"Mechanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... representation of all orders carefully carried out, I believe, will do more good than any of us can yet foresee. Does it not seem a strange thing to consider that I have never yet seen with these eyes of mine, a mechanic in any recognised position on the platform of a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... strong as blackmiths'. They were two strong fellows, who thought a great deal of their vigor, and who showed in all their movements that elasticity and grace of the limbs which can only be acquired by exercise, and which is so different to the deformity with which the same continual work stamps the mechanic. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... kept a loaded musket within reach. He had also a bolt constructed in such a manner that, by aid of pulleys, he could fasten or unfasten the door of his chamber while in bed. All this was known to Philip, and he ordered the mechanic who had made it to derange the mechanism so that it would not work. To force a way into the chamber of a man like Carlos might not ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the way was found to open industrial schools that should include classes for girls. Every State, and almost every city and town of any size, had them. It was not long ere multitudes of societies and organizations furnished means for women's education in business and mechanic arts. The growth of the philanthropy of self-help is one of the wonders of the past twenty-five years, and women, without the ballot, have largely assisted in ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... are the most frequent annoyance. In all modern organs there is a panel above the pedals which will come out and admit the mechanic to the bellows, straps, springs, etc.; but in some old instruments the case is made solid, in which case the workman must do his work from the bottom, turning the organ down so as to get at it. Pedal straps ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... could not readily be replaced in the circumstances, and every hour of the now far advanced season had become precious. Smeaton had set his heart on "showing a light" that year. In this difficulty, being a skilled mechanic himself, he threw off his coat and set ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... a man who struts around altogether too large to notice an ordinary working mechanic? Do you think he is great? He is nothing but a puffed-up balloon, held down by his big feet. There ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... a farmer, because he is a farmer, only occupy an uncouth, outlandish house, any more than a professional man, a merchant, or a mechanic? Is it because he himself is so uncouth and outlandish in his thoughts and manners, that he deserves no better? Is it because his occupation is degrading, his intellect ignorant, his position in life low, and his associations ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... Lord! Yes, Rick. I have a mechanic friend who is ideally suited for the purpose. Constantine Chavez. Look him up in the professional part of the phone directory. I'll phone him and ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... replied Max, "that was not the way Father learned his business. You have often proudly told me how he used to work as a simple mechanic, going from shop to shop and learning all he could of the practical side of the different processes. How he then bought a small business, extended it and extended it, until it grew to its present size. And the whole secret of his success was that he knew the work so thoroughly ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... gazed on admiringly by the expert eyes of Darius, in his shirt-sleeves, Big James, in his royally flowing apron, and Chawner, the journeyman compositor, who, with the two apprentices outside, completed the staff! Aided by no mechanic more skilled than a day-labourer, those men had got the machine piecemeal into the office, and had duly erected it. At that day a foreman had to be ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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
... 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, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... cried Justice Millet. "The Parliament was made up of a pack of usurpers with a low mechanic fellow at their head. Gentlemen," turning with a gracious smile to the jury, "you ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... that a taxidermist should receive at least as much as a skilled mechanic and the experts both in commercial and museum work are sometimes (not always) ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... humiliations you subjected me in bequeathing me nobility with poverty! Well may you have wished that you had been born a peasant! Had I been a peasant's child, I might have lived by, and rejoiced in, honest labor! Had I been the daughter of a mechanic, I might have gained my bread by some useful trade. Had I even been the child of some poor gentleman, I might have earned a livelihood by giving lessons in music, in drawing, by becoming a governess, or teaching in a school. But, the daughter of the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... I happen to know it for a fact. A mechanic of some sort himself when he was young; then he took to writing for the Socialistic Press. I ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... of the conditions, antecedent and contemporary, which helped to make it precisely what it was. But a complete criticism does not end there. In the evolution of abstract doctrine as we find it written in the history of philosophy, if there is always, on one side, the fatal, irresistible, mechanic play of circumstance—the circumstances of a particular age, which may be analysed and explained; there is always also, as if acting from the opposite side, the comparatively inexplicable force of a personality, resistant to, while it is moulded by, them. It might even be said ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... handicraft pre-eminent above all other crafts that are practised by the hand of man, to which our Lord humbly inclines His breast, to which the finger of God is applied, performing the office of a pen! We do not read of the Son of God that He sowed or ploughed, wove or digged; nor did any other of the mechanic arts befit the divine wisdom incarnate except to trace letters in writing, that every gentleman and sciolist may know that fingers are given by God to men for the task of writing rather than for war. Wherefore we entirely approve the judgment ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... 