"Mechanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had gone to New York City in his early twenties. He had had a good high school education and was a first-class mechanic. But somehow, he could not compete. He was slow and thoroughgoing and honest. He could not compete with the new type of workman, the man bred to do part work. When Little Jim was five, the Mannings had come back ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... suspecting it, by listening to his father teaching his brother; observe him making a wooden watch without the slightest knowledge of mechanism; and while a shepherd, studying, like an ancient Chaldean, the phenomena of the heavens, on a celestial globe formed by his own hand. That great mechanic, SMEATON, when a child, disdained the ordinary playthings of his age; he collected the tools of workmen, observed them at their work, and asked questions till he could work himself. One day, having watched some millwrights, the child was shortly after, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... tale of little ANNIE PROTHEROE. She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW; She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day - A gentle executioner ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... flighty the last three days, at times—knows me always, however —calls me "Walter"—(sometimes calls the name over and over and over again, musingly, abstractedly, to himself.) His father lives at Breesport, Chemung county, N. Y., is a mechanic with large family—is a steady, religious man; his mother too is living. I have written to them, and shall write again to-day—Erastus has not receiv'd a word from home ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... felled the forest, drained the marsh, and cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort, in the purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of generations and the progress of ages! As to-day, the common mechanic may equal in science, however inferior in genius, the friar [Roger Bacon] whom his contemporaries feared as a magician, so the opinions which now startle as well as astonish may be received hereafter as acknowledged axioms, and pass into ordinary practice. We cannot even tell how far ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mr. Geary's chief complaint against the Chinese was that they work too cheaply, are too industrious, and do not eat as much as an American. He obtained his information from Consul Bedloe, of Amoy. He says the average earnings of the Chinese adult employed as mechanic or laborer (in China) is five dollars per month, and states that this is ten per cent above the average wages ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... that we five men of Dr. Mawson's Expedition were landed on December 22, 1911, with a programme of work outlined by our leader. H. Hamilton was biologist, L. R. Blake surveyor and geologist, C. A. Sandell and A. J. Sawyer were wireless operators, the former being also a mechanic, and I was appointed meteorologist and leader of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... same way with regard to an unclear drawing, a new road, some bodily activity, etc. Anybody who has not acquired the habit might have to take all day to learn the business of dressing and undressing himself. And how difficult it is just to walk, a thing we do unconsciously, is confirmed by the mechanic who wants ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... rode towards Courthorne's homestead, and found its owner stripping a binder. Pieces of the machine lay all around him, and from the fashion in which he handled them it was evident that he was capable of doing what the other men at Silverdale left to the mechanic at the settlement. Payne wondered, as he watched him, who had taught the gambler to use spanner ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... 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, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... 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 ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is paid chiefly by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States? These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... comforted herself with the thought that good cooks were exceedingly scarce—so scarce, in fact, that even a cook with impedimenta in the shape of a small son might be reasonably certain of prompt and well-paid employment. Picturing herself as a kitchen mechanic brought a wry smile to her sweet face, but—it was honorable employment and she preferred it to being a waitress or an underfed and underpaid saleswoman in a department store. For she could cook wonderfully well and she knew ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... a few months afterwards—said she had no need for it," replied Peters. "I kept Phillipe on because he was a better mechanic than the other man. There ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... that a taxidermist should receive at least as much as a skilled mechanic and the experts both in commercial and museum work are ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... of the column, "the Corinthian capital of polished society;" they appealed to prejudices without number, to old attachments and young hopes; to the expectation of thousands who might one day become peers; they set up as a scarecrow, the spectre of all that was sordid, mechanic and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... horseback, Watt arrived in London, a stranger in a strange land, unknowing and unknown. But the fates had been kind for, burdened with neither wealth nor rank, this poor would-be skilled mechanic was to have a fair chance by beginning at the bottom among his fellows, the sternest yet finest of all schools to call forth and strengthen inherent qualities, and impel a poor young man to put forth his utmost ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... grant was made to provide for "the endowment, support and maintenance of at least one college, where the leading object should be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislature of the States may prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life." This act was supplemented in 1890 by an additional provision ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... wearing apparel, beds and bedding of the debtor, whatever his calling; and also the farming utensils and implements of husbandry of the farmer, two beasts of burden employed by him, and one cart or wagon; the tools and implements of a mechanic or artisan necessary to carry on his trade; the instruments and chests of a surgeon, physician, surveyor, and dentist; the law libraries of an attorney and counsellor; the cabin or dwelling of a miner, and his pick, rocker, wheelbarrow, and other implements ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... and Mistakes of the Press". Over the 'nom de guerre' of 'Papyrius Cursor,' a real Roman name, but as happy in its applicability as Thackeray's 'Manlius Pennialinus,' Whitefoord contributed many specimens of this mechanic wit to 'The Public Advertiser'. The 'Cross Readings' were obtained by taking two or three columns of a newspaper horizontally and 'onwards' instead of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... people is to go deeper, excavate their sensory impressions, play on their subconscious nerves, use liver pills or have a kidney taken out to convince them. Talk with almost any man of a certain type, no matter what he is, a banker, a lawyer, or a mechanic, after he is thirty years old, and his mind cannot really be budged. He is not really listening to you when you criticize him or differ ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... not inspiring. A machinist, or a mechanic, or a day laborer might have found a foot-hold. A man without handicraft was not in request in Stillwater. "What is your trade?" was the staggering question that met Richard at the threshold. He went from workshop to workshop, confidently and cheerfully at first, whistling softly between ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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 ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... not end by Nelson's urn Where an immortal England sits— Nor where your tall young men in turn Drank death like wine at Austerlitz. And when the pedants bade us mark What cold mechanic happenings Must come; our souls said in the dark, "Belike; but there ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... special efforts made by dualists to draw our attention here to the "wisdom of the Creator" and the design visible in his works. As a matter of fact, you will discover, on mature reflection, that on this theory the Creator is at bottom only playing the part of a clever mechanic or watch-maker; all these familiar teleological ideas of Creator and creation are based, in the long run, on a similar ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... Civil War and the Commonwealth caused great confusion and many defects in the registers. Very often the rector was turned out of his parish; the intruding minister, often an ignorant mechanic, cared naught for registers. Registrars were appointed in each parish who could scarcely sign their names, much less enter a baptism. Hence we find very frequent gaps in the books from 1643 to 1660. At Tarporley, Cheshire, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... navigation has been still more recently ascertained. When it was first proposed, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, said: "It is a pretty plan, but there is just one point overlooked: that the steam-engine requires a firm basis on which to work." Symington, the practical mechanic, put this theory to the test by his successful experiments, first on Dalswinton Lake, and then on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Fulton and Bell afterwards showed the power of steamboats in navigating the rivers of America ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Astra had been turned over to Maintenance. Maintenance asked no questions. It was that department's job to take the ship apart, fix what needed fixing, and put it. Ten minutes later Jacobs saw Armando Gomez was the mechanic detailed to check the ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... 1870, that Harte in the make-up of the Overland found an awkward space too much for an ordinary poem. An associate suggested that he write something to fit the gap; but Harte was not given to dashing off to order, nor to writing a given number of inches of poetry. He was not a literary mechanic, nor could he command his moods. However, he handed his friend a bundle of manuscript to see if there was anything that he thought would do, and very soon a neat draft was found bearing the title "On the Sinfulness of Ah Sin as Reported by Truthful James." ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... 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 Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... as to the abstract question, who first conceived the principle involved in sewing by machinery, or in respect to who first constructed a machine that would fulfill that idea; but so far as great results are concerned the world must be considered as indebted to Elias Howe, Jr., a New England mechanic, born and reared in obscurity, and at an early age thrown upon his own resources. He was born at Spencer, Massachusetts, July 9th, 1819. His father was a farmer and miller, but at sixteen he left home, engaging in a cotton mill. Space will not permit us to follow him through ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... teaching of this Blessed Father in his Philothea, where he says, "It is an error, nay, a heresy, to wish to exclude the highest holiness of life from the soldier's barrack, the mechanic's workshop, the courts of princes, or the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... circumstances such as to encourage them in such a work. We cannot begin too early to give them a bent towards culture which shall abide by them and raise them above the work-a-day world which will demand so large a share of their time and strength. The mechanic, the farmer, the man in any walk of life, who has early formed good habits of reading, is the one who will magnify his calling, and occupy the highest positions in it. And to the thousands of young people, in whose homes there is none of the atmosphere of culture or of the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... two of these settlers at hazard upon their holdings, and, although the year had been adverse, found them happy and hopeful. No. 1, who had been a mechanic, proposed to increase his earnings by mending bicycles. No. 2 was an agriculturist pure and simple, and showed me his fowls and pigs with pride. Here, however, I found a little rift within the rural lute, for on asking him how his wife liked the life he replied after a ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Whose every sentence Fashion makes a law; Who on mere credit his vain trophies rears, And founds his merit on our servile fears; Then we discard the workings of the heart, And nature's banish'd by mechanic art; Then, deeply read, our reading must be shown; Vain is that knowledge which remains unknown: Then Ostentation marches to our aid, And letter'd Pride stalks forth in full parade; 40 Beneath their care behold the work refine, Pointed each sentence, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 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 ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... thou? Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shall be shown In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forc'd to drink ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... countries;—rushing out from their stone towers ("walls fourteen feet thick"), to seize any herd of "six hundred swine," any convoy of Lubeck 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 to be had, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... to better. Naught care I, or know I, or should or could I trow, being a man of poetical turn and no base mechanic—no offence meant to yourself, Master Droop. But this I do say—and now mark me well—I say—and dare maintain it (and all shall tell ye that is a fair maintenance and a good champion), that for a sure and favorable inductance to the favors of the court there's no man living takes the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... faculty, nor stoop to any condescension, by which the horrors of his fate might be assuaged: he scorns to execute the lowest offices of menial services, particularly in attending those who are the objects of contempt or abhorrence; he is incapable of exercising any mechanic art, which might afford a happy though a scanty independence: shrunk within his dismal cell, surrounded by haggard poverty, and her gaunt attendants, hollow-eyed famine, shivering cold, and wan disease, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without definite aim or system. The pickaxe of his criticism demolishes, it never constructs. Thus his lassitude is that of a mechanic, not of an architect. The eyes, of a pale blue, once brilliant, are clouded now by some hidden pain, or dulled by gloomy sadness. Excesses have laid dark tints above the eyelids; the temples have lost their freshness. The chin, of incomparable distinction, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... a blacksmith. He was much more-a natural amateur mechanic-the only man in those early days in the little town of Warren, who could successfully tinker sewing-machines, repair clocks, or make a new casting for a broken Franklin heater. He was a hale, ruddy man who lived, worked and died with much peace. There were girls, but David ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... bravery, when not reinforced by other qualities, is of less and less consequence. The bold, adventurous youth who, years ago, would have been an embryo Murat, Messina, Espartero or Prim, would be rejected today to make room for a mechanic who had the skill to operate a machine, or for an aviator or an engineer who might be capable of solving in a crisis a problem of ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... my journey, yet I would not forget that it was the people and their fathers' deeds and sufferings that had led me to undertake this rather fatiguing enterprise; and long before I reached the Barricata, or Pra del Torno, I had a great enjoyment in being taken by a Vaudois mechanic, who left his work at Angrogna, and would have no acknowledgment but my thanks, in order to show me one of those wonderful hiding-places in the very heart of the mountains, where the God of the hill ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... "insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among us—Peter Wilkins—the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle—the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy—and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic or scientific operations; making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious parentheses, called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... place. Why should he be reared as a gentleman—he, a poor waif of the sea? Probably he is the son of some low mechanic, perhaps of a Northern mudsill, and my aunt—think of it, my aunt—must bring him up as a Southern gentleman!" The young man leaped up and began to pace the boathouse floor nervously. "I suppose she'll leave him a large legacy in ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... temporarily impossible, so the trio gazed eagerly around them. Just ahead, sat a shop girl in a shabby best dress, with a head of blonde, mismatched hair, and beside her, her escort, an Irish mechanic, who shifted his head from time to time as the unaccustomed collar scraped his neck. Across the aisle was a family of towheaded Swedes, the father self-conscious in his carefully pressed black suit; the mother, watchful of her two mischievous, blue-eyed urchins. Young gallants of the neighborhood ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... stone-cutter, but his sons had both completed their education in good schools in Alexandria. The elder, Antonius, who already had a house of his own and a wife and children, was an architect and artist-mechanic; the younger, Polykarp, was a gifted young sculptor. The noble church of the oasis-city had been built under the direction of the elder; Polykarp, who had only come home a month since, was preparing to establish and carry on works of great extent in his father's quarries, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... adds, "It is said he died in an hospital at Paris in 1740:" and observes that Le Blon was "very far from young when he knew him, but of surprising vivacity and volubility, and with a head admirably mechanic, but an universal projector, and with at least one of the qualities that attend that vocation, either a dupe or a cheat; I think," he continues, "the