"Mechanism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... They glide on as if by gravitation, in fluid figures, dictated by the conformation of the country, like water from a burst reservoir; mostly snake- shaped, but occasionally with batrachian and saurian outlines. In spite of the immensity of this human mechanism on its surface, the winter landscape wears an impassive look, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... picked up a heavy cane from the hall-stand, and brought it down on the transmitter with all his strength. The delicate mechanism jangled and tingled, then the front fell off at their feet. The diaphragm ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... spellbound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well. For an instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator—such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... bodies, depends. We breathe that they may breathe, not that we may do so; we only care about oxygen in so far as the infinitely small beings which course up and down in our veins care about it: the whole arrangement and mechanism of our lungs may be our doing, but is for their convenience, and they only serve us because it suits their purpose to do so, as long as we serve them. Who shall draw the line between the parasites which are part of us, and the parasites which are not ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... gearing to reduce the number of revolutions to those possible for a large screw, this member is made very small, and allowed to revolve three thousand times a minute, so that the requisite power is obtained with great simplicity of mechanism, which further decreases friction. The shafts, and even the wires connecting the batteries with the motors, are made large and hollow. Though the primary battery pure and simple, as the result of great recent advances ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... up. "Now five minutes into the past." He set the other dial. Holding the cube in his hand he looked at his watch. "It is six minutes before three o'clock. I shall now activate the mechanism—by placing the cube on the platform—at exactly three o'clock. Therefore, the cube should, at five minutes before three, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform, five minutes before ...
— Two Timer • Fredric Brown
... has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... important point for you to remember, Max, that although the signal cannot be seen from the box, if the mechanism had gone wrong, or anyone tampered with the arm, the automatic indicator would at once have told Mead that the green light was showing. Oh, I have gone very thoroughly into the technical ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... to the powers of the body, that is, no one has as yet been taught by experience what the body can accomplish solely by the laws of nature, in so far as she is regarded as extension. No one hitherto has gained such an accurate knowledge of the bodily mechanism, that he can explain all its functions; nor need I call attention to the fact that many actions are observed in the lower animals, which far transcend human sagacity, and that somnambulists do many things ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... same time, and began to read Latin at six years old, after which, for some years, I read it daily. In this branch of study, first by my father, and afterwards by a tutor, I was trained to quite a high degree of precision. I was expected to understand the mechanism of the language thoroughly, and in translating to give the thoughts in as few well-arranged words as possible, and without breaks or hesitation,—for with these my father had ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... piercing whistle broke suddenly on the silence settling down over the whilom busy precincts, and as the rhythmic measure of the engine bell rang farewell chimes, a pyramid of sparks leaped high, and the mighty mechanism fled down the track, hunting its own echoes. The man in charge of the express office came out, looked up and down the street; yawned, lighted his pipe, and after locking the office, wended ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... explain to the reader the general principles on which the political organisations of the counties and townships of the United States rest, I have thought it expedient to choose one of the states of New England as an example, to examine the mechanism of its constitution, and then to cast a ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... at this point that Montague dropped out of the race, and took to studying from the outside the mechanism of this young poet's conversation. Strathcona flouted the idea of a moral sense; but in reality he was quite dependent upon it—his recipe for making epigrams was to take what other people's moral sense made them ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... leviathan with a heart of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing out the human atom standing in its way, with nirvanic calm, the agony of destruction sending never a jar, never the faintest tremour through all that prodigious mechanism of wheels and cogs. He went to his club and ate his supper alone, in gloomy agitation. He was sombre, brooding, lost in a dark maze of gloomy reflections. However, just as he was rising from the table an incident occurred ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... immediate and adequate. Yet what was it? He did not ask; he had not got beyond the mere experience, and the old questioning habit was in abeyance. Each new and great emotion has its dominating moment, its supreme occasion, before taking its place in the modulated moral mechanism. