"I am afraid so. It is no time for idle recrimination. The gambling fever was on me the other night and I felt that I must play. I tried to borrow money that evening, but not one of the wretches would trust me with a shilling. I had those notes upstairs; they formed my rescue in case of a collapse. It seemed to me that nobody would be any the wiser. I brought them down, and gambled with them. And beyond all doubt, Gilbert Lawrence has traced them to me."
(1.) To what general object are all pursuits directed?(2.) What besides wealth may be objects in the practice of engineering pursuits?(3.) Name some of the most common among the causes which reduce the cost of production.(4.) Name five of the main elements which go to make up the cost of engineering products.(5.) Why is commercial success generally a true test of the skill connected with engineering-works?
According to Bacon, the object of science is to analyse the complex of Forms making up an individual aggregate into its separate constituents; the object of art, to superinduce one or more such Forms on a given material. Hence his manner of regarding them differs in one important respect from Aristotles. The Greek naturalist was, before all things, a biologist. His interest lay with the distinguishing characteristics of animal species. These are easily discovered by the unassisted eye; but while they are comparatively superficial, they are also comparatively unalterable. The English experimenter, being primarily concerned with inorganic bodies, whose properties he desired to utilise for industrial purposes, was led to consider the attributes of an object as at once penetrating its inmost texture, and yet capable of being separated from it, like heat and colour for instance. But, like every other thinker of the age, if he escapes from the control of Aristotle it is only to fall under the dominion of another Greek masterin this instance, Democritus. Bacon had a great admiration for the Atomists, and although his inveterate Peripatetic proclivities prevented him from embracing their theory as a whole, he went along with it so far as to admit the dependence of the secondary on the primary qualities of matter; and on the strength of this he concluded that the way to alter the properties of an object was to alter the arrangement of its component particles."Well, you can leave other people to do that. You find your patient half dead between drink and drugs, and after a time you pull him round. As you go away you sign to the Spanish woman that you are coming again. She says no, and by means of a Bradshaw and some labelled luggage--say to Dover--leads you to believe that the people of the house are going abroad at once."A great share of the handling about an engineering establishment is avoided, if material can be stored and received on a higher level than the working floors; if, for instance, coal, iron, and sand is received from railway cars at an elevation sufficient to allow it to be deposited where it is stored by gravity, it is equivalent to saving the power and expense required to raise the material to such a height, or move it and pile it up, which amounts to the same thing in the end. It is not proposed to follow the details [74] of shop arrangement, farther than to furnish a clue to some of the general principles that should be regarded in devising plans of arrangement. Such principles are much more to be relied upon than even experience in suggesting the arrangement of shops, because all experience must be gained in connection with special local conditions, which often warp and prejudice the judgment, and lead to error in forming plans under circumstances different from those where the experience was gained.Marine and railway engineering have engrossed the best talent in the world; investigation and research has been expended upon these subjects in a degree commensurate with their importance, and it would be hard to suggest a single want in the many able text-books that have been prepared upon the subjects. Marine and railway engineering are sciences that may, in a sense, be separated from the ordinary constructive arts, and studied at the end of a course in mechanical engineering, but are hardly [61] proper subjects for an apprentice to take up at the beginning."Not in the way you mean," she said. "Balmayne has fooled you to save his own skin. He knew I should make my story good and prove my innocence, or he would never have sent you to meet me tonight."