former, though, as most of his projects ended in air, the sufferers ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... secure. Great lenses are so sensitive that one cannot go near them without throwing them discernibly out of shape. It were easy to show that there is no solid earth nor immovable mountains. I came away saying to my friend, "I am glad God lets you into so much of his finest thinking." He is a mechanic, not a theologian. This foremost man in the world in his fine department was lately but a "greasy mechanic," an engineer in ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... motor car from the point of view of absolute control of it at every moment, the first thought of the mechanic is an adequate brake and an efficient regulator of speed, instruments antagonistic, but necessary to work simultaneously or alternately. The involuntary or vegetative nervous system is built upon the same principle. It supplies every organ ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... conducting them; but they should recollect that competency cannot be obtained without labour. Every trade—every profession in this respect, is subject to the same law—the lawyer, the physician, the tradesman, and the mechanic. This labour is required at our hands, even in an old community; how much more then is it called for in a new, where the ingenuity of men is put to trial to secure those means of accomplishing their ends which here are abundant. Now, it appears to me but consistent, that he who is obliged ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... trustful sympathy showed, without word said, that he, if no other, believed nothing to her disadvantage, but was as much her humble friend as ever; and to the hitherto self-reliant damsel, the blessedness of human sympathy, embodied in the looks and tones of the hard-handed mechanic, brought such healing and such schooling together, that for a long time she never said her prayers by her bedside without ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... could be entered upon. As then organized—in the autumn of 1878—a superintendent of the workshop had general direction of the trade department of the school. He was instructed to submit to the writer plans, in detail, for a regular course of shop instruction, and was given as assistants a skilled mechanic of unusual experience and ability, whose compensation was paid from the mechanical laboratory funds, and guaranteed by the writer personally, and another aid whose services were paid for partly by the Institute and partly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... ever. From the affectation of cosmopolitan indifference not AEschylus, not Pindar, not Dante's very self was more alien or more free than Shakespeare; but there was nothing of the dry Tyrtaean twang, the dull mechanic resonance as of wooden echoes from a platform, in the great historic chord of his lyre. "He is very English, too English, even," says the Master on whom his enemies alone—assuredly not his most loving, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... what? A faint murmur of interest rose as the last wrappings fell aside and revealed a somewhat-the-worse-for-wear typewriter. People glanced from it to the witness: some of those present recognized him as a young mechanic, a native of Hathelsborough, who had gone, a few years previously, to work in the neighbouring manufacturing city of Clothford—such began to ask themselves what he could have to do with this case and waited eagerly for ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... would be sold "at vendue," or, as we say, at auction; that a reward of five pistoles would be paid for the arrest of "a lusty negroe man" or an "indented servant" or an "apprentice lad," who had run away from his owner or master. Very rarely is a call made for a mechanic or a workman of ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... 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
... of the places where he taught are not known to me, though doubtless there is many an Ohio farmer, or mechanic, or, perchance, professional man, who is able to boast that he was partially educated by a President ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... first volume is all story and adventure, those that follow it will not be wholly given up to the details of the mechanic arts. The captain has a steam-yacht; and the hero of the first story has a fine sailboat, to say nothing of a whole fleet of other craft belonging to the nabob. The boys are not of the tame sort: they are not of the humdrum kind, and they are inclined to make things lively. In fact, they ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... me to any treacherous machination against either thy person or thy property. Thy daughter I loved, and love and shall ever love, because I deem her worthy of my love, and, if I dealt with her after a fashion which to the mechanic mind seems hardly honourable, I did but commit that fault which is ever congenial to youth, which can never be eradicated so long as youth continues, and which, if the aged would but remember that they were once young and would measure the delinquencies of others by their own and their own ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "Farmers' High School," which later became the Pennsylvania State College, was opened in central Pennsylvania. In 1862, in the midst of the greatest civil war in history, the American Congress passed the very important Morrill Act, which provided for the creation of a college to teach agriculture, mechanic arts, and military science in each of the American States. It was a decade before many of these institutions opened, and for a time they amounted to but little. They had but few students, little money, and the instruction ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... our "good society" and "fashionable world" every baseness and vulgarity that is invented outre mer, particularly in Paris. One woman returns to smoke cigars, in a magnificent home erected by a lucky mechanic or shopkeeper, as if such an indecency had ever been tolerated among the well-born and well-bred people of the social metropolis. Others, copying from their probable associates abroad, introduce obscene dances, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... 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, ...
— 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
... fell ill on the 4th September. Skilled labour such as theirs 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
... too, and she remembered that the front door opened directly into the parlor and the side entrance was popularly used instead. But a strange sister-in-law opened the side door. Maggie was married and living in Cincinnati. Oh, fine—a master mechanic, and there were twins. She started back toward Finley's, thinking of Gerald, and halfway she ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... miscreant who launched the slander. He deserves it for a long course of dastardly and venomous attacks, not merely upon Goldsmith, but upon most of the successful authors of the day. His name was Kenrick. He was originally a mechanic, but, possessing some degree of talent and industry, applied himself to literature as a profession. This he pursued for many years, and tried his hand in every department of prose and poetry; he wrote plays and satires, philosophical tracts, critical dissertations, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... continual struggle of 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 out of the ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... whistle came, faintly, and with something tremulous in its note; for the adventure, though it offered little novelty to the experience of the Scotland Yard man, was dangerously unique from the mechanic's point of view. But where the Right Hon. Walter Belford led it was impolitic, if not impossible, to decline to follow. Yet, the whistle spoke of a man not over-confident. "Severac Bablon" was a ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature—honor and religion. The peasant, or mechanic, imbibed the useful prejudice that he was advanced to the more dignified profession of arms, in which his rank and reputation would depend on his own valor; and that, although the prowess of a private soldier ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sister, He will help you at the washboard and the kitchen-sink as gladly as at the hour of prayer. Yes, busy mechanic, He will go with you and help you to swing the hammer, or handle the saw, or hold the plow in the toil of life, and you shall be a better mechanic, a more skilled workman, and a more successful man, because ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... in the 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 different ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... limited only to his profession, the deserving in all sciences had not only free access to him, but always found a welcome reception, and at his table might daily be seen together the naturalist, the antiquarian, the mathematician, and the mechanic, with all whom he was capable of conversing in their respective terms; here might be seen united the magnificence of a prince, with ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... free display, by representing the assemblages, and the fashion of discourse and manners, at fairs, revels, and other rendezvous of amusement; or in the field of rural employment, or on the village green, or in front of the mechanic's workshop. They could recount various anecdotes characteristic of the times; and repeat short dialogues, or single sayings, which expressed the very essence of what was to the population of the township or province instead of law ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... unorganized myriads that one can cover by the phrase "mechanics and engineers," if one uses it in its widest possible sense. At present it would be almost impossible to describe such a thing as a typical engineer, to predicate any universally applicable characteristic of the engineer and mechanic. The black-faced, oily man one figures emerging from the engine-room serves well enough, until one recalls the sanitary engineer with his additions of crockery and plumbing, the electrical engineer with his little tests and wires, the mining engineer, the railway maker, the motor ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... were all for Waller and Dryden. 'Chevy Chace' and 'Johnny Armstrong' were dear to Walton as to Scott, but through a century these old favourites were to be neglected, save by Mr. Pepys and Addison. Indeed, there is no more curious proof of the great unhappy change then coming to make poetry a mechanic art, than the circumstance that Walton is much nearer to us, in his likings, than to the men between 1670 and 1770. Gay was to sing of angling, but in 'the strong lines that are now in fashion.' All this while Piscator has been angling with worm and minnow to no purpose, though he picks up ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... here that Shakespeare lends Cleopatra, as he afterwards lent Coriolanus, his own delicate senses and neuropathic loathing for mechanic slaves with "greasy aprons" and "thick breaths rank of gross diet"; it is Shakespeare too and not Cleopatra who speaks of death as bringing "liberty." In "Cymbeline," Shakespeare's mask Posthumus dwells on the same idea. But these lapses are momentary; ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... two later, 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 ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... classes of your country. The possessions of the Church menaced and presented as an allurement to revolution and anarchy; the fortunes of rich proprietors pointed out for plunder of armed ruffians; and merchants and the mechanic, the husbandman and the manufacturer, burdened with contributions, excises, monopolies, duties on consumption, surrounded by officers and collectors of these odious internal customs; the man of letters and the legislator, the freeman ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... a capacity to augment them to an indefinite extent; 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... Snake, even in Snake form, if 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 ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Battery 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 ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... which the mother of a family, as well as a teacher or writer, is most sure to apply practically in her vocation. The last word on this aspect of the subject was said by a woman in a small Maine town. Her father had been a day laborer, her husband was a mechanic. She had five children, and, of course, did all the house-work. She also belonged to a club which studied French history. To a foolish expression of surprise that with all her little children she could find time to write a paper on Louis XVI she retorted ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... strong as a blacksmith's. They were two strong, athletic fellows, who showed in all their movements that elasticity and grace of limb which can only be acquired by exercise and which is so different to the deformity with which monotonous heavy work stamps the mechanic. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... know Deadwood Dick, or he would never have placed his life in jeopardy by performing an act so uninteresting to the party in question. Hugh Vansevere; let me see—I don't think I've got that registered in my collection of appellatives. Perhaps he is a new tool in the employ of the old mechanic." ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... should be conversant with Mechanics, and with what are called the Mechanic Powers. Certainly no species of knowledge is better suited to the taste and capacity of youth, and yet it seldom forms a part of early instruction. Every body talks of the lever, the wedge, and the pulley, but most people perceive, that the notions ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... of Ockham's eccentricities. He had a body that required a more vigorous animal life than his station gave scope for, and this had often led him to seek it in what the world calls low society; that he had been to sea as a sailor, and was now working as a mechanic on the iron work of 'The Great Eastern.' He had laid aside his title, and went in daily with the other workmen, requesting them to call him ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... discovers that the blood is not stationary but circulates, if Copernicus discovers that the earth goes round the sun and not the sun round the earth, those discoveries can easily be communicated in the most abbreviated form. If a mechanic invents an improvement on the telephone, or a social reformer puts some good usage in the place of a bad one, in a few years we shall probably all be using the improvement without even knowing what it is or saying Thank you. We may be ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... and are rather a poor attempt at burlesque humor—their chief feature being a pretended illiteracy —they would seem to bear no relation to this collection. He roomed that winter with a rugged, self-educated Scotchman—a mechanic, but a man of books and philosophies, who left an impress ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plan expressed considerable anxiety lest a colored mechanic with all colored assistants should not prove equal to so large and important an undertaking. The result shows how unfounded were ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... steadily, for a life-time, with the artisan's skilful hand, he labored at the craft. He is the very antithesis of the erraticisms and irregularities of genius. He went to his daily stint of work, by night and day, on sea or land, exactly as the merchant goes to his office, the mechanic to his shop. He wrote with a watch before him, two hundred and fifty words to fifteen minutes. But he had the most unusual faculty of direct, unprejudiced, clear observation; he trained himself to set down what he saw and to remember it. And he also had the constructive ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... land in spite of all other creditors. His store-bills or other debts may run up to hundreds of dollars, but his homestead cannot be taken to satisfy them by any process of law. This is the homestead law of the State. A single exception is made in favor of one creditor: the mechanic who has erected the buildings can hold what is called a mechanic's lien upon the property until his claim is satisfied. Advantage is often taken of this law for the purpose of defrauding creditors. In one instance a merchant who owned a good residence in a city and a valuable store-property, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the room, mounted his steed, and rode through the town towards the bridge. He was compelled to ride slowly through the streets, for he was recognised; and cheapman and mechanic rushed from house and from stall to hail the Man of the Land ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... apply for a position as mechanic's assistant in the electrical department of your shops. I am nineteen years old, and in good physical condition. On June 6 I shall graduate from Carthage High School, and after that date ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... 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
... had the same experience yourself many times. It all goes to show that if we are awake four times as long as usual, we do not make up for it by sleeping four times as long, but four times as soundly, as customary. The hard-working mechanic requires no more hours of sleep than the corner loafer, the active man of affairs no more ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... was apt to be poisoned at its source by questions of class; and I think it might have been in the talk about precedence, and who should be what, that my boy first heard that such and such a girl's father was a mechanic, and that it was somehow dishonorable to be a mechanic. He did not know why, and he has never since known why, but the girls then knew why, and the women seem to know now. He was asked to be one of the boys who held the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... done all this myself, without the voluntary help of any human being. I have used men as the mechanic uses tools, making them do his work, or as the potter uses clay, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... then he would naturally be conducted to the boiler, steam chest, shafts, and every part that belongs to a completed engine. To know that they are straight and in place as shown upon the plan and described by the specification, he has done all that is required of a master mechanic. Then it goes into the hands of the engineer, who waters, fires and conducts this artificial being on its journey. You as Osteopathic machinists can go no farther than to adjust the abnormal condition, in which you find the afflicted. Nature ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... given to the public, it began to be improved in various ways. Henry Stones, a mechanic of Horwich, near Bolton, substituted metal drawing rollers for Crompton's crude wooden rollers, doubtless copying the idea from Arkwright's ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... noon tomorrow, and keep it up till he gets an answer. Or, better, tell him to run his conveyer to his First Level terminal, and bring with him an extra suit of clothes appropriate to the role of journeyman-mechanic. I'll want to talk to him, and furnish him with special equipment. Got all that? Well, carry on with it, and bring your own paratimers, priests and mining operators, back with you as soon as you've taken care ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... a mechanic of some education, stirred to the heart by the abuses he saw, made an exhaustive examination of the New England mills; and he gives many details of the hours of labor, the wages of employees, and the abuses of power which he found everywhere among unscrupulous ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... would agree to let him go where and when he pleased without further pursuit from me, if he would let me install a telautograph in a neutral place which he could select and the other end in this laboratory. I myself do not know where the other place is. Only a mechanic sworn to secrecy knows and neither Murtha nor myself know him. If Murtha comes across, I have given my word of honour that before the world he shall remain a dead man, free to go where he pleases and enjoy such of his fortune as he was able to fix so that he could carry it ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file ...
— All Day September • Roger Kuykendall
... from a sub-base on his sole expeditions to chart the various mountains and ranges in the islands off north-east King Charles Land, within the Arctic Circle. He had only one partner, a mechanic, who stayed behind on his shorter trips. And therefore all manner of emergency devices were stowed in the cockpit of his plane: a tiny folding tent, an amazingly light sled, a large store of compressed food—and a large vial of Kundrenaline and a ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... because the theme is historical or realistic; whilst in stories of love and courtship as that of Rose-in-hood, the proportion may rise to one-fifth of the whole. And this is true to nature. Love, as Addison said, makes even the mechanic (the British mechanic!) poetical, and Joe Hume of material memory once fought a duel about a fair object ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... passions only operate occasionally, the interested find the object of their ordinary cares; their motive to the practice of mechanic and commercial arts; their temptation to trespass on the laws of justice; and, when extremely corrupted, the price of their prostitutions, and the standard of their opinions on the subject of good and of evil. Under this influence, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... the quince sauce. Even apples were luxuries we could not have and we greatly missed them. We cleared new ground, sowed turnip seed, dragged it in and raised some very large nice turnips. At this time there was not a wagon in the neighborhood, but Mr. Traverse, being a mechanic and ingenious, cut down a tree, sawed oft two short logs, used them for hubs and made the wheels for a cart. These he took to Dearbornville and had them ironed oft. He made the body himself and then had an ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... sent with me were not added to the funds of the establishment, but generously employed for my benefit by the governors, who were pleased with my conduct, and thought highly of my abilities. Instead of being bound 'prentice to a cordwainer or some other mechanic, by the influence of the governors, added to the fifty pounds and interest, as a premium, I was taken by an apothecary, who engaged to bring me up to the profession. And now, that I am out of the Foundling, we must not travel ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... regard to their domestics extends simply to the things they have contracted to do and the hours during which they have contracted to serve; otherwise than this, they have no more right to interfere with them in the disposal of their time than with any mechanic whom they employ. They have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of their own household, and servants can choose between conformity to these hours and the loss of their situation; but, within reasonable limits, their right to come and go at their own discretion, in their own ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... have it 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 ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... who was a member of Grace Church, but who lived in another part of the city, was advised by Dr. Conwell to start a mission in his neighborhood. The mechanic pleaded ignorance and his inability to acquire sufficient education to enable him to do any kind of Christian work. On Sunday morning Dr. Conwell wove into his sermon an historical sketch of Elihu Burritt, that poor boy with meagre school advantages, who bound out to a blacksmith, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... by the mighty progress of this new element, this outpouring of wealth as from some unseen source; and in many instances their names only are recognised in these old and rickety mansions, now the habitation of the mechanic and the plebeian. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... have, in fact, heard this very criticism reiterated by various authorities ever since those prehistoric days when we began to lisp in numbers. Yet somehow we perversely continue to "mosaic" along in the same old way! But then, we have never claimed to possess "true art"; we are merely a metrical mechanic. "A New Point of View In Home Economics", a clever article by Miss Eleanor Barnhart, concludes ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the city I found a 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine old trees, the majestic building at their feet, with the noble river beyond, glistening in the moonlight, appear in all their beauty, and under their most favourable aspect; the voices of the boys, singing their evening hymn, are borne gently on the air; and the humblest mechanic who has been lingering on the grass so pleasant to the feet that beat the same dull round from week to week in the paved streets of London, feels proud to think as he surveys the scene before him, that he belongs to the country which has selected such a spot as a retreat for its oldest ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... 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 will ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and nephew having no such talents, we must do the best we can," Mr. Ffrench stated, with his most precise coldness. "Being well-born and well-bred, he has no taste for a mechanic's labor or for circus performances with automobiles in public. Who ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... they disdained the language and the sciences of the Greeks; and the vain sophist, or grave philosopher, who had enjoyed the flattering applause of the schools, was mortified to find that his robust servant was a captive of more value and importance than himself. The mechanic arts were encouraged and esteemed, as they tended to satisfy the wants of the Huns. An architect in the service of Onegesius, one of the favorites of Attila, was employed to construct a bath; but this work was a rare example of private luxury; and the trades of the smith, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... the passion for work of the true artist. Until he laid aside his pencil from illness, at the age of sixty-six, he was constantly in his painting-room from ten till four, daily, "laboring" as he himself said, "as hard as a mechanic working for ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... armchair, sipped his rare old wine. It was three years 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... committee is impressed with the belief that this is an utterly vicious system, and that it is responsible for much of the ill-feeling and bad blood displayed by the working classes. No self-respecting laborer or mechanic likes to feel that the man beside him may be a spy from a detective agency, and especially so when the laboring man is utterly at the mercy of the detective, who can report whatever he pleases, be it true or false....[20] Whether ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... is not 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
... armory would be incomplete without some allusion to the inventor of the machinery for turning irregular forms adapted to the manufacture of gun-stocks. This was the invention of Thomas Blanchard, then a citizen of Springfield and now of Boston,—whose reputation as a mechanic has since become world-wide,—and was first introduced into the armory about the year 1820. Before this the stocks were all worked and fitted by hand; but the marvellous ingenuity of this machinery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... fanciful hero, That my heart has pictured so fair: I must stoop from my realm of wild fancy, And take what may fall to my share. Some plain, honest, working mechanic, May be the prize I may call mine, But if shaped like a man he'll be better, Nor ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... the tomb of some Scandinavian chief, interred with his arms and his wealth, perhaps also with his immolated wife, that what he loved best in life might not in death be divided from him? or was it the abode of penance chosen by some devoted anchorite of later days? or the idle work of some wandering mechanic, whom chance, and whim, and leisure, had thrust upon such an undertaking?" What follows this sober passage is the work of the poet. "Sleep," continues Norna, "had gradually crept upon me among my lucubrations, when I was startled ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... years ago at a suburban book stall, a perfect copy of Moxon's Mechanic Exercises, now a scarce work. The volumes were uncut, and had the original marble covers. They looked so attractive in their old fashioned dress, that I at once determined to preserve it. My binder soon made for ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... with an eye to the delights of 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, he smoothed them out; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pet dream for you—you will never know how often I have dreamed it, Allyn—and let you throw over the idea of being a doctor, I shall expect you to keep on for two more years in your school and to take a good stand there. A mechanic should be as well-balanced mentally as a doctor. I want you to know some classics, some history. Then, after that, if you still feel the same way about this, you may fit for any of the good technological schools you may choose, and I will do all I can to help you carry out your plans for your ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... soon the armoured floor was echoing to the "roarin' game," the largest, noblest, brotherliest game known to mortal men. The laird and the cottar were there, the homely shepherd and the village snab who cobbled his shoes, the banker and the carter, the manufacturer and the mechanic—all on that oft-quoted platform which is ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... as old as the thirteenth century, is visibly borrowed from the mechanic corporations; in which an apprentice, after serving his time, obtains a testimonial of his skill, and a licence to practise his trade and mystery. It is not my design to depreciate those honours, which could never gratify or disappoint my ambition; ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... could build in another way. He was also clever in his business. When his apprenticeship was over he strapped on his knapsack, and sang the mechanic's song:— ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen |