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... render impotent. Psychological dominance means the ability to destroy, defeat, and neuter the will of an adversary to resist; or convince the adversary to accept our terms and aims short of using force. The target is the adversary's will, perception, and understanding. The principal mechanism for achieving this dominance is through imposing sufficient conditions of "Shock and Awe" on the adversary to convince or compel it to accept our strategic aims and military objectives. Clearly, deception, confusion, misinformation, ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... (1) of the payment of bounties, (2) of the levying of duties to promote any one form of industry, and (3) of appropriations for internal improvements. Here was a monument to the battle over these matters in the Federal Congress. As to the mechanism of the new Government it was the same as the old except for a few changes of detail. The presidential term was lengthened to six years and the President was forbidden to succeed himself. The President was given the power ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... "Inexorable death!" cried he; "get me my Horace. How beautifully the sweet poet consoles us for these misfortunes!" Oh, can these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of genius—he wants its bones ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... and absorption could lead to the highest consummation of life, also showed that a new form of religion was at hand. In the philosophy of the Brahmanic period, the transition is made from the service of gods external to man, by the mechanism of rites, to the acknowledgment of a divine being with whom man feels himself to be inwardly akin and to whom he draws near by his own spiritual effort. In this movement, to which we learn that members of the lay aristocracy and even women of intellectual ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... three subjects which I have hardly anything upon; astrology, mechanism, and the infallible way of winning at play. I have never cared to preserve astrology. The mechanists make models, and not books. The infallible winners—though I have seen a few—think their secret too valuable, and prefer mutare quadrata rotundis—to turn dice into coin—at the gaming-house: ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... male and female, and through this cordon Thompson seldom broke for confidential talk with her. When he did Sophie baffled him with her calm detachment, a profound and ever-increasing reserve—as if she had ceased to be a woman and become a mere, coldly beautiful mechanism for seeing about shipments of bandage stuff, for collecting funds, and devising practical methods of raising more funds and ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... silent blows. The mechanism was here to open this manual; but it was now clasped from within and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... a group of figures, images, symbols, enable us to pass for a few moments into a deep of the mind that had hitherto been too subtle for our habitation. As a deep of the mind can only be approached through what is most human, most delicate, we should distrust bodily distance, mechanism and loud noise. ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... an automobile when you don't understand the mechanism," added Joe. "As long as everything goes all right you go sailing along, but let something go wrong, and you're up a tree right away. You haven't any idea of where to look for ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... handle it," said I, and laid it down. But the next moment I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Rip's bubble. At a nod, the spaceman slipped it on his head. Rip reached up and gave it a quarter turn. The locking mechanism clamped into place. He turned his belt ventilator control on full, and the space suit puffed out. When it was fully inflated, he watched the pressure gauge. It was steady. No leaks in suit or helmet. He let the pressure go ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the contrary. But supposing they had got some tremendous sacred sanction—some holy thing, some book or gospel or some new prophet from the desert, something which would cast over the whole ugly mechanism of German war the glamour of the old torrential raids which crumpled the Byzantine Empire and shook the walls of Vienna? Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the Covenant which ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... couldn't be said for the unfortunates who swabbed the floors, scraped out the jets, realigned the drive mechanism, or did any other tidying work. Their jobs were never done; they always suffered from the nagging thought that just a little more work might bring the inspection rating up ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... a displacement, or to numerous other conditions. No one can tell the cause who is not properly prepared to do so and who is not fully acquainted with the physical condition. The sewing machine runs hard and perhaps makes a noise. It requires a mechanic who is familiar with the mechanism of the machine to find the cause of the trouble. So it is with the human body. It requires a mechanic who is familiar with the structure of the body to discover the cause of the trouble. And yet people will continue to pour into their bodies drugs, harmless and ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... superb white silk. With a gentle, uniform movement, which might be regulated by the wheels of a delicate piece of clockwork, the tip of the abdomen rises and falls, each time touching the supporting base a little farther away, until the extreme scope of the mechanism is attained. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... maintaining a fire right on the heads of their assailants, the besiegers contrived hanging roofs of strong rope-work netting, laid over with a thick covering of raw hides. These roofs were to be worked up and down by mechanism, and it was calculated that by their sloping position they would throw off the shot and shell of the garrison into the sea. Above eighty gun-boats and bomb-ketches were to second the operations of the floating batteries, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... mingling currents of wisdom and folly, ignorance and knowledge, truth and falsehood, weakness and force, the noble and the base, can analyze a systematized contradiction, and follow through its secret wheels, springs, and levers a phenomenon of moral mechanism? Who can define the Jesuits? The story of their missions is marvellous as a tale of chivalry, or legends of the lives of saints. For many years, it was the history of New France and of the wild ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... conservatory through which she had flitted aeons and aeons before to meet her lover. She went to her room and changed into her own clothes. The suit that had belonged to Rufus so long ago she laid away with an odd reverence, still scarcely knowing what she did, driven as it were by a mechanism that worked without any ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... is so adjusted that it will place its passenger exactly upon the surface of your world. It requires no cooperation from this end. When I step under the arch I merely close a black lever there. Inter-dimensional force immediately catapults me to your Earth. Then the automatic mechanism of the gate will within half a minute of my departure release an explosion that will shatter everything within a radius of a mile here, and so prevent the Council of Three from even guessing ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... himself. In the first place, he must have been very observing. He understood the construction of a printing-press so well, that he could put an old one into running order, youth as he was, when its proprietor was unable to do it. This is more remarkable, because he was not obliged to study the mechanism of a printing-press in order to work it. Doubtless many a person operates this and other machines without giving any particular attention to their structure. But a class of minds are never satisfied until they understand whatever commands their attention. They are inquisitive to learn ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... little bit of the varnish had been broken off and the reddish wood underneath was visible. The top was much better constructed than the cheap toys sold in the village. It was hollow and contained in its interior a mechanism started by a pressure on the upper end. Once set in motion the little top spun about the room for ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... progress of science consists in the perpetual correction of the errors and falsehoods which preceding minds conceived to be the correct answers they received from Nature. It is the supernatural within us,—namely, Mind,—which can alone guess at the mechanism of the natural, namely, Matter. A stone cannot question ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you need not fast or watch your arms overnight in order to understand it. Look at the nice setting of the mortises; mark how the cover fits; how smooth is the working of that spring drawer. Observe that this bit of carving, which seemed mere ornament, is really a vital part of the mechanism. Note, moreover, how balanced and symmetrical the whole design is, with what economy and foresight every part is fashioned. It is not only an ingenious structure, it is a handsome bit of furniture, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... to us that the solar system is a carefully-ordered mechanism, a manifestation of a magnificent life, of which man is but a small part. Nevertheless, it takes up that small part which immediately concerns us, and treats it exhaustively under three ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... to thy mind?" Dolores cried, tossing to him a golden ball which by some amazing internal mechanism played fairy chimes as it ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... original physical endowment, die young. The reason is that they have either been overdeveloped, or at some time they have overtaxed their bodies so in a supreme effort at vanquishing their opponents that a part of the vital mechanism has been seriously affected. Then when they settle down to business life they fail to take good care of ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... ingenious but now twisted and tangled series of minute wires and electro-magnets in the delicate mechanism now broken open before us. Delicate brushes led the ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... auroral hour, who can divorce me from it? Mystic, deep as the world's centre, are the roots I have struck into my Native Soil; no tree that grows is rooted so. From noblest Patriotism to humblest industrial Mechanism; from highest dying for your country, to lowest quarrying and coal-boring for it, a Nation's Life depends upon its Land. Again and again we have to say, there can be no true Aristocracy but ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... in the mechanism of Cleggett's gun. With an oath he flung the weapon to the deck. A hand thrust another one into his grasp, and Lady Agatha's voice said in his ear, "Take this ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Subsequently he became a professor at Princeton and later its President. He was a prolific and successful writer. His book on Congressional Government, for example, went through twenty-four impressions before he became President of the United States. The State, an account of the mechanism of government in ancient and modern times, and some of his portrayals of American history were hardly less in demand. His election as Governor of New Jersey in 1910 and his election to the presidency two years later have ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... piano does not differ from any other piano, save that its mechanism is in some way adapted to suit the requirements of a tropical climate. Pianos of American manufacture are popular in Cuba; but Pleyel's instruments are preferred by some, on account of their soft ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... MARY, a lady skilled in mathematics and physics, born at Jedburgh; was brought up at Burntisland and Edinburgh; contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Society; wrote a book entitled the "Mechanism of the Heavens" on the suggestion of Lord Brougham, as a popularisation of Laplace's "Mechanique Celeste," which was followed by her "Connection of the Physical Sciences," "Physical Geography," and "Molecular and Microscopic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... body everything has an object without a doubt. The eyes especially bear such evident, such proven, such admirable relation to the rays of light; this mechanism is so divine, that I should be tempted to take for a delirium of burning fever the audacity which denies the final causes of ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... desperate charge. Then for some minutes the pele mele was confused and indistinct—blows blind and at random—death coming no man knew whence or how; till discipline and steadfast order (which the Saxons kept, as by mechanism, through the discord) obstinately prevailed. The wedge forced its way; and, though reduced in numbers and sore wounded, the Saxon troop cleared the ring, and joined the main force drawn up by the fort, and guarded in ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... invented modifications of the rifle. The Kentucky[1] [Footnote 1: The technical name for the long, heavy, small-calibred rifle, in which the thickness of the metal outside the bore is about equal to the diameter of the bore.] rifle is to American mechanism what the chronometer is to English, a speciality in which rivalry by any other nation is at this moment out of the question. An English board of ordnance may make a series of experiments, and in a year or two contrive an Enfield ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... that limitation, it may seem strange to my readers that I have not had more to say of the wonder excited in my mind by the number and character of the great mechanical inventions and applications unknown in my day, which contribute to the material fabric and actuate the mechanism of your civilization. For example, although this was very far from being my first air trip, I do not think that I have before referred to a sort of experience which, to a representative of the last century, must naturally have been nothing less than astounding. I ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... thrust her arm through her muff so that she could take both Mary's hands. She pressed them tightly, her fingers jerking as if by mechanism. "I've come—I've got to throw myself on ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... simultaneously, at twelve open doors, twelve knights in armor, retiring one after another, as the hour struck. The time-piece then had superseded the sun-dial and hour-glass: the mechanical arts had attained no slight degree of perfection. But passing over all ingenious mechanism, making no mention here of astronomical discoveries, some of them surprising enough, it is especially for the Algebraic analysis that we must thank the Moors. A strange fascination, doubtless, these crafty men found in the cabalistic characters and hidden processes of reasoning peculiar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... place to describe its anatomy or its nervous mechanism or the newer instruments of precision in estimating the heart function, but they may be briefly itemized. It has now been known for some time that the primary stimulus of cardiac contraction generally occurs at the upper ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... ways of constructing a gun-trap. Of course a gun is the principal part of the mechanism, and the trigger pulled by a string is the main point of the contrivance. In some countries the bait is tied to the string, and the animal on seizing the bait tightens the string, draws the trigger, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... consist of figures of speech, images, and technical devices. It may well be, as Macaulay predicts, that the enlightened world will indeed resent and cease to practise "illusions" on the imagination, or on any other faculty. It may be the case also that the stock poetical diction and mechanism of Addison's time, with the "Delias" and "Phyllises," "nymphs," "swains," "lyres," and other tinsel elegancies in which it delights, will be—nay, are already—the abomination of a discerning world. But if by "poetry" ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... valuable machinery scaled and pitted with rust, Stern's brows contracted with a feeling akin to pain. The engineer loved mechanism of all sorts; its care and use had been ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Man's mechanism stands at the center of the universe with telegraph-lines extending in every direction. It is a marvelous pilgrimage he is making through life while myriad influences stream in upon him. It is no small thing to carry such a mind for three-score years under the glory of the heavens, through ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... ranger—all the scene swayed before him. He remembered the gracious vision that had saluted him; he shuddered at the crime from which he was rescued. Pity him because he knew naught of the science of optics; of the bewildering effects of a sudden burst of light upon the delicate mechanism of the eye; of ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... spirituality of religion, of maintaining strict fidelity to scriptural doctrine, of giving persevering illustration of the fellowship of believers, nor in upholding the expansion of home and foreign missions, nor in ceaseless efforts to promote social advancement. "There is no rigid system of Church mechanism, nor restraining ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... weapons submitted to him for approval; finally selecting a six-shot magazine rifle, which was not only a most excellent weapon in all other respects, but one especially commending itself to him on account of the simplicity of its mechanism, which he believed would prove to be a very strong point in its favour when put into the hands of such comparatively unintelligent persons as he strongly suspected the rank and file of the Cuban insurgents would prove to be. He also decided upon an exceedingly useful pattern of sword-bayonet ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the first importance that the mechanism of the oven to be used, be thoroughly understood by the cook, and she should test its heating capacity under various conditions, with a light, quick fire and with a more steady one; she should carefully note the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... bit of mechanism, the reply to her rhetorical question came down to her from heaven. It came in the shape of a thunder-roll that began far off and reverberated from mountain to mountain; then muttered itself into silence in the more ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... between each two signal posts is termed a block. From the signal posts the trains in day time are signalled by wooden arms termed semaphores, and at night by lanterns. The arms may be moved by hand or by automatic mechanism depending in part on electricity for carrying out its functions. Thus in the Westinghouse system the semaphores are moved by pneumatic cylinders and pistons, whose air valves are opened and shut by the action of solenoid magnets, q. v. The ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... St. Paul's to be burned, and on fourteen of them the sentence was carried out, Paul's Cross echoed with renunciation of the Pope's authority. The miraculous rood of Bexley, in Kent, having been exposed as a fraud there, was brought up to Paul's Cross, February, 1538, and the mechanism having been shown to the indignant audience, it was committed ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... twisted sort of smile which the girl could not but find attractive, somehow. He said: "Why, but this heart thumping here inside me may stop any moment like a broken clock. Here is Euripides writing better than I: and here in my body, under my hand, is the mechanism upon which depend all those masterpieces that are to blot the Athenian from the reckoning, and I have no control ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to the execution were written not printed, and, excepting the bungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went off with more than usual good order. Every body feels relieved to night, because half of the ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... after Tom Swift had announced his decision to start for the city of gold, and Mr. Damon had said he would accompany the young inventor, there was a silence in the workshop. Then Mr. Swift laid aside the delicate mechanism of the new model gyroscope on which he had been working, came over to ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... Robeck has hitherto thrown cold water. He thought, as we thought, that the Army would save his ships. But our last battle has shown him that the Army would only open the Straits at a cost greater than the loss of ships, and that the time has come to strike home with the tremendous mechanism of the Fleet. On that basis he quickly came to terms with the views ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... brass-bound, ticking box from the bed, and must have adjusted the mechanism in a way Blake or Joe did not notice, for the "click-click" stopped at once, and the room seemed curiously still ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... the wall. It was divided into three parts; the lower part contained a universal calendar; in the middle was an astrolabe, and in the superior division were seen the three wise men and the Virgin Mary carved in wood; the wise men bent every hour before the Virgin, by means of a peculiar mechanism, which at the same time put in motion a chime of harmonious sounds and a cock crowing and flapping ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... composition, led to his becoming, in the end, perhaps the most perfect of English sonnet-writers. In youth, it was one of his pleasures to engage in exercises of sonnet-skill with his brother William and his sister Christina, and, even then, he attained to such proficiency, in the mere mechanism of sonnet structure, that he could sometimes dash off a sonnet in ten minutes—rivalling, in this particular, the impromptu productions of Hartley Coleridge. It is hardly necessary to say that the poems produced, under ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... from that of an engine; but also from that of animals in whose members the mechanism is so complex as to give them a resemblance to engines. The dart of the common house-fly, for instance, in full strength, is a more wonderful movement than that of a swallow. The mechanism of it is not only more minute, but the swiftness of the action so much greater, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... themselves quite unnecessary pain and fatigue from lifting, pulling and carrying weights in the wrong way. Ability to carry and lift or move is not so much dependent upon absolute strength as it is on knowing how. The whole body, so far as it is a physical mechanism, may be thought of as a series of levers, of which the muscles, bones, and joints make up the parts and are fulcrum, power arm or weight arm as the case may be. Without going into the details of bodily structure or even knowing the names of the different bones and muscles, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... dozen units of time and mechanism have to mesh perfectly. The odds are against that happening. After all, you've got to remember, what we're attempting ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... inflated through the gills. These two reservoirs are capable of containing a considerable volume of air; and as the fish has the power of filling or emptying them at will, they no doubt play an important part in the mechanism of its ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... how deep the sciopero went. In our hotel we knew of it only the second day through the failure of the morning rolls, for there had been no baking overnight. Most of the in-door service was of Swiss or other foreign extraction, and the mechanism of our comfort, our luxury, was operated as usual. Our floor facchino, or porter, went to the meeting of the unions in the evening, being an Italian. Otherwise the strike fell especially on the helpless and guiltless foreigner, who might be, and very often was, in sympathy with the strikers. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... lowered, and an ingenious system of counterpoises renders the movement equally easy at all altitudes. The observer then takes his station in one of the galleries which give access to the eye-piece; and when the right moment has arrived, the star enters the field of view. Powerful mechanism drives the great instrument, so as to counteract the diurnal movement, and thus the observer can retain the object in view until he has made his measurements or finished ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... attained that great result of the novel which has been noted in Defoe, in Richardson, and in others—the result of what the French vividly call enfisting the reader—getting hold of his attention, absorbing him in a pleasant fashion. The mechanism was often too mechanical: taken with the author's steady and honest, but somewhat inartistic determination to explain everything it sometimes produces effects positively ridiculous to us. With the proviso of valeat quantum, it is not quite unfair to dwell, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... been spoken. There was something lacking in the so-called civilized man's economy—a lack which his philosophy failed to account for, but which was not observable among animals and primitive men. There, the economy of the infinite cosmic mechanism which binds and holds all manifestations of life in one harmonious whole was too apparent to even suggest the detachment of a single form of life from this whole, but with the civilized man it was different. He alone ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... most of us thought it was some mechanism of Parsket's still at work and we were in the queerest mixture of fright and doubt. I think everyone looked at Parsket. And suddenly the ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... quickly through the house to the attached garage. He climbed into the groundcar, started the engine, and opened the garage door by the remote control mechanism on the dashboard. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... temperature dancing up and down like a mad thing between a hundred and one and a hundred and three? I'm dashed if I like the looks of her at all, at all, Miss Bilson; and I am well acquainted with her constitution and her temperament. She's as delicate a piece of feminine mechanism as it's ever been my fortune to handle, and has been so from a child. Mind and body so finely interwoven that you can't touch the one without affecting the other—that is where danger comes in.—And I am glad to find she has so competent a nurse as Mary Fisher—a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... music, then each class at the Academy—four companies—came out upon the grassy plain upon the double-quick. Their motions were light and swift, and yet so accurately timed that each company seemed one perfect piece of mechanism. A cadet stood at a certain point with a small color flying. Abreast of this their advance was checked as suddenly as if they had been turned to stone, and the entire corps was in line. Then followed a series of skilful manoeuvres, in which Christine was much interested, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... that Moxon shifted his king. All at once the thought came to me that the man was dumb. And then that he was a machine—an automaton chess-player! Then I remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me of having invented such a piece of mechanism, though I did not understand that it had actually been constructed. Was all his talk about the consciousness and intelligence of machines merely a prelude to eventual exhibition of this device—only a trick to intensify the effect of its mechanical ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... kindly received is unquestionably a pleasing internal commotion, out of which arises a not less pleasing secondary sensation, which the unthinking vulgar call conceit, but which is in reality an increased consciousness of life, and a most important part of the mechanism by which a man is advertised of his ability to serve his fellows, and stirred up to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the orthodox quote it as much as the others—always a bad sign. It tickles these anthropomorphic fancies, which are at the bottom of all their creeds. Imagine yourself playing at chess, not with an angel, but with an automaton, an admirably constructed automaton whose mechanism can outwit your brains any day: calm and strong, if you like, but no more playing for love than the clock behind me is ticking for love; there you have a much clearer notion of existence. A much clearer notion, and a much more satisfactory notion too, I say. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... said he, "a piece of mechanism entirely new. At the first serious attempt upon your lock, an invisible plate will open of itself and vomit forth a pretty copper bullet of the weight of a mark—which will knock down the intruder, and not without a loud report. What do ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by Alexander in his victories, and by statues, and columns, and sculptures, and gilded ornaments of every kind. There were images of sirens on the entablatures near the roof, which, by means of a mechanism concealed within, were made to sing dirges and mournful songs. The expense of this edifice, and of the games, shows, and spectacles connected with its consecration, is said by the historians of the day to have been a sum which, on calculation, is found equal to ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... drawn over the framework beneath, or of weight where it falls away from it—these were not the things that most compelled his interest or in which he was most successful. For the human figure as a figure, for the inherent beauty of its marvellous mechanism, he did not greatly care. The problems of bulk and mass and weight and movement which have occupied sculptors from the beginning were not especially his problems. It may have been due to the nature of the commissions he received ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... attendants were very kind to us, one of them accompanying us to the top, and as the lighthouse was 175 feet high, we had a great number of steps to climb. We had never seen the interior of a lighthouse before, and were greatly interested in the wonderful mechanism by which the flashlight was worked. We were much impressed by the incalculable value of these national institutions, especially in such dangerous positions as we knew from experience prevailed on those stormy coasts. We were highly delighted with ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... reassembled in a few hours; so that unfordable streams or impossible bits of country can be crossed piecemeal. Its enormous wheels are set wide apart. The brake is worked by a crank at the rear, like a reversal of the starting mechanism of a motor car. Bolted to the frame on either side between the front and rear wheels are capacious cupboards, and two stout water kegs swing to and fro when the craft is under way. The net carrying capacity of such a wagon is from three to four ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... deck. Just beyond this stood the most important part of the vessel—the lantern-house. This was a circular wooden structure, above six feet in diameter, with a door and small windows. Inside was the lantern—the beautiful piece of costly mechanism for which the light-ship, its crew, and its appurtenances were maintained. Right through the centre of this house rose the thick unyielding mast of the vessel. The lantern, which was just a little less than its house, surrounded this mast and travelled ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Centralized Control.*—In respect to the actual mechanism of government the principal achievement of the Norman-Plantagenet period was the overhauling and consolidation of the agencies of administration. Despite the fact that local institutions of Saxon origin were largely respected, so that they have continued to this day ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... pair of powerful shears with toothed jaws. Let the fore-arm close upon the upper arm; and the imprudent insect, crushed between the two saw-blades, will be torn to pieces; wounded by the terminal hook, it will be eviscerated. This ferocious mechanism is the great danger; it is this that must be mastered at the outset, at the risk of life; the rest is less urgent. The first blow of the stylet, cautiously directed, is therefore aimed at the lethal fore-legs, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... intonation for the chanting of the priests. From the twelfth century, small portable organs of limited compass were much used; although the tone of these instruments was necessarily slight, and, owing to the shortness of the pipes, high in pitch, the principle of the mechanism was similar to that of the larger instruments. They were hung by means of a strap passed over the shoulders; one hand pressed the keys in front of the pipes (which were arranged perpendicularly), and the other ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... body as a mechanism is far from perfect. It can be beaten or surpassed at almost every point by some product of the machine-shop or some animal. It does almost nothing perfectly or with absolute precision. As Huxley most ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... was terrifying, but it was all over very swiftly. The mechanism jammed between the third and second floors and the elevator came to a stop with a suddenness that jarred the teeth of the passengers. It had begun to fall after ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... we come to the point. In the development of life from low to high, there came a dividing of the ways. Instinct, as a factor of development, had its limitations. It culminated in that remarkable mechanism, the bee-swarm. It could go no farther. In that direction life was thwarted. But life, splendid and invincible, not to be thwarted, changed the direction of its advance, and reason became the all-potent developmental factor. Reason ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... needs. For a time those whirring machines, which had been evolved in the first place from the brains of men, and partook in a manner of both the spirit and the grosser elements of existence, its higher qualities and its sordid mechanism, like man himself, had the best of it. The swart arms of the workmen flew at their appointed tasks, they fed those unsatisfied maws, the factory vibrated with the heavy thud of the cutting-machines like a pulse, the racks with shoes in different stages ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Cope, there has been progressive improvement in the mechanism of the body—it has become a better and better machine. The suspension of the lower jaw, so as to bring the teeth nearer the power,—the masseter and related muscles,—was a slow evolution and a great advance. The fin is more primitive than the limb; the limbs themselves display a constantly ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... done heroic work under adverse conditions. A tentative theory of the mechanism involved had already been formulated, and the search had started for a means to duplicate the super-dielectricity in materials otherwise more suitable to man's needs. But as he grew familiar with the place and ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... grief over, young Armstrong rose, and began sadly to wander about the ruins. It had been an extensive structure, fitted with all the most approved appliances of mechanism which wealth could purchase. These now helped to enhance the wild aspect of the wreck, for iron girders had been twisted by the action of fire into snake-like convolutions in some places, while, in others, their ends stuck out fantastically from the blackened walls. Beautiful furniture had been smashed ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... science, aided by the laryngoscope, for many facts concerning the action of the larynx, and more especially the vocal cords in tone-production. While the early discoveries regarding the mechanism of the voice were hopefully believed to have solved all problems concerning its cultivation, experience has shown the futility of attempting to formulate a set of rules for voice-culture based alone upon the incomplete data furnished by the laryngoscope. This instrument ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... the extraordinary virtues and attainments of the early Jesuits, and the wonderful mechanism of their system, would promote the growth of the order and the interests of Rome, before the suspicions of good people would be aroused. It was a long time after their piety had passed to fraud, their simplicity to cunning, their poverty to wealth, their humility to pride, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... study of the mechanism and operation of the principal types of cylinder printing machines. 64 pp.; illustrated; ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton
... of the second act. The forest with its trees, grass and rocks entirely disappeared in the flies taking Renaud and Armide with it and the spectator was left, for some unknown reason, looking at a background surrounded by mountains. Then, by a marvel of mechanism, there appeared to the sound of ultramodern music, Renaud sleeping on a bed of state, with Armide standing at the foot and stretching forth her hand with a gesture of authority, declaiming in a ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... step by step. He occupied his leisure hours in the study of bibliography; he read books on the old printers and their works; he spent hours with the bookbinder and printer at Overstone, studying the mechanism of a book; he even studied architecture, in connexion with the ventilation and lighting of libraries, and began to teach himself German, in order to be able to master the stores of book- lore ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... in complex dispute over Spratly Islands with China, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and possibly Brunei; claimants in November 2002 signed the "Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea," a mechanism to ease tension but which fell short of a legally binding "code of conduct"; disputes over deliveries of fresh water to Singapore, Singapore's land reclamation on Johor, maritime boundaries, and Singapore-occupied Pedra Branca Island/Pulau ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 1999; thousands of Ituri refugees from the Congo continue to flee the fighting primarily into Uganda; 90,000 Angolan refugees were repatriated by 2004 with the remainder in the DRC expected to return in 2005; in 2005, DRC and Rwanda established a border verification mechanism to address accusations of Rwandan military supporting Congolese rebels and the DRC providing rebel Rwandan "Interhamwe" forces the means and bases to attack Rwandan forces; the location of the boundary in the broad Congo River with the Republic of the Congo is indefinite except ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States |
