Special agent

“ In fact, an agent is to an election what the main-spring is to a watch; he is, in point of fact, the real returning-officer. His importance is not less than the talents and tact he is obliged to exert. ”

“ What business are you going into, that is, if you are going to the city?"
"I am going to the city, but I have no idea yet what I shall do."
"Perhaps you may like to become an agent for our lots. I shall be ready to employ you as sub agent if you feel disposed." ”

“ The third person, who had stated himself to be an agent, was a heavy, full-faced, coarse-looking personage, with his hat over his eyes, and his head bent down on his chest, and I observed that he had a small packet in one of his hands, with his forefinger twisted through the string. ”

“ But is there not such an understanding among the men, that they are to get their supplies from the agent who employs them?-Yes, that is the general understanding among the men; but the agent does not bind them in any way to take them. ”

“ This agent, a man about forty years of age, was thickset and powerful, with a high colour, a keen, quick eye, his face entirely shaven, in order that he might better assume the various disguises necessary for his dangerous expeditions ”

“ But, as I see it, the minute you gave up your profession you lost the right to expect or demand any other treatment than that of an outsider. As for the service which you claim to have rendered us in grappling with the agent, I, for my part, fail to acknowledge any obligation—unless it be on the part of the agent, whose life you assuredly saved. ”

“ Neither can it doubted, that, where an agent has power to employ a sub-agent, the acts of sub-agent, or notice given to him in the transaction of the business, have the same effect as if done or received by the principal. ”

“ His quick, restless eyes were always busy,—the agent feels certain that he has been measured and disposed of in a glance,—but the longer he looks at the stranger the more certain he becomes that the packages he is helping to handle contains goods of importance, for their owner is evidently a man of importance. ”

“ You must replace me just as much if your freedman drove me away, though he was not appointed to manage any of your business, as if your agent did it; not that every one is an agent who transacts any of our business, but because it is of no importance to the matter to inquire into that point. ”

“ To provoke, literally to call out or challenge, is to begin a contest; one provokes another to violence. To affront is to offer some defiant offense or indignity, as it were, to one's face; it is somewhat less than to insult. Compare PIQUE.
Antonyms: AGENT. Synonyms:
In strict philosophical usage, the prime mover or doer of an act is the agent. Thus we speak of man as a voluntary agent, a free agent. But in common usage, especially in business, an agent is not the prime actor, but only an instrument or factor, acting under orders or instructions. ”

“ In a great cause, I should certainly wish that my agent should possess conciliating qualities: that he should be of a frank, open, and candid disposition, soft in his nature, and of a temper to soften animosities and to win confidence. He ought not to be a man odious to the person he treats with, by personal injury, by violence, or by deceit, or, above all, by the dereliction of his cause in any former transactions. ”

“ It is the rule that the knowledge of the agent is the knowledge of his principal, and notice to the agent of the existence of material facts is notice thereof to the principal, who is taken to know everything about a transaction which his agent in it knows. ”

“ Many an agent, my Lord, has built himself a fortune out of the very necessities of his employer, and left to his children the honorable reflection that their independence originated from profligacy on the one hand and dishonesty on the other. ”

“ Is he not bound upon the principles of law, even that are common among men and well known to us? Most certainly he is. Did you ever know a. gentleman or agent delegated by an individual to go forth to do business in the name of that person, and yet deny that he had any line of communication with the principal or party for whom he was agent? ”

“ Knowledge communicated to the principal himself he is bound to recollect, but he is not bound by knowledge communicated to his agent, unless it is present to the agent's mind at the time of effecting the purchase. ”

“ The principle asserted in the decision of that point, and applied to the case was, that whatever an agent does, or says, in reference to the business in which he is at the time employed, and within the scope of his authority, is done or said by the principal ”

“ In other words, if it is generally known that A is acting as the general agent of B in conducting his business,—we will say managing his cotton-factory,—A will bind his principal B for everything done by him as general agent in conducting that business. ”

“ Now by an agent I mean any thing that acts or has a power to operate, that is, to produce effects; by a free agent I mean one that is not hindered from acting; by a moral and accountable agent I mean one that acts from will, and is influenced by motives; by reward and punishment I mean what every one does; by praise and blame I mean our approbation or disapprobation of any agent that is conscious of our sentiments towards him, or that is capable of reflecting on his own conduct, and of being affected by what others think of it. ”

“ And she knew that if all her friends should fail her, if the beggar returned no more to be modelled, if the secret-service agent proved but a handsome empty shell, Bubbles would always show up at the appointed time and place while life remained in him. Then, again, as she tried to concentrate upon her bust of Blizzard, the secret-service agent stepped forward, you may say, and smiled into her eyes. ”

“ The agent may have some compunction, but his first aim is to please his principal, and as he is often a sojourner liable to early transfer he cares little what may be said or thought about him locally. ”

“ The free agent, thus understood, is one who can neither feel himself accountable, nor be rendered accountable, to or by others. It is only the necessary agent (the person whose volitions are determined by motives, and, in case of conflict, by the strongest desire or the strongest apprehension) that can be held really accountable, or can feel himself to be so. ”

“ If you could only hear my agent, ma’am—the things he has to tell about people in my situation—how they are going mad, all over the country, with incessantly matching of worsteds, now that that kind of work is all the fashion. ”

“ There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting; no department of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience, making him exceptionally competent and fit. ”

“ The agent who rings a door bell with a palpitating heart, with a great big doubt in his mind as to whether he ought to do it, and who, when the door is opened, acts as though he were stealing somebody’s valuable time, and had no right to be there at all, will create a prejudice against him before he opens his mouth. ”

“ This simplified matters a good deal, for the agents kept me duly informed of their purposes, and, besides, an agent who handles treasure every week is an adept at the business, and does not need the protection which must surround an amateur, who in nine cases out of ten has but scant idea of the dangers that threaten him, beyond knowing that if he goes down a dark street in a dangerous quarter he is likely to be maltreated and robbed. ”

“ However, when he has armed himself with the more indispensable facts, our agent opens the campaign with extreme prudence, for it would be ruinous to awake suspicion. It is curious to observe the incomparable address which the agent displays in his efforts to learn the particulars of the deceased’s life, by consulting his friends, his enemies, his debtors, and all who ever knew him, until at last some one is found who says: “Such and such a man—why, he came from our part of the country. ”

“ The necessary qualifications of an agent vary of course with the class of work to be done. We can dismiss the waiter and porter class, as they never receive independent commands and work only under direct supervision on minor details without knowing why. The trusted agent handling important matters and documents must needs be a person of intelligence, tact and address. He must be a linguist and, above all, a man of resource and a close student of his fellow men. In the woman agent charm and tact, beauty and manners, à la grande dame, knowledge of the world and men are essential. ”

“ Hickman. That gentleman is an advocate for education and the spread of knowledge. Now if an agent were as much devoted to the interests of the people as he is and ought to be to those of the landlord, this principle might pass; but as I take it, that the sole duty of an agent is to extend the interest of his employer exclusively, so am I opposed to any plan or practice by which the people may be taught to think too clearly. For let me ask, my Lord, what class of persons, at the approach of an election, for instance, or during its continuance, are most available for our interests? ”

“ Within the sphere of the authority conferred, the act of the agent is as binding upon the principal as if it were done by the principal himself. But it is an elementary principle, applicable alike to all kinds of agency, that whatever an agent does can be done only in the way usual in the line of business in which he is acting. ”

“ Some maintain that they have made all their good engagements independently, others tell you that you are safe only in the hands of a reputable agent. I have closed contracts in both ways. The agent is not omnipotent. It is his business to watch the operatic field and notify you when there is a vacancy that he thinks would suit you. ”

“ The operator, or agent, as he likes to be called,—although, as police-magistrates and all other people dealing with crime are aware, the title “agent” is complimentary,—knows precisely with what material he has to deal. He “plays his cards,” as he sometimes describes his anxious labours, accordingly; and is only liable to one derangement. It is said that honesty and good faith towards one another is characteristic of thief-life. I have, in a former volume, shown that notion to be a fallacy. ”

“ Agentes) tells us that in the later Roman empire the officers who collected the grain in the provinces for the troops and the household, and afterwards extended their functions so as to include those of government postmasters or spies, came to be called agentes in rebus, their earlier name having been frumentarii. In law an agent is a person authorized, expressedly or impliedly, to act for another, who is thence called the principal, and who is, in consequence of, and to the extent of, the authority delegated by him, bound by the acts of his agent. (See PRINCIPAL AND AGENT; FACTOR, &c.) ”

“ An agent is bound, in ordinary cases, to observe the instructions of his principal, even though an act contrary to such instructions should be intended for the benefit of the principal. The agent must bear, personally, all losses growing out of a non-compliance with his orders ”

“ It’s the duty of an agent to save his principal trouble. I wouldn’t keep an agent who bothered me with all the twopenny-halfpenny transactions of the estate—dom’d if I would,” said Sir Moses, resuming his eye-glass reading. ”

“ And then, being, as I say, not in any way an eccentric or exorbitant character, the agent told it us a third time, with a digression here and there as to the deep friendships that members of his profession could form and cement if only they were decent fellows and not mere money-grubbing machines out for nothing but their commission. "That's what the wise man does," he concluded; "he makes real friends with his clients, such as I did with Ella Reeve. ”

“ I then tried two or three different things on my own account, and finally settled as agent for a paper-mill; and all things were going on fairly well until in an unguarded moment I read an advertisement in the New York Herald. It ran as follows: "A gentleman with experience requires a partner with capital, in a safe business, with no risks." ”

“ When the rays of the single lamp in the station fall upon the stranger, the agent at first concludes that he is middle-aged, for a new growth of whiskers covers his face completely; but he thinks better of this during the course of his inspection, and remarks to himself that the owner of the packages is not as old as he seemed at first glance, but he is a man not satisfied with himself, or with anything around him,—the agent is sure of that ”

“ Of great importance for the outline of the sociological picture is the question whether and in what degree the lordship of a numerous body is exercised directly or through agents. The “agent” is a very peculiar phenomenon, emerging in every highly developed form of intercourse. ”

“ He would have been told that every agent on every branch in the world, sooner or later, has the same conviction; that he need only to let it alone, eat sparingly of brain food, and the clot would be sure to pass unnoticed. ”

“ This seemingly mysterious agency, has given me relief when other human aid was hopeless, and I believe it is destined, when calmly investigated, to be, under Providence, a great remedial agent for mankind. ”

“ If an agent exceed the limits of his authority, he becomes personally responsible to the person with whom he deals, if the limitations of his authority are unknown to such person. He is in like mariner responsible, if he makes a contract in his own name ”

“ In advances of considerable amount, an agent's duty is to get authority from the head office before granting it. The discretion allowed is dependent on the size of the branch and the nature of the business and the class of customer, and on the record of the agent. ”