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 acres of land adjoining the city limits of St. Paul, for the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... they were always properly clothed, and behaved with the utmost decorum; justly deserving all commendation, for a bashfulness and modesty becoming their sex: and this was the more meritorious in them, as the male inhabitants discovered no sense of shame. In their manufactures and mechanic arts, these people have arrived to a greater degree of extent and ingenuity, both with regard to the design and the execution, than could have been expected from their natural disposition, and the little progress to which they have arrived in general civilization. Their ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... with a faltering negative. She, too, had her unhappy story. A Polterham mechanic who made love to her lost his employment, went to London with hopes and promises, and now for more than half a year had given no sign of his existence. Mrs. Wade had been wont to speak sympathetically on the subject, but to-night it ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... was not inactive. He sought out the obscure retreat of a distant branch of our family, a poor widow, who lived with her only son, an active and industrious mechanic. He renewed the acquaintance which we had allowed to drop some years before, and set before her in glowing colors the chance that opened for the young man to achieve a high and glorious destiny. Fired with patriotic zeal, he even went so far as to promise to take the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... railway conductor, whose adoration made amends for his lack of romance. Maud knew she was not liked in the school, and being, of course, unable to attribute it to any fault of her own, she ascribed it to the fact that her father was a mechanic and poor. This thought did not tend to make her home happier. She passed much of her time in her own bedroom, looking out of her window on the lake, weaving visions of ignoble wealth and fashion out of the mists of the morning sky and the purple and gold that ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... shown by the arguments with which the press has teemed for the past two months, that the process of combination is a necessary feature of industrial growth, and that the competition which fixes the profits of every ordinary trader, investor or mechanic, must be abolished for the benefit of great corporations, while kept in full force against the masses of producers and consumers, between whom the barriers of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and, incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States? These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and to apply ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... through his visor, feeling a vicious pleasure over the beads of sweat on Logan's forehead. Time he sweated a little, thought the mechanic. ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... oratory. There were near a dozen present, all men, and (as Joseph exulted to perceive) all working men. Often already had he seen cause to bless that appetite for disconnected fact and rotatory argument which is so marked a character of the mechanic. But even an audience of working men has to be courted, and there was no man more deeply versed in the necessary arts than Joseph Finsbury. He placed his glasses on his nose, drew from his pocket a bundle of papers, and spread them before him on a table. He crumpled them, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I said, I'm particularly sorry. Still, if you will let me have the bag afterward I can, perhaps, mend the lock. You see, I assisted a general jobbing mechanic." ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... perpetrated as jests. These are creatures who openly defy authority, whose language and conduct is such as was never before seen or heard out of Bedlam. There are men who are known to have murdered their companions, and who boast of it. With these the English farm labourer, the riotous and ignorant mechanic, the victim of perjury or mistake, are indiscriminately herded. With them are mixed Chinamen from Hong Kong, the Aborigines of New Holland, West Indian blacks, Greeks, Caffres, and Malays, soldiers for desertion, idiots, madmen, pig-stealers, and pick-pockets. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... least prevented your own country from being devastated by war. It is true, you send out your army, but the war will not lay waste the fields of Prussia; it will not trample in the dust the crops of the Prussian farmer, interrupt the labors of the mechanic, or carry its terror into our cities and villages, our houses and families. The enemy is at least far from ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... smooth enough not to look rushed I swung into a crouch. She was on her knees faster than that, her left hand hovering over the little set of tools for her stump, which like any good mechanic she'd lined up neatly on the edge of the blanket—the hook, the comb, a long telescoping fork, a couple of other items, and the knife. I'd grabbed a handful of blanket, ready to jerk it from under her. She'd seen that I'd ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... melodious disposition of musical airs,—the eighth in the completest manner of writing histories and books on all sorts of subjects, and—the ninth in the mysteries, secrets, and curiosities of all sciences, faculties, disciplines and arts whatsoever, whether liberal or mechanic,—that approaching near unto them he unbent his bow, shut his quiver, and extinguished his torch, through mere shame and fear that by mischance he might do them any hurt or prejudice. Which done, he thereafter ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... their native rulers. 'Those who boasted descent from the Scytho-Spanish hero would have considered themselves degraded were they to devote themselves to any less honourable profession than those of soldiers, ollavs, or physicians; and hence the cultivation of the soil and the exercise of the mechanic arts were left almost exclusively to the Firbolgs and the Tuatha-de-Danans—the former people, in particular, being still very numerous, and forming the great mass of the population in the west. These were ground down by high rents and the exorbitant ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... to the early part of the nineteenth century, when Koenig found his bed and platen press impracticable, he immediately set to work, assisted by one of his countrymen, Andreas Bauer, a mechanic who had helped him formerly, and in the latter part of 1812, the first flat-bed cylinder press was erected by them in Bensley's office. The cylinder of this press had three impression surfaces with spaces between them, and each covered with a soft blanket. With each forward ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... without the call of their officers; and women, even more enthusiastic than the men, urged their "guardians and protectors" to the front to meet and vanquish a foe who threatened to invade the Southern soil. Armories were quickly constructed in a country which knew little of the mechanic arts; guns and ammunition were ordered from Europe and from Northern manufacturers as fast as trusty agents could make arrangements; shipbuilding was resorted to on the banks of the sluggish rivers; and machinists and sailors were imported from the North ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... story has undergone a curious transformation among the Kalmuks. In the 9th Relation of Siddhi Kur (a Mongolian version of the Vampyre Tales) six youths are companions: an astrologer, a smith, a doctor, a mechanic, a painter, and a rich man's son. At the mouth of a great river each plants a tree of life and separates, taking different roads, having agreed to meet again at the same spot, when if the tree of any of them is found to be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a clever mechanic, and had invented a machine for making chenille. Sad to say, this invention he used for the purpose of inveigling the girl into his workshop, which was situated on the second floor of an extensive range of warehouses ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... is that servant of Captain Jones; but then they all are. Valet, cook, porter, boots, chambermaid, ostler, carpenter, upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coal-heaver, diplomat, barber, linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, if a very old soldier, and a man of the most human kind. Jones ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... inclose his treasure, for the present, under locks so solid that no wrist could break them, and so complicated that no master-key could open them. D'Artagnan remembered that the English are masters in mechanics and conservative industry; and he determined to go in the morning in search of a mechanic who would sell him a strong box. He did not go far; Master Will Jobson, dwelling in Piccadilly, listened to his propositions, comprehended his wishes, and promised to make him a safety lock that should relieve him from ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... has had a year of exceptional interest. The college work is developing and the theological school was never better. The industrial departments in agriculture and the mechanic arts offer fine advantages. The institution increases in popular favor and is ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... Oxford's jests of him for the jacks and upstarts, we all know it savoured more of emulation, and his honour than of truth; and it is a certain note of the times, that the Queen, in her choice, never took in her favour a mere viewed man, or a mechanic, as Comines observes of Lewis XI., who did serve himself with persons of unknown parents, such as were Oliver, the barber, whom he created Earl of Dunoyes, and made him EX SECRETIS CONSILIIS, and alone in his favour ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... striking at the Master through them. It is easy to conceive what an affront the pretensions of Jesus must have been felt to be by Paul. Jesus had been a man of about his own age—a young man; he had sprung from the lowest of the people, being a villager and mechanic; he had never sat in the schools of learning; the men of ability and authority had had no hesitation in condemning Him. That such a one should be esteemed the Messiah of the Jews and worshipped as if He were Divine, raised a storm of indignation in ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... means to be of note, begins betimes.— So, so; come, give me that: this way; well said.— Fare thee well, dame, whate'er becomes of me: [Kisses her.] This is a soldier's kiss: rebukeable, And worthy shameful check it were, to stand On more mechanic compliment; I'll leave thee Now like a man of steel.—You that will fight, Follow me close; I'll bring you ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... we slept! Our busy schemes, Our cold mechanic world awhile was still; But O, their eyes are blinded even in dreams Who from the heavenlier Powers withdraw their will: Here did the dawn with purer light fulfil Thy happier eyes than ours, here didst thou see The quivering wonder-light in flower and dew, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the mechanic was carried to the hospital, and the school doctor was soon working over him. Meanwhile, dry garments had been supplied to Larry and Mr. Vardon. A messenger came from Colonel Masterly to learn what was going ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... which was the kitchen mechanic, she says the perfessor's wife's been over to her mother's while this smallpox has been going on, and they is a nurse in the house looking after Miss Margery, the little kid that's sick. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. They's been some talk, anyhow, about Mrs. Booth ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... tables—that is, three o'clock. It is singular how this important period recedes from the meridian as people grow more refined in their own opinions, or more fashionable in those of their neighbors. The hard-working farmer or mechanic has his dinner at the matin hour of twelve; the country doctor or village lawyer stands upon his dignity and dines at one; in country towns, of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, the "good society" feels obliged ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... which has done more for the cause of social progress. Its effects have been far-reaching. Among other things, it was this measure which led to the common-sense system which makes a soldier of every mechanic and artisan employed upon Government work. It introduced the system which enables so many men to devote a part of their time to soldiering, and the rest to various other kinds of Government work. But, of course, its main reason of existence is the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... historical and literary associations which are of great value, and possessed by no other American community upon that continent. These can never be replaced by the plumed hat of the General and all that it conveys, nor by the freethinker, nor by the factory whistle and overalled mechanic, nor, indeed, by the elements of a strenuous commercialism generally. As time goes on and civil life broadens and develops this attitude will be moderated—it is but a phase of the country's history, and indeed a healthy one, to cry for ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... social smile, Released 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
... places of holiness: let holiness to the Lord be written upon the heart of every merchant, of every mechanic, of every statesman, of every counsellor, of every officer, upon every hall of legislation, and every splendid edifice; and an influence sweet, holy, and happy, shall go forth to revive the hearts of God's people, to awe and confound ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2. No. 6., Nov. 1827 - Or Original Monthly Sermons from Living Ministers • William Patton
... to me, who am zealous in the interests of learning, to think I may have the honor of leading the town into a very new and uncommon road of criticism. As that kind of literature is at present carried on, it consists only in a knowledge of mechanic rules which contribute to the structure of different sorts of poetry, as the receipts of good housewives do to the making puddings of flour, oranges, plums, or any other ingredients. It would, methinks, make these my instructions ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... four years, is about L200, but an additional sum of at least L100 is required for incidental expenses. Should the woman student desire to confine herself to dental mechanics this would materially lessen the expense. The average wage for a good male mechanic is L120 per annum. Hospitals can be joined at the age of nineteen, and it is advisable to begin study soon after leaving ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... by workingmen went back to the failure of government to protect the poorer citizen's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The lack of a mechanic's lien law, which would protect his wages in the case of his employer's bankruptcy, was keenly felt by the workingmen. A labor paper estimated in 1829 that, owing to the lack of a lien law on buildings, not less than three or four hundred thousand dollars in ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... every gift of passion, In that fierce flame can forge and fashion Of self and sin the anchor strong; Can thence compel the driving force Of daily life's mechanic course." ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Lincolnshire. It was headed by Dr. Mackrel, prior of Barlings, who was disguised like a mean mechanic, and who bore the name of Captain Cobler. This tumultuary army amounted to above twenty thousand men;[**] but notwithstanding their number, they showed little disposition of proceeding to extremities against the king, and seemed still overawed by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... in the yellow. A ship would be cold meat this far inside our perimeter. And besides, there's no Rebel alive who can tune a converter like a Navy mechanic." ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... for the man who owned it, and the man who owned it, being a little short of wind and a trifle weak in his legs, had decided to sell and retire. Billy had become the purchaser, and not without many qualms and doubts as to the wisdom of assuming such heavy responsibilities. Billy knew he was a good mechanic, and could put a tire on a wheel or a shoe on a horse as quickly and as well as the next man. But it took a good big pile of dollars, as Billy counted dollars, to get those forges, and before he turned them over to his late employer Billy scratched his head a good many times and ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... A young mechanic and a trusting, happy girl marry in Edinburgh. He is skillful, with good pay. They live frugally, but in comfort. The firm has a branch house in Calcutta. There is a vacancy, and this young man is offered the position. All expenses of the family ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... adorned with girls and garlands, "that stroke shall fall there, where the hand of Una clasps Dua's. The stroke of one shall sever that loved clasp. To-morrow, then, at one o'clock, as struck here, precisely here," advancing and placing his finger upon the clasp, "the poor mechanic will be most happy once more to give you liege audience, in this his littered shop. Farewell till then, illustrious magnificoes, and hark ye for ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... accomplish a great deal if you feel disposed to 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 be ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... place of a master mechanic, at four dollars a day, he had followed his vision, until the world acknowledged him one of her richest men, one of her greatest geniuses for organization. In ten years, lifting himself by his boot straps, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... strolled out, bare-headed, to enrich Dale. He could trust his man absolutely, and was quite sure that the Mercury would then be in the drying stage after a thorough cleaning. Thus far he was justified, but he had not counted on the pride of the born mechanic. Though the car was housed for the night, when he entered the garage the hood was off, and Dale was annoying two brothers of the craft by explaining the superiority of his engine to ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... 