It was the feeling of a passenger on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in the engine-room and t...alked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I am writing a novel I must actually live the lives of my characters. If, for instance, my hero is a gambler on the French Ri...viera, I must make myself pack up and go to Cannes or Nice, willy-nilly, and there throw myself into the gay life of the gambling set until I really feel that I am Paul De Lacroix, or Ed Whelen, or whatever my hero's name is. Of course this runs into money, and I am quite likely to have to change my ideas about my hero entirely and make him a bum on a tramp steamer working his way back to America, or a young college boy out of funds who lives by his wits until his friends at home send him a hundred and ten dollars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the... one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps--are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air.... It is a guzzling..., lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As if her velvet helmet high Did turret rationality.... She fans her wing up to the winde As if her Pettycoate were lin'de With reasons fleece, and hoises saile And humming flies in thankfull gaileLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All sailors pause to watch a steamer, and shout in welcome or derision. In one a large Newfoundland dog put his paws on the rail a...nd stood up as high as any of them, and looked as wise. But the skipper, who did not wish to be seen no better employed than a dog, rapped him on the nose and sent him below. Such is human justice!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I thank you for your letter. I was very glad to get it; and I am glad again to write to you. However slow the steamer, no time int...ervenes between the writing and the reading of thoughts, but they come freshly to the most distant port.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men will tell you sometimes that "money's hard." That shows it was not made to eat, I say.... Some of those who sank with the stea...mer the other day found out that money was heavy too.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Things are quite changed since I was here eleven years ago. Where there were but one or two houses, I now found quite a village, w...ith sawmills and a store (the latter was locked, but its contents were so much the more safely stored), and there was a stage-road to Mattawamkeag, and the rumor of a stage. Indeed, a steamer had ascended thus far once, when the water was very high. But we were not able to get any sugar, only a better shingle to lean our backs against.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »