"Automatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seem odd that Hamlet should be represented as, at such a moment, making a note in his tablets; but without further allusion to the student-habit, I would remark that, in cases where strongest passion is roused, the intellect has yet sometimes an automatic trick of working independently. For instance from Shakspere, see Constance in King John—how, in her agony over the loss of her son, both her fancy, playing with words, and her imagination, playing with ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... of doubt, with a cry she ran forward. She saw Peabody, his back against a wall, a levelled automatic in his hand; her brother at the entrance to a tunnel like the one from which she had just appeared. His arms were raised above his head. At his feet lay a revolver. For an instant, with disbelief, he stared at Monica, and then, as though assured ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... certain manner of acting which renders him estimable in the eyes of his fellow beings. What is virtue? It is the disposition that causes us to do good to others. What can there be contemptible in automatic machines capable of producing such desirable effects? Marcus Aurelius was a very useful spring to the vast machine of the Roman Empire. By what right will a machine despise another machine, whose springs would facilitate its own play? Good people are springs which assist society in its tendency to ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... ended by just reversing the water-valve switch. This valve was supposed to be used only for repairs, after the pile was damped. When the water was cut off with the pile in operation, it had started to overheat and the automatic safeties had dumped the charge down ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... only opened in the spring of 1914, and from the very first season its success had testified to the excellence of the system. Photographs were published in all the fashionable papers, and wealthy clients rushed in with alarming and automatic rapidity. ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... his breath, searching among the loose papers on the chart table for the copy of the news which was received every twelve hours by automatic helioprinter from New York millions of miles away. He read the article about Teutoberg through and laid aside the paper. Turning to the charts he jotted down a few hasty calculations, and stepped to the controls ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... as automatic as if it had been Juli. I pulled the kid loose, shoved her behind me, and scowled at the ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... code of slave-ethics. She has the supreme advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to table-rappings and flounder through swamps of automatic writings in order to bolster their hope of the survival ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... groups of vehicleless fliers passed occasionally; as members of a sporting fraternity, they exchanged waves and shouted greetings. At last, a long, wild valley opened ahead, showing no trace of human habitation; at its far end began open land, dotted with small tobacco farms where automatic cultivators moved unhurriedly about. Kilby, glancing back over her shoulder at Halder for a moment, swung around towards one of the farms, gliding down close to the ground, Halder twenty feet behind her. They ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... his old self again, chatty and pleasant, and with his old passion for talking "shop." He launched into a long explanation of some scheme he had in mind for securing automatic balancing. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... Waves. Hearing Electricity. The Diaphragm in a Magnetic Field. A Simple Telephone Circuit. How to Make a Telephone. Telephone Connections. Complete Installation. The Microphone. Light Contact Points. How to Make a Microphone. Microphone, the Father of the Transmitter. Automatic Cut-outs for Telephones. Complete ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Radium, which is a solid element under ordinary conditions, gives rise by transmutation to a gaseous element—the emanation of radium. The new element is a heavy gas at ordinary temperatures and, like other gases, can be liquified by extreme cold. The extraordinary property of transmutation is entirely automatic. No influence which chemist or physicist can apply can ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... 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
... 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 else is ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... gravely said Hardwicke. "She is only a girl, like other girls, I presume; but, this old fool is only fit for the old days, when the kings of Oude flew kites and hunted with the cheetah; or, half drunken, dozed, lolling away their lives in these marble-screened zenanas, with the automatic beauties of the seraglio. Our English cannon have knocked all that nonsense silly. Here is a high-spirited, Christian English girl, shut up like a slave. It's only the unfairness of the thing that strikes me." Hawke eyed the blue-eyed, rosy young fellow of twenty-six with ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... plants, the habits of one race of fishes, suffice for the exclusive study of half a lifetime. Minds of a more active or more practical bent will spend an equal time over the construction of a new machine more absolutely automatic than any that has preceded it. Physical labour is thrown as much as possible on the young; and even they are now so helped by machinery and by trained animals, that the eight hours' work which forms their day's labour hardly ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... It is well to denounce the purchase of votes, but the duty of the country church to Americanize the peasant class is the greater duty. The presence of such a class in a town infallibly leads to this iniquity. The sale of votes is as bad as the sale of woman's virtue, and both have an automatic tendency to ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... of a 1912 reprint of the 1777 edition of David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Each page was cut out of the original book with an X-acto knife and fed into an Automatic Document Feeder Scanner to make this e-text, so the original book was disbinded ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... 