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Electric   /ɪlˈɛktrɪk/   Listen
Electric

adjective
1.
Using or providing or producing or transmitting or operated by electricity.  Synonym: electrical.  "Electric wiring" , "Electrical appliances" , "An electrical storm"
2.
(of a situation) exceptionally tense.
3.
Affected by emotion as if by electricity; thrilling.  Synonyms: galvanic, galvanising, galvanizing.  "The new leader had a galvanic effect on morale"



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"Electric" Quotes from Famous Books



... to see it," said his hostess, and suddenly pressed a button. This brought into play a row of electric bulbs near the top edge of the frame and into full prominence the dark plumpness of the subject. He looked back again from the painter (who also had black hair and ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... to look upon just now. For an appreciable length of time her glance met Carteret's and held it; giving him—though the least neurotic of men, calm of body and of mind—a strange sensation as of contact with an electric current which tingled through every nerve and vein. And this, although he perceived that, dazzled by the moonlight, she either did not see or quite failed to recognize him. An expression of disappointment, akin, so he read it, to hope defeated, crossed her face. She lowered ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... clouds with electric flash may meet, And thunder may rattle its dreadful breath, Yet never a sound break the rest complete, Or the silence ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart

... the case, we'd best be looking after him. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns, psychasthenia—that's going to be a long-drawn affair—bruises, maybe a little concussion, and possibly internal injury—that was equivalent to a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby

... tap zere fronts, an' spek of ze strait-jackets. Never fear,—I am toujours harmless! Mais, Monsieur, it is true, vat I tell you: I am ze original inventeur of ze Atlantic Telegraph! You mus' not comprehend me, Sare, to intend somesing vat persons call ze Telegraph,—such like ze Electric Telegraph of Monsieur Morse,—a vulgaire sing of ze vire and ze acid. Mon Dieu, non! far more perfect,—far more grrand,—far more original! Ze acid may burn ze finger,—ze vire vill become rrusty,—ze isolation subject ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... spectacular fashion to various procedures or else disappears spontaneously in remarkable fashion overnight. Paralyses of this type have disappeared under hypnosis, violent electric shocks, "magical" liniments, threats, prayers, the healer's, the fakir's, the doctor's personal influence; under circumstances of danger (a fire, a row, etc.); by pilgrimages to Lourdes, St. Anne de Beaupre, the Temple of Diana, the relic of a saint; by the influence of sudden joy, fear, anger; ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... tree-things both create and respond to the patterned electrical impulses of the mind. It's something like the way a doctor creates fantasies by applying a mild electric current to the right places on a patient's brain. In the year we've been here, the trees—or some of them—have learned to read from and transmit to our minds. The range, they say, is around fifty feet. But ...
— Tree, Spare that Woodman • Dave Dryfoos

... struck! Awkward, as they have just pulled down north side of Strand, to make room for double lines of electric tramways in centre of roadway, and whole street in an awful litter. Begin to wish we had not "Abolished the Contractor" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various

... shoulders broad and bare; The ripe corn under the undulating air Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines 120 Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines— The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill The empty pauses of the blast;—the hill Looks hoary through the white electric rain, And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, 125 The interrupted thunder howls; above One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love On the unquiet world;—while such things are, How could one worth your friendship heed the war Of worms? the shriek of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... in his hand, is pleasant to the imagination,— although it is questionable whether his carbine be loaded; and, no doubt, if the authorities had any message to send, they would choose some other messenger than this heavy dragoon,—the electric wire, for instance. Still, if he and his horse were to be withdrawn from their post, night or day (for I suppose the sentinels are on duty all night), it seems as if the monarchy would be subverted, and the English constitution crumble into rubbish; and, in honest fact, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... one of those little electric lights," Hal said. "My father sent it to me for my birthday when I was in the Home, and I didn't use it hardly at all, 'cause I wasn't up nights. It flashes bright. I brought it with me when I came to visit you, and I can get it and take it to ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis

... you look at 'em?" did they venture to untie a single ribbon. Then the old eyes shone, indeed, at sight of the wonderful things disclosed; a fine lace tie and a bottle of perfume; a reading-glass and a basket of figs; some dates, raisins, nuts, and candies, and a little electric pocket lantern which would, at the pressure of a thumb, bring to light all the secrets of the darkest of rooms. There were books, too, such as Ella and Frank themselves liked to read; and there was a handsome little clock for the mantel—but there was not anywhere a ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... and not an unwise one. For Fiesole at nearer view can easily disappoint. It is beautifully set on its hill and it has a fascinating past; but the journey thither on foot is very wearisome, by the electric tram vexatious and noisy, and in a horse-drawn carriage expensive and cruel; and when you are there you become once more a tourist without alleviation and are pestered by beggars, and by nice little girls who ought to know better, whose peculiar importunacy it is ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... the savages stood on the brow of the hill, seemingly at a loss to understand what had become of the combatants. Perceiving this, the bee-hunter profited by the delay and reloaded his rifle. As everything passed almost as swiftly as the electric spark is known to travel, it was but a moment after the Pottawattamie fell ere his conqueror was through with his bloody task. Just as le Bourdon threw his rifle up into the hollow of his arm, he was rejoined by his red friend, who bore the reeking scalp of the sentinel at his belt; ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... a moment shielded part of his face, as though he found the electric light a little strong. From behind the shelter of his palm his eyes met the eyes of his visitor. The latter suddenly turned and bowed ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... measure years ago. They call it Sonnenuntergangverderbenpraxis, I believe. After all, it is only a temporary measure, because in the fall, when the daylight hours get shorter, we shall have to turn the clocks back a couple of hours in order to compensate the gas and electric light companies for all the money they will have lost. That will bring those 163 old gentlemen to life again and double their remaining term of years to make up for their temporary effacement. They are patriotic hostages to Time for the summer ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... brightness and dimness with much more than appropriate frequency. The Rehabilitation Shop was where Mahon-modified machines were brought back to usefulness when somebody messed them up. Two or three machines—an electric ironer, for one—operated slowly and hesitantly. That was occupational therapy. A washing-machine churned briskly, which was convalescence. Others, ranging from fire-control computers to teletypes and ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... not speak the words, she shrank from them and left them hanging in their self-polluted atmosphere. "Learn me!" The words were vibrant with a low-pitched hum, that smote and bored like the impact of an electric wave. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... acknowledged Pegler reluctantly. "And of course, the lighting was very bad. Some of the people hope that Mr. Varick's going to bring electric light into the village—d'you think ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... in course of publication in Paris. He has been engaged upon it for a number of years, and it is said to be a work of great ability and learning.——LEVERRIER, the French astronomer, has published a strong appeal in favor of throwing the electric telegraph open to the public in France, as it has been in the United States. At present it is guarded by the government as a close monopoly. His paper contains a good deal of interesting matter in regard to this greatest of modern inventions.——MEINHOLD, the author of the "Amber Witch," ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with the added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the Guard comes clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really horrible performance ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... floated in fitful extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously accompanying the murmur of many voices, the mingled pace of feet, and the lingering sweep of silken skirts upon the shadowed grass. The light streamed in broad, electric rays from the open windows of the low, wide house, and from the tall double doors of the studio, which had been added at the side, broken continually by the silhouettes of guests who entered the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... windows comes ever and anon the sharp ting of the bell of an electric car, and the President, anxiously steering the course of debate through difficult international cross-roads, rings his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... silver sound of the electric bell, a precipitate double peal, seemed to uphold this statement. The women faced each other in a moment's suspense, a moment of expectation, such as the advance column may feel at sight of a scout hotfoot from the field of battle. There were muffled movements in the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... remote parts of France; nay new Provincial Revolutionary Armies rise dim, here and there, as Carrier's Company of Marat, as Tallien's Bourdeaux Troop; like sympathetic clouds in an atmosphere all electric. Ronsin, they say, admitted, in candid moments, that his troops were the elixir of the Rascality of the Earth. One sees them drawn up in market-places; travel-plashed, rough-bearded, in carmagnole complete: the first ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... its rocky, erratic course up the caon. Vivid flashes of forked lightning shoot athwart the heavy black cloud that seems to rest on either wall, roofing the caon with a ceiling of awful grandeur. Sheets of electric flame light up the dark, shadowy recesses of the towering rocks as they play along the ridges and hover on the mountain-tops; while large drops of rain begin to patter down, gradually increasing with the growing fury of their battling allies above, until a heavy, drenching downpour ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... well say so, Eric, with your noble father, sainted mother, and Vaura's mother, my dear friend, your sweet sister, Ethel, as inmates;" and in that instant their eyes met, full of sympathy. And be it what it may, an electric spark, the true speech of heart to heart, or what; the knowledge came to him for the first time of what he had lost, and a nervous tremor ran through him such as he had never felt at Delhi or Inkerman ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... eight o'clock in the evening, and as the man Allen had said, it was just beginning to snow, the first fall of the season. Hal looked out of the window as the flakes glittered in the electric light and fell into ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield

... advantage of your kind offer, Fairbanks," responded Fogg. "I'm weak as a cat, and my head is going around like an electric turntable." ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... by the way, was an official of the Cupid Airline, so he advertised on his aeroplane, which was painted on a large curtain with a hole cut out where the seat would be, and the wheel of an electric fan poked through at the front and set going for a propeller. His mail bag hung over the side of the car inside of which he stood in aviation uniform, and for ten cents you could get your fortune in a small white envelope out of the mail bag if you were ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... William, and the boom of the sunset gun rolled across the water and was re-echoed from the Highlands opposite. The flag came running down from the flag-pole, the bugles sounded on the white decks of the warships, and the first electric light sparkled out from the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... four years of civil war was clearly in sight. It was in many respects a record-making and a record-breaking war. The navies of the world, rendered helpless by the incidental effects of its thundering guns, had to be rebuilt. For the first time in the world's history the railroad and the electric telegraph played a very considerable part. The grip of insatiate despotism on Democratic institutions was effectually loosened far and wide. For the first time in war the lessons taught in the art of warfare by Alexander and Caesar were utterly ignored, and the "Maxims ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... "international" play, and that the scene is really the "west end" of any European city. To me it seems quite clear that Ibsen had Christiania in mind, and the Christiania of a somewhat earlier period than the 'nineties. The electric cars, telephones, and other conspicuous factors in the life of a modern capital are notably absent from the play. There is no electric light in Secretary Falk's villa. It is still the habit for ladies to ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... Our art might perhaps be keener for beauty than it seemed to be, but still—it flourished. And our science at least was wonderful—wonderful. There certainly this young detractor of existing things went astray. What was there in Byzantium to parallel with the electric light, the electric tram, wireless telegraphy, aseptic surgery? Of course this about "unchallenged social injustice" was nonsense. Rant. Why! we were challenging social injustice at every general election—plainly and openly. And crime! What could the man mean ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... nine o'clock. Carriages were fast arriving with guests for the mansion. In the centre of the handsome hall, illuminated with electric light, stood Madame Desvarennes in full dress, having put off black for one day, doing honor to the arrivals. Behind her stood Marechal and Savinien, like two aides-de-camp, ready, at a sign, to offer their arms to the ladies, to conduct them to the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... the throne, the stage coach was the common means of traveling; only two short pieces of railroad had been constructed; the electric telegraph had not been developed; few steamships had crossed the Atlantic. The modern use of the telephone would then have seemed as improbable as the wildest Arabian Nights' tale. Before her reign ended, the railroad, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... turned his head to gaze in the direction of the trees where the fire was blazing, uttered a faint cry of surprise and horror, and turned and dived off the bank into the hole, to feel quite an electric shock run through him, while the water thundered in his ears, and he formed a graceful ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... when the bishop had presented his resignation, and it was accepted, McLaren simply concluded that this would entail extra work upon him for a month or two, until the trustees found a suitable man to fill the vacancy. But now as he heard his name spoken, it came like an electric shock, and he sprang to his feet, exclaiming: "O, no! This must not be. It cannot be!" He then moved a postponement of the election. He said: "It is only thirteen years since I stood in front of that old farmhouse, tired ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor

... no electric light! It is simply charming!" she thought, "And so becoming to one's dress and complexion! Only there's nobody to see the becomingness. But I can soon remedy that. Lots of people will come down and stay here ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... state that the celebrated Dr. MILIO (of whom we have never heard before) has invented a means of illuminating men's interiors. The doctor lives in Russia; and he takes you and throws inside of you "a concentrated beam of electric light;" and then he sees exactly what particular pill you want, and he gives it to you, and you go away (after paying him) exultant! This quite does away with the necessity of a bow-window in the bosom, so much desired by a certain ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various

... skies, and disclose its profoundest depths." Clay and Calhoun were equally apprehensive. Yet there were younger men who shared none of these fears. To be sure, the political atmosphere of Washington was electric. The House spent weeks wrangling over the Speakership, so that when the serious work of legislation began, men were overwrought and excitable. California with a free constitution was knocking at the door of the Union. President Taylor gave Congress to understand that at ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... are no Gods, as a wise German says; and as the electric telegraph ought already to have taught you. They are customs, but who has proved them to be laws of Nature? No; analyse these miracles one by one, fairly, carefully, scientifically, and you will find that if ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... its promise of new tastes, new ambitions, new thoughts, new purposes, may indeed come to you without your feeling all at once how great a thing it is. At first it may be nothing more than some vision of the possibilities of your life, or some electric flash of new consciousness that runs through you, or the sharp pang of remorse for some sin or some neglect, or the flush of shame or repulsion as you think of something or other in your life, or the glow of some good resolution to begin some new life or new duty, ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... his hand almost unconsciously, and Ambrose pressed it. Man and boy, alike they had felt the electric current of that truth, which, suppressed and ignored among man's inventions, was coming as a new revelation to many, and was already beginning to convulse ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to be the case, for as she left the room the electric bell rang again more furiously than before, and I shook ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... empire should. The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the clan warfare of bygone days, are generals now,—chiefs of staff. The captain-general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue, sits in Number Seven. A new Number Seven,—with electric lights and a bathroom and a brass bed. Tempora mutantur. There is an empire and a feudal system, did one but know it. The clans are part of the empire, and each chief is responsible for his clan—did one but know ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Amos had catched another light in his brain-pan and knowed too bitter well what he'd found. He groped into the garments of that poor clay and found the light that he'd set going was hid in a dead man's breast pocket. Then he got hold of it, drew out an electric torch and turned it on the withered corpse of his elder brother. There lay Joe and the small dried-up carcase of him weren't much the worse seemingly in that cold, dry place; but Amos shivered and went goose-flesh ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... men over the wheel and dashing them senseless against the carronades; the forecastle, the fore part of the main deck, and even the lower deck, were spread with men, either killed or seriously wounded or insensible from the electric shock. The frigate was on her beam ends, and the sea broke furiously over her; all was dark as pitch, except the light from the blazing stump of the foremast, appearing like a torch, held up by the wild demons of the storm, or when occasionally the gleaming lightning cast a momentary ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Halleck? Napoleon had about 500,000 men, when, in between four and five months, he marched from the Rhine to Moscow. Yet he had the aid of no railroad, on land, no steam, that practical annihilator of distance, no electric telegraph, with which to be in all but instantaneous communication with his distant generals, and had not similar ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... suddenly soured by thunder, so the electric influence of Charlotte's words converted all Augusta had been brewing to acidity; jealousy stung her like a wasp, and she boxed her dog's ears as he was barking for another run ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... of Neil's words startled Nathaniel, like the thrilling twinges of an electric shock. He darted across the cell and found Marion's brother with his ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... hands grew slower in their action and, at last, he stopped and leaned against the wagon-box. Something came into his heart that shook him, a feeling of unknown power, a certainty of faith in himself. He shivered with an electric thrill that made ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... to Roman or Grecian virtue, be the electric fluid of freedom, that shall animate and quicken ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... streets below,—the noisy New York streets, spread out like a giant picture-book before her. Then it began to grow dark, and lights twinkled here and there, and great letters of flame appeared as by magic across the fronts of buildings, and on the electric arches spanning ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the radio's electric cord picked itself up and stretched toward the baseboard socket, then dropped to ...
— Pythias • Frederik Pohl

... thunder of his voice. [Footnote: Solution.] A minor writer says that poetry must be written in one's life-blood, so that it necessarily kills one before it is appreciated. [Footnote: William Reed Dunroy, The Way of the World (1897).] Another suggests that a subtle electric change is worked in one's poems by death. [Footnote: Richard Gilder, A Poet's Question.] But the only reasonable explanation of the failure of the poet's own generation to appreciate him seems to be that offered by Shelley, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... products of the countries, and so to create a greater comfort for the people that live in them. In the wildest islands in the Pacific you can find—I will mention only little things—the same fine sofas, fireplaces, draperies, modern kitchens, piano and library, electric light and cablegrams, as in London. And in foggy and smoky London you can have all the African fruits, Australian wine and wool, Canadian metals and wood, Indian beasts ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... quickly changed his wet clothes and settled himself at the desk in his cosy office on board the private car. He had been there something like half an hour when the buzzing of an electric bell called the porter to the door ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... the poetic mind in handling the image tosses it with what might be called a sportive earnest delight, and through this power and freedom of play elicits by sympathetic fervor, from its very core, electric rays, wherein the subject glows like the sculpture on an inwardly illuminated urn; rare insights being thus vouchsafed to clearest imaginative vision,—insights gained never but through sensibilities elevated and purified by aspirations after, and gleaming glimpses of, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... the Biggest Store with his mother in his electric runabout, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his heart. He knew that love had come to him for the first time in all the twenty-nine years of his life. And that the object of it should make so readily an appointment with him at a street corner, ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... Then he came home occasionally, and always saw us; but I generally contrived, on such occasions, to do some frightful thing that shocked every nerve he had, and he avoided me instinctively as he would an electric torpedo; but—do you believe?—I never had an idea of such a thing, till, when sailing from the South, so changed, I remembered things, and felt intuitively how it must have been. Shortly after I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... street, railway, gas, water, steam, or electric heating, electric light or power, cold storage, compressed air, viaduct, conduct telephone, or bridge, company, nor any corporation, association, person or partnership, engaged in these or like enterprises, shall be permitted to use the ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox

... with interest. Having dispatched but three electric missives, he received no less than eight gratulatory bulletins in return. He put them into his pocket-book, and the next time he encountered old Madame de Bellegarde drew them forth and displayed them to her. This, it must be confessed, was a slightly malicious stroke; the reader must judge in ...
— The American • Henry James

... school was a large private house at 233 West 14th Street, which was equipped like a factory and could comfortably accommodate 100 pupils. Training was offered in a variety of satisfactory trades which required the expert use of the needle, the paste brush, and the foot and electric power sewing machines. ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... department of life in Germany than those of my boyhood. The furnishing of the rooms differed little from that of the present day, except that the chairs and tables were somewhat more angular and the cushions less comfortable. Instead of the little knobs of the electric bells, a so-called "bell-rope," about the width of one's hand, provided with a brass or metal handle, hung beside ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... behind him, Rovald bringing up the rear in the approved trail technique. Chambriss carried a needler, Starns was unarmed except for a small protection stunner, his tri-dee box slung on his chest by well-worn carrying straps. Yactisi shouldered an electric pole, wore its control belt buckled about his middle, though Hume had warned him that the storm would prevent any deep ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... from the west and north-west, a few drops of rain fell, and a few low peals of thunder were heard; but, although charged with electric fluid, and, in appearance, threatening an approaching thunder-storm, no discharge of lightning took place. We were very much annoyed and harassed, during the evening and the early part of the night, by sand-flies and mosquitoes; ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... and that of the other prisoners, we began a concerted fight for fresh air. The windows were about twenty feet distant from the cells, and two sets of iron bars intervened between us and the windows, but we instituted an attack upon them as best we could. Our tin drinking cups, the electric light bulbs, every available article of the meagre supply in each cell, including my treasured copy of Browning's poems which I had secretly taken in with me, was thrown through the windows. By this simultaneous attack from every cell, we succeeded in breaking one window ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... came o'er my frame, Much like electric shock; Oh, how I longed for some rare key With which I might unlock My prison door, for I now felt The breath of coming Spring, And heard, likewise, her merry laugh, Like silver bells its ring. My lips were close to blanket rent, I ceased my useless ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... pressing an electric button; "Watson, Captain Selwyn's luggage is to be brought here immediately from the Holland! Immediately!" And to Selwyn: "Austin will not be at home before half-past six. Come up with me now and see your quarters—a perfectly charming place for you, with your ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... pocket she drew a small electric torch she had had the foresight to pick up from the hall table as she ran out. Gavin took it and turned its rays on his wet ankles. His shoes and trouser-legs still showed clear signs of the scorching they had received. And his palms were ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... diverse forms and all daubed with fragrant powders of diverse hues, and dancing with joyous hearts in accompaniment with instruments of different kinds made of brass. Surrounded by these who move with electric rapidity in the mazes of the dance or refrain at times altogether from forward or backward or transverse motion of every kind, Mahadeva dwells there. That delightful spot on the mountains, we have heard, is the favourite abode of the great Deity. It is said that that great god ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... a moment's reflection on the part of the men with whom it originated, and who appear to have been some of the advanced skirmishers, would have shown the impossibility. It was to the effect that a force of cavalry was advancing upon our force, and instantly the cry of "Cavalry", spread with electric rapidity from the front to where the Colonel stood in reserve, with which part of the force Lieut.-Col. Booker as commanding officer remained, and thus assuming the cry to have its origin in the fact that that officer gave the order "Look out for cavalry!" squares were formed ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... are the ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... man pointed to the dead body of his brother, and burst into tears. While these were yet flowing in a fulness that promised to give relief to his oppressed heart, a loud shout from the British ranks arrested the attention of both. The sound seemed to have an electric effect on the actions of Henry Grantham. For the first time he appeared conscious there was such a thing as ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... Elizabeth so often consulted, produced plays when he was a student at Cambridge University, with stage effects which only one gifted in the secrets of magic could have consummated. Belasco paints with an electric switchboard, until the emotion of his play is unmistakably impressed upon the eye. At a moment's notice he will root out his proscenium arch, and build a "frame" which obliterates the footlights; at another time he will build an "apron" to his stage, not for its historical significance, but ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... back to my news stand. I was shaking so my knees would hardly hold me. All I could think of was that they had swallowed Mr. Pierce, bait and hook, and that for a time we were saved, although in the electric light Mr. Pierce was a good bit less like Dicky Carter than he had seemed to be in the spring-house by ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... laughed. 'You show the thumps of an electric battery at each elbow, and expect your Goddess of lightnings not to see that she moves you. Go. You have not sided with me, and I am right, and I am a woman. By the way, Sandra mia, I would beg the loan of your Beppo for two ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... from the Hope Hospital the October dusk had fallen and the wide suburban street was almost dark, except when the illuminated bulk of an electric car flashed ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... number of days in London, had almost directly gone over to Paris to see his old chief. He came back from Paris—Biddy learnt this not from Julia, but in a much more immediate way: she knew it by his pressing the little electric button at the door of Florence Tressilian's flat one day when the good Florence was out and she herself was at home. He made on this occasion a very long visit. The good Florence knew it not much later, you may be sure—and how ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... approached the reading desk. To look at his outer man, this knight of the truth might have been the very high priest of the monster which, while he was sitting there, had been twisting his slimy, semi-electric, benumbing tendrils around his heart. His business was nevertheless to fight him, though to fight him in his own heart and that of other people at one and the same moment, he might well find hard work. And the loathly worm had this advantage over the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... the introduction of Christianity. The starving Singhalese of low caste, keenly alive to the comforts of rice and social equality, proclaims himself of the religion of the East India Company; the knowledge-loving Buddhist of Thibet may one day adopt the religion of railways, microscopes, and electric telegraphs; and it is just possible, as M. Huc observes, that the missionary who should introduce vaccination at Lha-Ssa, would at one stroke extirpate ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... Butler, "what are we that the laws of nature should correspond in their march with our ephemeral deeds or sufferings! The clouds will burst when surcharged with the electric fluid, whether a goat is falling at that instant from the cliffs of Arran, or a hero expiring on the field of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... quiet when the Head and the newcomer to the school stole softly up the stairs and stopped at Number 34 on the third floor. Teeny-bits unlocked the door, reached in to switch on the electric lights and stood aside to let Doctor Wells enter first. He followed and led the way directly to the closet where he kept his clothes. Swinging open the door ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... the cloudy sky, and it was amusing to watch the Boers trying to confuse the signals by flashing their two searchlights upon the same cloud. They have one light west of us near Bester's Station, and to-night they showed a very brilliant electric light on the top of Bulwan. When our signalling stopped, they turned it on the town, and very courteously lighted me home. It was like the clearest moonlight, the shadows long and black, but all else distinct in colourless brilliance. The ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... the sofa and pulled the blinds down. A minute later he turned on the electric light and began to read again. Then he turned it out, pulled up the blinds, and ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... treatise on electricity and its uses in connection with the telephone, telegraph, electric light, et cetera. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... It was like the bursting of one of those squalls that come up with a breathless loom of cloud, hang still and brooding, and then flash without warning into tempest. She faced him at the station with an electric vivacity; her voice was harsh and imperious to her servants who put her into the train and disposed of her luggage. It occurred to O'Neill that she traveled well equipped; there were boxes and baskets ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... are lowered down, down, down. At last the cage stops and you are at the bottom of the mine. The miners' faces, hands, overalls, are all black with coal dust. They wear tiny lamps on their caps, and as they come near the walls of coal, it sparkles as it catches the light. Here and there hangs an electric lamp. It is doing its best to give out light, but its glass is thick with coal dust. The low roof is held up by stout wooden timbers and pillars of coal. A long passageway stretches off into a blacker darkness than you ever dreamed of. ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... either," said the chunky man. "There was a hell of a explosion over at the lake this mornin'. We piled in a car—my car—and came over to see what'd happened. Then something hit us. All of us. Lights. Noise. A godawful stink. A feeling all over like an electric shock that paralyzed us. We came to blindfolded and tied. They brought us here. That's our story so far. What's happened to you—and ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... (1900) 20,178, of whom 1081 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 22,476. It is served by the Central Indiana, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Pittsburg, Chicago & St Louis railways, and also by the Indiana Union Traction System (electric), the general offices and central power plant of which are situated there. Its importance as a manufacturing centre is due to its location in the natural gas region. In 1905 Anderson ranked first among the cities of the state in the manufacture of carriage and wagon material, and iron and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... steam as a propelling power at sea, has added tenfold weight to these arguments of Raleigh, On the other hand, a well-constructed system of railways, especially of coast-lines, aided by the operation or the electric telegraph, would give facilities for concentrating a defensive army to oppose an enemy on landing, and for moving troops from place to place in observation of the movements of the hostile fleet, such as would ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... labour in agriculture and industry under public ownership and control on co-operative principles. Nationalisation of the trusts, of railways, docks, and canals, and all great means of transit. Public ownership and control of gas, electric light, and water-supplies, tramway, omnibus, and other locomotive services, and of the food and coal supply. The establishment of State and municipal banks and pawnshops and public restaurants. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... order to give adequate study to every one of the shaggy men. But One-Eye suddenly grasped him by the hand again and led him away—down a long, curving alley that took them past a score of horses. Each horse was in a stall of its own, and under each was straw as yellow as Johnnie's own hair. Electric bulbs lit the whole place grandly, disclosing saddles and straps and other horse gear, hung at intervals ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... a knee; some of them kept running one or both hands through their hair; some of them wrote a little and then paused to gaze blankly before them or to tap their teeth with a pen or pencil: all of them were concentrating with an intensity that made the silence electric. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... was on the ground floor. You heard him add that he refused to open his door, either asking to be left alone or failing to answer at all. And he had to return to the Cedars the next day, for he missed his handkerchief, and he pictured himself, since he thought it was his own, in the electric chair. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... brain area, auditory, visual, or whatever it may be, which is associated with that particular type of sensation. The path to the brain area is far from simple; the nervous impulse, which might be compared to an electric current, must pass through many nerve junctions known as "synapses," at which points there is some not completely understood chemical resistance offered to the passage of the nerve current. On passing through the network of nerves in the brain area, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... a cheap buffoon. Criticism, as the average American "intellectual" understands it, is what a Frenchman, a German or a Russian would call donkeyism. In all the arts we still cling to the ideals of the dissenting pulpit, the public cemetery, the electric ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... old forms and deeply rooted customs. China is moving, and, we of the old school think, too quickly. She is going at a bound from the dim light of the bean-oil brazier to the dazzling brilliance of the electric light; from the leisured slowness of the wheelbarrow pushed by the patient coolie to the speed of the modern motor-car; from the practice of the seller of herbs to the science of the modern doctor. We all ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... inspiration bursts forth in deep sleep and awakens the sleeper, and lest we may suppose this suddenness to be especially characteristic of artists we see it in all forms of invention. "You feel a little electric shock striking you in the head, seizing your heart at the same time—that is the moment of genius" (Buffon). "In the course of my life I have had some happy thoughts," says Du Bois Reymond, "and I have often noted that they would come to me involuntarily, and ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... the companion volume—that of the American in England—in which it should be proved, after the same fashion, that this poor old country is in the last stage of decay, because we have compartment carriages on the railway; no checks for the luggage; no electric trolleys in the street; at the hotels no elaborate menu, but only a simple dinner of fish and roast-beef; no iced water, an established Church (the clergy all bursting with fatness); a House of Lords (all profligates); and a ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... losing flying speed and falling to earth out of control when the air resistance caused by its manoeuvring reduced its speed. In 1905 they built another machine and resumed their experiments in the same field. They did not want to attract a crowd. The cars on the electric line adjoining the field ran every thirty minutes, and they timed their flights between the runs. The farmers living near by saw the flying, but their business was with the earth, not the air, and after looking ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... little way ahead, as his habit was, his shoulders humped, his eyes fixed on the straight grey road in front of him; so he did not notice poor Mole when suddenly the summons reached him, and took him like an electric shock. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... the eyes. Suddenly he turned and switched on the electric lights. Then he turned back and looked at her—hard. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... an electric-light on board the great steamer Rio de Janeiro, and dead Stphane beside him.... It was four o'clock in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... passed through the above-mentioned stages. It is always a question of expediency whether to leave a subject under the mores, or to make a police regulation for it, or to put it into the criminal law. Betting, horse racing, dangerous sports, electric cars, and vehicles are cases now of things which seem to be passing under positive enactment and out of the unformulated control of the mores. When an enactment is made there is a sacrifice of the elasticity and automatic self-adaptation of custom, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... Frank was afraid of the dog. His heart beat fast, his flesh felt an electric chill, and there was a curious stirring in the roots of his hair. The dog came right on, bristling up as large as two dogs, opening his ferocious maw, and barking and growling terribly. Then the fun of the thing was still more dampened, to the boy's appreciation, by a sudden suspicion. Why had ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... Lady Swansdown has never looked so lovely as to-night. Excitement and mental disturbance have lent a dangerous brilliancy to her eyes, a touch of color to her cheek. There is something electric about her that touches those who gaze, on her, and warns herself that a ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... much too expensive. We should want a cart with a bonfire in it and a sort of witches' cauldron on top, and all kinds of sticky stuff; so we gave up that scheme. We did not feel inclined to mess with gas-pipes or electric wires either, in case we burst ourselves up; so we finally decided to select some street with a wooden pavement, and maul it about generally for as long as we could. If we got interfered with by anybody official, we meant ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... of thrift, the apostles of physical progress, the pioneers of enterprise,—the Franklins and Stephensons and Tyndalls and Morses of our glorious era. Its watchword is progress. All hail, then, to the electric telegraph and telephones and Thames tunnels and Crystal Palaces and Niagara bridges and railways over the Rocky Mountains! The day of our deliverance is come; the nations are saved; the Brunels and the Fieldses are our victors and leaders! Crown them with Olympic leaves, as the heroes of our ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... a writer in The Daily Mail declares, "that electric light in the poultry-house results in more eggs." There may be more of them but they never have the real actinic taste of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various

... still determined to get to France. Only two days after our return she came in with a book called "Military Codes and Signals," and gave it to Aggie. She had it marked at a place which told how to signal at night with an electric flashlight, and from that time on for several weeks she would sit in her window at night, with Aggie on the pavement across the street, also with a pocket flash, both of them signaling anything that came into their heads. It was rather hard on Aggie on cold evenings, and I remember ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... kerosene lamps and electric lights in the neighborhood: matches flaring, fires in stoves, bonfires, house afire somewhere; lights of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... know what suggested it; perhaps it was something in the play I had just witnessed—it is not always easy to put one's finger on the invisible electric thread that runs from thought to thought—but as I sauntered on I fell to thinking of the ill-assorted marriages I had known. Suddenly there hurried along the gravelled path which crossed mine obliquely a half-indistinguishable throng of pathetic men ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... shall be effected, not by the unaided resources of the State, but by its co-operation with the interested business men and banks. On this basis he is working at monopolies of cigarettes, life insurance and electric power. This complex arrangement is facilitated by the machinery of the banks and their peculiar activity. And here we touch upon one of the main sources whence German organization after the war ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... in shadow, except for the firelight, which shone upon a table laid ready for dinner, and upon an extraordinary collection of antiquities, including a couple of mummies with gold faces arranged in their coffins against the wall. At the far end of the room, however, an electric lamp was alight in the bow-window hanging over another table covered with books, and by it I saw my host, whom I had not met for twenty years, although until I vanished into the desert we frequently corresponded, and with him the friend ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... both. Whatever makes the hearts of two countries beat in unison, makes them more enamored of harmony, more sensitive to discord. Honor to the men of genius who made two hemispheres thrill to the same electric touch, who at the same time, and with the same potent spell, are ruling the hearts of men in the mountains of Scotland, the forests of Canada, the hillsides of New England, the prairies of Illinois, and the burning plains of India. Their influence, so far as it extends, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... rain came down, and the lightning kept on flashing through the dark shelter; while, if there was any change at all in the thunder, it was louder, clearer, and more rapid in following the electric discharge. ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... himself in a place where electricity played a principal part as an agent of heat and light. Although the ventilation shafts were numerous, they were not sufficient to admit much daylight into New Aberfoyle, yet it had abundance of light. This was shed from numbers of electric discs; some suspended from the vaulted roofs, others hanging on the natural pillars—all, whether suns or stars in size, were fed by continuous currents produced from electro-magnetic machines. When the hour of rest arrived, an artificial ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... Towards San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele has ripped up every olden district, the lofty five-storeyed houses with their dazzling sculptured fronts contrasted violently with the black sunken dwellings of the neighbouring lanes. In the evening the globes of the electric lamps on the Corso shone out with such dazzling whiteness that the gas lamps of the Via Giulia and other streets looked like smoky lanterns. There were several old and famous thoroughfares, the Via Banchi ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... crystals. The "other selves," refers to the fellow students. Unless the greatest harmony reigns among the learners, no success is possible. It is the teacher who makes the selections according to the magnetic and electric natures of the students, bringing together and adjusting most carefully the positive and ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky

... hosts, when the fervour of the field seems for a moment to allay, fresh squadrons arrive and renew the hottest strife, so a low moaning wind that was now at intervals faintly heard bore up a great reserve of electric vapour, that formed, as it were, into field in the space between the Castle and Hellingsley, and then discharged its violence on ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... Mr. Temple, busy with his mail. "If I had the scouts' Gold Cross for life-saving, I'd wear it, and I'd have an electric light next to it, like the tail light on an automobile to show the ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... swift succession. To the blinded men in the bomber above the clouds it seemed that unexplained mechanisms were springing into action by dozens, all about the Wabbly. They were mechanisms. They were electric mechanisms. They were obviously designed to have some effect on the Wabbly. And the Wabbly had no defense against the unguessed-at effects ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster

... The city comprises eleven wards and eighteen ecclesiastical parishes, and is under the jurisdiction of a council with lord provost, bailies, treasurer and dean of guild. The corporation owns the water (derived from the Dee at a spot 21 m. W.S.W. of the city) and gas supplles, electric lighting and tramways. Since 1885 the city has returned two members to Parliament. Aberdeen is served by the Caledonian, Great North of Scotland and North British railways (occupying a commodious joint railway station), and there is regular ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... accident resulting from a violent thunderstorm we fell in with when crossing the Equator for the last time, in which the ship got struck by the lightning, when the captain's cabin, where the chronometers were kept, was seriously damaged by the electric fluid. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... brain without any friction whatever. Both these results are unhealthy and injurious. A true natural and healthy act of sexual intercourse demands the excitement of brain, spinal cord, and every nerve in the body simultaneously, and resembles the lightning flash which restores the equilibrium of electric force ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... tried me rather hard with a scandalmongress of the type we happily meet less often in life than in fiction. I hope he will not be quite so dental in his next book. I didn't so much mind Mrs. Hopper's teeth, which "flashed like an electric advertisement," but when he made two golfers also flash ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... expected to take precautions that no tricks were likely to be played upon him. It would be suspicious if I didn't make a little noise. Now we will settle ourselves. I shall lie on the bed. You move a chair under that glass and sit there. I have an electric torch with me. Don't ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner



Words linked to "Electric" :   machine, car, automobile, exciting, auto, electric circuit, tense, motorcar



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