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Mechanism   Listen
noun
Mechanism  n.  
1.
The arrangement or relation of the parts of a machine; the parts of a machine, taken collectively; the arrangement or relation of the parts of anything as adapted to produce an effect; as, the mechanism of a watch; the mechanism of a sewing machine; the mechanism of a seed pod.
2.
The series of causal relations that operate to produce an effect in any system; as, the mechanism of a chemical reaction.
3.
Mechanical operation or action. "He acknowledges nothing besides matter and motion; so that all must be performed either by mechanism or accident."
4.
(Kinematics) An ideal machine; a combination of movable bodies constituting a machine, but considered only with regard to relative movements.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mechanism" Quotes from Famous Books



... beyond the skill of most violinists, and in reading them it is hardly possible to conceive how their author was able to execute them. Unfortunately he was not able to transmit to his successors the vital spark which animated and rendered human those astonishing prodigies of mechanism. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... frightfully unconscientious. You should never write about anybody until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that you love him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves. It will always make a hole in the book; and, if he has anything to do with the mechanism, prove a stick in your machinery. But you know all this better than I do, and it is one of your most promising traits that you do not take your powers too seriously. The LITTLE MINISTER ought to have ended badly; we all know it did; and we are infinitely grateful to you ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... still—though this is a thing of every day—the warm young heart palpitated with a thousand anxieties and apprehensions, while that of the old worldly man lay rusting in its cell, beating only as a piece of cunning mechanism, and yielding no one throb of hope, or fear, or love, or care, for ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... city," he said, "where you are surrounded by the triumphs of science and of mechanism—you, whose river is ploughed by the great steamships whose white wake has been called the fittest avenue to the palace front of a mercantile people—you know well that in the achievements of science there is not only beauty and wonder, but also beneficence and power. It is not only ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... cluttered up with such a mass of preconceptions, that it would be necessary to redefine our terminology, and then, after all, perhaps we should not understand one another. Men have an idea that they are thinking when they operate the mechanism of language which they have at command. When somebody makes the joints of language creak, they say: "He does not know how to manage it." Certainly he does know how to manage it. Anybody can manage a platitude. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... pleased with the display of ingenuity in this warehouse, and found that many of the articles were intended to be sent to Paris, to Asia, &c. Geneva itself could not, of course, supply purchasers for such a profusion of expensive mechanism. The taste of many of the articles, is by no means such as would ensure them a ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... for you; 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, and will materially improve the looks ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... invariably wore, gave him an unmistakable air of prosperity. He stood now, the silk hat cocked a little to one side, one hand under the tail of his broadcloth coat, a pudgy finger of the other pointing to some new feature of the mechanism of the new carts, and he looked the personification ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism. We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our admiration, no one of them on that account would cease to trace its orbit. There is another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... work-filled week, in which I had had to snatch odd moments for the selecting of certain wonderful toys for the Spalpeens. There had been dolls and doll-clothes and a marvelous miniature kitchen for the practical and stolid Sheila, and ingenious bits of mechanism that did unbelievable things when wound up, for the clever, imaginative Hans. I was not to have the joy of seeing their wide-eyed delight, but I knew that there would follow certain laboriously scrawled letters, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... physical cosmography. Separation of other kindred studies — p. 56-62. The uranological portion of the Cosmos is more simple than the telluric; the impossibility of ascertaining the diversity of matter simplifies the study of the mechanism of the heavens. Origin of the word 'Cosmos', its signification of adornment and order of the universe. The 'existing' can not be absolutely separated in our contemplation of nature from the 'future'. History of the world and description of the world — p. 26-73. Attempts ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... semblance of order. Four years from now, if not before then, the conditions will be ripe for a revolution; the oligarchy of American manufacturers and bankers will have reached its height and will be on the point of dissolution. The perfected mechanism of government that it will have established, will be in readiness to be turned over ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... After a while it became acute torture. He felt as if every axle he handled was the last he could manage—but he forced himself to just one more and then just one more—and another. He worked in a daze. Thought-processes seemed to stop. He was just a mechanism for performing certain set acts. The pain was gone— everything was gone but the stabbing necessity for getting another axle on that chute in time. He wanted to stop at a certain stage, but there was something ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... world reflects the disturbance of war's reaction. Herein flows the lifeblood of material existence. The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the farmer can buy ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... twenty-seventh, why should two rough sea-dogs—or you and I—be more attentive? And indeed it is a correct picture of his period that Mr. RALPH DURAND is concerned to present rather than a love story. In the writing of the love scenes considered necessary to the mechanism of the plot he seems very little at his ease; and so marked at times is his discomfort that I must confess to having felt some irritation when my willingness to be convinced was not met halfway. In the handling of his sheets and oars I like the author better, though even ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various

... systematic attention which it demands in order to preserve a healthy condition of intestinal regularity. The bowel is simply a complex muscle controlled by an elaborate system of nerves of an involuntary type. In order to preserve the highest degree of efficiency of this complicated mechanism, it must be permitted to obey the laws nature endowed it with and which it must obey. When the fecal mass reaches the rectum the nerve centers, acting through the spinal cord, send a message to the rectum ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... neither a social agitator nor a theological professor. Christianity is not a scheme or arrangement, social or theological, like a railway which men might build either to accelerate the business of life or to take one straight to heaven. Christianity provides that which all such mechanism needs. It is a power, like that electric force which makes the equipment of a railway move. A church is a power-house for the {153} development and the transmission of the power that makes things go. Cut off the power, and the theological creeds and social programmes ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... and the wickedness of doing it swept over her as a relief. She revelled in it. She was glad she had cursed him. Her little, light, graceful body that had been quivering grew calm again, and she turned to hurry home with an unexpected sense of having pulled some lever in the mechanism that would bring about results. She neither knew nor cared what results, nor how they were to happen; she felt that that curse of hers, her first, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... and breakages of the circuit are produced upon a certain number of the teeth, and the sharp blow is replaced by a quick succession of sounds, or a tremulous one, according to the skill of the medium whose business it is to interrogate the spirits. As the table contains within it all the mechanism that actuates it, it may be moved about without allowing the artifice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... away her tears, and looked at the doctor in hopes that he might suggest some plan by which she could accomplish her end. To him she was but another case of a badly working mechanism. Either from the blow on her head or from hereditary influences she had a predisposition to a fixed idea. That tendency had cultivated this aberration about the woman her husband preferred to her. Should she happen on this woman in her wanderings about Chicago, there ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... he humbly conceives, can the true philosophy of the spiritual world ever be comprehended. For, as the laws of matter had first to be studied and traced out in relation to bodies on the earth, before they could be extended to the heavens, and made to explain its wonderful mechanism; so must the laws and phenomena of the human mind be correctly analyzed and clearly defined, in order to obtain an insight into the intellectual system of the universe. And just in proportion as the clouds and darkness hanging over ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... (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 ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... of Winifred was the machine. She too, Winifred, worshipped the impure abstraction, the mechanisms of matter. There, there, in the machine, in service of the machine, was she free from the clog and degradation of human feeling. There, in the monstrous mechanism that held all matter, living or dead, in its service, did she achieve her consummation and her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... or a more honest woman than Mary Leffingwell, but I tremble for her. She is utterly incapable of managing that child. If Honora is a complicated mechanism now, what will she be at twenty? She has elements in her which poor Mary never dreamed of. I overheard her with Emily, and she talks like ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to "take care of them" as he was in the habit of doing. The list included several former state officials and the benevolent bosses who manipulated the legislature by a perfectly adjusted bi-partisan mechanism. It was with a disagreeable shock that they found that Samuel had departed this life, leaving them to bear the burden ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... The astonishing mechanism of the Peruvian polity could have resulted only from the combined authority of opinion and positive power in the ruler to an extent unprecedented in the history of man. Yet that it should have so successfully gone into ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... in the mechanism of his own brain, and followed its workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could be more remarkable, he thought, than to thus discover that, on the instant of his formulating a desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and behold! there ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... remotest idea what its peculiar virtues are, but Tim believed in them. His nervousness seemed to pass away from him as he spoke about his invention with simple-minded enthusiasm. Love casts out fear, and there is no doubt that Tim loved every screw and lever of the complicated mechanism. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... his hand on the wheel of the periscope mechanism, awaited a nod from his chief. Receiving it, the younger officer turned the wheel, sending the periscope up a foot ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... gifts of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes;—this nature bade not,—this God blesses not,—this humanity for no long ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... was perhaps natural and excusable that popular prejudice should have associated the subject of cross-fertilization with the orchid alone; for it is even to-day apparently a surprise to the average mind that almost any casual wild flower will reveal a floral mechanism often quite as astonishing as those of the orchids described in Darwin's volume. Let us glance, for instance, at the row of stamens below (Fig. 1), selected at random from different flowers, with ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... 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, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... his knees, and his fingers sought the small projections of the gear on the inside of the door He could no more budge the mechanism than a child could open a ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... was in the possession of the fakirs. They enlarged the holes made by the beetle according to the size of the reed, sometimes shaping it into a circle, sometimes into an oval. These reeds in their present state can be justly considered as the finest illustration of mechanism applied to acoustics. However, this is not to be wondered at, because some of the most ancient Sanskrit books about music minutely describe these laws, and mention many musical instruments which are not only forgotten, but ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... 1336. Care of the mechanism. When the rifle has been wet or exposed to unfavorable climatic conditions, the bolt should be withdrawn and all working parts carefully wiped with a dry cloth, and then gone over with an ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... exceptions to the general rule, but, on better knowledge, he found that he was mistaken, and that so far from being absent in these people the sexual instinct was present even in its crudest shapes. The activity of sex is an activity that on the physical side is generated by the complex mechanism of the ductless glands and displayed in the whole organism, physical and psychic, of the individual, who cannot abolish that activity, although to some extent able to regulate the forms in which it is manifested, so that purity cannot ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... panorama of both banks moved along without a pause, as though some ingenious mechanism necessitated its unrolling in the opposite direction to that ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... dignified among them might at any moment fling a leg out behind them and almost kneel in mutual adoration, and then, as if nothing unusual had happened, shuffle onward through the press; or, as though some electric mechanism had been set in motion, they would suddenly lift a foot sideways and stand on one leg. Poised pathetically, as if waiting for the happy signal when they might put the other leg down, these men looked very sad, and I wished that the Medusa's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... single. On the contrary, the more beings are happy the greater is the individual happiness of each: for each is a being of sympathies, and affections; which are increased by being called into action. It is the miserable mechanism of society which, by giving legal possession of what is called property to the holders, puts it absolutely and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... the mechanism, and the engine, with the muffler off, roared and shrieked as it took the smooth white road, with every bar and rivet throbbing under the pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and motion to Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... calcetines, half-hose, socks canamo, hemp cancelar, to cancel coger, to catch *conseguir, to succeed in contado (al), (in) cash dificultad, difficulty un dineral, a mint of money encogerse, to shrink equivocarse, to be mistaken la gente, the people mecanismo, mechanism, contrivance medias, stockings, hose ocurrir, to happen perfeccionar, to perfect persona, person por mas que, however much, whatever *probar, to prove, to attempt, to try pruebo, etc., ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... mill engines, and all engines, indeed, in which the rectilinear motion of the piston is changed into a circular motion. In rotatory engines the steam acts at once in the production of circular motion, either upon a revolving piston or otherwise, but without the use of any intermediate mechanism, such as the crank, for deriving a circular from a rectilinear motion. Rotatory engines have not hitherto been very successful, so that only the single acting or pumping engine, and the double acting or rotative engine can be said ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... hardihood of this State, is seen to have a menacing and dangerous consequence for the true German spirit; for we see endeavours being made in this quarter to raise the public school, formally systematised, up to the so-called 'level of the time.' Here is to be found all that mechanism by means of which as many scholars as possible are urged on to take up courses of public school training: here, indeed, the State has its most powerful inducement—the concession of certain privileges respecting military service, with the natural ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... that he could accomplish nothing by altering their striking mechanism—that every clock in the house persisted in striking five times no matter where the hands were pointing, a sudden, odd, and inward rage possessed him to hurl the clocks at the wall and stamp the last vestiges of mechanism out ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... off the mechanism and settled down to wait. His trousers were wet and heavy with mud, and his legs and feet were chilled. Mosquitoes whined around his head and little gnats settled down for a meal on his exposed neck and head. He began to wonder if it ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... Legislator of Montalluyah is the occupation of every person in the intellectual or physical pursuit for which he has been fitted by natural qualifications, developed and fortified by culture. Nobility, position, and wealth are made to depend on merit alone, ascertained by a mechanism which neither favouritism, ignorance, nor accident can affect. These laws may for an instant seem to partake of a democratic tinge; but it will be clearly perceived that the regulations concerning the institutions ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... afforded Punch his chance, for the actor's realisation was so wide of Goethe's creation that it was a Frenchified demon, played as a comic character. Punch admitted the beauty of the production, but said that "as a piece of show and mechanism (wires unseen) it will draw the eyes of the town, especially the eyes with the least brains behind them." Kean's performance was denounced as devoid of life and beauty, but generous praise was accorded to his newly made-up nose, to which the best ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... Aladdin got back the strength of his body, but the gray bullet which had come in answer to his cry against God, even as the lightning came to Amyas Leigh, in that romance to which it is so good to bow, had injured the delicate mechanism of his brain, so that it seemed as if he would go down to the grave without memory of things past, or power upon the hour. Indeed, the war ended before the surgeons spoke of an operation which might restore his mind. He went under the knife a little child, his head full of pictures, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... The knob was turned forward till the finger pointed to a number, then back and then forward again to another numeral. It moved as smoothly as if the delicate mechanism ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... by, "if it hadn't been for that confounded headache of mine this morning, I'd have had a coat on that man, in spite of himself, before he left the store." A passing throb, only,—but it deranged the nice mechanism required to persuade the accidental human being, x, into a given ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... and had learnt that this very opulent bachelor was passionately fond of weapons. He used to buy pistols, revolvers, daggers, hang them on his wall and show them to acquaintances. He prided himself on them, and was quite a specialist on the mechanism of the revolver. Mitya, without stopping to think, went straight to him, and offered to pawn his pistols to him for ten roubles. The official, delighted, began trying to persuade him to sell them outright. But Mitya would not consent, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the right, to see whether the sight was on the object. If he had to raise or lower the muzzle to obtain that result, it was obvious that it did not come up right for him. At length he got one which suited him exactly, and he was shown the mechanism by which the breeches were opened and closed, and learned how to take it to pieces, put it together again, clean it, and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... journey commenced. Eveena's wardrobe, with my own and my books, portfolios, models, and specimens of Terrestrial art and mechanism, were packed in light metallic cases adapted to the larger form of carriage whereof I have made mention. I was fortunate in escaping the actual parting scene between Eveena and her family, and my own leave-taking was hurried. Esmo and his son accompanied us, leading the way in one carriage, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... this gun (which we described fully in Number 6 of THE GREAT ROUND WORLD) are fastened together at the breech with a clasp which holds the whole mechanism of ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... sick report. All who ran could read it in the blanched lips, the grey-green pallor of their faces, the jaundiced eye, the hurried breathing. Thereupon came three days' struggle with Azrael's pale shape before the blackwater gave place to the natural colour again, or until the secreting mechanism gave up the contest altogether and the Destroying Angel settled firmly on his prey. At first, if there was no vomiting, it was easy to ply the hourly drinks of tea and water and medicine. But once deadly and exhausting vomiting had begun, one could no longer feed the victim ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... exercise. It is well known that many of our picked athletes, men with great 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

... or look upon anything that has no direct bearing upon Aniela. The thoughts in which I do not see her image at the bottom are meaningless to me. It is a proof how far a man may sink his own self. I read this morning a lecture by Bunge called "Vitality and Mechanism," and I perused it with exceptional interest. He demonstrates scientifically that which has been in my mind more as a dim, shapeless idea than a definite conviction. Here science confesses scepticism ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... a formidable sting, and when provoked, makes instant and effectual use of her natural weapon. The sting, when subjected to microscopic examination, exhibits a very curious and complicated mechanism. "It is moved[6] by muscles which, though invisible to the eye, are yet strong enough to force the sting, to the depth of one twelfth of an inch, through the thick skin of a man's hand. At its root are situated two glands by which the poison is secreted: these glands ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... to punish the past, but to illuminate the future. Many months before being carried out, the coup d'etat had been accomplished. The day having come, the hour having struck, the mechanism being completely wound up, it had only to be set going. It was bound not to fail, and nothing did fail. What would have been an abyss if the majority had done its duty, and had understood its joint responsibility with the Left, was not even a ditch. The inviolability had ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... and the line of white road before them appeared to Christopher as a track dividing past and future, the thin edge of the passing minutes. They spoke no more, however, on the forbidden subject. Christopher presently explained to her the visible mechanism of the car and on a stretch of clear road let her put her hands on the wheel beneath his own and feel the joy of fictitious control. Before the sun quenched itself in the sea they stood on the Cliff Edge and looked out across ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... relations with Mexico continued to improve due in large measure to the effectiveness of the Coordinator for Mexican Affairs and the expanded use of the U.S.-Mexico Consultative Mechanism. By holding periodic meetings of its various working groups, we have been able to prevent mutual concerns from becoming political issues. The Secretary of State visited Mexico City in November, and, along with the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations, reviewed the performance of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter

... whole the most remarkable for his inconstancy of coloration. Like a lacertine Vicar of Bray, he varies incontinently from buff to blue, and from blue back to orange again, under stress of circumstances. The mechanism of this curious change is extremely complex. Tiny corpuscles of different pigments are sometimes hidden in the depths of the chameleon's skin, and sometimes spread out on its surface in an interlacing network of brown or purple. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... of its dripping rim, moving with a slow, measured strength through the darkness that shut it in. It impressed me with something of the awe which comes to us in thinking of the great Power which keeps the mechanism of the universe in motion. Even now, the remembrance of its large, mysterious movement, in which every little motion of every noisy little wheel was involved, brings back to me a verse from one of my ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... car won from her father by Miss Harding is a massive and beautiful machine. Luckily I am familiar with the mechanism of this particular make, and, as a consequence, am called in for advice when any trifling question arises. Harding scorns ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... one can say how many centuries elapsed. The catgut strings of the harps of three thousand years ago are still capable of giving a musical sound. The best workmen of the present time, we are assured, could not finish a harp more exquisitely than these are finished; yet they have no mechanism for tightening or loosening the strings, and no strings except such as were furnished by the harmless, necessary cat. The Egyptian harp, with all its splendor of decoration, was a rude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... be obtained equally well by a deliberate exercise of the will, without any prayer, by a person who understood the mechanism concerned, and the way to put it in motion. Such a man would think clearly of what he needed, would draw to him the kind of subtle matter best suited to his purpose to clothe the thought, and by a deliberate exercise of his will would either send it to a definite ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... diamond. This rifle was said to be worth $250. Uncle Dick showed the "fire-arm" to me and I considered it a very beautiful instrument of its kind. Old Uncle Dick proudly invited inspection of his beautiful "fire-arm," but woe to the man who criticised its wonderful mechanism. I do not know of Espinosa's being on the Santa Fe Trail but ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... behind the bushes and made them spring as I gave the word to gallop for cover to the woods where the Welsh company was. There I got ——, who understands them (the guns), and an infantryman who volunteered to help, and —— and I ran up to the Maxims and took out the breech mechanism of both and one of the belts, and carried away one whole Maxim. We couldn't ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... life—actual life; capable of producing life—of creating offspring—of impregnating and developing into perfect being, with thinking and reasoning brain and mind, pulsating heart, expanding lungs, sentient nerves, motive muscle, and all that beautiful, minute and co-ordinate mechanism that forms a perfect human being—the only secretion in the body capable of propagating species—carrying life ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... her and the female gooseberry with a pocket-handkerchief a-piece, interwoven by a mechanism with their baptismal ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... animated, as were the soldiers of the revolution, by the spirit of liberty, but transformed into mechanical forces. The time was to come, in spite of the military enthusiasm of his veteran soldiers, when it was to be proved that the throne of absolutism is better sustained by love than by mechanism. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... attracts them at first is the evidence which these beliefs furnish, that the world in which they live is not entirely under the dominion of an unconscious or inflexible power, but that behind the iron mechanism of cause and effect is a will more like their own in its irregularity and arbitrariness. Afterwards, as the majesty of law dawns upon them, miracles are no longer regarded as capricious exercises of power, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... beautiful ornaments, this vase had a handle, made all of one piece, with most delicate mechanism, which, when a spring was touched, stood upright above the mouth of it. While the prelate was one day ostentatiously exhibiting my vase to certain Spanish gentlemen of his suite, it chanced that one of them, upon Monsignor's quitting the room, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... admiration for the clock placed in the tower bearing its name, and the mechanism of which shows the progress of the sun and moon through the twelve signs of the zodiac. In a niche above the dialplate is an image of the Virgin, which is gilded and lifesize; and it is said that on certain fete days, each blow of the pendulum makes two angels ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... "he wants to have an easier life, and, besides, if the despatches and orders leave him time for it, to occupy himself with his favourite amusements—his clocks and pieces of mechanism. Finally, his sufferings remind him often enough of the approach of death, and he hopes by religious exercises to secure his place in the kingdom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Honor, were invented; titles were instituted; a new aristocracy, made up of relics of the old noblesse and of fresh recruits, was created; Napoleon was declared to be consul for life, and the mechanism of the government was converted into a practical dictatorship. Unsparing in his treatment of Jacobins, he aimed still to moderate the passions of party. His activity was seen in an excellent system of public works, such as canals and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... 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

... by the score, pliers, small hammers, besides lenses, compasses, rules, and a heap of brass filings; the other, for two-thirds of its length, was a litter of books and papers. But the end nearest to the working-bench had been cleared, and here stood a mighty curious intricate mechanism of wheels and brass wire and little brass balls, with fine brass chains depending through holes in the board. My host flung a tender look at it across his shoulder as he stepped to the press to fetch basin ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... of an English cricketer, there can be no successful evasion of the natural difficulties of the thing to be done—the difficulties of competing with nature itself, or its maker, in that marvellous combination of motion and rest, of inward mechanism with the so smoothly finished surface and outline—finished ad unguem— ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... the world has ever seen was first an ideal in the architect's mind. Every statue was first an ideal in the sculptor's mind. Every piece of mechanism the world has ever known was first formed in the mind of the inventor. Here it was given birth to. These same mind-forces then dictated to and sent the energy into the hand that drew the model, and then again dictated to and sent the ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine

... several Cuts, clearly and distinctly representing the Structure and Mechanism of the Wings of the Glums and Gawrys, and the Manner in which they use them either ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... ourselves than we are. The astronomical telescope is constructed upon the same principles as the terrestrial one, only it is more powerful and more perfectly made. Not only the lenses, but all the details of the mechanism are more highly finished; more thought and more labour are bestowed upon them; the parts are more skilfully co-ordinated together; it is a better instrument. We do wrong to genius in connecting it with mental aberration; it is more normal, more perfectly ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... contrive machines for perpetual motion—that is, machines for the production of force. This idea is now wholly renounced by all well-informed men as utterly impossible in the nature of things. All that human mechanism can do is to provide modes for using advantageously a force previously existing, without the possibility of either increasing or diminishing it. No existing force can be destroyed. The only changes possible are changes of direction, changes in the relation of intensity ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... will have taken a popular place in a Dutch street musician's repertoire; it will be whistled in many different keys by butcher and baker boys, and will be heard issuing painfully from the wonderful mechanism of the superfluous concertina. For almost every one in Holland possesses some musical instrument on which he plays, well or otherwise, when his daily work is over, or on Sunday evenings at home. And here a notable characteristic of the Dutch higher classes ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... Numerous inventors of mechanism applicable to the guidance of balloons came to propose their systems, but he would accept none; and, when he was asked whether he had discovered something of his own for that purpose, he constantly refused to give any explanation, and merely busied himself more actively than ever with the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... Man's Mechanism, Life, Force, Food, Digestion, Respiration, Heat, the Skin, the Kidneys, Nervous System, Organs ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... small places it is easy to observe the mechanism of a government which, en grand, becomes that of Delhi, Teheran, and Constantinople. The Governor farms the place from the Porte: he may do what he pleases as long as he pays his rent with punctuality ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... after an interval of some days, if anaphylaxis has been established by the first dose, the patient suddenly manifests toxic symptoms of the nature of profound shock which may even prove fatal. The conditions which render a person liable to develop anaphylaxis and the mechanism by which it is established are ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... way it came, then no farther, and he had to light the candle. Peeping into the stall he perceived a chain stretching from its head to where the manger might be. This he dared not try to break, lest he might injure the mechanism he hoped to find in it. But clearly the horse could not have been so fastened as the stall then stood. The stall must have been completed after the horse was thus secured. More than ever he now needed a candle—and indeed one held ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... near him, and Phineas saw that he was armed with a pistol. Phineas, who had hitherto been seated, leaped to his legs; but the pistol in a moment was at his head, and the madman pulled at the trigger. But the mechanism of the instrument required that some bolt should be loosed before the hammer would fall upon the nipple, and the unhandy wretch for an instant fumbled over the work so that Phineas, still facing his enemy, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... can remember," he said, "one of our great New York dealers marking on his samples the colours that pleased most of his buyers, who themselves were to place the goods. All other colours or patterns were tabooed in his instructions to the makers in Japan. This was the rude mechanism of the change, the coming down to the worst public taste, which must be that of the greatest ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... Spectral Illusion of Messrs. Dircks and Pepper obtained great favour at one time, and awakened some interest upon the subject of theatrical phantoms. But it soon became clear that the public cared for the Illusion, and not for the Spectre. They were concerned about the mechanism of the contrivance, not awed by the supernatural appearances it brought before them. When once you begin to inquire by what process a ghost is produced, it is clear you are not moved by its character as a spectre merely. Puppets lose their power to please when the spectators are bent ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... character, and which appear on a cursory view to be involved in inextricable confusion. Long and careful examination has at length been efficient in ascertaining that in this apparent disorder are to be seen the traces of an order, as perfect as that of any other mechanism of nature, and of a succession of changes by which the earth has been finally fitted for the habitation of man. These strata have been finally arranged into five distinct classes, differing in their characters and position. These have been so fully described in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... effectually preserve their inclosed stamens and anthers from the rain and cold. Many of these flowers, both before and after their season of fecundation, erect their heads perpendicular to the horizon, like the Meadia, which cannot be explained from meer mechanism. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... flying-machine is something entirely apart from and above all other contrivances of man's ingenuity. It is the nearest thing to animate life which man has created. In the air an airplane ceases to be a mere piece of dumb mechanism; it seems to throb with feeling, and is capable not only of primary guidance and control, but actually ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... what money she had saved—a few pennies it was—and had bought something for him. A life-preserver! A neighbor of hers had gotten it from an engineer on an English steamer! And she produced the huge vest of padded cork, which folded up so easily along the seams! The Rector looked at the strange mechanism and smiled. Did you ever! What things people could think of! "I'd heard there were rigs like that in the world, but I never saw one before. Glad to have it aboard, though I can swim like a fish, myself, and never do it in uniform!" And he was tickled to death, at bottom. He ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... for the fair sex like that.—Entre nous, surprise is always the greatest charm of the beautiful! As for the Allegri di Bravura, I must make allowance for yours. To tell you the truth, I am no great friend to that kind of thing, as it is apt to entail too much mere mechanism; at least, such is the case with those I know. I have not yet looked at yours, but I shall ask —— about them. I recommend you to be cautious in your intercourse with him. Could I not be of use to you ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... littleness as human beings, because to our microscopic mole-like sight the immense mechanism of the world is lost, do not for a moment doubt it. The earth turns. Without moving from where you are, in twenty-four hours you will have made the complete circuit with the globe. Without moving our feet we rush along at the rate of four hundred leagues an hour, a velocity that the fastest ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... in canvas leggings and with three buttons loose. Until Byng came the Canadian Corps was a semi-disciplined and marvellous mob of men who could swear as hard as they could fight and fight like wildcats. Byng gave then the massive and complex mechanism of an army competent to conduct operations as a unit of modern war, dominated by the man of whom the boys sang to the tune of Three Blind Mice, "Byng Bangs Boche, See how they run!" Currie, commander of the 2nd ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... because they can breed an appetite that craves stimulants and drugs. Others have taught how the body acts, what we ought to eat, how we should live. We are concerned here not with repeating the laws of health, but with a consideration of the mechanism that will make it possible for us so to work together that we can ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... it was discovered by Galileo, and investigated by Laplace, appeared in its outward aspect so symmetrical, and displayed in its inner mechanism such harmonious dynamical relations, that it might well have been deemed complete. Nevertheless, a new member has been added to it. Near midnight on September 9, 1892, Professor Barnard discerned with the Lick 36-inch "a tiny speck of light," closely following the planet.[1067] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... inner construction of the Animal Man—not to be conscious of a midriff—to hold kidneys (save of sheep and swine) to be an agreeable fiction—not to know whereabout the gall grows—to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's—to acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, once fix the seat of your disorder, and your fancies flux into it like bad humours. Those medical gentries chuse each his favourite part—one takes the lungs—another the aforesaid liver—and refer to that whatever in the animal economy is amiss. Above all, use ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of glonoin, the most powerful heart stimulant known to medical science. Two ounces had riven the solid door of the iron safe; with one fiftieth part of a minim he was now about to still forever the intricate mechanism of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... bodily position and action. These movements are used by many great artists, who develop them as they themselves develop, through giving expression to thought, feeling, and emotion, through using the impressive, persuasive tone, the fervent voice. This brings into action the entire vocal mechanism, in fact all the powers of the singer; hence these movements become a part of the great artist. He may not be able to give a reason for them, but he knows their value. The persuasive, fervent voice demands spontaneity and automatic form and adjustment; these conditions are impossible without ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer

... suppose that is owing to the increased intelligence produced by habits of reading, attending lectures, and studying mechanism." ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... dark their shaven skulls look like nothing human. They're armed with those damned tubes, too. I'd give a thousand dollars—if I had it!—to know their mechanism. Well, gentlemen, deeds speak. What am I here for, when I might be on the way to Liverpool, ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... great deal more than a pound of coal; while it does not, by its combustion, generate nearly so much heat. The steam-engine, therefore, took the place of animal power, and for a long time stood alone; and nearly all the motive power derived from heat is still produced by the mechanism which Watt brought to such great efficiency in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... 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 ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... second considers essence as such, appearance, and (essence appearing or) actuality, and this last, in turn, in the moments, substantiality, causality, and reciprocity. The third part is divided into the sections, subjectivity (concept, judgment, syllogism), objectivity (mechanism, chemism, teleology), and the Idea (life, cognition, the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... moral feelings of brutes, and the mechanism on which they depend—may be divided into two parts, the portion that receives and conveys, and that which stores up and ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... understand these things; but between you and me, you know, I think it does a man good to swear. Swearing is the safety-valve through which the bad temper that might otherwise do serious internal injury to his mental mechanism escapes in harmless vaporing. When a man has said: "Bless you, my dear, sweet sir. What the sun, moon, and stars made you so careless (if I may be permitted the expression) as to allow your light and delicate foot to descend upon my corn with so much ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... had not yet 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

... tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like clear ice with sunshine on it, were darting, furtive, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... attack was made, and a breach was soon effected in the works, which ensured its capture. Two days after this Lord Cornwallis proceeded against the redoubt on Red Bank, and this was also captured. Franklin's ingenious mechanism was then destroyed, and a full and free communication was established along the whole ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... then, are two definite ethical characters in all engraved work. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one more; that it is Obedient;—in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of the higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and in its function of interpreting the schools of painting as ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... to journalists, who controlled public opinion, and finally to the discontented, enraged, and disappointed people. The throne was undermined, and there was no power in France to prevent the inevitable catastrophe. In Russia, Prussia, and Austria an overwhelming army, bound together by the mechanism which absolutism for centuries had perfected, could repress disorder; but in a country where the army was comparatively small, enlightened by the ideas of the Revolution and fraternizing with the people, this was not possible. A ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... in my life—for my general attitude of mind and, I make no doubt, for my being where I was and playing the part I did play in The Citizens' campaign. But our life was not one that admitted of emotional preoccupation of any sort. We were too close to the working mechanism of national progress. There never was more absorbing work than the making and enrolment of Citizens at such a juncture in the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... across the Atlantic. In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the higher and more subtle faculties of such men were materialised, and that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and reflection, thus originated, determine, but in producing or extending the most sublime impressions of the beneficence, the power, and the providence, of the Great Author of Creation? The physical mechanism of birds, the muscular energies of brutes, strike us at first with wonder, or move us with mingled terror and delight; but the activity of the human mind will not suffer us long to remain at this point of simple excitement. We involuntarily begin to analyze ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... the relative value of inventions in musical instruments, it appears, from an essay of his which has been recently published, that he considers improvement in acoustical proportions the chief foundation of the higher or lower degree of perfection in all instruments, their mechanism being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... "It's a reflex mechanism, Mike," Dr. Stone said as Millie showed me in. "Every type knows how to fight for survival." He took one thoughtful puff on his pipe. "The old fud," ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman

... back in his chair, and, eyeing me all the time with that same watchful glance, began to describe to me in some detail an apparatus which he said my father had devised, for taking instantaneous photographs by the electric light, with a clockwork mechanism. It was an apparatus that let sensitive-plates revolve one after another opposite the lens of a camera; and as each was exposed, the clockwork that moved it produced an electric spark, so as to represent such a series of effects as the successive positions ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... 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 ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... of a rifle that an enlisted man is permitted to take apart are the bolt mechanism and the magazine mechanism. Learn how to do this from your squad leader, for you must know how in order to keep your rifle clean. Never remove the hand guard or the trigger guard, nor take the sights apart unless you have special permission from a ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... chance, since they serve no purpose: any other form would be as fit; but the forms of living things are always purposeful. Is it possible to believe that the human body, with all its complicated mechanism, its many wonderful organs of secretion and excretion and assimilation, is any more matter of chance than a watch or a phonograph is? Though what agent to substitute for the word "chance," I confess I do not know. The short cut to an omnipotent Creator sitting ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... considered as mere trustees, should be adapted to the same plan, and this was done. Ecclesiastical as well as aristocratic control was thus removed by the stroke of a pen. In other words, by the destruction of the mechanism through which the temporal and spiritual authorities exerted the remnants of their power, they were both completely paralyzed. The King was denied all initiative, being granted merely a suspensive veto, and in the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... door the jug overhead, true to its mechanism, tilted forward and launched a deluge of water over the head and shoulders of the ill-starred master, just as he tripped forward over the string and fell prone into the apartment, while at the same instant, accompanied by a loud howl, one sponge, ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... now!" cried Tom. "It was those fellows at the hotel barn! They monkeyed with the mechanism, short circuited the battery, and jammed the gauge so I couldn't tell when my power was gone. If I had known there wasn't enough to carry us I could have recharged the battery at the hotel. But I figured ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... seldom put back the hair on either side of her brows; but when she did so, she shook her head with a sudden jerk that had not to be repeated to shake away the thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In everything that she did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty in the working of the mechanism, an unerring swiftness and precision, like that of an animal, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... The term dates from the period when this pedal controlled three shifts: una corda, due corde and tre corde; the hammer striking respectively one, two or three strings. The whole mechanism is well implied in the German word Verschiebung, i.e., the shoving along—so frequent in Schumann's works, e.g., the middle part of his Vogel als Prophet from the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... duly and most appropriately embodied, sat half-facing him. The Voice's eyes confirmed his worst suspicions, and, dazed though they were at the moment, there were deep lights in them that wholly disordered his mental mechanism. Nor were her first words such as to restore ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... "My time is always occupied, sir, but step this way," and he led me into the museum or library, for I forget which it was, only I know there was a glass case against which we leant. He read my letter, did not think my plan would answer. Was I acquainted with mechanism, what we call the laws of motion? I saw all was up with my poor scheme, so after trying a little to explain, in the course of which I certainly failed in giving him a clear idea of what I would be at, I thanked him for his attention, and went off as dissatisfied as ever. The sense of one part of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... acid rain, resulting from sulfur dioxide emissions, is damaging forests; pollution in the Baltic Sea from raw sewage and industrial effluents from rivers in eastern Germany; hazardous waste disposal; government currently attempting to define mechanism for ending the use of nuclear power; government working to meet EU commitment to identify nature preservation areas in line with the EU's Flora, Fauna, and ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... ways of constructing a gun-trap. Of course a gun is the principal part of the mechanism, and the trigger pulled by a string is the main point of the contrivance. In some countries the bait is tied to the string, and the animal on seizing the bait tightens the string, draws the trigger, and shoots itself. In this way, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... his seat, clicked his tongue, and we went downhill. The brake squeaked horribly from time to time. At the foot he eased off the noisy mechanism and said, turning half ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... to find out for yourself. There's a sort of metronome inside us—wonderful, sell-adjusting little machine; most delicate bit of mechanism in the world—people call it conscience—that records the proper beat of our tempos. I guess that's all we ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... mechanism keeps pace in the most curiously interesting way with the world of thought. Inventions came as material correspondences to the immaterial growth and demand. When in the middle of the nineteenth century the human race had achieved a degree of development that ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... indeed, that this play should not contain faults of two kinds, first, the faults of one who has necessarily much to learn in the mechanism of his art; and, secondly, of one who, having written largely in the narrative style of fiction, may not unfrequently mistake the effects of a novel for the effects of a drama. I may add to these, perhaps, the deficiencies that arise from uncertain ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... particular question—especially if it is a question essentially mechanical—is shown by the work of a Frenchman all too neglected by the trumpet of fame—Clement Ader. M. Ader was probably the first man to get a mechanism up into the air for something more than a leap. His Eole, as General Mensier testifies, prolonged a jump as far as fifty metres as early as 1890. In 1897 his Avion fairly flew. (This is a year ahead of the date of my earliest photograph ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... which name it should now be called) into a tub of water; in drawing it backwards and forwards, he will perceive that the clack, which should now be called the valve, opens and shuts as the piston is drawn backwards and forwards. It will be better not to inform the child how this mechanism is employed in the pump. If the names sucker and piston, clack and valve, are fixed in his memory, it will be sufficient for his first lesson. At another opportunity, he should be present when the fixed or lower valve of the pump is drawn up; he will examine ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... that afternoon: Regret to inform you that meteorite impact on satellite hull severely damaged capsule-detachment mechanism, making ejection impossible. Will make every effort to find another means of accomplishing your ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young

... the red blood in the cartilage within. About all her figure, and especially her head, there was a certain expression of energy, and, at the same time, of softness. She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... less interesting to the student of psychology. Here was every type from the illiterate human mechanism whose muscles dominated his whole process of life, to the cultured son of civilization who had never known before the meaning of life beyond the portals of the temples of refinement. Here they were all on the same highway of pleasure. Here they were all ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... bedside, and he kept a loaded musket within reach. He had also a bolt constructed in such a manner that, by aid of pulleys, he could fasten or unfasten the door of his chamber while in bed. All this was known to Philip, and he ordered the mechanic who had made it to derange the mechanism so that it would not work. To force a way into the chamber of a man like Carlos might ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... follows—unless his explanation is to be accepted—is an absolutely unaccountable thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on the hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... of superstition which runneth in the blood of man, I shuddered, grew weak and faint; great drops of cold perspiration started out from my forehead, and I turned to see if some supernatural mechanism had not closed the door and entombed me with the lovely phantom. It was still open; its rust-eaten hinges had long since ceased to act. I was free to go, but, with the infatuation of curiosity, I could not move; I stood in my tracks and ventured ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... on it. Towards the lower point a 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 ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... done. His mind, now restored to its balance, recognized the fact. The brigade was under orders to move to another point, and he was disabled and compelled to take a leave of absence until fit for duty. The inexorable mechanism of military life moves on, without the slightest regard for the individual; and Graham's act was only one of the many heroic deeds of the war, some seen ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... was the reply. "All working parts, you see." The Captain set in motion some internal mechanism, and the turret guns trained slowly on to the beam. He pressed a button. "Electric bow and steaming lights!" His voice had a ring of almost boyish enthusiasm, and he picked up a tangle of threads from the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... a word, artificial from head to foot. He was very like one of the figures one sees at a wax work show. From time to time—usually the wrong one—he would give vent to a little dry cackling laugh, like the rattle of some rusty mechanism inside him. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... Microscopic structure of Bones, uses of, The Kinds of in infancy and childhood positions at school in after life Broken broken, Treatment for Effect of alcohol on Effect of tobacco on Breathing, Movements of Breathing, Mechanism of Varieties of Nervous control of change in the air Air, made impure by Brain, as a whole Membranes of as a reflex center Effects of alcohol on Brain center, Functions of, in perception of impressions Bright's disease caused by alcohol ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... such a view are numerous, many-sided, and cumulative. The hypothesis of evolution gives them keen edge and gathering force. Behind the cosmic process men feel there must be a creative power, an animating impulse. The struggle upwards must mean something. Mechanism is but a mode of working—its Ground is ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... of cast-iron throughout. No marks except a serial number, 736. Peculiarly simple mechanism. Barrel ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker

... had by this time observed that my watch was a marvelous piece of mechanism beyond their most delicate accomplishments, and they announced the fact to their other companion who again looked at me in breathless surprise. "Where did you get this Fot-sil?" (or plaything), he queried in ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... I have not before seen such fine specimens of the Devon cattle,—of course I speak of them as they present themselves to the eye—not pretending to judge of their relative value to other stock exhibited. Improvement in the breed of domestic animals goes hand in hand with agricultural mechanism, to give the ability to make two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, and thus to render you indeed benefactors. Skill in the use, and ingenuity in devising and constructing implements, serve to render labor productive, and ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... consider that each hour hastens the end of our pilgrimage! How insignificant in comparison with futurity! A single drop in the boundless deep of eternity! Oh Time! thou greatest of all anomalies! Friend yet foe, "preserver and yet destroyer!" Whence art thou, great immemorial? When shall thy wondrous mechanism be dissolved? When shall the "pall of obscurity" descend on thy Herculean net-work? Voices of the past echo through thy deserted temples, and shriek along ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... oracle,' said Olinthus, as he proceeded in the warmth of his address, 'advance yourself to the railing, proclaim aloud to the people the deception they endure, invite them to enter, to be themselves the witness of the gross but artful mechanism of imposture thou hast described to me. Fear not—the Lord, who protected Daniel, shall protect thee; we, the community of Christians, will be amongst the crowd; we will urge on the shrinking: and in the first flush of the popular ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... who gave Great Britain its modern constitution. Not that those Englishmen analyzed the matter, or had any theory about it; Englishmen care little for theories. It was a Frenchman, Montesquieu, who pointed out to them how faithfully they had copied Newton's description of the mechanism of ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson



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