"Locomotive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has pushed a superstition from the brain and a ghost from the clouds. Every mechanic art is an educator. Every loom, every reaper and mower, every steamboat, every locomotive, every engine, every press, every telegraph, is a missionary of Science and an apostle of Progress. Every mill, every furnace, every building with its wheels and levers, in which something is made for the convenience, for the use, and for the comfort and elevation of man, is a church, ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... few exceptions, both the red and the white coral polypes are, in their adult state, firmly adherent to the sea-bottom; nor do their buds naturally become detached and locomotive. But, in addition to budding and division, these creatures possess the more ordinary methods of multiplication; and, at particular seasons, they give rise to numerous eggs of minute size. Within these eggs the young are formed, and they leave the egg in a condition ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... rates on the Great Lakes are higher per ton-mile than on the ocean, because the vessels are necessarily smaller than those built for ocean traffic. For a similar reason, river and canal freights are higher than lake freights. Railway transportation is economical, partly because a single locomotive will draw an enormous weight of goods, and partly because of the high speed at which the goods move from point to point. Animal transportation is more expensive than any other means ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... was lost in the shout that suddenly went up from the western end of the line of laborers. Then came the sound of a locomotive bell and exhaust. Bannon started down the track, jumping the timbers as he ran, toward Vogel's lantern, that was bobbing along toward him. The train had stopped, but now it was puffing slowly forward, throwing a ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... roar of the locomotive, and the shrill scream from the steamboat, are heard here all day; a continuous stream of life ever bustles through the city, and, standing as it does on the very verge of western civilisation, Chicago is a vast emporium of the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... instructively compares these inventions to the three great inventions or discoveries— the magnetic needle, gunpowder, and printing—that ushered in the Modern Age.] In the year 1830 Stephenson exhibited the first really successful locomotive. In 1836 Morse perfected the telegraph. In 1838 ocean steamship navigation was ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... profitable question arises at once. How is it that the steam locomotive appeared at the time it did, and not earlier in the history ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... very shabby man was quite close to the bookstall, while Mr Sandbach stood quite ten yards away. Mr Sandbach gazed steadily at the man, but the man, ignoring Mr Sandbach, allowed dreamy and abstracted eyes to rest on the far distance, where a locomotive or so was impatiently pushing and pulling waggons as an excitable mother will drag and shove an inoffensive child. The platform as a whole was sparsely peopled; the London train had recently departed, and the station was ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the train pushing slowly on, the head locomotive aided by a pusher picked up at the junction, the berths were made up and everybody in the ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... trees around our little haven setting up a most piercing chirp. it began with the usual harsh jarring tone of its tribe, but this gradually and rapidly became shriller, until it ended in a long and loud note resembling the steam-whistle of a locomotive engine. Half-a-dozen of these wonderful performers made a considerable item in the evening concert. I had heard the same species before at Para, but it was there very uncommon; we obtained one of them here for my collection by a lucky blow with a stone. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... is very elastic, and that for a reason easy to state. This is, that all facts which exist and are revealed to us reach us by the testimony of the consciousness, and are, consequently, facts of consciousness. If I look at a locomotive, and analyse its machinery, I act like a mechanic; if I study under the microscope the structure of infusoria, I practise biology; and yet the sight of the locomotive, the perception of the infusoria, are just facts of consciousness, and should ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... penetrated into the bedroom in company with several logs of wood, and usurped the soft pillows intended for the commissioners. On the eighth and ninth nights, there was a cessation of hostilities; but on the tenth, the bricks in the chimneys became locomotive, and rattled and danced about the floors, and round the heads of the commissioners, all the night long. On the eleventh, the demon ran away with their breeches; and on the twelfth filled their beds so full of pewter platters that they could not get into them. On the thirteenth ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the ticket-chopper. A shout, and a man bounded up the steps, three at a time. It was an engineer who, to make connection with his locomotive at Chatham ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... swim. If their occupation is actual work they prefer to pump water into cisterns, two of which leak through holes in the bottom and one of which is water-tight. A, of course, has the good one; he also takes the bicycle, and the best locomotive, and the right of swimming with the current. Whatever they do they put money on it, being all three ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... our tickets and seen to the baggage we entered a car in the women's division and waited impatiently for the train to start. At last the first signal was given, then the second and third; the locomotive shrieked and puffed, the train moved slowly, then swiftly it left ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... had not dreamed of entering the field of international competition, in 1897, as much to her own surprise as any one else's, undersold the English in their own London market. In 1899 there was but one American locomotive in Great Britain; but, of the five hundred locomotives sold abroad by the United States in 1902, England bought more than any other country. Russia is operating a thousand of them on her own roads today. ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... locomotive whistled just then, and the novelty of getting aboard a train for the first time, helped her to be brave at the parting. She stood on the rear platform of the last car, waving her handkerchief ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of the cars was now heard, and in a moment the locomotive stood puffing before the depot. From one of the open windows a fair young face looked out, and a voice which thrilled Mary's every nerve, it seemed so familiar, called out, "Oh, Rosa, Jenny, all of you, I'm so glad ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... from the ground. Presently a large ground sloth came to the pool to drink, lapping up the water at the sides that had partly cooled. In an instant the black armored monster rushed down the slope with the speed of a nineteenth-century locomotive, and seemed about as formidable. The sloth turned in the direction of the sound, and for a moment seemed paralyzed with fear; it then started to run, but it was too late, for the next second the enormously exaggerated ant—for such it was—overtook it. The huge mandible shears that ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the hill between the picturesque cottages of Willey Green till they came to the railway crossing. There they found the gate shut, because the colliery train was rumbling nearer. They could hear the small locomotive panting hoarsely as it advanced with caution between the embankments. The one-legged man in the little signal-hut by the road stared out from his security, like a crab ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... welding the Union more closely together and in giving it more prestige abroad. We should next note the unparalleled material development of the country; the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the rapid extension of steamboats on rivers, the trial of the first steam locomotive in 1828, the increased westward movement of population, which reached California in 1849, several hundred years ahead of schedule time, as those thought who prophesied before the introduction of steam. The story ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... aboard!" the little group of boys on the station platform suddenly parted, and the four who had stood in the centre of the ring, vigorously shaking hands, now moved hastily toward the train and scrambled up the steps. The conductor waved his signal to the engine-driver and swung aboard. The locomotive bell began to ring, there was a hissing of steam, and a puffing of the great locomotive, and the train slid gently forward. On the car platform stood the four departing members of the wireless patrol, waving fond farewells to their less fortunate members. Then they turned and entered the coach, ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... agent of the company with unlimited authority to raise funds and press forward the work of completion. He entered upon his duties with his usual indomitable perseverance and energy, fully seconded by the directors and contractors, and they had the satisfaction of passing a locomotive over its entire length late in the autumn of the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... "hot with the fray, and weeping from the fight," confined in a locomotive prison with my sullen captor. I blubbered in one corner of the coach, and he surveyed me with stern indifference from the other. I had now fairly commenced my journey through life, but this beginning was anything but auspicious. At length, the carriage stopped at a place I have since ascertained ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... physical workers," and if "we cannot reverse our present economic order of things," then any apprenticeship, even this brave effort of his, is a pseudo-apprenticeship and even in the most energizing of the trades leads the pupil nowhere in particular. Even the skilled trade of locomotive engineering, which Dean Schneider classes as the most highly energized of trades, does not escape. As a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers observes: "The big electrical engines which are being introduced in the railroad system are rapidly eliminating the ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... The great panic of 1857 had had a very depressing effect on business of every description and it was contended that the passage of this measure would give employment to thousands of people; that the rumbling of the locomotive would soon be heard in every corner of the state, and that the dealer in town lots and broad acres would again be able to complacently inform the newcomer the exact locality where a few dollars would soon bring to the investor returns unheard of by any ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... without being the expectants. Individual actors, with respect to the master claim of humanity, are, for the most part, not unlike that fleet hound which, enticed by a tempting prospect of meat, outran a locomotive engine all the way from Lowell to Boston, and won a handsome wager for his owner, while intent only on a dinner for himself. Humanity is served out of all proportion to the intention of service. Even the noble souls, never wanting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... hardly be said that in all cases where the two sexes come into competition for comfort, the provision is made first for women. In railroads the end car of the train, being that farthest removed from the smoke of the locomotive, is often reserved for them (though men accompanying a lady are allowed to enter it); and at hotels their sitting-room is the best and sometimes the only available public room, ladyless guests being driven to the bar or the hall. In omnibuses and horse-cars ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... every evening at 6.55. Smokey had been in the habit of taking a latest evening edition through to Pat in his engine cab. Mulcahy didn't get his paper one night, but next evening Jimmy turned up alongside the big locomotive and said: ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... seen in electric search lights and in locomotive head-lights. They are employed in electric search lights. The arc light must be of such construction as to maintain its ignited points always at the same point, the focus ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... the salient feature of the people in this upstairs room is the inexorable isolation of their souls. No one speaks. One or two look up from their food as the author makes his way to the window from which he commands a glimpse of blue sky, the elevation of an enormous brick wall, and possibly a locomotive having its firebox cleaned on a siding and panting as though afflicted with lung trouble. He takes his seat not far from a young woman who is breakfasting on a bun and a glass of milk. She is reading a book, a fat novel ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... as I had begun to get in very low spirits about the prospects of getting on, a locomotive arrived from a station called Haslehurst, and brought us the astonishing report that the Yankees had suddenly abandoned Jackson, after destroying all the Government, and a good deal of ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... bonnets; or sometimes the burden was huge enough almost to cover the whole person, looked at from behind,—as in Tuscan villages you may see the girls coming in from the country with great bundles of green twigs upon their backs, so that they resemble locomotive masses of verdure and fragrance. But these poor English women seemed to be laden with rubbish, incongruous and indescribable, such as bones and rags, the sweepings of the house and of the street, a merchandise gathered up from what poverty itself had thrown ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... will afford comfort for travellers. The cars too are sometimes very beautiful. Accidents very often happen on rail-roads, and lives are often lost by the the carelessness of those having charge of the locomotive. They go very fast; indeed so fast, that you cannot see the houses, ...
— The Skating Party and Other Stories • Unknown
... home in strong excitement, rumors of the accident having met him on the way. The horses had taken fright at the sudden shriek of a locomotive, and the breaking of a defective bit had deprived the old gentleman of the power to control them. They ran madly down a steep embankment, wrecking the carriage and throwing both passengers out ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... him, but he was not too sure of himself, and he knew now that the other man had a swing to his right arm like the driving rod of a locomotive. He retreated again to the table, and his hand closed over ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fatalist, but of an orthodox school of fatalism withal, that led him to rely upon himself and even upon Providence. He claimed that he was impelled, rather than drawn by his own volition, to journey as he did, and that he traversed the world like the locomotive, which does not direct itself, but is guided and directed by ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... say this dogone prairie 'ud be the best place to start resurrectin' it. No, sir! There's too many chances for that—seein' we're on a branch line. There's the track—it might give way. You never can tell on a branch line. The locomotive might drop dead of senile decay. Maybe the train crew's got drunk, and is raisin' hell at some wayside city. You never can tell on a branch line. Then there's that cargo ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... purpose of conveying vessels overland, has been projected by Mr. Henry Fairbairn, in the United Service Journal for May, 1832. The vessels are to be raised from the sea by machinery, placed in slips and dragged along the railway by locomotive steam-engines. The same author proposes to connect Ireland with Scotland, by means of a bank between Portpatrick and Donaghadee; and England with France, by means of a chain bridge, causeway, or tunnel, from Dover ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... consequences, but he knew that in the West railroads are built as fast as possible and made safe afterwards. For that matter, he had often run risks that would have daunted engineers used to conservative English methods. In the meantime, the speed was slackening, and by and by the harsh tolling of the locomotive bell echoed among the pines. Tents, iron huts, and rude log shacks slipped past; men in muddy slickers drew back against the bank, and then the ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... false and grievously mischievous. You have DESERTED—after a start in that tram- road of all solid physical truth—the true method of induction, and started us in machinery as wild, I think, as Bishop Wilkins's locomotive that was to sail with us to the moon. Many of your wide conclusions are based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved, why then express them in the language and arrangement of philosophical induction? ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... A locomotive shrieked, adding its voice to the roar of traffic at Victoria Station. There came the pounding hiss of escaping steam. The crowd pressed close to the rails and peered down the foggy platform. A train had stopped, and the engine was ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... but you never know where you are with any horse. That mare, which had been a mirror of all the virtues all the afternoon, was off like a rocket. She overtook an electric car as if it had been standing still. Ellis sawed her mouth; he might as well have sawed the funnel of a locomotive. He had meant to turn off and traverse Bursley by secluded streets, but he perceived that safety lay solely in letting her go straight ahead up the very steep slope of Oldcastle Street into the middle of the town. It would be an amazing mare that galloped to the top ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... spurts played about Mrs. Condon's dripping countenance; they increased rather than diminished; actually it resembled a wrecked locomotive she had once seen. "How are you?" M. Joseph demanded nervously. "Is it hot anywhere?" With a sudden gesture she replied in a shaking ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the victim of brilliant Moscow. They rode straight to the station, where they dined in, by the way, one of the best railway refreshment rooms in the world. At one o'clock the night express from Moscow to St. Petersburg, with its huge American locomotive, rumbled into the station. Paul secured a chair in the long saloon car, and then returned to the platform. The train waited twenty minutes for refreshments, and he still had much to say to Steinmetz; for one of these men owned a principality and the other governed it. They walked up ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... reach of level railway which stretched away through the pine barren, we began to see certain ominous puffs of smoke, which might indeed proceed from some fire in the woods, but were at once set down by the men as coming from the mysterious locomotive battery which the Rebels were said to have constructed. Gradually the smoke grew denser, and appeared to be moving up along the track, keeping pace with our motion, and about two miles distant. I watched it steadily through a field-glass from our ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that expression of severe solemnity I am told queens and rich people always do; but, in spite of herself, a little pleased smile rippled over her face; and, noticing it, and the bow and speech, the prince suddenly and sharply set up such another screech of laughter as no steamboat or locomotive, in the present age of steam, could begin to ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... its mirrorless altar and its colourless lanterns, and the decaying sculptures of its neglected court, and its kindly guardian whom I see still watching my retreating steps, with the yellow kakemono in his hand. The whistle of a locomotive warns me that I shall just have time to catch the train. For Western civilisation has invaded all this primitive peace, with its webs of steel, with its ways of iron. This is not of thy roads, O Koshin!—the old gods are dying ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... showers loosen the frost-bound soil, trickling snow-rills grow into gullying torrents, and the jar of a passing train sets in motion a loose boulder, which, with ever-increasing speed, at last hurls itself upon the track. Even the echoes of the locomotive whistle will in some states of the atmosphere bring disaster. Tiny snow crystals are jarred by the sound-waves; these start on a downward career, gathering volume and speed until a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... up in the tower of the Woolworth Building and down in a coal mine and up in a Ferris wheel and once I had a ride with Uncle Jim in the cab of a locomotive—-but this beats anything I ever had anything to do with!" exclaimed Jack, all ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... then Prescott left him and, after giving an order to have his team ready, proceeded to the station. It was getting dark, but the western sky was still a sheet of wonderful pale green, against which the tall elevators stood out black and sharp. The head-lamp of a freight locomotive flooded track and station with a dazzling electric glare, the rails that ran straight and level across the waste gleaming far back in the silvery radiance. This helped Prescott to overcome his repugnance to his task, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... straight line, gradually relaxing into its former smile of rather kindly mockery. He told himself, apparently, that there was no point in getting excited; and he seemed a master hand at taking his ease when he could. Neither the sharp whistle of the locomotive nor the brakeman's call disturbed him. It was not until after the train had stopped that he rose, put on a Panama hat, took from the rack a small valise and a flute-case, and stepped deliberately to the station platform. The baggage was already unloaded, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... writes, "when the cotton fields were white and the elm leaves were falling, in the soft autumn of the Southern climate wherein the sky is fathomlessly clear, the locomotive's whistle blew a much longer time than usual as the train approached Millworth. It did not stop at so small a station except when there was somebody to get off or to get on, and so long a blast meant that someone was coming. Sam and I ran down the avenue of elms to see ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Again the locomotive shrieked, again the girl mechanically clutched the suit-case, as presenting the most difficult item in the problem of transportation, and this time the shriek was not an idle formality. The train slowed down; the uneasy sleepers behind the green-striped ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... you're to get a toss into the river. That's to be on Friday. But the other thing—well, they all cleared away but two. They were the two that wanted to have it out with me. They stayed behind. There was I snoring like a locomotive, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... strenuously denounced as fatal. The pressure for place was even greater than it had been ten years before, and although Mr. Webster as Secretary of State maintained his consistency by putting his name to an executive order asserting sound principles, the order was swept away like a lamb by a locomotive. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... battleships struck the Russian battleship Retvisan, while another fell aboard the Sevastopol, exploding on her armoured deck. Yet another of our shells struck a train which happened to be just entering Port Arthur station, destroying the locomotive and, as we subsequently learned, killing the engine-driver and severely wounding the fireman. Finally, the Retvisan adopted our own tactics and retaliated by firing her heavy guns over the intervening high ground, while some of the forts did the same, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... to "kicker", thence to the platforms and the shotgun carriages; into the mad rush of the bank saws, while the rumbling rolls caught the offal to cart it away; then surging on, to the edgers and trimmers and kilns. Great trucks rumbled along the roadways. Faintly a locomotive whistled, as the switch engine from Tabernacle clanked to the mills for the make-up of its daily stub-train of lumber cars. But the attention of Ba'tiste Renaud was on none of these. Out in a safe portion of the lake was a boat, and within it sat two persons, a man ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... you have when you put on airs like that, but naturally your voice is a cross between a locomotive whistle and ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... storm. The snow increased as we approached the mountains, and night had set in before we reached Staunton. The next morning, before sunrise, in spite of the predictions of the wise ones, I took passage on the single car which was attached to the locomotive, and arrived at Goshen about 10 A. M., where, after some little encouragement, the stage-driver attached his horses to the stage, and we started slowly through the mountains, breaking the track. On reaching the Baths, the North River ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... Ohio Railroad and was subsequently studied and adopted by railroads in Europe, made it possible to avoid the difficulty of ventilation connected with steam traction in tunnels, and permitted the use of grades practically prohibitive with the steam locomotive. The practicability of the tunnel extension project finally ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond
... generally all taken in the first 10 minutes. The tram runs down the Via Po, crosses the Ponte Vit. EmanueleI., passes by the western end of the church, the "Great Mother of God," and descends by the left side of the Po to the Cassale station, whence the ascent commences by the rope and locomotive railway constructed by Agudio, and opened in 1884. The ascent takes 20 minutes, the length is 3500 yards, the average inclination 13%, and the greatest 20%. At the Superga station are waiting-rooms, and a few feet below them a commodious restaurant. On arriving at the station ascend by the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... same track almost an impossibility if the engineer is awake and attentive to business. Under this system when the trains approach a certain distance of each other a bell is rung in the cab of each locomotive simultaneously, and will continue to ring until the danger is over. This with the powerful electric headlights now used, with which the roadbed is lit up for a distance of five miles, makes a head-on collision almost impossible, while the air ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... for London O'er Bulgaria's heavy sands To Rotten Row and muffins, soles, Chevalier and Brass Bands Ho' get away you bullock man You've heard the whistle blowed a locomotive coming ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... force for the subject. It is as if a railroad should be built and a locomotive started to transport skeletons, specimens, and ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... made no answer. At that moment was heard the shrill whistle of a locomotive pulling into the depot. That was the train on the little, narrow-gauge road that struck into San Rosario from the south. The major cocked his ear and listened for a moment, and looked at his watch. The narrow-gauge was in ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... neglectful ancestors; and it is a fault that none need really blush for in the present. For such as they there still remains the example of the turnpike-loving clerk, with all its golden possibilities. Denied the great delight of driving a locomotive, or a fire-engine — whirled along in a glorious nimbus of smoke-pant, spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar — what bliss to the palefaced quilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge and Chelsea! ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... across the yard. He dodged in front of a yard locomotive, picked his way about masses of lumber and the general litter of all mill yards, and opened the door of his own building. Just inside his office a girl was sitting on a straight chair, her hat a trifle crooked, and her eyes red from crying. He ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blowing towards us from the plain, sounded very faintly but clearly in our ears. Young started as he heard this sound, and as he turned towards me he held out his hand and said, in a voice that was husky and tremulous, "Professor, that's a locomotive whistle, an' th' d——n fool is—is whistlin' 'down brakes'!" And in these curiously chosen, yet not unmeaning words, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... he staggered to his feet and lunged against the door, forcing it open. The dim light from the one square-paned window showed a small form huddled on the floor, the mouth open, and a tiny locomotive gripped in one hand. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... "'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' As long as I've still got the last pair of those blarsted cuff-buttons in my cuffs,"—here he took off his coat and displayed to full view the famous heirlooms, which gleamed like a pair of locomotive headlights,—"we'll wait till to-morrow before tearing up the foundations of the castle looking for ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... of colour. Mr. Browning compares these changes to those which are seen when a cloud of steam of varying depth and density is illuminated from behind by a strong light, as when we look through the steam escaping from the safety-valve of a locomotive at a gas-lamp immediately behind it. This appears to be the true explanation of the phenomenon. [Footnote: Popular Science Review, 1871, p. 307.] These belts are probably due to vast masses of steam, poured forth with great force from the body of the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... engineer on a combination locomotive and coach and as this locomotive will be in the scene of more than one tragedy, I will describe it. It was specially designed for the president and officers of the road, weighing only eight tons. On the same frame with the engine, in fact, a part ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... post-Civil War advances as the steel rail, automatic coupler, and airbrake, was the invention of the safety truck for locomotives. Intended to lead the bobbing, weaving locomotive around curves on the rough track of the early roads, it did much to reduce the all too numerous derailments that were a major ...
— Introduction of the Locomotive Safety Truck - Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Paper 24 • John H. White
... with small trucks of stone and lime behind them.... Lean mules no longer crawl leisurely along the little rails with trucks of stone, through Croydon, once perchance during the day, but the whistle and rush of the locomotive, and the whirr of the atmospheric, are now ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... and the work done at the rate of from a mile to a mile and a half a day. Before the Bokharans fairly realized what was afoot, the iron horse was careering over their level plains, and the shrill scream of the locomotive whistle was startling the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... were needed to convey soldiers and military supplies. The customary uses of the railroad were largely suspended and travel went on under great difficulties. In a measure it had returned to the conditions existing before the invention of the locomotive. Even horse traffic was limited by the demands of the army for these animals, and foot travel regained ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... of a Great Northern locomotive, trundling freight cars through the gloom, gave the death-stroke to the old boy-dream. It was the cry of modernity. This boisterous, bustling, smoke-breathing thing, plunging through the night with flame ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... interchangeable," has brought about a revolution in the manufacture of other articles besides fire-arms. It is applied also to watches, sewing-machines, knitting-machines, and even to agricultural implements and the building of locomotive engines. ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... around the house, and their pensiveness I know to be only that touch of twilight which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the few chance visitors there were city friends occasionally, figures quite unknown to the village, who came preceded by the steam shriek of the locomotive, were dropped at the gate-posts, and were seen no more. The owner was as much a vague name to me as ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... by name. He was running what is called a planer, a machine for trimming pieces of cold metal just from the foundry or the casting room. He was at work this morning on one of the eccentric bars of a locomotive, and it was of such a character that he could leave the machine for several minutes to do the planing. Burns talked with this man for a while, and then moved across the floor to another workman, ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... and easy transition from place to place, it is difficult to form a just conception of the tediousness, hardships, and duration of those early emigrations to the West. The difference in conveyance is that between a train of cars drawn by a forty-ton locomotive and a two-horse wagon, without springs, and of the most lumbering and primitive construction. This latter was the best conveyance that the emigrant could command. A few were so fortunately situated on the banks of rivers that ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Greek minds by Plato or Aristotle or Zeno, are nothing at all compared with the vast differences between every Greek mind and every Egyptian or Chinese mind. We may neglect them in a philosophy of history, just as in calculating the impetus of a locomotive we neglect the extra impetus given by a single piece of better coal. What each man adds is but an infinitesimal fraction compared with what he derives from his parents, or {256} indirectly from his earlier ancestry. And if what the past gives ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... moonlight on the still agitated waters, a strange contralto witch-gleam; and then again the chorus and the storm; and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger,—the movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild, and mad,—a locomotive quickstep, and then a sudden ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... was filled to suffocation. Assuming that the crowd's intention was to view the unaccustomed locomotive, it was strange it did not occur to them that the opposite side of the track or the adjacent prairie would afford more elbow room. They huddled together on the boards of the platform as though the appearance of the spectacle depended on every last individual's keeping ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... lightning speed. A curve was just ahead, beyond which was a station where two trains usually met. The conductor was late,—so late that the period during which the up train was to wait had nearly elapsed; but he hoped yet to pass the curve safely. Suddenly a locomotive dashed into sight right ahead. In an instant there was a collision. A shriek, a shock, and fifty souls were in eternity; and all because an engineer ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Independence, and the great cycle of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. These in their turn left Europe too exhausted to accomplish much in the way of colonial expansion until the middle of the nineteenth century. Even then, when the steamship and the locomotive were at hand to multiply man's powers, there was, as yet, no general wish, except on the part of the more fortunate English-speaking peoples, to enter into man's new heritage. The problems of Europe had to be settled before the age of expansive activity could dawn in its full radiance. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... clearer, that the railroad should raise its price to twenty- five centimes, the rate by the old method remaining at eighteen; it would lose immediately all its consignments; shippers, consignees, everybody would return to the stage-wagon, if necessary. The locomotive would be abandoned; a social advantage of four hundred per cent. would be sacrificed to a private loss ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to the station might have averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill scream of the locomotive as it stopped for a moment and then dashed on into the white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half three-quarters, until at last he heard the clock strike the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... two elements which cannot exist together. I thought the water would put out the fire, and the fire would consume the boat if it had the shadow of a chance. This was to me a preposterous thing! But when I was told that the Big Knives had created a "fire-boat-walks-on-mountains" (a locomotive) it ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... in the lunar spheres, and not half as much about an iron smelter as I did about converting whiskers into mermaid's tresses. However, one of the greatest iron men in New England, Aretas Blood, president of the Manchester Locomotive Works, and of the Nashua Steel and Iron Company, was at the head of the enterprise, which apparently safeguarded it. Well, it turned out that there was no iron in the mines—at least not enough to pay for extraction, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... acknowledging ignorance, by betraying surprise.[41] We have been in company with Indians from the Far West, while they saw a railroad for the first time. When they thought themselves unnoticed, they were as curious about the singular machinery of the locomotive, and as much excited by the decorations and appointments of the cars, as the most ignorant white man. But the moment they discovered that their movements were observed, they resumed their dignified composure; and, if you had judged of the Indian country by their subsequent deportment, you ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... through the window-panes of the station, fell on her like the rays of an immense hour-glass which measured for her the minutes of happiness lost. She was lamenting her fate, when, in the red light of the sun, she saw the locomotive of the express stop, monstrous and docile, on the quay, and, in the crowd of travellers coming out of the carriages, Jacques approached her. He was looking at her with that sort of sombre and violent joy which she had often observed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for the morning train drew near, Carrie, resting upon pillows, and whiter than the linen which covered them, strained her ears to catch the first sound of the locomotive. At last, far off through an opening among the hills, was heard a rumbling noise, which increased each moment in loudness, until the puffing engine shot out into the long, green valley, and then rolled ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... went on, the lovers married and went North; but after awhile the bride grew heartsick for the old home, so "We journeyed South a spell." With this line the moving picture flung at us, head on, a great passenger locomotive and its trailing cars. To the right there were a country road, meadows, some distant hills, a stake and rider fence, and a farmhouse. The scene was homely, simple, typically American, and rustic, and it sent every ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... be on solid ground. But one day, when we had forgotten the hour; or a train was behind, or ahead of time; or an extra train was on the road—we were crossing this railroad bridge, and had just about reached the middle of it, when we heard the whistle of a locomotive! Looking up quickly, we saw a train, not a quarter of a mile away, which was coming towards us at full speed. We stood paralyzed for a moment. We did not know what to do. In a minute, or less, the train would be on the bridge ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... narrowest of narrow gauges, and its rolling-stock consisted of flat cars three feet wide, drawn by splendid Percherons. The live stock, the rolling-stock, the tracks, and the trees on either side of the tracks were entirely covered with white clay. Even the brakemen and the locomotive-engineer who walked in advance of the horses were completely painted with it. And before we got out of the woods, so were the passengers. This railroad feeds the trenches, carrying to them water and ammunition, and to the kitchens in ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... centers where they were transformed into completed machines. The result was that the United States, despite the high wages paid here, led the world in bicycle making and flooded all countries with this utilitarian article. Our great locomotive factories had developed on similar lines. Europeans had always marveled that Americans could build these costly articles so cheaply that they could undersell European makers. When they obtained a glimpse ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... scene. In place of the foreshore with its flat grey stones, his eye travelled down a steep green slope. The hissing sound continued in his ears, louder than ever, but it came with violent jets of steam from a locomotive, grotesquely overturned some twenty yards below him. Fainting, he saw and sank across the body of Sir John Crang, which lay with face upturned among the June grasses, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... train and scampered up the stairway and out to the cars as the last note from the starting-gong rang through the arched station. The guard slammed the door of their compartment, a whistle sounded, answered by a screech from the locomotive, and the long train glided from the station, faster, faster, and sped out into the morning sunshine. The summer wind blew in their faces from the open window, and sent the soft hair ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... air rang out the sound of a tocsin—the stroke of a hammer upon a steel rim from a locomotive wheel, and which was hung aloft in the only ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... and brighter: soon it had a strong glare like a locomotive headlight; it kept on getting brighter and brighter till it was like the sun peeping above the horizon-line at sea—the big red rays shot high up into ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain |
