"Automatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concluded he drew from behind him a leather case which he sprung open as he presented it to the astonished master of the institution. There, in the case, rested a very fine automatic pistol, its polished handle engraved with Colonel Colby's name and also the fact that it was presented to him by the school, with the date. The hat had been passed around among the boys for contributions to this gift, and ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... of the body regulates its supply of blood, the regulation being effected by means of nerves which control the tension of the muscle fibres. The circulation may be compared with an irrigation system in which the water supply of each particular field is regulated not by the engineer, but by an automatic device connected with the growing crop and ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... not doubt but that the first automatic impulse of all our automatic friends here present, on hearing this sentence, will be strenuously to deny the accuracy of my definition of the aims of modern English education. Without attempting to defend it, I would only observe that this ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... and looked at the wicked, blue-black outlines of an automatic pistol. Idly he examined the clip, crowded with shiny, yellow cartridges. He recognized the gun as Fallon's, and smiled as he returned it ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny, white cotton undershirt covered his torso; and from a belt about his middle dangled a tobacco pouch, a sheath-knife, filled clips of cartridges, and a huge automatic pistol in a ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... moving with deliberate steps, the imaginary winding-sheet dragging slowly after him. There was an automatic precision in the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... by me to Mr. Southey's Omniana, On the soul and its organs of sense, are the following sentences. "These (the human faculties) I would arrange under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the ear, the touch, etc.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating and realizing power; the speculative reason, vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by which we produce or aim to produce unity, necessity, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... each was exposed, the clockwork that moved it produced an electric spark, so as to represent such a series of effects as the successive positions of a horse in trotting. My father, it seemed, was of a scientific turn, and had just perfected this new automatic machine before his sudden death. I listened with breathless interest; for up to that time I had never been allowed to hear anything about my father—anything about the great tragedy with which my second life began. It was wonderful to me ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... an automatic "Sure," and Manuel an amazed "Si, senor," upon which they were promptly retired ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... kept up jest and laughter for the next hours—and I have some memory that I did—it was automatic. For I more nearly touched despair than ever before. I did not need the sentences that I picked up further among the Indians to tell me what had happened. The Senecas, under Pemaou's guidance, had gone to Michillimackinac; had put their heads into the bear's ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the whole scheme may be looked on not so much as a measure to aid the sick and wounded of industry financially, as to set at work an automatic pressure working towards the preservation of the health, strength, and productive capacity of the people, and incidentally to the increase of profits. As Mr. Lloyd George said in an interview printed in the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... automatic jib-sheet which passed the jib across of itself, so there was no need for Maud to attend to that; but she was still hoisting the jib when I put the wheel hard down. It was a moment of anxiety, for the Ghost was rushing directly upon the beach, a stone's throw distant. But she swung obediently ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Find an "Automatic Delivery" pillar! Curious sight on a mountain. Put a penny in, and you get a small book—Guide to Snowdonia. Thanks! But what I want is a guide to top. Fog worse than ever. Believe I've missed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... would I, reasoning wisely, pronounce you just a beast? Your actions "automatic," not "conscious" in the least? Set myself so high above you, As not to know and love you, And toss you but a bone ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... learn that the least thing may hinder his work in us. It became necessary for me recently to purchase a hayrake. I was told of two different kinds, one the old-fashioned kind where the prongs of the rake must be lifted by hand, the other an automatic arrangement where by simply touching the foot to a spring the movement of the wheels would lift the rake at the proper time so that raking hay was a delight. The first day the rake was in the field it was almost impossible to use it. It was too heavy to lift by hand and the foot attachment would ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... automatic gear hoist one of the old pipe and white and black enamel roadsigns up by its roots, and place it on a truck full of discards. I watched the mole drive a corkscrew blade into the ground with a roaring of engine and bucking of the truck. It paused, pulled upward to bring out the screw and its load ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... he said again. "Now for Miss Deronnais. But we can't stop this Sunday affair; that's certain. Did he tell you anything about it? Materialization? Automatic—" ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... moment upon the burning coals, and that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy, an automatic fancy, made as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... from hand to hand in self-defence until it burst and injured the plaintiff. Here even human agencies were a part of the chain between the defendant's act and the result, although they were treated as more or less nearly automatic, in order to arrive at ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... which is connected with the liberation of pain. We learn from neuropsychology that an important part in the functional activity of the apparatus is attributed to such regulations through the qualitative excitation of the sensory organs. The automatic control of the primary principle of pain and the restriction of mental capacity connected with it are broken by the sensible regulations, which in their turn are again automatisms. We learn that the repression which, though originally expedient, terminates nevertheless in a harmful rejection ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... he remembered his appointment with Katherine at three o'clock. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to the hour, and, beyond a cleaning yesterday afternoon, no preparations were made. In an automatic way he unlocked some cases and drew out his treasures, wiped the sword-blades tenderly with chamois leather, and laid them on the long, baize-covered table. Here and there from the cornice he selected a helmet. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... no child ever wrote a play. Acting is the lowest of the arts. And even if it were the highest, it would be brought low again by its infinite self-repetition. Imagine playing one part for a season, a year, a decade. Actors are not even parrots—they are automatic puppets that move their limbs in fixed fashions, and make squeaking sounds at prescribed moments. There was a French Minister of Education who drew up a most rigid Time-Code, which hung in his bureau; and it ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... for little cocktails after a dusty drive. Everywhere in the streets and on the esplanade there was incessant saluting. The arms of men were never still. It was like the St. Vitus disease. Tommies and Jocks saluted every subaltern with an automatic gesture of convulsive energy. Every subaltern acknowledged these movements and in turn saluted a multitude of majors, colonels, and generals. The thing became farcical, a monstrous absurdity of human relationship, yet pleasing to the vanity of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... without any wish for confidence, and why should they wish to confide in Henrietta? She was not wise and she was not sympathetic. The mere fact that they lived in the same house with her caused no automatic opening of the heart. Well on in middle life, William became engaged, and suddenly poured out everything to his love, but for the present he and Harold were content to go through life never saying anything about themselves to anybody. In fact, they hardly ever thought of Henrietta. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... down, and it was evident, even to my inexperienced eyes, that he was weakening rapidly. He leaned heavily upon the two Jews when they led him to his corner, and he reeled when their support was withdrawn. Yet his science had, through long practice, become an automatic thing with him, so that he stopped and hit with less power, but with as great accuracy as ever. Even now a casual observer might have thought that he had the best of the battle, for the smith was far the more terribly marked, but there was a wild stare in the west-countryman's ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the airlock close to the base of the ship. The heavy lux door was opened by automatic machinery from the inside, but the combination depended on the use of a molecular ray and the knowledge of the correct place, which made it impossible for anyone to open it unless they had the ray and knew where ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... "to put pennies in automatic machines on the beach. I am going to listen to the niggers. I am going to have my photograph taken. I am going to drink ginger-beer out of its original bottle. I will buy some picture postcards. I do want a boat. I am ready to listen to a concertina, and but for the defects of my education should ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... have tried to root dormant, as well as greenwood, cuttings, the conventional twig cuttings as well as leaf-bud cuttings; numerous hormone treatments using several different hormones in solution and as powders, over a wide range of concentrations, have been tried; a special chamber in which an automatic atomizer nozzle sprays the cuttings intermittently has been used. Results have always been poor. Dormant cuttings have broken dormancy, sent out new leaves, formed an abundance of callus on the basal end, but failed to develop any ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... it, a rattling volley of sparks immediately crossed the interval and the air was pervaded with a strong smell of ozone. Of course sparks were not always being emitted by the collector, and it was important to determine the periods of activity. To ensure this, Hurley devised an automatic arrangement, so that an electric bell was set ringing whenever a current was passing; the night-watchman would then note the fact in the log-book. However, the bell responded so often and so vigorously that it was soon dismantled for the benefit of sleepers. It was singular that ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... 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
... open-air dancing-pavilion in Grant Street. Stirred by an idle curiosity, he turned the corner and stopped to watch the crowded couples whirling up and down the raised platform under paper lanterns and red streamers to the music of an automatic piano. He took his place in a fringe of onlookers that filled the sidewalk. But he was thinking as he stood, not of the boisterous dancing or the clumsy dancers, but of the broken lever and the defeat at the fair-grounds. It still rankled ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... under their present altered conditions and mobility, they have improved twofold since they first landed. Their rapidity of fire was wonderful when it is remembered that their carriages are fitted with none of the automatic appliances for returning the gun to the firing position, but have to be dragged back every time by hand, and then carefully adjusted with the wheels at exactly the same level. As regards mobility, ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... position to profit by it, and when they are installed they know sufficiently well what to do. The species has so long perpetuated itself by this process that it has become, both in mother and offspring, highly automatic. It is a hymenopterous insect which this family, whose first vital manifestation is theft, thus levies a contribution on. It is called the Anthophora pilifera, and during the fine weather it makes a collection of honey intended to be absorbed by its own larvae, if it ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... though, how the acquired nature made a struggle to assert itself, and the practical side of him, developed in the busy markets of the world, protested. It was automatic rather, and at best not very persistent; it soon died away. But, seeing the gravel everywhere, he wondered if there might not be valuable clay about, what labour cost, and what the nearest stations were for haulage; and, seeing the hop-poles, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... aeronautics industry has benefited tremendously. Engines, automatic pilots, radar systems, flight equipment, capable of meeting the high standards required by space vehicles represent a great improvement ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... punishable by fine or imprisonment were disfranchised for a year, if of major offenses, for varying and increasing periods, from five years upwards, and if a second offense during the period of disfranchisement worked an automatic doubling of the time prescribed for a first offense, I conceive that the electorate would be measurably purified and that regard for the law would be stimulated. In one instance I am persuaded that disfranchisement should be for life, and that is in the case of giving or accepting a bribe or otherwise ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... though he expected that thence might fall upon him vengeance for his many sins. A dozen times as he came did I cover him with an imaginary rifle, marking the exact spots where I might have hoped to send a bullet to his vitals, in a kind of automatic fashion, for all my real brain was contemplating ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... sense of touch which make it in certain directions even the organ of control of the sense of sight, is well known, and Condillac's historic attempt to derive all the senses from this one is still plausible. If what is seen is to be seen accurately there is automatic resort to the confirmatory aid of the sense of touch, which apprehends what the eye has missed. Hence we find many people touching things, whose vision is not altogether reliable— i. e., people of considerable age, children unpracticed in seeing, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... '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. He was glad enough to break away, I kin tell you. They's no manner o' doubt ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... infallibly procure them the crossed fertilisation they need. See the marvellous fashion in which the Orchis Moris, our humble country orchid, combines the play of its rostellum and retinacula; observe the mathematical and automatic inclination and adhesion of its pollinia; as also the unerring double seesaw of the anthers of the wild sage, which touch the body of the visiting insect at a particular spot in order that the insect may, in its turn, touch the stigma ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... a certain hustling automatic thoughtless conception of Albert Sidney Burleson and what he is like and what he can do, and so far as anyone can see he has not spent three minutes in seven years in thinking what other people's conceptions of ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... have been successfully explored through the discovery of Nature's "weak side" since that momentous era in the industrial history of the world; and the nineteenth century, as Watt clearly foresaw, has been emphatically the age of steam power. In the condenser, the high pressure cylinder and the automatic cut-off, which utilises the expansive power of steam vapour, mankind now possesses the means of taming a monster whose capacities were almost entirely unknown to the ancients, and of bringing it into ready and willing service for the accomplishment of useful work. Vaguely and loosely it ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... old-fashioned way, but I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning, as I was buying a simple penn'orth of butterscotch out of the automatic machine at Paddington. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won't), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded. Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... improving domestic and international service, especially in wireless telephony domestic: 90% of telephone network is automatic; liberalization in 2003 is transforming telecommunications; there has been 20% growth in fixed lines with a penetration rate of 58% of households; nation-wide wireless service is growing even faster with four major ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... the traveling public, the Maroon Taxicab Company is putting out a line of armored cabs. These will also be equipped with automatic brakes, so that when a driver for a rival taxicab company shoots a Maroon, the cab will ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... overtake your future generations if a halt is not called on the over-zealous adoption of automatic machines for most every line of industrial activity. You are now getting to the stage where the most simple and elementary mathematical problems are solved by merely pressing a few buttons or turning a crank, the operator understanding ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... cleared up, De Launay took from his packs a second automatic, hanging the holster, a left-hand one, to the bunk. He showed Solange how to operate the mechanism and found that she readily grasped the principle of it, though the squat, flat weapon was incongruous in her small hand. The rifle also he ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the coat on my arm unostentatiously over my hip pocket. It wasn't a revolver; it was an automatic. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... filled. They are up- to-date, well kept and flourishing; the cafes are constantly being enlarged. The real estate business is also progressive; one may rent splendidly furnished houses, or modest cottages, or apartments at very fair prices. There I first saw the automatic elevator, the kind that you ring for and that runs down by itself and opens its own door; then you get in, press a button at the number you wish to get off at, and the elevator runs itself up to the floor indicated, stops and opens its door. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... it either," Gefty admitted. "So I'll start right now before I lose my nerve. As soon as I move out into the vault hall, the lighting will go on. That's automatic. You watch the right side of the screen. If you see the janandra coming before I do, yell ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... pretty toy, too!' said Roy, springing forward and picking it up. 'A nice new automatic, Roy. We'll keep that as spoils ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... Treatment of sewage on land. Surface application. Artificial sewage beds. Subsurface tile disposal. Automatic syphon. Sedimentation. Underdrains 208-232 ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... Embassy. For, in this big sunny kitchen five men lounged about in addition to the white-coated chef and his beardless stripling of an assistant. And each of the five had a holster strapped openly over his coat with the butt of an automatic protruding in ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... of Suggestion, though largely automatic, is well-nigh exhaustive. Awareness, and Attention, are illustrated copiously; but not clearly differentiated as they may be, and actually are in the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... thousands who plainly saw that without the rights of citizenship his freedom could be maintained only in name, and that without the elective franchise his citizenship would have no legitimate and (if the phrase be allowed) no automatic protection. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... (formerly Automatic Voice Network or Autovon); basic general-purpose, switched voice network of the Defense Communications System (US Department ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of grave negligence caused by Flore, who distracted his attention in order that he might allow the Havre express to dash into a train loaded with ballast. The accident was only averted by a new automatic ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... us crowded into the automatic elevator, and I pressed the seventh floor button. The girl's eyes shone under the wisp of veil twisted around a knowing little turban. She liked the taste ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of our little wooden images, unto whom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... national abuses casts a deep shadow across the traditional American patriotic vision. The sincere and candid reformer can no longer consider the national Promise as destined to automatic fulfillment. The reformers themselves are, no doubt, far from believing that whatever peril there is cannot be successfully averted. They make a point of being as patriotically prophetic as the most "old-fashioned Democrat." They proclaim even more loudly their conviction of an indubitable and a ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... phantasmagorical figures moving forwards or backwards between their bed-curtains and the chamber walls. In some children this power is semi-voluntary—they can control or perhaps suspend the shows; but in others it is altogether automatic. I myself, at the date of my last confessions, had seen in this way more processions—generally solemn, mournful, belonging to eternity, but also at times glad, triumphal pomps, that seemed to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a psychic revelation, dear," she said to William's mother. "In hopes! I've heard of wonderful experiences, but so far none—alas!—have befallen me. Automatic writing I have tried, but any communication the spirits may have sent me ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... fervour of the Hughes programme prevented the Premier from taking stock of the nation. He permitted Hughes to treat Quebec as an automatic part of Canada at war—which it was not; and he failed to use even the Machiavellian energies of Bob Rogers in getting a line on the psychology of the West, supposed to be useful only in elections. Sir Robert had long known of the menace of Germany, and his Naval Aid Bill was one proof that ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... There were six of these new howitzers, and they were worked by the 37th Field Battery, commanded by Major Elmslie. Except that the bore was larger, there was little to distinguish the pieces from the 15-lb. Maxim-Nordenfeldt automatic recoil guns used at the battle of the Atbara. The latter cannon, however, only used cordite, whereas the 5-inch howitzer shells are filled with a picric compound resembling M. Turpin's melinite. For over ten years Russia has had 100-lb. howitzer batteries in the field, firing high explosives. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... mistake the meaning of Jean Lacheneur's words. His threats were not the wild ravings of anger. His quiet manner, his icy tones, his automatic gestures betrayed one of those cold rages which endure so long as ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... to be the packer of currency under James F. Meline, the Assistant Treasurer of the United States, who, says that his is a place where automatic safeguards and checks fail, and where the government must trust to the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... feller by the name of Rufe Daniels who wouldn't jine the night-riders had been shot to death on his own door step, jest about a mile away, only a week or so before. The night-riders mostly used these here automatic shot-guns, but they didn't bother with birdshot. They mostly loaded their shells with buckshot. A few bicycle ball bearings dropped out of old Rufe when they gathered him up and got him into shape to plant. They is always some ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... put it into the criminal law. Betting, horse racing, dangerous sports, electric cars, and vehicles are cases now of things which seem to be passing under positive enactment and out of the unformulated control of the mores. When an enactment is made there is a sacrifice of the elasticity and automatic self-adaptation of custom, but an enactment is specific and is provided with sanctions. Enactments come into use when conscious purposes are formed, and it is believed that specific devices can be framed by which to realize such purposes ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... up-town he maintained messengers who carried none but his own despatches. In the railroad yards his private car stood always in readiness; and in the harbor his yacht was kept constantly under steam. A motor car stood ever in waiting in the street below, close to the shaft of a private automatic elevator, which ran through the building for his use alone. This elevator also penetrated the restaurant in the basement of the building, where a private room and a special waiter were always at the man's ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 of bounds." It came ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... long practice is able to play a difficult composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... constitute a machine, an automatic one, which produces things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no others, are the result of one universal and ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... He had thought that in asking him to fight for her she had spoken with the physical definition of that word in mind. But at the outset she had plunged him into mystery. If she had asked him to draw the automatic at his side and leap into battle with a dozen of his kind he would not have been surprised. He had expected something like that. But this other—her first demand upon him! What could it mean? Shrouded in mystery, bound by his oath of honour to make no effort ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... This, sir, and you know it as well as I do, is nothing so out of date. It is Number 2613 of the five thousand Attraction Houses controlled by the Hustle Trust Circuit of Automatic Drama: President, Mr. Theodor B. Kedger. But it is located on 99th ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... classes of instruments for the automatic recording of earth tremors, each with its own particular function. First is the seismoscope, which will merely detect and record the fact that there has been such a tremor. Some of these are so equipped as to indicate the time of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... foreign to every sentiment within her heart, cowardly, abject, the unconscious outcome of this strange magnetism which emanated from him and had cast a spell over her, transforming her individuality and will power, and making of her an unconscious and automatic ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... dip of the valley. It needed something of common size to mark the nature of the scale. The train that came rattling from Sevenoaks athwart their vision, and presently plunged into the tunnel out of their sight, looked by contrast with them like some small-sized automatic toy. ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... why you should go at all, my dear," his wife answered with a cheerfulness that had become automatic. "I have some cards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I'll drop in at about half-past three and stay long enough to make poor Amy feel that she hasn't been slighted." She glanced hesitatingly at her daughter. "And if Newland's afternoon is provided for perhaps May can drive you ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... apparatus of the wireless room—how messages were sent and received; the power of the batteries and their auxiliaries; the switch-board regulating voltage; the automatic recording apparatus—in fact, every detail connected with the intricate mechanism of ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... Jacques's life. How many times have I listened to the story, told always in the same words, with the same gestures in the same places! He remembered every sentence of the conversation he had heard, and repeated them with automatic fidelity, understanding nothing of their meaning; even when I explained their probable connection with the campaign, my words made no impression upon him, and I could see that they conveyed no idea to his mind. He was made for a soldier; brave ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... and the conditions before it. But no man knows what forces are at work in the determination of his ego. The bias which decides his choice between two or more motives may come from some unsuspected ancestral source, of which he knows nothing at all. He is automatic in virtue of that hidden spring of reflex action, all the time having the feeling that he is self-determining. The Story of Elsie Yenner, written-soon after this book was published, illustrates the direction in which my thought was ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... you want yours right now!" Darrin challenged. Swiftly he changed the revolver into his left hand as he still covered the pair. Then he reached for his own automatic, throwing ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... calico banners, and Japanese-lanterns, the congested Stream of Custom oozes slowly along, with an occasional overflow into the backwaters of the shops behind, while the Stall-keepers keep up a batrachian and almost automatic croak of invitation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... Calvinism and Wesleyanism. The old folks put every dollar they can wring from a reluctant environment into real property or the banks; the young folks put their inheritance into phonographs, Fords, boiled shirts, yellow shoes, cuckoo clocks, lithographs of the current mountebanks, oil stock, automatic pianos and the works of Harold Bell Wright, Gerald Stanley ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... Jo Portugais saw that memory was gone; that the past was blotted out. He had watched that first terrible struggle of memory to reassert itself, as the eyes mechanically looked out upon new and strange surroundings, but it was only the automatic habit of the sight, the fumbling of the blind soul in its cell-fumbling for the latch which it could not find, for the door which would not open. The first day on the raft, as Charley had opened his eyes upon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... compelled the player to feel as his director felt—the force we call magnetism. The firmness of mouth showed that the determination to dominate was still there, but the absence of that mental power left only the automatic rhythm and swing, sans heart, sans soul, sans feeling. The beat was the beat of the finely trained academic conductor, but the genius of it was gone. The ghost of a departed Von Barwig was beating time for the Von Barwig that had lived ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... that you have a weapon?" inquired the officer; and when Jimmie answered no, he pressed a button, and spoke quick words to an orderly, who came running with an automatic revolver and a belt, which Jimmie proceeded to strap upon him with thrills, half of delighted pride and half of anguished terror. "You will say to the men of the botteree that the Americans come soon to the rescue. You will find them, my brave American?" The officer spoke as if to a son whom he ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... dazzling line marched a grave 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 ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... discover ere long, that a lesser riddle would have been to stand in the manufactory of the Faubourg St. Marcel, and abolishing the pattern of the designers, the directing touch of Lebrun, the restraint of the heddle, demand that the blind, insensate automatic warp and woof should originate, design and trace as well as mechanically execute the weaving of the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... dropped to her lap, came up to the level of the table top and in its palm he saw the shining barrel of a small automatic pistol. Again he laughed ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... in her hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre, that dismal silent hole where she lived entirely alone on potatoes and dry vegetables, and which she did not leave once in the course of a month. On seeing her pass, you might have thought her to be one of those delicately white old nuns with automatic gait, whom the cloister has kept apart from all the concerns of this world. Her pale face, always scrupulously girt with a white cap, looked like that of a dying woman; a vague, calm countenance it was, wearing an air of supreme indifference. Prolonged taciturnity had made her dumb; the darkness ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... campaigns of the great commanders, and reflecting upon them with an intensity that so embedded their lessons in his subjective mind that they became a part of him, and actions in conformity with those lessons became afterward almost automatic. Alexander and Napoleon are perhaps the best illustrations of this passionate grasping of military principles; for though both had been educated from childhood in military matters, the science of strategy ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... in spirit. He did not look forward to Jane's companionship. She was still a good little girl: but there was something automatic and formal in her goodness, as though it were a kind of moral calisthenics that she went through for the sake of showing her agility. An early consciousness of virtue had moreover constituted her the natural guardian and adviser of her elders. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... volitions required of it to keep every joint in action, and every organ performing its proper function. It would not delegate the control of the fingers to an inferior power, nor contrive mechanical or automatic means for moving the extremities. Within its sphere, it is sole sovereign, and is not perplexed with the variety and constant succession of its duties, extending to every part of the complex structure of which it is the animating and directing spirit. Sensation is not cumbered with the multitude ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... to this: If we had an ordnance officer who fired a gun, that was tested for but two hundred rounds without heating, five hundred times and thus cracked it, he would probably be discharged. If the superintendent in a factory doubled the number of hours he was running his automatic machinery, and instead of doubling the amount of oil actually cut it in half and thus ruined the machines, he would be regarded as a fool. Yet we are letting our men, high in executive positions, heads ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... 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)
... right," Fleck decided. "It is no work for a woman. Here is an automatic, Miss Strong. You will stay here until after we have rounded them up. If we get the worst of it, which is not likely to happen, make your way to the automobile and telephone the ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... of boots to give him that limp. Old Jerry's a long time drinking pal of mine, he's never copped one in his life. What's more, another year or so and he'll be a general and you know what that means. Almost automatic jump ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the men below began acting like madmen. Throwing away their rifles, they staggered about, tearing at their eyes, their throats, their clothing, and uttering wild cries of distress. At the same time three automatic pistols cracked, and Dave knew the doctor had ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... (for which Percy was rapidly developing a considerable taste), and a good deal of discussion on all sorts of topics, they were deep in constructing the model of a new kind of bookcase, designed by Percy, with some ingenious contrivances for keeping out dust and for marking, by means of automatic signals, the place of any book which should be taken from its shelf. This wonderful work of art promised to eclipse every bookcase ever invented. The only drawback to it was that it was too good. Percy insisted on introducing ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... to do with it. The outside did not depend on the interior. The laugh which he had not placed, himself, on his brow, on his eyelids, on his mouth, he could not remove. It had been stamped for ever on his face. It was automatic, and the more irresistible because it seemed petrified. No one could escape from this rictus. Two convulsions of the face are infectious; laughing and yawning. By virtue of the mysterious operation to which Gwynplaine had probably been subjected ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo |
