No answer rewarded his agile thoughts as Jeff skilfully shot the small field, compelled to come in to one side because of tall trees directly in their line of flight, over which his dead engine made it impossible to maneuver. Nor did he get a solution to his puzzle as Jeff cleverly side-slipped to lose momentum, and to get over the neglected, turf-grown runway down which, a little bumpily but right side up, he taxied to a standstill.To urge the necessity of learning practical fitting as a part of an engineering education is superfluous. A mechanical engineer who has not been "through the shop" can never expect to attain success, nor command the respect even of the most inferior workmen; without a power of influencing and controlling others, he is neither fitted to direct construction, nor to manage details of any kind connected with engineering industry. There is nothing that more provokes a feeling of resentment in the mind of a skilled man than to meet with those who have attempted to qualify themselves in the theoretical and commercial details of engineering work, and then assume to direct labour which they do not understand; nor is a skilled man long in detecting an engineer of this class; a dozen words in conversation upon any mechanical subject is generally enough to furnish a clue to the amount of practical knowledge possessed by the speaker.
ONE:Sandy shook his head. Let them take Jeff up to the house, he decided, and watch the two men when they met. Dick, not comprehending the idea behind Sandys headshake, nevertheless, did not finish his sentence.
ONE:We entered another caf, and once more I shouted51 for the inhabitants at the top of my voice. At last I heard a feeble sound somewhere in the hall, which I entered, but as I saw no one there, I called out once more. Then I heard distinctly, and knew whence the answer came. I opened a door, behind which stairs led to the cellar, and from there I was at last able to speak to some of the Herstal people. I heard that all of them stayed in their cellars for fear of the bombardment.
THREE:It was not the usual voice of Gilbert Lawrence that spoke. There was a dogged grimness about him that would have surprised his friends. "Let us light the gas and smoke here for a time," he said. "There is not the slightest chance of those people coming back, and there are no windows overlooking this one. I have a good deal to say to you."
Nothing can be more unreasonable than to expect an apprentice engineer to begin by an inductive course in learning and reasoning [3] about mechanics. Even if the mind were capable of such a course, which can not be assumed in so intricate and extensive a subject as mechanics, there would be a want of interest and an absence of apparent purpose which would hinder or prevent progress. Any rational view of the matter, together with as many facts as can be cited, will all point to the conclusion that apprentices must learn deductively, and that some practice should accompany or precede theoretical studies. How dull and objectless it seems to a young man when he toils through "the sum of the squares of the base and perpendicular of a right-angle triangle," without knowing a purpose to which this problem is to be applied; he generally wonders why such puzzling theorems were ever invented, and what they can have to do with the practical affairs of life. But if the same learner were to happen upon a builder squaring a foundation by means of the rule "six, eight, and ten," and should in this operation detect the application of that tiresome problem of "the sum of the squares," he would at once awake to a new interest in the matter; what was before tedious and without object, would now appear useful and interesting. The subject would become fascinating, and the learner would go on with a new zeal to trace out the connection between practice and other problems of the kind. Nothing inspires a learner so much as contact with practice; the natural tendency, as before said, is to proceed deductively."Mamie," Hetty said simply. "The child has been greatly frightened. She is calling for you. Will you please go up at once?"He passed forward, through Sandy, a note."Oh, I know the man well enough," Isidore replied. "I will give you an introduction to him right enough. But you won't get much from that quarter."The beautiful part of it, to Sandy, was that he could sit by and watch, do nothing, except pay out rope and let them tie themselves up in it.