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 of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... were at work getting out timber for bridges, and cutting fuel for locomotives and cars. Thus every branch of railroad building, making tools to work with, and supplying the workmen with food, was all going on at once, and without the aid of a mechanic or workman except what the command itself furnished. General Dodge had the work assigned to him finished within forty days after receiving his orders. The number of bridges to rebuild was 182, many of them over deep and wide chasms. The length ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... who had got the horrid contrivance correctly going again without imposing upon us the misery of slowly working through an almost endless series of, as it were, historical chimes. I agree that my premises were faulty, far too lightly supported, but my mind leapt to the deduction that the mechanic in this connection could be none other than Banks. And granting that, the further inferences were, undoubtedly, important. For as I saw them they pointed infallibly to the conclusion that Banks had accepted once more the yoke of servitude; that he ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... will kindly bring nothing whatever which may point to your trade. I would have you wear just those clothes in which I saw you first, such clothes as any mechanic or artisan might be ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Evans is going to add a garage to his livery barn. He'll need a mechanic. That will be just the place for you. In the meantime I'm buying a little car and am in need of a driver. So until Billy is ready you'd better come and bach with me. The farm is big and I'm nearly as lonely ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... bought a foreign chair, made of iron—a sort of miniature garden seat—and from this pattern a squad of blacksmiths were turning out facsimiles, which were selling at two dollars apiece. They were well made, but a skilled mechanic, not himself a prisoner, was teaching the men. Bamboo blinds were being made in the same room, whilst at the extreme end of another shed were paper dyers and finishers, carrying on a primitive work in the same primitive way that the Chinese did thousands of years ago. It was, however, exceedingly ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... their leaders, and in other important concerns. Their dress and manners are similar to those of the society of Friends; hence they are often called Shaking Quakers. They display great skill and science in agriculture, horticulture, and the mechanic arts; and their honesty, industry, hospitality, and neatness, are proverbial. These people choose their locations with great taste and judgment. A Shaker village always presents a ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... American and English inventors from Stephenson and Fulton to Edison and Westinghouse. These histories emphasize the facts that these men were self- taught and bench-trained, and that their achievements can be imitated by every intelligent mechanic in the organization. ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... account of this great event of the day, which of course you heard as you came here. This is a proof how things are brought about unexpectedly. Not a man in England, statesman or mechanic, could have imagined, for the last six weeks, that this dark, cold-blooded plotter, Sir John Fenwick, had failed ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... his religious work—on his statue of Here, for instance, in ivory and gold—that too, doubtless, expressive, as appropriately to its subject as to himself, of a passive beauty. We see it still, perhaps, in the coins of Argos. And has not the crowned victor, too, in that mechanic action, in his demure attitude, something which reminds us of the religious significance of the Greek athletic service? It was a [295] sort of worship, you know—that department of public life; such worship as Greece, still in its superficial youth, found itself best capable of. At ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... our thoughts 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 of trade, the silent ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... rather write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the poor than for the amusement of the rich; and I would sooner raise a smile or create an interest in the honest mechanic or agricultural labourer who requires relaxation, than I would contribute to dispel the ennui of those who loll on their couches and wonder in their idleness what they shall do next. Is the rich man ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... unusual sky. The least change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air. A man who seldom rides needs only to get into a coach and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show. The men, the women—talking, running, bartering, fighting—the earnest mechanic, the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs are unrealized at once, or at least wholly detached from all relation to the observer, and seen as apparent, not substantial, beings. What new thoughts are suggested ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... DRIGGS was born in Kinderhook, New York, March 8, 1813. He served an apprenticeship in the sash and door-making business, and soon after set up as a master mechanic in New York City. He took no part in politics until 1844, when he assisted in the reform movement by which James Harper was elected Mayor of New York. He was soon after appointed Superintendent of Blackwell's Island Penitentiary. In ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... of body or mind, That hath for its object the good of mankind! The Farmer, who cheerily ploughs the soil, And gathers the fruit of his hopeful toil,— The strong Mechanic, whose manly brow Weareth of labor the healthful glow,— The bold Inventor, beneath whose hands The useful engine completed stands,— The Artist, who, with unrivalled skill, Creations of loveliness forms at will,— The Teacher, who sows in ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... 