but as one possessing a scientific knowledge of his profession, and as a mechanic of considerable talent. To recapitulate all his inventions, with their respective merits, and the approbatory letters that he has received from different academical institutions, would half fill my little ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... how Government patronage is disposed of in the Parent country. Kindly motives, however, which never appear in the arrangements of the latter, are always conspicuous in a colony. A public work is sometimes created for the sole purpose of saving an unfortunate mechanic from the horrors of idleness; and a debt due to the State is occasionally discharged by three months' washing ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... disposition. The most ancient families have become absorbed or overwhelmed by the mighty progress of this new element, this outpouring of wealth as from some unseen source; and in many instances their names only are recognised in these old and rickety mansions, now the habitation of the mechanic and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... inferior in scientific knowledge, which has a clear and fixed notion of its work and destiny. That many of these signs are themselves more and more ominously showing in our young men, from the fine gentleman who rides in Rotten Row to the boy-mechanic who listens enraptured to Mr. Holyoake's exposures of the absurdity of all human things save Mr. Holyoake's self, is a fact which presses itself most on those who have watched this age most carefully, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... Rama, to these words, and having listened, do what is proper! If, at thy command, I get a way for the passage of thy army, others then, from strength of their bows, will command me to do the same! In thy army there is a monkey of the name of Nala, who is a skilful mechanic. And endued with great strength, Nala is the son of Tashtri, the divine artificer of the Universe. And whether it is wood, or grass or stone, that he will throw into my waters, I will support the same on my surface, and thus wilt thou have a bridge (over which to pass)!" And having said ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the rice farmer and his wife and children working in the paddy fields as long as they could see. These people do not work with the fierce energy of the American mechanic, but their workday is from twelve to fourteen hours and, considering these long hours, they show ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... must eventually be adopted with regard to the entire Indian question, Eliot made his settlers land-owners, conferred upon them the right to vote and hold office, impressed upon them the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, and taught them the rudiments of agriculture and the mechanic arts. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... 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 ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... also; that he has the same rights which every other gentleman possesses, and of which his profession has not even the remotest tendency to deprive him, to be treated with politeness and respect; that he has the same right as every other man in society, as the merchant, the mechanic, or the farmer, to prosecute his business unmolested; shielded by the same laws which protect them from the attacks of malicious libellers out of the theatre, and the insults of capricious Ignorance ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of your missionary life, cultivate a spirit of enterprise. Without such a spirit, nothing great will be achieved in any human pursuit; and this is an age of enterprise, to a remarkable and unprecedented extent. In manufactures, in the mechanic arts, in agriculture, in education, in the science of government, men are awake and active; their minds are all on the alert; their ingenuity is tasked; and they are making improvements with the greatest zeal. Shall not the same enterprise be seen in moral and religious things? ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... do so. I think it possible I can obtain a situation for your father as carpenter on a plantation in the country, if he will promise to abstain from drinking. I have heard that he was a very good mechanic, and in the country he would not meet with such constant temptation. Do you suppose that he will ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... charities, but from that organized and efficient emigration, so long advocated by the seer Carlyle? Only the crassest ignorance and the listlessness born of misery and want prevent the able-bodied pauper, the frozen-out mechanic, or the weary and ill-clad, the over-worked and under-fed agricultural labourer, from quitting the scenes of his purgatory, and from finding, scattered over earth's surface, spots where he may enjoy a comparative paradise, heightened by the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to see these shells, perhaps to carry one away. But Fontanella had vanished, swallowed up, with all remnants of antiquity, by the graceless Arsenal. It matters to no one save the few fantastics who hold a memory of the ancient world dearer than any mechanic triumph of to-day. If only one could believe that the Arsenal signified substantial good to Italy! Too plainly it means nothing but the exhaustion of her people in the ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... and evil. The first settlers lived in the country, in the woods and wilds, whose "clearings" were far apart. Not one in ten of them had dwelt in any town, or even visited one having as many as a thousand inhabitants. And now there came the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, and the mechanic, who resided in the towns which began to grow and to take on new life. Most of these had enjoyed superior advantages, so far as related to education and that worldly wisdom which comes from experience in older communities. Some of them had come ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... of little ANNIE PROTHEROE. She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW; She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day - A gentle executioner whose ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... a wealthy family in Dublin, a note was handed to him, inviting him to dine the next day. When he read it aloud, his host remarked, "Those people are very respectable, but not of the first circles. They belong to our church, but not exactly to our set. Their father was a mechanic." ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... craft, viz., joint wiping, pipe bending and lead burning.... 'Hints' are the most useful things to an apprentice, and there are many in this work which are not to be found in some of the text-books."—English Mechanic. ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... poetry, worth calling poetry, produced a minister 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 ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... slaves and unfree tribes tilled the soil, and practised the mechanic arts. Agriculture seems first to have been lifted into respectability by the Cistercian Monks, while spinning, weaving, and almost every mechanic calling, if we except the scribe, the armorer, and the bell-founder, continued down to very recent tunes to be held in contempt among ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... that miserable quarter of the city where Sarah and her mother now lived. It was not in a tenement house either; but in a little dwelling owned by an Irishman and his wife who seemed decent people. He was a mechanic, and one room of their small house they were accustomed to let, to ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... want to get the permanency, since it seems to be the only possible thing, but you know my heart isn't really in newspaper work. The plain truth is I don't like it, although I do my best. You know Father always said I was a born mechanic. If I only could get a position somewhere among machinery—that would be my choice. There's one vacant in the Steel and Iron Works at Bancroft—but of course I've no chance of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... say anything to him, but I was certain that my guess was correct. His mother was the daughter of a valet de chambre, and his father was a poor mechanic. I asked the young man if he were called count at the embassy, and he said he bore the title in virtue of a warrant from the elector-palatine. My question skewed him that I knew his origin, and he began to speak openly to me; and knowing that I was acquainted with the peculiar tastes ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... mine. Ole once carried a pair of these shoes a mile and sunk knee deep into solid rock at every step. Babe cast a shoe while making a hard pull one day, and it was hurled for a mile and tore down forty acres of pine and injured eight Swedes that were swamping out skidways. Ole was also a mechanic and built the Downcutter, a rig like a mowing machine that cut down a swath ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... of the tools with which society does its work, and is the means relied upon for the production of livelihood. Like the axe of the woodsman or the lathe of the mechanic, the social tools and machinery must be kept in effective working order if society is to receive a return for its outlay of labor and materials. Three items enter into the maintenance of this efficiency: (a) current repairs, (b) periodic ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... nebulae have been scanned by Herschel and Rosse, with their gigantic mirrors, and at Pulkova and Greenwich with refractors whose construction has taxed to the utmost the ingenuity of the optician and mechanic, it must be utterly useless for an unpractised observer to direct a telescope of moderate power to the ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... All means of transportation were for military men, all roads ended at the railroad stations. The heavy trucks of the administration, filled with sacks, were saluted with general enthusiasm. "Hurrah for the army!" The soldiers in mechanic's garb, on top of the swaying pyramid, replied to the cheers, waving their arms and uttering shouts that ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... found a tottering, blackened pile of wall that he said was Mechanic's Pavilion, and a sort of thin peak of brick that he said was the new Bell Theater. He would go over the town from the top of the hill and torture himself trying to locate San Francisco's splendid landmarks in these acres of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... that time have established a new state of defensive energy in India. The Punjaub will by that time have long been ours: all the roads, passes, and the five great rivers at the points of crossing, will have been overlooked by scientific fortresses; but, far beyond these mechanic defences, Christianity and true civilization will, by that time, have regenerated the population, who will then be conscious of new motives for defending themselves. A native militia will then every where exist; and mere lawless conquerors, on a mission of despotism or of plunder, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... The gentleman put the question to me upon the hustings, whether I had not, or whether my father had not, sold his wheat for fifty pounds a load in Marlborough market? I was saved the trouble of an answer by the observation of a sensible, shrewd mechanic, a freeman of that city; who said, "Well, and suppose he did, what has that to do with the merit or demerit of a representative who is contending for our rights and liberties? Was Mr. Hunt not justified in selling his corn for the best price that he could obtain for it? It is ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... which I had my quarters, was the Tower Hotel, once a palatial mansion of the Buccleuchs. There the Duchess of Monmouth used to hold her drawing-rooms in an apartment which many a New England journeyman mechanic would hardly think ample and comfortable enough for his parlor. There is a curious conical mound in the town, called the Moat-hill, which looks like a great, green carbuncle. It is thought by some to be a Druidical monument, but is quite involved in a mystery which no one has satisfactorily solved. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... and wants no learning. I nefer did pe learning it, yat I nefer haf to say to myself 'What is it she would be saying?' when I speak ta Gaelic; put she always has to set ta tead men—that is ta vords—on their feet, and put tem in pattle array, when she would pe speaking ta dull mechanic English. When she opens her mouth to it, ta Gaelic comes like a spring of pure water, Malcolm. Ta plenty of it must run out. Try it now, Malcolm. Shust oppen your mouth in ta Gaelic shape, and see if ta Gaelic will not pe ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... delayed are a great company. Elizabeth Barrett Browning exclaiming, "I have not used half the powers God has given me," poets dying ere the day was half done; the inventors and reformers denied their ideals; obscure and humble workmen—the mechanic who emancipates man by his machine; the artisan whose conveniences are endless benefactions to our homes; the smith whose honest anchor holds the ship in time of storm—all these labored and died without seeing the fruitage, but other ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... hunting deer, wild turkies, and the prairie hen, which are abundant in that quarter of the territory. For hunting, Black Hawk is said to have displayed no fondness; but chose to spend his time in improving his place of residence, and exercising his ingenuity with mechanic tools. In the spring of 1838, they removed to the frontier, and settled upon the Des Moines river, about eighty or ninety miles from its mouth, near to a trading post, and in the immediate vicinity of the villages of the other chiefs of the tribe. Here he had a very comfortable ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... Mbati-ndua, the one-toothed lord; a fiend with a huge tooth projecting from his lower jaw and curving over the top of his head. He had bat's wings armed with claws and was usually regarded as a harbinger of pestilence. The mechanic's god was eight-handed, gluttony had eighty stomachs, wisdom possessed eight eyes. Other gods were the adulterer, the abductor of women of rank and beauty, the rioter, the brain-eater, the killer of men, the slaughter god, the god of leprosy, the giant, the spitter of miracles, the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... mud breastworks had long been leveled with the earth, and their site converted into the green lawns and leafy alleys of the battery, where the gay apprentice sported his Sunday coat, and the laborious mechanic, relieved from the dirt and drudgery of the week, poured his weekly tale of love into the half averted ear of the sentimental chambermaid. The capacious bay still presented the same expansive sheet of water, studded with islands, sprinkled with ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... is the president and largest stockholder of the Bank of Monroe, at Rochester, and is connected with various institutions. He has not acquired wealth simply to hoard it. The Sibley College of Mechanic Arts of Cornell University, at Ithaca, which he founded, and endowed at a cost of $100,000, has afforded a practical education to many hundreds of students. Sibley Hall, costing more than $100,000, is his contribution for a public library, and for the use of the University of Rochester ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... interested in the smallest affairs of life, perhaps because the slits through which he gazed magnified the objects gazed upon, and he peered about him now with profoundest solicitude. This was Watt Brooks, a mechanic, and hanger-on about the mills, where he did an occasional bit of odd work, and employed the balance of his time in gossiping among the women, or lounging at the drinking saloons, talking a great deal about the wrongs of the working ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... raising within the country aliment of every kind to an amount far exceeding the demand for home consumption, even in the most unfavorable years, and to be obtained always at a very moderate price; skilled also, as our people are, in the mechanic arts and in every improvement calculated to lessen the demand for and the price of labor, it is manifest that their success in every branch of domestic industry may and will be carried, under the encouragement given by the present duties, to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon 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 pale The lazy yawning drone. I this infer, That many things, having full reference To ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... accustomed to, very confidently took it to pieces; but finding, when he came to put it together again, some wheels of which he could not discover the use, very discreetly carried them off in his pocket. The simple artifice of this prudent mechanic, always recurs to my mind, when I observe the manner in which our modern improvers repair and embellish old places; not knowing how to employ the terraces, mounds, avenues, and other features which they find there, they take them all away, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... accurately described thus: "He is a mechanic, of a good mind, who has succeeded so well that I doubt if he is in active business. Certainly he does not labor. He is very independent and radical,—can be impudent, if occasion requires,—gives others all their rights, and pertinaciously insists upon his own." Here the mechanic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... 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 is perhaps, a misleading ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd |
