This is a waterwork as the Industrial Revolution hit full swing.
It’s the final image in a book I’ve used here before, A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water works, in North America on archive.org.
Two pages later, the text turns from mechanical concerns to more of a philosophy for living:
Let the designer and builder of the public water system feel that his work must be complete, durable, and unfailing, and let this feeling guide his whole thought and energy, then there is little danger of his going astray as to system, whether it be called “gravitation,” “reservoir,” “stand-pipe,” or “direct pressure,” or of his being enamored with lauded but suspicious mechanical pumping automatons, and uncertain valve and hydrant fixtures.
When the people have learned to depend, or must of necessity depend, upon the public pipes for their indispensable water, it must flow unceasingly as does the blood in our veins. All elements of uncertainty must be overcome, and the safest and most reliable structures and machines be provided.
Words to live by. It almost sounds like Chinese ethical treatises of a thousand years earlier.