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 nobody ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to sag a little; but Mr. Sherwood had blocked them up. The front fence had got out of alignment, and the same able mechanic had righted it and set the necessary ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... little boy, three years old perhaps, half frantic with terror, and crying to every one for his "Mammy." This was about eleven, mark you. People stopped and spoke to him, and then went on, leaving him more frightened than before. But I and a good-humoured mechanic came up together; and I instantly developed a latent faculty for setting the hearts of children at rest. Master Tommy Murphy (such was his name) soon stopped crying, and allowed me to take him up and carry him; and the mechanic and I trudged away along Princes Street to find his parents. I was soon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other hand, I know cases among our colored brethren, plenty of them, of conscientious and well-directed effort and industry in the worthiest fields, in agriculture, in trade, in the mechanic arts, that show the colored man has in him all the best rudiments of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... no corridor cut through inert matter by mechanic art; its opening had been caused by no hidden mechanisms! It was a living Thing—walled and floored and roofed by the living bodies—of the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... injurious to the white people, as you know. They are not to be blamed for this. God has not given them strength to endure exposure to the sun. Had they a northern climate, in which the labor required by the mechanic arts could be performed with safety and comfort, do you not suppose that they would have the same aptitude and relish as we for handicraft? Their children cannot be brought up to manual labor to the extent that ours are, because the God of heaven has ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob. When we blindly follow authority we are serfs. When our reason is convinced we are freemen. It is rare to find a fully rounded and complete man. A man may be a great doctor and a poor mechanic, a successful politician and a poor metaphysician, a poor painter and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... spread like flame; And Garry thundering down his mountain-road Was stopp'd, 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. Oh! for a single hour of that Dundee Who on that day the word of onset gave! Like conquest would the Men of England see; And her Foes ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... been at work since the age of sixteen. Noll's father was engineer at one of the local machine shops, so Noll had gone into one of the lathe rooms, and was already accounted a very fair young mechanic. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... what fate had in store for thee! To hide thy noble birth under the humble roof of a mechanic; to seek a refuge from insult and contempt far from thy childhood's home; to work without relaxation; to fight against privation and want, and to sink at last into shame and poverty, heart-broken by despair! Misery, doubtless, has cast a yellow tinge upon thy ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... humiliating to the general name and interests of learning. The better taste, or rather the relaxing pressure of aristocratic prejudice, arising from the vast diffusion of trade and the higher branches of mechanic art, have gradually caused these functions of the order (even where the law would not permit the extinction of the order) to become obsolete. In my time, I was acquainted with two servitors: but one of them was rapidly pushed forward into a higher ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... moved to Post street. The same year A. Kohler opened a large wholesale house on Sansome street. The first grand pianos were imported by them about 1859. They came from Europe and arrived on board ship just in time to be exhibited at the first Mechanic's Fair, held in a building put up for that purpose on Montgomery street. At that time Montgomery street toward Market street consisted mostly of vacant lots. Kohler & Chase's music house has been one of the most successful during all these years of changes which have come during all these years. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... do not need to tell you that Austin's colonists are a band of choice spirits, hardy working men, trained in the district schools of New England and New York—nearly every one of them a farmer or mechanic." ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... accepted an unpretending seat for himself, where he remained in readiness to tow us home after the performance. And then the spectators began to come in, and positively some of the very people who used to be at the panorama. I know there was a lady in front of me, in Mechanic Hall, who wore her hair in just such a little knot—pug is, I think, the classic name for that coiffure—and her dress cut as low in the throat and adorned with precisely such a self-embroidered collar as the lady rejoiced in who occupied the seat before me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... moved a larger piston at the same pressure; and the difference of the areas of the pistons multiplied by the pressure common to both represented the indicated power. This principle was subsequently developed by a very able mechanic, Mr. Wenham; but his engine never came much into favor. The only hot-air engines at present in use are Ryder's, Buckett's, and Bailey's, employed to a limited extent for small powers. I have not said anything of the thermal principles involved in the construction of these engines, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... verily, they destroy them all. Give them to the legal advocate; do they increase his knowledge, his perception to discover the points of his case, his readiness to apply the evidence, his ability to persuade a court and jury? No; they destroy them all. Give them to the mechanic; do they assist his ingenuity, his judgment, or his taste? No; they destroy them all. Give them to the laborer; do they add to his strength? Do they enable him to bear fatigue, to endure heat and cold? Can he do more work, or do it better? No; they ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... weighing out gingerbread nuts; but such an anomaly could not continue. No position could be suited to Mr. David Faux that was not in the highest degree easy to the flesh and flattering to the spirit. If he had fallen on the present times, and enjoyed the advantages of a Mechanic's Institute, he would certainly have taken to literature and have written reviews; but his education had not been liberal. He had read some novels from the adjoining circulating library, and had even bought the story of Inkle and Yarico, which had made him feel very sorry for poor Mr. Inkle; so ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... breaks a pedal, and when we dismount at Indjia, for our noontide halt, he discovers that his saddle-spring has snapped in the middle. As he ruefully surveys the breakage caused by the roughness of the Fruskagora roads, and sends out to scour the village for a mechanic capable of undertaking the repairs, he eyes my Columbia wistfully, and asks me for the address where one like it can be obtained. The blacksmith is not prepared to mend the spring, although he makes a good job of the pedal, and it takes a carpenter ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... all 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 ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... when he was a little boy, and his father drank himself to death, or something. He won't talk about his family much. He did say though, that his father was a mechanic. I believe that he tells Mr. Udell more about his ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... now," asserted Jerry. "He's a great chap, Mr. Dick is! About your age, too, I guess. Quite a mechanic and always tinkering with tools and machinery. If there's anything wrong with the motor boat he can usually fix her up all right. As for mending a car, he beats all the chauffeurs out. They know it and have to say so. Likely you've seen him fluking through the main street in his ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... race prejudice. But against all this were operating steadily two tremendous forces. In the race for industrial advantage which is at last the decisive test, free society was superior to slave society by as much as the freeman is superior to the slave. The advantage of the Northern farmer or mechanic over the negro slave was the measure of the advantage of the North over the South. In increase of wealth; in variety, intensity, and productiveness of social life; in immigration; in intellectual progress, the free States outstripped the slave States by leaps and bounds. And, again, in the conscience ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... cheaply; and the selling price depends on the relation between the necessity to buy on one hand, or to sell on the other. Diminish suddenly and largely the competition for the purchase of food, and the farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Smith, she had been housekeeper to Professor Whitland, a biologist who discovered her indispensability, and was only vaguely aware of the social gulf which yawned between the youngest son of the late Lord Bortledyne and the only daughter of Albert Edward Smith, mechanic. To the Professor she was Miss H. Sapiens—an agreeable, featherless plantigrade biped of the genus Homo. She was also thoroughly domesticated and cooked like an angel, a nice woman who apparently never knew that her husband had a Christian name, for she called him "Mr. Whitland" to the ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... saw no harm in Tristram's conversing with an ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at this moment Valentin de Bellegarde drew near. Newman, some weeks previously, had presented Madame de Cintre's youngest brother to Mrs. Tristram, for whose merits Valentin professed ...
— The American • Henry James
... the hands of a rich merchant, who, as soon as he bought me, took me to his house, treated me well, and clad me handsomely as a slave. Some days after, he asked me if I understood any trade. I answered that I was no mechanic, but a merchant, and that the pirates who sold me had robbed ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... before him? Do you say your prayers at night, laddie, before you go to your naked bed in the garret? I'll warrant Mary taught you that if she taught you nothing else. Pray every night then that Heaven may give you thew and heart and a touch of the old Hielan' glory that this mechanic body by my side has got through the world wanting. Oh, laddie, laddie, what a chance is yours! To hear the drum in the morning and see the sun glint on the line; to sail away and march with pipe or bugle in foreign countries; to have a thousand good companions round about the same camp-fires ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... its economic and educational status. The noblest monument to its labours is the State College in Raleigh, an institution which now has more than a thousand students, for the most part studying the mechanic arts and scientific agriculture. To this one college most North Carolinians to-day attribute the fact that their state in appreciable measure is realizing its great economic and industrial opportunities. From it ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to invent, and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of litter, which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our own carriage for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without disturbing her, and placed in a similar manner in the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... gaud Of glory; zeal that needs no fans Of banners; plain mechanic power Plied cogently in War now placed— Where War belongs— Among the trades ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... are no longer legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... transit dues; lived much at their own discretion in these 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his muscles to their greatest capacity of strength and flexibility, and this can only be done by observing strictly the laws of health, is physically an educated man. Every mechanic whose hands and brain have been trained to the expertness required by the master workman, is well-educated in his particular calling. The man who is an expert accountant, or a trained civil engineer, may know ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Provisional Prospectus of the Double Acting Rotary Engine Company. Also Mechanic's ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... give the farmer a practical working knowledge of electricity for use as light, heat, and power on the farm. The electric generator, the dynamo, is explained in detail; and there are chapters on electric transmission and house-wiring, by which the farm mechanic is enabled to install his own plant without the aid ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... pris'ner free, He shows in Park, and laughs with glee At creditors and Bum. Then who of any taste can bear The coarse, low jest and vulgar stare Of all the city scum, Of fat Sir Gobble, Mistress Fig, In buggy, sulky, coach, or gig, With Dobbin in the shay? At ev'ry step some odious face, Of true mechanic cut, will place Themselves plump in your way. Now onward to the Serpentine, A river straight as any line, Near Kensington, let's walk; Or through her palace gardens stray, Where elegantes of the day Ogle, congee, and talk. Here imperial fashion reigns, Here high bred ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... distinguish perfectly, and judge accurately what really is. Good sense has not so piercing an eye, but it has as clear a sight: it does not penetrate so deeply, but as far as it does see, it discerns distinctly. Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... religion—became much interested in the New Church. I furnished them suitable reading matter and visited them occasionally. Within a year they united with our Society. The man had formerly been a drinking man, but had ceased entirely. They were regular attendants on our church services. He was a mechanic. His well-behaved life restored public confidence in him, and he soon found constant employment at his trade. After about two years he felt a desire to take the Lord's Supper. I did not dissuade him; for, as he ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... ask you to send the fugitives to Canada. I don't know much of this Province but I beleaves that there is Rome enough for the colored and whites of the United States. We wants farmers mechanic men of all qualification &c., if they are not made we will make them, if we cannot make the old, we ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness. The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer,—all orders of men, look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils. The often-agitated question between agriculture and commerce has, from indubitable experience, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... more than a century behind this age of steam and lightning. To form an adequate idea of the mechanic and fine arts in that "city of the kings," we must transport ourselves to the Saxon period of European civilization. Both the material and the construction of the houses would craze Sir Christopher Wren. With fine quarries close ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the scepter of the globe. It is this which lies at the foundation of that aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into strange vagaries, so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose this, would find itself paralyzed; and in trade, and in the mechanic's shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity of work, which is a national characteristic. This conscience is one element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage of man to man, running through all classes,—the ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... to take the precaution of exchanging his foreign garb of a Swiss peasant for the dress of an English mechanic. The change did not make him look any more like his old self, for there was no longer any incongruity in his appearance. No soul on earth knew that he had not died many years ago, except Felicita. He might saunter down the streets of his native town in ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... handicraftsmen in the industrial and mechanic arts. It consists of authoritative statements by experts in every field for the exercise of ingenuity, taste, imagination—the whole sphere of the so-called ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... provided handsomely for them afterwards, for fear of their meeting with a second mischance, and thereby bringing a stain upon their family. But nowadays a petty alehouse-keeper, if he gives too much credit, a cheesemonger whose credit grows rotten, or a mechanic that is weary of living by his fingers-ends, makes no more ado, when he finds his circumstances uneasy, but whips into a saddle and thinks to get all things retrieved by the magic of those two formidable ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... first annual message to the Congress of the United States,] the powers enumerated may be effectually brought into action by laws promoting the improvement of agriculture, commerce and manufactures, the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic arts, and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound, to refrain from exercising them for the benefit of the people would be to hide in the earth the talent committed to our charge, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... about saving!" said one journeyman mechanic to another. "What can a man with a wife and three children save out of eight dollars ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur |
