"Automatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleasant and curious memory. His mind was exercised superficially, not in thinking, but in wondering how it was he had come to kiss a strange woman. He said to himself that such conduct was not right; but this statement was no more than the automatic working of a mind long exercised in the distinctions of right and wrong, for, almost in the same breath, he assured himself that what he had done did not matter in the least. His opinions were undergoing a curious change. Right and wrong were meeting and blending ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... reach of the real difficulties of its task, a task which every admiral in his service knew to be beyond the strength of the Imperial Navy. Nor did Napoleon even approach a solution of the problem he had set himself—invasion over an uncommanded sea. With our impregnable flotilla hold covered by an automatic concentration of battle-squadrons off Ushant, his army could never even have put forth, unless he had inflicted upon our covering fleet such a defeat as would have given him command of the sea, and with absolute control of the sea the passage of ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... tilt, the children scuttling to the cabin. Johnny swore at the dogs and they did not bite. He followed the children and they did not stop. So he came presently to the oak and roused Cliff, who came promptly to an elbow with a wicked looking automatic pointed straight ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... groaned. "Hear the explosion. Albert, Albert ... you have a fertile mind. Why didnt I hide myself before they told us to clear out? Why didnt I get W R to hire a plane? Why didnt I foresee this and do any of a hundred things? A microphone and automatic moviecamera ... Goony Gootes, they called him, the man who missed all bets.... A captive balloon, now.... Hay! ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... with a benignly triumphant expression, and a complacent rustle of silken skirts. Harriet, beneath an automatic smile, hid a troubled heart. Royal was losing no time, Ward his innocent instrument, and this fatuous old lady of course playing his game for him! Madame Carter had always spoiled Nina in something a trifle more defined and malicious than the usual grandmotherly fashion. She had indulged the ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... chauffeur had produced a thin black automatic and was now lazily pointing it, not so much at Ross Wooley as at Dr. Braun and Patricia. He said evenly, ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... sense of duration, of the passage of seconds or minutes. There was only a dream in which, suddenly, a gentle mind made its presence known. Concepts tapped lightly at his own mind and an automatic process of interpretation winnowed and equated until a gentle voice seemed to speak. The words were few, merely computed associations keyed to understanding, and with them were perfectly and intimately synchronized ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... coals, and that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy, an automatic fancy, made as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... Middle Ages he stood watch on the ramparts of the baron's castle—now he walks the block and lifts his finger to suspicious persons. In the old days he wore his armour on the outside and carried a spear. Now he wears a hidden coat of mail and carries concealed two automatic guns. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... us now!" exclaimed Tom, as he increased the speed of the RED CLOUD, and then, taking up a telescope, after setting the automatic steering gear, Tom pointed the glass at the person whom Mr. Damon ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... habit. Developing the urban habit, he fails to oxidize his proteins and toxins. Failing to oxidize his proteins and toxins, he degenerates. Recognizing the degenerating influence of urban life, by means of his intelligence he has placed within his consciousness that automatic arrangement, as good as the automatic arrangement which turns water on to a boiler, which says to him, "go out and oxidize your proteins and toxins." That is what "back-to-the-land" means. You've got to begin from this fundamental point. Now then, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... damnable perdition, we are consoled by contemplating the steadfast virtue of commuters. The planet grows harder and harder to live on, it is true; every new invention makes things more complicated and perplexing. These new automatic telephones, which are said to make the business of getting a number so easy, will mean (we suppose) that we will be called up fifty times a day—instead of (as now) a mere twenty or thirty, while we are swooning and swinking ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... automatically; but the extreme variance in composition of different coffees, the effect of changing atmospheric conditions, and the lack of constancy in the calorific power of fuels have conspired to defeat the automatic roasting machine.[165] It is even doubtful whether De Mattia's[166] process for roasting until the vapors evolved produce a violet color when passed into a solution of fuchsin decolorized with sulphur ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... foundations of a pleasant and profitable existence had been cut right out from under him. Gone were the days in which the big racket boss, Scarneck Ed, generously rewarded the exercise of Tony's brilliant talents as an engineer in redesigning cars to give higher speed for bootlegging purposes, in devising automatic electric apparatus for handling and concealing liquor, in designing beam-directed radios for secret communication among the gangs. Yes, mused ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... she heard a rapid-fire thunk-thunk-thunk as the automatic guard system slid inter-compartment doors shut against sections of the ship suddenly airless. The doors were still thudding shut when another explosion came, from toward the bow. Then there was silence; a feeling of ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... stronger sheet and one of higher folding endurance. Undoubtedly, there is more dirt in the samples than would be tolerated by the trade, but this was to be expected, since in this preliminary work the raw material was sieved by hand screens instead of by automatic machines which would sieve ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill
... who has the smallest histrionic gift has a natural dramatic fertility; so that as soon as he knows the author's text, and obtains self-possession, and feels at home in a part without being too familiar with it, the mere automatic action of rehearsing and playing it at once begins to place the author in new lights, and to give the personage being played an individuality partly independent of, and yet consistent with, and rendering more ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... made in a day by market gunners: but rarely have they published any of their records. The greatest kill of which I ever have heard occurred under the auspices of the Glenn County Club, in southern California, on February 5, 1906. Two men, armed with automatic shot-guns, fired five shots apiece, and got ten geese out of one flock. In one hour they killed two hundred and eighteen geese, and their bag for the day was four hundred and fifty geese! The shooter ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... are done with the work in motion on the platforms. The metal is poured at another point as the work moves, and by the time the mould in which the metal has been poured reaches the terminal, it is cool enough to start on its automatic way to cleaning, machining, and assembling. And the platform is moving around for a ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... job-ownership owes its effectiveness to the fact that it has been built upon two of the most potent driving forces in all the world—hunger and ambition—the driving force that comes from the empty stomach and the driving force that comes from the desire for betterment. Thus job-owning, based upon an automatic self-drive principle, enables the job-owner to exact a return in faithful service that neither slavery nor serfdom ever made possible. Job-owning is thus the most thorough-going form of mastery yet devised by the ingenuity ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in conversation—said their pauses and accompanying movements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines. One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "lubricator" now being used on nearly all the railroad engines in the United States was invented by a colored man, Mr. E. McCoy, of Detroit, Michigan. Eugene Burkins, a Negro, was inventor of the Burkins' Automatic Machine Gun, concerning which Admiral Dewey said it was "by far the best machine gun ever made." Many other useful inventions in the country are credited by the Patent Office ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... way of mischief Silver was a star performer. What other fire-horse ever mastered the intricacies of the automatic halter release? It was Silver, too, that picked from the Captain's hip-pocket a neatly folded paper and chewed the same with malicious enthusiasm. The folded paper happened to be the Company's annual report, in the writing of which the Captain ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... temperate climate. They become nervous, irritable, and less moral. And they drink as they never drank before. Drinking is one form of the many forms of degeneration that set in when white men are exposed too long to too much white light. The increase of alcoholic consumption is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn. They seem doomed to die anyway, and the heavy drinking expedites the process. They don't reason about it. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the routine of the work numbly; but his intercourse with the hands tugged at deep fibres of feelings. He had always shared, as far as his duties allowed, in the cares and interests of their few free hours: the hours when the automatic appendages of the giant machine became men and women again, with desires and passions of their own. Under Amherst's influence the mixed elements of the mill-community had begun to crystallize into social groups: his books had served as an improvised lending-library, he had organized ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... ninth vowel sound ou ( owe), but the other pair remained such a constant source of error, that persons who had their house put on the general telephonic system would request the Post Office to give them a number that did not contain a 9 or a 5; and it is pretty certain that had not the system of automatic dialling, which was invented for quite another purpose, got rid of the trouble, one of these two ciphers would have changed its ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... line of machines. At length the plate is taken in hand by a machine, or rather a group of machines, which can do almost anything. Before they let it go, they actually perform one hundred and forty-two different operations, each bringing it nearer completion. These machines are automatic, but nevertheless they must be constantly watched by expert machinists to keep them in order and make sure of their turning ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... Germany held all the winning cards in a game of peaceful penetration and economic competition, we should attribute to the Imperial Government a strange recklessness if we did not conclude that the political condition of Germany itself, and the automatic working of the machine, were the main causes why the attack was made. There is, in fact, abundant evidence that it was so. The scheme failed only because Germany was foolish enough to threaten England before ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the man beside her sat bent over, his face in his hands, blood striping the fingers of his gloves. With a shudder she placed the automatic weapon on the cushion beside her and shrank ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... delay to investigate this department, fascinating as it was. They were hurried on to another floor and were shown where all the accounts of advertisers were computed by means of an automatic device that registered the space taken by a specific firm and the price of such space. There was also a circulation department where lists of subscribers and records of their subscriptions ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... Hamilton Burton meant to use them for another, and a grimmer purpose—in fact a final one. The portfolio which he carried contained a dilapidated old blank book, such as one buys in a crossroads store, a volume of verse, and an automatic pistol, carefully loaded. When the now inevitable moment came which should leave his family roofless—he would not be there ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... your letters unanswered long enough they answered themselves; and he admitted it was true, and that he had sometimes adopted the plan successfully. There is a secretary with him—a dark and silent man named Murray, who appears to have an automatic, double-action brain; anyway he can write a letter and answer questions at the same time. And he watches your father's lips as if he—the secretary, not Sir Stephen—were a dog waiting for a stone to be thrown. It is interesting to watch—for a time; then it gets on one's ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... manifestations—all showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life," according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these automatic dancing-jacks ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... logical, prevalent amongst the rich people before the days of freedom, which did not die out at once after that epoch had begun. This opinion, which from all I can learn seemed as natural then, as it seems absurd now, was, that while the ordinary daily work of the world would be done entirely by automatic machinery, the energies of the more intelligent part of mankind would be set free to follow the higher forms of the arts, as well as science and the study of history. It was strange, was it not, that they should thus ignore that aspiration after ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... who for a time seemed to encourage him. He was dismissed from his post on account of grave negligence caused by Flore, who distracted his attention in order that he might allow the Havre express to dash into a train loaded with ballast. The accident was only averted by a new automatic ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... the wall, he moved with the crowd until he reached the rounded niche that marked an escape chamber. As if pushed by the hurrying throng, he backed into it, the automatic doors opening ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... something of a shock that I found myself looking directly along the barrel of a .45 automatic pistol, which a stout gentleman, wearing a green mask, white kid gloves, and immaculate evening-dress, was ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... applies to the teaching of that modern Absolute Idealism which declares, with Green, that man is his motives, and that he is "free" inasmuch as it is by his own motives that he is governed. It would be as accurate to call an automatic machine "free" on the ground that it is by its own works that it is moved. This is only, as Professor William James aptly calls it, "soft Determinism." If the automaton could decide to slacken or increase its rate of speed, to go or to stop as it liked and where it ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... itself, and exerts, a special supervenient power of deciding action in one way or the other: a power not determined by any causal antecedent, but self-originating, and belonging to the class of agency that Aristotle recognizes under the denomination of automatic, spontaneous (or essentially irregular and unpredictable). Chrysippus replied by denying not only the reality of this supervenient force said to be inherent in the soul, but also the reality of all that Aristotle called automatic or ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... moralists a more favorable opportunity to assail the sensualism of the century, the venality of consciences, and the corruption instituted by the government: instead of that, what does the Academy of Moral Sciences do? With the most automatic calmness, it establishes a series in which luxury, so long proscribed by the stoics and ascetics,—those masters of holiness,—must appear in its turn as a principle of conduct as legitimate, as pure, and as grand as ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... meant "stop"; two meant "back"; three meant "get together." They carried no rifles, because the rifle is an awkward tool for a noiseless crawler to lug. But each man had a big trench-knife and a pair of automatic ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano," I went on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always hitched at a post for 'the missus'—and May Martha Mangum to spend the profits of the ranch ...
— Options • O. Henry
... what the railroad builders call a steel dump: a metal wagon capable of carrying thirty or forty tons of ballast, with an automatic arrangement ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... right. From the deck of the unterseeboot a signalling apparatus similar to that employed by the spies was in use. By an ingenious automatic arrangement it projected a beam of light, derived from the same sources as that on St. Mena's Island, rigidly in a fixed direction, regardless of the "lift" of the submarine under the action ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the same time, he admits, in all that regards its mere animal life—in active functions, such as those connected with hunger, respiration, sleep, digestion; in many passive ones, such as we are accustomed to call mental, as in memory, the perception of color, sound—a purely automatic action of the body, which it pursues simply by following out its own laws, independent of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... conducting apparatus and serve to place the central nervous organs in connection with peripheral end organs. The nerve cells, however, besides transmitting impulses, act as physiological centers for automatic, or reflex, movements, and also for the sensory, perceptive, trophic, and secretory functions. A nerve consists of a bundle of tubular fibers, held together by a dense areolar tissue, and inclosed in a membranous sheath—the neurilemma. Nerve fibers possess no elasticity, but are very strong. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... to have men about him who can dispense with blueprints altogether or can make their own. The difference between these two types of operatives spells the difference between leadership and mere blind, automatic following. Were all the workers in the factory mere followers, the work would be stereotyped and the factory would be unable to compete with the other factory, where initiative ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... matter. You may shout yourself hoarse in trying to bring a greyhound to heel after he sights a hare; but the dog cannot obey you, for he is an automaton. The human predatory animal has his share of reason, but he also is automatic to some degree, and he will hunt in spite of all perils and all punishments when he sights his prey. One comic old rascal whom I know well has been caught thirty times and imprisoned eight times. While he is in gaol he ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... twenty-six without any wish for confidence, and why should they wish to confide in Henrietta? She was not wise and she was not sympathetic. The mere fact that they lived in the same house with her caused no automatic opening of the heart. Well on in middle life, William became engaged, and suddenly poured out everything to his love, but for the present he and Harold were content to go through life never saying anything about themselves to anybody. In fact, they hardly ever thought of Henrietta. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... count on hatching more than fifty chicks. Incubators are a constant care. The most important objection to an incubator is that it is against the rules of most fire insurance companies to allow it to be operated in any building that the insurance policy covers. If the automatic heat regulator fails to work and the heat in our incubator runs up too high we may have a fire. At any rate, we shall lose our entire hatch. The latter is also true if the lamp goes out and the eggs become too cool. I have made a great many hatches with incubators of different ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... cedar chests, and, from certain rich and alien garments laid out for the guests, pretending as unconcernedly to fleck lint as if they had been broadcloth from Fifth Avenue. He stood bending above the breakfast-table, his lean, shadowed hands perfectly at home, his lean, shadowed face all automatic attention. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... immovable, her eyes fixed on Armitage, saw his head half turn in her direction, then with the automatic movement of a machine, he reached for the port engine room telegraph and with a jerk threw the port engine full speed astern. The bridge quivered as though it were being torn from its place; throughout the hull sounded a great metallic clanking. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... doorway, crying up the merits of Cosmoramas, views of Constantinople, marionettes, automatic chess-players, and performing dogs who would pick you out the prettiest woman in the company. The ventriloquist Fritz-James flourished here in the Cafe Borel before he went to fight and fall at Montmartre with the young lads from the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... automatic effort to defend himself against the conviction he felt closing down upon him that John lashed out here ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... nor the irrepressible spirit of our A.P.M., son of a distinguished father who commanded an Army, nor the dry common-sense humour of our Field Cashier. What delight they took in ragging the Senior Chaplain, whose automatic ears, as he averred, prevented his hearing the things he should not. Nor must we forget the Camp Commandant, often perplexed like Martha with much serving. It was a goodly company and one much addicted to ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... with no warning, the mule suddenly applied all the automatic brakes which a mule ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... a lesson in school, the soldier replied in a weak, singsong voice: "Insert tag end of belt in feed block, with left hand pull belt left front. Pull crank handle back on roller, let go, and repeat motion. Gun is now loaded. To fire, raise automatic safety latch, and press thumb piece. Gun is now firing. If gun stops, ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... to the place where they were making watches with the complex, automatic machinery that defies the eye to detect its movements, then there was the sewing machine with a man riding it like a bicycle and sewing carpet in strips a hundred feet long. There were knitting machines and clothing machines, and carving and molding ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... adventurous spirit who happened to be in a business which was much too good to leave. He was continually, as they say there, "up to something" that caused changes in daily habits. Moreover, the Universal Thrift Club (Limited) was so automatic and self-winding that Denry ran no risks in leaving it often to the care of his highly drilled staff. Still, he did usually come home to his tea about six o'clock of an evening, like the rest, and like the rest, he brought with him a ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... was made by Mrs. Alexander Baumgard, of New York City, and showed an automatic advertising figure actuated by an electric motor. The figure was that of a woman standing before a rack on which were a number of signs. The figure stooped, picked up one of the signs, raised it, turned a quarter way around in order to display it to the best advantage, and replaced the sign. The ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... commentary upon Bourget's 'Outre Mer', he declared that there wasn't a single human characteristic that could safely be labelled "American"—not a single human detail, inside or outside. Through years of automatic observation, Mark Twain learned to discover for America, to adapt his own phrase, those few human peculiarities that can be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the name of the nation where ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... strike on a clock which he kept shut up in a large oblong closet, he rose at the stroke with the mechanical precision of the figures which are made to move by springs in the German toys. He would then advance slowly towards the players, give them a glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, "Go away!" There were days when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely annoying, and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in reality so swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he who must have made it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A hand darted ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... aglow in red tabs and armbands, thirsty for little cocktails after a dusty drive. Everywhere in the streets and on the esplanade there was incessant saluting. The arms of men were never still. It was like the St. Vitus disease. Tommies and Jocks saluted every subaltern with an automatic gesture of convulsive energy. Every subaltern acknowledged these movements and in turn saluted a multitude of majors, colonels, and generals. The thing became farcical, a monstrous absurdity of human relationship, yet pleasing to the vanity of men lifted up ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... we get to you, or you are a dead man," shouted Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he ran. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... a progressive development of the nervous system, none the less so because it takes place out of the womb instead of in it. The regular transmutation of motions which are at first voluntary into secondary automatic motions, as Hartley calls them, is due to a gradually effected organisation; and we may rest assured of this, that co-ordinate activity always testifies to stored-up power, either ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... quiet and peaceful, though, as Pinckney opens the door with his latchkey. No howls from upstairs, no front windows broken, and nobody slidin' down the banisters. We was just waitin' for the automatic elevator to come down when we hears voices floatin' out from the lib'ry. Pinckney steps to the doorway where he can see through into the next room, and then beckons me up ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... I tell you, and it will have to be looked into," insisted the ex-foreman, drawing his automatic revolver. ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... statues seemed so strange and so unworthy of the wisdom of the Egyptians that Egyptologists of the rank of M. de Rouge have taken in an abstract and metaphorical sense expressions referring to the automatic movements of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... not. We're going right on as soon as a slight break to one of the engines can be repaired. We are in no danger. Only a little water came in before the automatic bulkheads were shut. We haven't even a list to one side. Now please clear the decks and ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... she paused in her task and stood waiting for him, with the expression of interested, if automatic, attention, which appeared on her face, as in answer to some secret spring, whenever she was invited to perform the delicate part of a listener. She had attained at last that battered yet smiling acquiescence in the will of Providence ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... government. Reform is both meaningless and powerless unless the Jeffersonian principle of non-interference is abandoned. The experience of the last generation plainly shows that the American economic and social system cannot be allowed to take care of itself, and that the automatic harmony of the individual and the public interest, which is the essence of the Jeffersonian democratic creed, has proved to be an illusion. Interference with the natural course of individual and popular action there must be in the public interest; and such interference must at ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... people out when one is not sure who is coming—and it is rather dull not to see any one," with a little quiver of the lip which Sir William did not perceive. Then speaking more lightly, "It is a pity we can't have some kind of automatic arrangement at our front doors, like the thing for testing sovereigns at the Mint, by which the heavy, tiresome people would be shot back into the street, and the light, amusing ones ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... costume, a floppy felt hat, distinctly Rembrandtish in effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny, white cotton undershirt covered his torso; and from a belt about his middle dangled a tobacco pouch, a sheath-knife, filled clips of cartridges, and a huge automatic pistol ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Smiths, and I don't care for Smythe. My father's content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning, as I was buying a simple penn'orth of butterscotch out of the automatic machine at Paddington. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won't), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded. Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments—a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... I will show you all my plans. I have also invented an automatic crane for hanging the paper on the rods in the drying-room. Next week I intend to take up my quarters in the factory, up in the garret, and have my first machine made there secretly, under my own eyes. In three months the patents must be taken out and the Press must be at work. You'll ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... over the dishes mount upstairs agin, and are washed by a electric automatic dish washer, and dried by a electric ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... artisan could produce an article almost from raw material to finished product: now he has learned to stand at an automatic and labour at a single part. In short, he is becoming a specialist which makes him a cog in the machine of ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... you once more," I said, "if you touch Mr. Blank, I'll punch you so hard you'll wish you hadn't." The attendant's answer was an immediate attempt to eject Mr. Blank from the room by force. Nothing could be more automatic than my action at that time; indeed, to this day I do not remember performing the act itself. What I remember is the determination to perform it and the subsequent evidence of its having been performed. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... leaped with joyous hope, and he leaned forward on the sledge to examine Croisset's empty gun. It was an automatic, and Croisset, glancing back over the loping backs of the huskies, caught him smiling. He ran more frequently now, and longer distances, and with the passing of each mile his determination to strike a decisive blow increased. ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... an' him just perishin' for the touch of a real mother's hand. Get out of this—the whole crowd o' you," and before the force of her righteous wrath they fled as chaff before the wind. Then, quick as the automatic click of a monstrous spring, the hitherto unknown—the supposed-to-be-impossible—befell Radcliffe Sherman. He was treated as if he had been an iron girder on which the massive clutch of a steam-lift had fastened. He was raised, lowered, laid across what seemed to be two moveless iron trestles, and ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... efficient and economical steam driven high speed compressor plant must be installed so as to get the maximum power out of coal. The boiler room will contain two 250-H. P. water-tube boilers with automatic stokers and coal bin overhead holding two weeks' supply of coal. Steam pressure 175 lbs. As the firing of the boilers is automatic and requires practically no work on the part of the engineers, no firemen are needed. Ashes will also ...
— Manufacturing Cost Data on Artificial Ice • Otto Luhr
... stole an automatic shotgun. They stole a colt one time. They stole all my clothes and pawned them to a whiskey dealer. He got sent to the pen for selling whiskey, but I didn't get my clothes. They come in the yard ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... it did—in my opinion—but for the ardent beliefs of the young and remarkable woman, at once a strong Liberal and a devoted daughter of the English Church, as Arnold, Kingsley, and Maurice understood it, who had married her Quaker husband in 1850, and had thereby been the innocent cause of his automatic severance from the Quaker body. His respect for her judgment and intellectual power was only equaled by his devotion to her. And when the last great test of his own life came, how she stood by him!—through those terrible days of the Land League struggle, when, as ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may be worked by hand (Fig. 17) or power driven. Where large quantities of a particular tablet have to be stamped, one of the many automatic mechanical stampers in existence may be employed, the tablets being conveyed to and from the dies by means of endless belts. Such a machine is shown in the accompanying illustration ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... in 1891 by Mr Henry Whiley, superintendent of the scavenging department of the Manchester corporation, is automatic in its action and was designed primarily with a view to saving labour—the cells being fed, stoked and clinkered automatically. There is no drying hearth, and the refuse carts tip direct into a shoot or hopper at the back which conducts the material directly on to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the snub nose of a small automatic, concealed from the rest of the car by a newspaper, resting against ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... Machine Works occupy a large and convenient brick building on Main street, near its beginning, and manufacture machinists' tools principally. Opposite is the handsome brick building occupied by C.H. Brown and Company, manufacturers of the "Brown" automatic cut-off steam-engines, which have gained a wide reputation. A little further up on Main street is located the Simonds Manufacturing Company. This company was organized in 1868 with a capital of $150,000 and manufactures machine knives and the well-known "Simonds" ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... his possessions, and arose gravely with an automatic courtesy, and lifted eyes with a wooden expression to ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... known WHAT he was imprisoned for doing! More important is the probable conclusion that the long and mysterious captivity of Eustache Dauger, and of another perfectly harmless valet and victim, was the mere automatic result of "red tape" of the old French absolute monarchy. These wretches were caught in the toils of the system, and suffered to no purpose, for no crime. The two men, at least Dauger, were apparently mere supernumeraries in ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... necessity of the case, then, we find the reason why the life, love, and beauty of the Spirit are not visibly reproduced in every human being. They ARE reproduced in the world of nature, so far as a mechanical and automatic action can represent them, but their perfect reproduction can only take place on the basis of a liberty akin to that of the Originating Spirit itself, which therefore implies the liberty of negation as well ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... firebreak, trench; aerial water bombardment. wet blanket; fire extinguisher, soda and acid extinguisher, dry chemical extinguisher, CO-two extinguisher, carbon tetrachloride, foam; sprinklers, automatic sprinkler system; fire bucket, sand bucket. [warning of fire] fire alarm, evacuation alarm, [laws to prevent fire] fire code, fire regulations, fire; fire inspector; code violation, citation. V. go out, die out, burn out; fizzle. extinguish; damp, slack, quench, smother; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... first thing a man does when, he finds handcuffs on his wrists is to try to get them off. The action is automatic. Mr. McEachern strained at the steel chain till the veins stood out on his forehead. His great body ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... body, but this so-called mind is both the service and message of this telegraphy. Nerves are un- able to talk, and matter can return no an- 399:15 swer to immortal Mind. If Mind is the only actor, how can mechanism be automatic? Mortal mind perpetuates its own thought. It constructs a machine, manages it, 399:18 and then calls it material. A mill at work or the action of a water-wheel is but a derivative from, and continua- tion of, the primitive mortal mind. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... counter of his dry canteen and his work as a money-changer, that he had forgotten all the higher interests of the men, and the high purpose for which he was there. He had become a mere secularized machine, a kind of automatic cash register, mistaking in his work the means for the end. He was just as much "out for his own show" as the three mentioned above, and it ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... undertaken—began to impress itself upon him. He had thought that in asking him to fight for her she had spoken with the physical definition of that word in mind. But at the outset she had plunged him into mystery. If she had asked him to draw the automatic at his side and leap into battle with a dozen of his kind he would not have been surprised. He had expected something like that. But this other—her first demand upon him! What could it mean? Shrouded in mystery, bound by his oath of honour to make no effort to uncover her secret, he was to accompany ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... glance at the prostrate form, dashed over the back-trail with the curious lumbering strides of the man who would hurry on rackets. He had jerked off his heavy mitten at the sound of the shot, and his bared hand clutched firmly the butt of a blue-black automatic. A spruce-branch, suddenly relieved of its snow, sprang upward with a swish, thirty yards away. MacNair fired three times ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... smiling terrace of the Cafe de la Paix; That little wizened Spanish man, his face is ghastly white, His eyes are staring, staring like a tiger's in the night. I know within his evil heart the fires of hate are fanned, I know his automatic's ready waiting to his hand. I know a tragedy is near. I dread, I have no peace . . . Oh, don't you think I ought to go and call upon the police? Look there . . . he's rising up . . . my God! He leaps from out his place . . . Yon millionaire from Argentine . . . the two are ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... confession to make which ill accords with my luxurious surroundings of the moment. It is that I am accustomed to press my trousers myself by the homely and ignoble expedient of sleeping on them. My only excuse is that I am a heavy sleeper. So automatic is the process, that I was wrapped in sheets and darkness before it occurred to me that I had placed the trousers I had just doffed under the mattress on which I now lay. I could not help thinking how the masterful Perkins would take it when he came ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... and Cartwright occupied a chair on the lawn in front of the Canadian summer hotel. Automatic sprinklers threw sparkling showers across the rough, parched grass, the lake shimmered, smooth as oil, in the sunset, and a sweet, resinous smell drifted from the pines that rolled down to the water's edge. The straight trunks stood out against a background of luminous red ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... last John Holliday, a dealer in automatic musical instruments, was "trimmed" out of sixty-five thousand dollars by various schemes of this character, the tardy Legislature finally amended the penal code in such a way as to do away with the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... submarine and that of the water which it displaces. Variations in weights are so important to the submersible that, as fuel is used, water is allowed to enter certain tanks to compensate exactly for the loss of the weight of the fuel. To obtain such an equilibrium, an automatic device controlled by the pressure of the water, which, of course, varies with the depth, is used. This device controls the pumps which fill or empty the ballast-tanks, so as to keep the relation of the submersible to the water which it displaces ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... carried. As we gaze upon these huge engines, only occasionally touched by a woman's hand, we are reminded of man, the pigmy guiding an elephant. We seem conscious, moreover, of what almost approaches human intelligence, so much of the work achieved appearing voluntary rather than automatic. The skins reach Rheims direct from Australia and are here dressed, cleaned and prepared for working up into cloth. If machinery is brought almost to the perfection of manual dexterousness, human beings attain the precision ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... gate slid aside, and, after the caravan had passed through, naked slaves pushed the massive thing shut again. Although they were familiar with the interior of the town, from photographs taken with boomerang-balls—automatic-return transposition spheres like message-balls—they looked around curiously. The central square was thronged—Caleras in striped robes, people from the south and east in baggy trousers and embroidered shirts, mountaineers in deerskins. A slave market was in progress, ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... homogeneous system. The will tires not of its supremacy, and is not wearied with the number of volitions required of it to keep every joint in action, and every organ performing its proper function. It would not delegate the control of the fingers to an inferior power, nor contrive mechanical or automatic means for moving the extremities. Within its sphere, it is sole sovereign, and is not perplexed with the variety and constant succession of its duties, extending to every part of the complex structure of which ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... delivered, instead of, as the Revised Version correctly does, delivereth. It is a continuous deliverance, running all through the life of the Christian man, and not merely to be realised away yonder at the far end; because by the mighty providence of God, and by the automatic working of the consequences of every transgression and disobedience, that 'wrath' is ever coming, coming, coming towards men, and lighting on them, and a continual Deliverer, who delivers us by His death, is what the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... operating the great interstate freight lines of the country, and especially of the yardmen and brakemen. A petition signed by nearly 10,000 railway brakemen was presented to the Commission asking that steps might be taken to bring about the use of automatic brakes ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this," he said as he handed Charley his automatic. "Let your chum carry your pistol. I'll get another at the office. It isn't likely that you will ever need to use a weapon in the forest. I have been a ranger for years and have never yet drawn one, but I never travel without one. You'll meet some pretty tough characters in the forest and sometime ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... pipe line passes a water tank on the railway, a 4-in. branch pipe is carried to the bottom of the tank and up to the top, where it is capped by an automatic valve. A gate-valve is placed in the branch pipe at its junction with the ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... aesthetic; that The People's own untutored instinct would always unerringly select the best; that it was an insult to the noble idealism of The People to try to educate them; they were, so to speak, born with an education, ready-made, automatic, in sound working order from the beginning. Now, anyone almost may have theories, but if they are wise souls they won't try to apply them. If they have never been practically tested they can't be proved fallacious and ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... young major concluded he drew from behind him a leather case which he sprung open as he presented it to the astonished master of the institution. There, in the case, rested a very fine automatic pistol, its polished handle engraved with Colonel Colby's name and also the fact that it was presented to him by the school, with the date. The hat had been passed around among the boys for contributions to this gift, and every cadet had ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... pulleys and levers and half-finished inventions that wouldn't work, and that, even if they would work, would be of little consequence. There was an attempt to make a self-oiler for buggy wheels, a half-finished contrivance that was supposed to keep cordwood stacked in neat rows; an automatic contraption to prevent coffeepots from burning; a cornsheller that would all but work; a molasses faucet with an alcohol burner which was supposed to make the sirup flow faster—but which instead sometimes ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centers or spheres of consciousness. This theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven thousand billion cells-endowed with a sure if automatic intelligence by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations, and dissolutions-and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions, and variations of alternating phases in man's consciousness in an ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... and propping his elbows on his knees, took both hands to the automatic which was his only weapon, emptying the magazine and replacing it. The last three savages he shot in the back: they had had enough and were running ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire |
