"Automatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Slow as these 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 through them and caught Pocket's ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... process, it will be simply and solely because you and Kenneth and I are here to see that he does not. Do you know what the men call him out on the main line? When they see the Nadia trundling in, they say, 'Here comes old Automatic ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the sending is an occasional rather than a steady practice. Costs in this work are cut by better planning of the work and facilities, setting work standards, paying a bonus in excess of the standards, and by the introduction of automatic machinery. The Post Office now permits, under certain conditions, the use of a machine which prints a stamp that is really a frank. This is now being used very generally by concerns which have a heavy outgoing mail. Then there are sealing machines, ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... uttered in an emphatic voice, half-surprised remonstrance, half-automatic rebuke; "I am astonished!" She looked it. She pursed her lips more tightly, and gazed at the pair of culprits as though she had hoped better things of them and again had been disappointed. "You know quite well that this is out ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... into the habit of associating ideas, weighing values, and carrying points, unconsciously, before the subject is properly mastered. "Ninety-nine hundredths, or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual," says Professor James, "from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. Our dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking, our greetings and partings, our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede, nay, even most of the forms of our common speech, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... kept stretching out and falling back to her side with automatic regularity, and still the little figure pranced, and gesticulated, and blew kisses to right and left, at one moment a merry Irish vagabond, at the next a French marionette—all smirks and bows and ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 name at ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... rarely need to depend upon the illustrations for its retention. A still more cogent objection is that if you occupy your attention with the task of copying the lecture verbatim, you do not have time to think, but become merely an automatic recording machine. Experienced stenographers say that they form the habit of recording so automatically that they fail utterly to comprehend the meaning of what is said. You as a student cannot afford to have your attention so distracted ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... miles an hour. He had a thousand-yard start, but we gained rapidly, and I estimated that he never reached a greater speed than thirty miles an hour. Charles was very anxious to kill the brute from the motor with his .45 caliber automatic pistol, and ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... particular field. One impeccably rigorous analysis showed that the ship would shift into the nearest solar system possessing an Earth-type planet; which was believed to be Alpha Centauri and which was close enough to Sol so that orientation would be automatic and the return ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... no surprise to find his bed-chamber door unlocked and slightly ajar. Lanyard made sure of the readiness of his automatic, strode into the room, and shut the door quietly but by ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 powerfully visible, the dramatist's conception. It is ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... no desire for that sort of notoriety. Bless you, I knew that answer would come as well as I know that a box of matches will come out of an automatic machine when I put a penny in the slot: you would be ashamed to ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... thorough anarchist will never be an artist, though many artists have believed that they were thorough anarchists. One man cannot pour an aesthetic experience straight into another, leaving out the problem. He cannot exude form: he must set himself to create a particular form. Automatic writing will never be poetry, nor automatic scrabbling design. The artist must submit his creative impulse to the conditions of a problem. Often great artists set their own problems; always they are bound by them. That would be a shallow critic who ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... motor became a leonine roar while she was still on her knees, gears clashed, and the car leaped with a jerk that drove her headlong against the cushions of the seat. Then the dome light was switched on, and she saw Victor with a bleak face sitting over her, an automatic pistol naked ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... NA domestic: good automatic telephone system international: 1 coaxial submarine cable; satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean); tropospheric scatter to Saba ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... 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 ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... 2c values of this series were issued in coil form for use in automatic vending machines. These were first issued in November, 1912, perf. 8 vertically and imperforate at top and bottom. In October, 1913, the 1c was issued perf. 8 horizontally and imperforate at the sides and shortly afterwards the 2c appeared ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... company of nuns; with their black robes sweeping the flower-strewn streets, the pallor of their faces, and the white wings of their huge coifs, they might have been so many marble statues moving with slow, automatic step, repeating in life the statues in stone above their heads, incarnations of meek renunciation. With the free and joyous step of a vigorous youth not yet tamed to complete self-obliteration, next there stepped forth into the sun a group of seminarists. In the lace and scarlet ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Then the automatic jumped into her hand and leveled between his eyes. "All right, friend. Come on out." Her voice was very low and shook a trifle but there was grimness ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... shots, and from my windows I could see the glare of the sky of some conflagration in the direction of Oakland. It was a night of terror. I did not sleep a wink. A man—why and how I do not know—was killed on the sidewalk in front of the house. I heard the rapid reports of an automatic pistol, and a few minutes later the wounded wretch crawled up to my door, moaning and crying out for help. Arming myself with two automatics, I went to him. By the light of a match I ascertained that while ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... of rich gifts attended to the work in the shop in rather an extraordinary manner. The customers were waited on while he fed the white mice. Money was changed and counted while he put wheels on his little automatic wagons. And while he told the customers of his very last love-affair, he kept his eye on the quart measure, into which the brown molasses was slowly curling. It delighted his admiring listeners to see him suddenly leap over the counter and rush out into the street to ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... the true via media? The theory of the automatic extension of the constitution of a state over its annexed insular, transmarine and transterranean regions which from their local or other circumstances can never equally participate in the institution and operation of its government, in some cases ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... the way from the cathedral, through Lisbon's streets, was double-banked with troops, while a squad of two hundred mounted troopers surrounded the carriage. Suddenly the amazing thing happened. The automatic rifles of the troopers began to go off, as well as the rifles, in the immediate vicinity, of the double-banked infantry. In the excitement the muzzles of the exploding rifles were turned in all directions. The slaughter was terrible—horses, troops, spectators, and the King and Queen, were riddled ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... increased. For instance, a rainfall of lin may occur in a period of twenty minutes, being at the rate of 3 in per hour, but if a period of one hour is taken the fall during such lengthened time will be considerably less than 3 in In towns where automatic rain gauges are installed and records kept, the required data can be abstracted, but in other cases it is necessary to estimate the quantity of rain which may have to ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... returning from the front and bringing within their carefully closed walls the finished product, the fruits of the day's grinding, or a fraction thereof. And about the whole thing there was a sense of the mechanical rather than the human, something that suggested an automatic, a machine-driven, movement; it was as if an unseen system of belts and engines and levers guided, moved, propelled this long procession upward and ever toward the mysterious front where the knives or the axes or the grinding stones ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... cannot be obtained except at exorbitant cost. Usually, the engine is so built as to be adapted for other farm work. It shares this advantage with the gasoline engine. Oil engines are simple, reliable, almost automatic, compact, and reasonable in first cost and in cost of repairs. There are many forms of such engines in the market. To be successful from a commercial point of view, an oil engine should be so designed and built that any unskilled attendant can run, adjust, and clean it. The ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... the wheelman and warn the lookout of shoals and reefs. Some of these send forth flashes of light whose intensities are measured in millions of candle-power. Many are unattended for days and even months. These powerful lights dominated by automatic mechanisms have replaced the wood-fires which were maintained a few centuries ago upon certain ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... came to a shelf of rock which overlooked the valley of the rivulet. They paused for a moment to listen for the sounds of those in advance when a strong electric searchlight was thrown on their faces and they saw the grim, round barrel of an automatic pointing at ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... psychological investigation carried on in America by Miss Gertrude Stein among the ordinary male and female students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College. The object of the investigation was to study, with the aid of a planchette, the varying liability to automatic movements among normal individuals. Nearly one hundred students were submitted to experiment. It was found that automatic responses could be obtained in two sittings from all but a small proportion of the students of both sexes, but that there were two types of individual who showed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Vedantins and the followers of Shankaracharya's philosophy, in talking of themselves, often avoid using the pronoun I, and say, "this body went," "this hand took," and so on, in everything concerning the automatic actions of man. The personal pronouns are only used concerning mental and moral processes, such as, "I thought," "he desired." The body in their eyes is not the man, but only a covering ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... movement the elbow scarcely moves from its position at the side, a fact gratefully appreciated by one's next neighbor. What is more awkward than the arm projected, holding the fork pointing backward at a right angle to the lips, the mouth opening wide like an automatic railway gate to an approaching locomotive—the labored and ostentatious way in which food is sometimes transported to its destination? Nor, once in the mouth, is it lost to sight forever. Other people, seated opposite, are compelled to witness it in successive stages of the grinding process, as exhibited ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... perfect washing shall be assured, and this can be done only by heavy rains or by strong currents of water. As regards rain, that could not be relied upon; and to have a force of men specially charged with the service of washing, that would be too costly, and so recourse has been had to automatic apparatus. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... the almost automatic tendency to destroy animate and inanimate objects, which results in frequent wounding, suicides, and homicides. This desire to destroy is also common to children. Fernando P. (Fig. 15), an epileptic treated by my father, when enraged was in the habit of smashing all the furniture ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... sewage. Stream pollution. Treatment of sewage on land. Surface application. Artificial sewage beds. Subsurface tile disposal. Automatic syphon. Sedimentation. Underdrains 208-232 ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... enclosed acrostic, and might he be allowed to print it in the Mudborough Young Men's Mutual Improvement Magazine? Messrs. Smith & Smith would be extremely obliged if Mr. Lionel Moore would honor them with his opinion of the accompanying pair of their patent silver-mounted automatic self-adjusting braces. ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... set. The letters were selected by La Mara, and translated into English by Constance Bache. The edition used was an original 1893 Charles Scribner edition, printed in America. Each page was cut out of it and fed into an Automatic Document Scanner to make this e-text; hence, the original book was fragmented in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... an automatic pistol crackled at the far end of the Garden, and frantic crowds pushed for the doors in abject terror. There was no ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... the automatic percolator was making small, promising noises. In the frying pan four sunnyside eggs were sizzling; half a dozen strips of bacon drained on a paper towel on the sideboard. It couldn't ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... notification of the fact that the thing was not a kitten or a puppy. But then a little quiver came over the small countenance, and the attendant said it was "the wind." Perhaps the opening of the eyes was the wind too, or some other automatic effect. He would not hold out his finger to be clasped tight by the little flickering fist, as Elinor would have had him. He would none of those follies; he turned away from it not to allow himself to be moved by the effect, quite a meretricious one, of the baby in the young mother's arms. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the wing folds over towards the tail, and the tip points forward. The further inward folding of the hinge of this rod next appears to divide the wing into two, the second portion passing under the first, and thus bringing the wing down to half its original size. By this time the mechanical or automatic folding process stops, and the rest of the folding up has to be done by the aid of the pincers at the end of the body. Finally the packing up is complete, and the two hard outer cases, like a couple of tarpaulins, are drawn over the delicate wings ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... which denies the existence of any self-determining power, he may be presumed to belong to the class of intellectual half-breeds, of which we have many representatives in our new country, wearing the garb of civilization, and even the gown of scholarship. If we cannot follow the automatic machinery of nature into the mental and moral world, where it plays its part as much as in the bodily functions, without being accused of laying "all that we are evil in to a divine thrusting on," we had better return at once to our old demonology, and reinstate the Leader of the Lower House ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... appliances, within the means of the average farmer, the generation of electricity, with its unique conveniences, becomes automatic, provided some dependable source of power is to be had—such as a water wheel, gasoline (or other form of internal combustion) engine, or the ordinary windmill. The water wheel is the ideal prime mover for the dynamo in isolated plants. Since water-power is ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... Montgomery long before the DC-3 reached the area.) In addition, the rocket would have had to veer sharply away from the airliner, as both pilots testified, and then zoom into the clouds. No high-atmosphere test rocket has automatic controls such as this would require. {p. 71} And if it had gone astray from White Sands, the station's remote control would ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... in enforcing this rule the Constabulary were was open to some doubt. Ever since arising, Verkan Vall had heard the crash of small arms and the hammering of automatic weapons in other parts of the towering city-unit. There hadn't been a civil war on the Akor-Neb Sector for over five centuries, he knew, but then, Hadron Dalla, Doctor of Psychic Science, and intertemporal trouble-carrier extraordinary, had only been on this sector for a little under a year. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... 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 ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... blessed—even had two or three automatic servants beyond the public contribution, which they destroyed in private. Their more average neighbors crowded into their gardens for the awesome festivities. The next morning everyone could return to work, renewed ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... tea things. The young man caught fleeting glimpses of her as she moved airily about her work. He drew a cigar from his case, cut off the end with his knife, and lit a match on the sole of his boot, doing this with an easy automatic familiarity that required no attention on his part; all of which aroused the respectful envy of young Hiram, who sat on a wooden chair, leaning forward, eagerly watching ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... that it was 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
... velocity of the piston is 1,402 feet per minute nearly, and its energy in foot pounds amounts to about 8.6 times its weight. The cylinder is steam jacketed on the body and ends, and is fitted with Corliss valves and Inglis & Spencer's automatic Corliss valve expansion gear. Referring to the general drawing of the engine, it will be seen that the cylinder is bolted directly to the end of the massive cast iron frame, and the piston coupled direct to the crank by the steel piston rod and crosshead and the connecting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... artificiality of modern life forbids it. The high pressure under which most people live induces mental tension together with the consequent nervous and muscular tension. We are, without being conscious of it, so habituated to unnatural tension that automatic breathing is shallow and irregular instead ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... quick to see whether or not a smile is genuine or is manufactured and put on like a mask for the occasion. The automatic, stock-in-trade smile hardly ever fits the face that tries to wear it. It is a little too wide or sags at the corners or something ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... upon the mental attributes of inferior animals, how aptly is evidence in support of a favourite theory presented? Are the actions of birds due to automatic impulses or hereditary traits? Is instinct merely "lapsed intelligence," or do birds actually reflect? Are they capable of applying the results of habit and observations in respect of one set of circumstances to other and different conditions? John Burroughs expresses the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... hearts, partly to suggest that Liehtse's China may have had the actuality, or at least a reminiscence, of scientific knowledge since lost there, and only discovered in Europe recently. In the same way one finds references to automatic oxen, self-moving chariots, traveling by air, and a number of other things which, as we read of them, sound just like superstitious nonsense. There are old Chinese drawings of pterodactyls, and suchlike unchancey antediluvian wild fowl. Argal, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... cartridges in the street, for no reason in the world, it seemed, than because he liked to hear the noise! Dead bodies are found nearly every morning. Murders are so common that they do not provoke even passing comment. In the night there comes a sharp bark of an automatic or the shattering roar of a hand-grenade (which, since the war proved its efficacy, has become the most recherche weapon for private use in these regions), a clatter of feet, and a "Hello! Another killing." ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... go to my room and wait for me." As she spoke Mrs. Whitney crossed the broad hall and, passing the Colonial staircase, entered the elevator. The automatic car carried her to the first bedroom floor but, changing her mind, she did not open the door; instead she pressed the electric button marked "Attic." Her slight feeling of irritation aroused by not being met downstairs by any member of her family was ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... automatic gong, clanged out immediately after, and the race that always occurred was on. The engine of course had the start, but the hose-cart, a huge two-wheeled reel, about which the hose was wound, was much lighter, and speedily was clanging abreast of ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... country in a single year." Various reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission state the same facts.] or slain largely because the railroad corporations refused to expend money in the introduction of improved automatic coupling devices, these workers or their heirs were next confronted by what? The unjust and oppressive provisions of worthless employers' liability laws drafted by corporation attorneys in such ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... sent down to Intombi Camp with other serious cases, but the doctors think he has a chance. Lieut. Bond, who has a similar wound, went with him. Lieut. Fergusson, who died, had four bad wounds, three from bullets and one from a small shell of the automatic "pom-pom," which shattered his thigh. The rest of the day was a delirium of fever till the evening, when the wind suddenly changed to east, and it became cool and then bitterly cold. At half-past eight the proposed Flying Column, which is to co-operate ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... Inis Cathaig; tradition said that it had been floated on the river to the saint of the island, though there were various opinions as to which saint had done the miracle; it is attributed to Brigit daughter of Cu Cathrach (LL, 2399) and to Diarmait (CS, 753). For parallels to the automatic transfer of objects by water, see Plummer, VSH, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... about him. To his library he had added a treatise on navigation. And, reflecting that his firearms were worthless, considered as modern weapons, he also purchased a score of .44 caliber Colt's revolvers and automatic pistols of the latest pattern, and a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... that drew a questioning tenseness into her face. Gently he stroked her soft hair, explaining that Shan Tung had returned and that he was going to see him. In his bedroom he strapped his Service automatic ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... on a limb without becoming weary? They do not need to make a conscious effort to do this, but are held by the mechanical action of certain muscles and tendons in the leg and foot. Of course, the bird can also control these muscles by an act of its will, but a large part of their action is automatic. In some species there is a muscle called the ambiens, which has its rise in the pelvis, passes along the inner side of the thigh, whence its tendon runs over the apex of the angle of the knee joint, and down the leg till it joins ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... 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 thus may be ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... 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 be removed automatically. The engine room ...
— Manufacturing Cost Data on Artificial Ice • Otto Luhr
... his army rifle and his automatic too, And hid himself behind a nearby tree; He shot them like he used to shoot the rabbits and the squirrels Away ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... that any moral act, so long as it is conscious, is not ingrained in character, and the more conscious it is, the more dubious it is; and that "virtue itself is not safely lodged until it has become a habit"—in other words, till it has become an automatic and unconscious operation of the nerve-cells, such a doctrine, in its extreme logical results, destroys all voluntary and conscious loyalty to principle, and renders man a ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... generators are constructed to make the gas only as fast as it is consumed at the burner, with the object of saving the expense and room which would be involved by a storage-holder. Generators with devices for regulating and stopping at will the action going on are generally termed "automatic.'' Another set merely aims at developing the gas from the carbide and putting it into a storageholder with as little loss as possible, and these are termed "non-automatic.'' The points to be attained in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... girl that the minds and the tongues and the movements of the two men were part of some slow-acting, wooden, automatic mechanism. Whether they reached the land or not seemed a matter almost of indifference to them. Accustomed to people who talked much and had much to talk about she could not understand. All this was part of the new world in ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... tree and with one hand on the automatic- loaded water pistol, and the other on the lead-loaded pop gun, he ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... Webster established the point that Christianity is a part of the common law of the land. Criminal lawyers quote Webster's argument in the great Knapp murder trial, that the voice of conscience is the voice of God, as the world's best statement of the moral imperative, and the automatic judgment seat God has set up in the city of ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... get used to it. In fact, you'll like it after a while. The home leaves. The fuss your friends will make over you when you step off the ship. The regular and automatic promotions in grade with the extra gold band added to your sleeve; the move from one outpost to an always larger installation. You'll never do much, of course, but why should you? After all, there aren't any ...
— No Moving Parts • Murray F. Yaco
... understand that if the infernal nuisance did not cease instantly he would shoot the first person who entered the garden that evening after he had retired. And to back his threat, he displayed a new automatic pistol which he had purchased in the town the day before; the shopkeeper having assured him that, for a running fire, it was the most convenient and effective weapon on the market. The Colonel was in a reckless mood and seemed in imminent ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... envelope in the office. First of all he wanted fresh air. The quick, calm, business-like manner in which his promotion had taken place; the noiseless, well-ordered, automatic opening of another door leading to the future of his ambitions, so utterly at variance with preconceived ideas in this regard, had all but unnerved him. He had always held it as assured that some day he should walk his own bridge. But until ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... and limbs of those engaged in 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 and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... disgusting; he wanted to get out of it. He glanced automatically at his watch: four o'clock—he must have sat here nearly five hours. For the first time he noticed Ludwig's absence; he was glad of it and walked dully out of the door to an automatic elevator. There was no response to his ring; someone was using the thing. He walked three flights to the street and ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... used on the diaphragm, made possible the present perfect instrument. The magneto call bell—still used in certain backward districts—for many years gave fair results for calling purposes, but the automatic switch, which enables us to get central by merely picking up the receiver, has made possible our great urban service. It was several years before the telephone makers developed so essential a thing as a satisfactory wire. Silver, which gave excellent ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... danger. Suspicious they may be at times, and the suspicion may cause them to remove themselves to a greater distance from the object that excites it; but the emotion is so slight, the action so almost automatic, that the singing bird will fly to another bush a dozen yards away, and at once resume his interrupted song. Again, a bird will see the deadliest enemy of its kind, and unless it be so close as to actually threaten his life, he will regard it with the greatest indifference ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... power provided by a float, and a large and impressive device when working (see fig. 5). Literary accounts of the anaphoric clock have been analyzed by Drachmann; there is no evidence of the representation of planets moved either by hand or by automatic gearing, only in the important case of the sun was such a feature included of necessity. A model "sun" on a pin could be plugged in to any one of 360 holes drilled in at equal intervals along the band of the ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... threw open a locker and showed us a gleaming array of automatic guns and pistols and even ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... defence, is it not possible that they mimic their surroundings for purposes of offence as well? It is easy and natural to say that the Mantis presents a terrifying aspect. It does to us, by association; but how can we say that it represents anything of the sort to the probably hypnotic or automatic consciousness of the cricket? What does it really represent, as seen from below? A twig, terminating in a bud, with two branching twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly perched on the back of it. The combination of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... flow," explained the little man proudly. "Helps tap the unused eighty per cent. The pre-symptomatic memory is unaffected, due to automatic cerebral lapse in case of overload. I'm afraid it won't do much more than cube his present IQ, and an intelligent idiot is ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... 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 ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... to meet the sledges. There were seven Indians and one white man. Jan thrust himself close to look at the white man. He wore two revolver-holsters and carried an automatic. Unquestionably he was not a missionary, but an agent of the company well prepared to ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... were concentrated on the man,—and yet I recall a curious bifurcation. Instead of experiencing that automatic righteous indignation which my father and mother had felt, which had animated old Mr. Jules Hollister when he had sternly forbidden his daughter's name to be mentioned in his presence, which had made these people outcasts, there welled up within ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 of ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... Fourier has often been objected to as a mechanical arrangement, by which persons were fixed, automaton-like, and expected to work where they were placed, and has been opposed with the criticism that human beings are not automatic—that they have the restlessness of human nature and will constantly ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... noncommissioned officer—a big man with a neck on him like a bison and a red, broad, menacing face—turned in his saddle and dropped the muzzle of his black automatic on them. They sucked their hisses back down their frightened gullets so swiftly that the exertion well-nigh choked them, and shrank flat against the wall; and, for all the sound that came from them until he had holstered his hardware and trotted ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... shadows in the gap crawled steadily eastward. Knowlton tested the feed of his automatic, which, since its balkiness in the fight with the Peruvians, he had kept carefully oiled and free from the slightest speck of rust. Tim arose at intervals and paced up and down in sentry go, eyes and ears alert—a ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Calvert dressed himself with uncertain hands but mechanical regularity and neatness, and, under the automatic training of discipline and duty, managed to button his tunic tightly over his feelings, to pull himself together with his sword-belt, compressing a still cadet-like waist, and to present that indescribable combination ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and Matilda Larson was particularly distressing, and ultimately led to the passage of a rather drastic law by the Council. Judge Malone was the father of this law. It provided for the automatic annulment of all previous marriages at the expiration of two years,—provided, however, the absent husband or wife didn't turn up to contest the matter. This law also granted absolute freedom to the absent husband or ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the rowers there was not enough art to give occupation to their minds, rude and simple as they were. The reach forward, the pull, the feathering the blade, the dip, were all there was of it; motions most perfect when most automatic. Even the care forced upon them by the sea outside grew in time to be a thing instinctive rather than of thought. So, as the result of long service, the poor wretches became imbruted—patient, spiritless, obedient—creatures of vast muscle and exhausted ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... sought came toward him at that moment. The noise her brother had made at the door brought Amelie to the landing; but, without doubt, the excitement which Roland's return had occasioned was too much for her, for after descending a few steps in an almost automatic manner, controlling herself by a violent effort, she gave a sigh, and, like a flower that bends, a branch that droops, like a scarf that floats, she fell, or rather lay, upon the stairs. It was at that moment that the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Felicia touched a bell, the maid appeared with automatic readiness, and presently a tall little girl entered. She was very well dressed. Her linen frock was hand-embroidered, and her shoes were ultra. Her pretty shock of fair hair was tied with French ribbon in a fetching bow, and she made a courtesy which would have befitted a little princess. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with her coat and handed her her handbag, then shrugged into his own overcoat and belted it about him, the weight of the flashlight and the automatic sagging the pockets. He'd need both, the gun as much as the light—New York had more than its share of vicious criminals, to whom this power-failure would be a perfect devilsend. Handing Doris the light, ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... is served by an extensive system of automatic telephone exchanges connected by modern networks of fiber-optic cable, coaxial cable, microwave radio relay, and a domestic satellite system; cellular telephone service is widely available and includes roaming service ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... winged horses, marvellous jewels, and so forth; its songs are almost without exception about love, constancy, moon, stars, flowers. Such things have not been degraded by familiarity and parody as in the town; they retain for the country folk the vague charm (like that of music, automatic and independent of thorough comprehension) of belonging to a sphere of the marvellous; hence they are repeated and repeated with almost religious servility, as any one may observe who will listen to the stories and verses told and sung even nowadays in the Tuscan country, or who will glance over ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... on the forecastle keeping a lookout. The automatic sounding machine was being used at regular intervals to give them some sort of an idea as to their position by a comparison of the depths obtained with those shown on the chart, but even then the eccentricity of the tidal currents ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... parental are also the automatic and the immediate. Reason with love! As well with orange-boughs for bearing orange-buds, or water upon its boiling-point! When John's earnestness made my father realize that this is the truth, he gave John all the available funds in the underground till, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... forward with long strides; now and then he even looked over his shoulder. Sweat rolled from him, he lost his hat, and the matted mane of thick yellow hair swept over his forehead and shaded his small, twinkling eyes. At times, with a vague, nearly automatic gesture, he reached his hand forward, the fingers prehensile, and directed towards the horizon, as if he would clutch it and draw it nearer; and at intervals he muttered, "Hurry, hurry, hurry on, hurry on." For now ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... toward East Broadway, where the detectives and their companions had just alighted from the car, and the other, breaking into a run, dived into Henry Street, with two patrolmen after him. He it was who opened the fray, and the peace of the night was suddenly disrupted by the loud bark of an automatic pistol. Three shots were fired with a quick irregularity, and then came the deeper report ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... white as the soft muslin covering her chamber, and her lips, always scarlet, formed a barely visible line, pale and narrow. Tall, slender, and erect, without the slightest movement of hand or head, with dry eyes looking somewhere into remoteness, she passed through the room, and with automatic movement dropped into a low chair near Miss Mary, who touched her hand and felt the cold of ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... discharge, by——!" of Dickens; as the "Adsum" of Thackeray; as the "Trop lourd!" of Porthos' last agony; as the longer but hardly less quintessenced malediction of Habakkuk Mucklewrath on Claverhouse. It is of Eugenie Grandet shrinking in automatic repulsion from the little bench as she reads her cousin's letter; of Henri de Marsay's cigar (his enjoyment of it, that is to say, for his words are quite commonplace) as he leaves "la Fille aux Yeux d'Or"; of the lover allowing himself to be built up in "La ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... James Freeman Clarke has stated this better than I can. "We may state the law thus: 'Any habitual course of conduct changes voluntary actions into automatic or involuntary (i.e., reflex) actions.' By practice man forms habits, and habitual action is automatic action, requiring no exercise of will except at the beginning of the series of acts. The law of association does the rest. As voluntary acts are ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... he saw her head toward him. Then he set the fly torpedo across what he thought would be her track and pulled in shore. Had the cruiser picked the line up with her bow, it would have thrown the torpedo along her side, setting an automatic wheel in motion that would explode it. When he had reached a safe distance, he turned to see the vessel blown up and to his intense disappointment, the cruiser turned a gatling gun on the torpedo. The Chileans were more watchful than he had ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... violently precipitated toward the gurgling and oozing tide below. He threw out his arms desperately, caught at a strong girder, drew himself up with the energy of desperation, and staggered to his feet again, safe—and sane. For with this terrible automatic struggle to avoid that death he was courting came a flash of reason. If he had resolutely thrown himself from the pier head as he intended, would he have undergone a hopeless revulsion like this? Was he sure that this might not be, after all, the terrible penalty of self-destruction—this ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... explode after the fashion of an over-inflated ball. He squeaked like a rat, leaped to his feet, hurled the chair on which he had been sitting crash against the door from which Windy Bill et al had withdrawn hastily, and ended by producing a small wicked-looking automatic—then a new and strange weapon—and rushing out into the main saloon. There he announced that he was known to the cognoscenti as Art the Blood and was a city gunman in comparison with which these plain, so-called ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... in the smoking-room, confiding to him his intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. Captain Malu agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was not until several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when that young adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-calibre pistol. Bertie explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loaded magazine up ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... wouldn't 'a' split the wind if I could have jest drawed my automatic in time! As 'twas, I put up the best fight I could, with a woman screamin' and hangin' to me for pertection. I rastled the big feller around in the road there for some time, neither of us able to git a good holt. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... 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 for ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford |