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 ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... place, go off and buy land or lease it for themselves. This makes a constant drain from the gardens, leaving openings for others who will learn in time their trade; it is possible to make in this way a steady drain out of the cities to the country, and what is better still, an automatic drain. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... in Broken Stone and Gravel; Effect of Method of Loading; Test Determinations; Specific Gravity; Effect of Hauling—Theory of the Quantity of Cement in Mortar; Tables of Quantities in Mortar—Tables of Quantities in Concrete—Percentage of Water in Concrete—Methods of Measuring and Weighing; Automatic Measuring Devices. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... will, or even original sin: the original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from God. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a terrible nightmare to itself by its automatic monotony, that still is only its own work and, figuratively speaking, its own fault. Nothing save its own arbitrary and needless pressure keeps it going in that round. This fatality is impressive, and popular religion ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... wrongly, the governor held that the bishop was subservient to the Jesuits, while Colbert's plain instructions required the governor to keep the Jesuits in check. From such a starting-point the further developments were almost automatic. Laval found on his return that Frontenac had exacted from the clergy unusual and excessive honours during church services. This furnished a subject of heated debate and an appeal by both parties to the king. After full consideration Frontenac received orders ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... a shot rang out, and Eagle jumped back as if he had been mortally wounded. The man was unharmed, however, for Mick had only fired into the air as a warning, but he now covered the native with his automatic pistol. The warragul knew enough about white men to understand that sudden death could spit out of that little barrel which Mick held in his hand, and if there had been any doubt in his mind as to what he ought to do, it was dispelled by the shouts of ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... with her tea and steamed the stamps off her letters ("when, by a miracle, I don't put them in the box myself.") Her whole attitude was of a vast grim tolerance of things-as-they-came, as though she had been some wonderful automatic machine which recorded facts but had not yet been perfected to the point of sorting ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... of cotton cloth, that wrapped about his waist and descended to his knees. On his head was a battered Stetson, known to the trade as a Baden-Powell. About his middle was strapped a belt, which carried a large-calibred automatic pistol and several spare clips, loaded and ready for ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... with his charm of simple style And close dialectic, all but proving man An automatic series of sensations, Has often numb'd me into apathy Against the unpleasant jolts of this rough road That breaks off short into the abysses—made me A ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... outwardly, in those days, but inside she was in a tumult of rebellion. She went home with Miss Slome when she was asked, but she was never gracious in response to the doll-like smile, and the caressing words, which were to her as automatic as the smile. Sometimes it seemed to Maria that if she could only have her own mother scold her, instead of Miss Slome's talking so sweetly to her, she would ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... watch on the ramparts of the baron's castle—now he walks the block and lifts his finger to suspicious persons. In the old days he wore his armour on the outside and carried a spear. Now he wears a hidden coat of mail and carries concealed two automatic guns. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... that this or that rope should be let go, or intimating that such and such a sail was ready for setting, for the darkness was so intense that it was impossible to see exactly everything that was happening even aboard their own ship, nor was the work executed with quite that automatic precision and astonishing speed that is characteristic of the Navy of the present day, yet the work went forward so smoothly and rapidly that within ten minutes of the delivery of George's first order the Nonsuch was under way ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... smooth-bores could not reach us. Yet we were ordered to throw away our advantages and reduce ourselves to our enemy's condition upon the obstinate prejudice of a worthy man who had had all flexibility drilled out of him by routine. Models of automatic rapid-fire and repeating field-pieces were familiar objects "at the rear," but I saw none of them in action in any army in which I served. The conservatism of the old army must be held responsible ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... "horse," which weighs two tons, and is guided by a driver mounted upon it through the front wheel, proceeds on the towing path like a traction engine; and the boats are connected with it by a rope, with automatic disengaging gear, in case the force of the stream or a gust of wind should drive a boat backward. Speeds of from 1,990 to 4,240 meters (mean 3,319 yards) were obtained with the electric horse, towing from three to four boats, so that it is more suitable than the electric ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... next room. At the production of the coat during the demonstration of the markings of the bullet, Mrs. Parker had betrayed great emotion, Mr. Bruce had done likewise, and nothing more than ordinary emotion had been noted for the rest of us. Miss La Neige's automatic record during the tracing out of the sending of the note to Parker had been especially unfavourable to her; Mr. Bruce showed almost as much excitement; Mrs. Parker very little and Downey very little. It was all set forth in curves drawn by self-recording pens on regular ruled paper. The student ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... is!" Mr. Hennage walked to the end of the porch. He was just a little excited. "It's all off with the hobo" he continued. "I know the man that's using that automatic, and he can shoot your eye out at a hundred yards. I saw him ridin' in just as I ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Each stowed two sacks in his pocket and Hal carried the seventeenth package in his hand. Then Hal motioned them out the door. He emerged after them and his hand was on his automatic ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... one's thigh has. Laughter is spontaneous, that is to say, the movements are not designed or directed by the conscious will. But in mankind, in proportion as individuals are trained in self-control, it is more or less completely under command, and in spite of the most urgent tendency of the automatic mechanism to enter upon the progressive series of movements which we distinguish as (1) smile, (2) broad smile or grin, (3) laugh, (4) loud laughter, (5) paroxysms of uncontrolled laughter, a man or woman can prevent all indication by muscular movement of a desire to ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... great labour to clear them out." "We don't clear them out," he replied. "We use ploughs that automatically rise when they come to a stump, and take the earth again on the other side." I cannot but conjecture that Mr. Wells's thinking apparatus is fitted with some such automatic appliance for soaring gaily over the snags that stud the ploughlands ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... time and memory had come to a standstill. The present was not, nor present ambitions and duties. The soldiers came plunging out into the street, swords in their hands, but they stopped to watch. Sime, Murray and Tuman, used to instant and automatic battle, watched. A struggle so titanic, by tacit, by unconsidered consent, must be left to decide its ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... which was to be derived from aerial photography. The air duel was regarded simply as a possible incident that might occur during a patrol or a reconnaissance, and in view of which the observer or mechanician armed himself with a gun or an automatic pistol. Airplanes armed with machine-guns were very exceptional, and at the end of 1914 there were only thirty. The Germans used them generally before we did; but it was the French aviators, nevertheless, who forced the Germans to fight in the air. I had the opportunity in October, 1914, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... forward, with no more comment. At his side, Rudolph moved as a soldier, carried onward by pressure and automatic rhythm, moves in the apathy of a forced march. The day had been so real, so wholesome, full of careless talk and of sunlight. And now this senseless picture blotted all else, and remained,—each outline sharper ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... a more favorable opportunity to assail the sensualism of the century, the venality of consciences, and the corruption instituted by the government: instead of that, what does the Academy of Moral Sciences do? With the most automatic calmness, it establishes a series in which luxury, so long proscribed by the stoics and ascetics,—those masters of holiness,—must appear in its turn as a principle of conduct as legitimate, as pure, and as grand as all those formerly invoked by religion and philosophy. Determine, it tells us, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to them," Ned said. "It seems to me that this case is set on automatic springs. The slightest move on our part brings out a bang from the other side. Our opponents are industrious chaps, and that's no fabrication. They keep going ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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
... variety of tobacco-box often to be found in rural inns and ale-houses was made somewhat on the principle of the now everywhere familiar automatic machines. The late Mr. Frederick Gale, in a column of "Tobacco Reminiscences," which he contributed to the Globe newspaper in 1899, said, that at village outdoor festivals of the 'thirties and early 'forties, respectable elderly ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... understood the bond that had been growing so rapidly between them. His was the temperament that immediately translates feeling into action. He reached into his breast pocket. There was the blue-black glint of a cold steel automatic. A moment he balanced it in his hand. Then with a rapid and decisive motion of the arm he flung it far from him. As it struck the water with a sound horribly suggestive of the death gurgle of a lost man, ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... crouched as he pushed 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 at last McTeague ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Haggerty is down-stairs. Upon two occasions you saved my life . . . Keep your eye on your man, Forbes! . . . Twice you saved my life. I'm going to give you a chance in return. An hour's start, perhaps. Forbes, come over to me. That's it. Give me the automatic. There. Now, go through their pockets carefully, and put everything in your own. Leave the money. Mason, a boat leaves to-morrow noon for Liverpool. I'll ship your trunks and grips to the American Express Company ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... take place periodically by automatic arrangement, and representation shall bear some definite relation to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... once fifty men and youths toiled with their cattle, today one steam-plough, guided by but two pair of hands, passes swiftly; and an automatic reaper in one day reaps and binds and prepares for the garner the produce of fields it would have taken a hundred strong male arms to harvest in the past. The iron tools and weapons, only one of which it took an ancient father of our race long ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... is a great future," she said at last, "for the man who first introduces smoke-jacks into Tibet! Every household will buy one, as an automatic ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... their bunks. The school's organized activities were not much affected by the hour, but the big exercise quadrangle was almost deserted for once. Behind the railing of the firing range a young woman stood by herself, gun in hand, waiting for the automatic range monitor to select a new string of targets ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... considered as a whole, seems almost a prodigy, you can, on the track of the old idea of "corruption," explain in its profoundest origins by one small fact, universal, common, of the very simplest—something that every one may observe in the limited circle of his own personal experience,—by that automatic increase of ambitions and desires, with every new generation, which prevents the human world from crystallising in one form, constrains it to continual changes in material make-up as well as in ideals and moral appearance. In other words, every new generation must, in order to satisfy ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... 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 ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... explain this we must have recourse to what I have already said about waves. The heart and the lungs are the two centres of automatic rhythmic movement in the body, and each projects its own series of vibrations into the etheric envelope. Those projected by the lungs are estimated to be three times the length of those projected by the heart, while those projected by the heart are three times ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... saying, with a glance towards the Byng-Beatty, "has the most exclusive features. The torque-tube being fitted with an automatic lighter, it is possible to change tyres without leaving your seat; while by a simple adjustment of the universal joint the car will take any reasonable obstacle gracefully and without any inconvenience to the occupants. The clutch is of the Alabama type. This new pattern ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... for a little while, Jimmie Dale stood there staring about the room, motionless, rigid as stone, save that his fingers moved in an automatic, mechanical way as they began to tear the note into little shreds. But presently into his face there crept a menacing look, and an angry red began to tinge his cheeks, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the wall he switched on the light and reached to a shelf for a weapon. When he faced his captive he held an automatic ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of teaching him how to control his throat by direct effort. The controlling power of a right idea is still much underestimated. The scientific plan of controlling the voice by means of mechanical directions leaves untouched the one thing which prevents its normal, automatic action, ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... animal parts, which are not absolutely insignificant. When the insects acquired wings they must also have acquired the mechanism with which to move them—the musculature, and the nervous apparatus necessary for its automatic regulation. All instincts depend upon compound reflex mechanisms and are just as indispensable as the parts they have to set in motion, and all may have arisen through processes of selection if the reasons which I have elsewhere given for ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... upon Bourget's 'Outre Mer', he declared that there wasn't a single human characteristic that could safely be labelled "American"—not a single human detail, inside or outside. Through years of automatic observation, Mark Twain learned to discover for America, to adapt his own phrase, those few human peculiarities that can be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the name of the nation ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... little contretemps makes him ill. But the comedy is to watch him when there is anything going on in the place that he thinks may lead to a canvass and to any attempt to influence him for a vote. On these occasions he goes off with automatic regularity to an hotel at West Malvern, and only reappears when the Times tells him the thing ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eyestone under the eyelid at the inner canthus of the eye, and the automatic action of the eye moves it slowly over the eyeball; thus it is likely to carry along with it any foreign body that has accidentally lodged in the eye. When the stone has reached the outer canthus you can remove it, along with any foreign substance it may have collected ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... and far, and looking up at his first almost automatic stop, he found that he had not only passed by his own house, but that he had come as far down as the corner of Twentieth Street and Broadway. The afternoon had waned before he knew it, and the streets were now filled with people returning from their day's work in offices or ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... hour," said MacDougall, promptly, jumping to his feet. "There are Roberts, Henshaw, Tom Cassidy, Lecault, the Frenchman, and the two St. Pierre brothers. They're all crack gun-men. Give 'em each an automatic and they're worth ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life," according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... danger that a crowd, tumbling up the stone stairways to the street, would cause the horrible maiming and killing which so often attend the efforts of a frightened multitude to get down. Finally, the ventilation is excellent, for the simple reason that natural or automatic ventilation of such a large, low basement room could not be expected, and consequently mechanical ventilation by means of a large fan, run by steam power, was provided. The efficiency of this system has sometimes been severely tested. On one occasion, ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... to a fight, just point it at the Indians, pull the trigger, and work that lever," explained the young inventor. "It's an automatic gun." ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... disliked. He thought they stood in the way of Canada's progress. His mind was even more childlike and transparent than is usual with business men. The observer could see thoughts slowly floating into it, like carp in a pond. When they got near the surface, by a purely automatic process they found utterance. He was almost completely unconscious of an audience. Everything he thought of he said. He told me that his boots were giving in the sole, but would probably last this trip. He said he had not washed his feet for eight days; and that his ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the public security that would impede the free exchange of credit and necessitate a more frequent production of gold in evidence, then there comes an undue appreciation of money as against the general commodities of life, and an automatic impoverishment of the citizens in general as against the creditor class. The common people are mortgaged into the bondage of debt. And on the other hand an unexpected spate of gold production, the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Joe Hooker 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
... rules, I conceive, so far at least as science can trace them, is to be found in the effort of men to adapt themselves to the circumstances, social and physical, in which they are placed. At first, probably, this process of adaptation was almost automatic and unconscious, but, when men once began consciously to adapt means to ends, they would soon begin to reflect on their acts, and to ask themselves the reasons why they had selected this course of conduct rather than another. ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... adjust the sights of the Remington, but he knew the gun and, holding coarsely upon the swiftly moving blot, he began to shoot. The first bullet sent up a great splash of dust beneath the horse's nose, making him leap as if to hurdle a fence. The rifle was automatic; Gale needed only to pull the trigger. He saw now that the raiders behind were in line. Swiftly he worked the trigger. Suddenly the leading horse leaped convulsively, not up nor aside, but straight ahead, and then he crashed to the ground throwing his rider like a catapult, and then slid and rolled. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... iron, and miscellaneous manufacturing had perhaps not been quite as great, but were remarkable notwithstanding. Power and automatic machinery were the order of the day. The Corliss engine got 23 per cent. more heat and energy from a given amount of coal than had ever been obtained before it was invented. Instead of the twenty-five days which the first ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Stand To-day—Automatic Players—Specifications of Notable Organs: St. George's Hall, Liverpool; Notre Dame, Paris; St. Paul's Cathedral, London; Westminster Abbey; Balruddery, Scotland; Worcester Cathedral; Yale University, U. S. A.; St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo; Paris Theatre, Denver; Cathedral ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... be closed. The eyes and attention must be constantly directed to the motion that is about to be performed, or it is imperfectly done. The brain centres in this case supply the weakened action of the spinal cord, and the stimulus to the muscles is directed by the intelligence instead of being automatic, as in health, and due to spinal action. Still later, the voluntary movements become spasmodic or jerking. The neuralgic pains often become very distressing; there is often a sense of constriction around the limbs or body, as if they were encircled with tight cords. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... we are exhorted again and again to be patient signifies that the acting out of patience is a matter of our wills. No matter how pure our hearts are, we have tests of patience. A pure heart is not an automatic heart, working out things independently of the will. When we have a pure heart, our will is fully set to do right, and through our will we regulate our actions so that they are right. Our feelings are influenced by the will, but ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... prevent us, not only before a helpless curtailed parliament, not only before an illusory high court, but before the whole world, raising our voice against the Premier who is a typical representative of that Austria whose mere existence is a constant and automatic prolongation of the war. One of the obstacles to peace is the oppression of nationalities in Austria and their domination by the Germans. In this war the Germans, even if they do not openly admit it, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... that they seemed to forget all about their prisoners, and in fact about everything except their individual safety. With wild yells of terror they scattered this way and that, all except the sergeant. He, seeing his men running in every direction, snarled out a curse, and whipped out his automatic pistol. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... wrong—all wrong. In spite of himself he could not but admit a note of pathos. The automatic voice of politeness would not come at his bidding. He should have left her on the other side of the bridge, where the harsh bells allowed no ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... not warily enough. For as the door was banged upon his entrance he faced around only in time to find himself looking down the barrel of a Colt automatic. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... urban habit. Developing the urban habit, he fails to oxidize his proteins and toxins. Failing to oxidize his proteins and toxins, he degenerates. Recognizing the degenerating influence of urban life, by means of his intelligence he has placed within his consciousness that automatic arrangement, as good as the automatic arrangement which turns water on to a boiler, which says to him, "go out and oxidize your proteins and toxins." That is what "back-to-the-land" means. You've got to begin from this fundamental point. Now then, if this represents ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... him so that he felt powerless; some hidden influence surrounded James, sucking from his blood, as it were, all manliness, dulling his brain. He became a mere puppet, acting in accordance to principles that were not his own, automatic, will-less. His father sat, as ever, in the dining-room by the fire, for only in the warmest weather could he do without artificial heat, and he read the paper, sometimes aloud, making little comments. His mother, at the table, on ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... man 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 and, let it be said, the erratic and most unladylike ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... took from it a considerable sum of money which he kept there for emergency journeys, also pocketing an automatic pistol. Pouncing on an A B C time table, be looked up the trains for East-bourne. A fast train left Victoria at 1:25 p. m. The hour was ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Brown might come along and take a hand? If he does, I'm ready for him." He slapped his pocket. "I carry a gun. Little Willie here travels round with me everywhere." He produced a murderous-looking automatic, and tapped it affectionately before returning it to its home. "But he won't be needed this trip. There's nobody ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... you always were—plus fifteen seconds on the deadline. The final dope is due right now." He plugged the automatic recorder and speaker into a circuit marked "Observatory," waited until a tiny light above the plug ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... velvety night. No flashing lights denoted the passing of liners, for they were safe in the harbor of the lower levels. He moved the controls once to avoid the green glare of an ascending area, then he knew that there were no ships to fear, and let the automatic control put him ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... head. The habit was strong, and she had reminded him of it. He did not wish to quarrel, and he did not reason. He moved a step to her side and bent down to kiss her forehead. The automatic conjugality of the daily kiss might have a good effect. That was what he thought, if ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... intuition; origin in pontifical authority; origin in supernatural revelation, as by vision, hearing, or unaccountable impression; origin in direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing itself in prophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterance generally—these origins have been stock warrants for the truth of one opinion after another which we find represented in religious history. The medical materialists are therefore only so many belated dogmatists, neatly ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... father of rapid-fire and automatic firearms. His is the brain behind practically every basic small firearm invention in the past 40 years. He has been to the development of firearms what Edison ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... more," I said, "if you touch Mr. Blank, I'll punch you so hard you'll wish you hadn't." The attendant's answer was an immediate attempt to eject Mr. Blank from the room by force. Nothing could be more automatic than my action at that time; indeed, to this day I do not remember performing the act itself. What I remember is the determination to perform it and the subsequent evidence of its having been performed. At all events I had already made ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... individuality, so that you will appreciate the advantages to be derived from my continued acquaintance, and grapple me to your soul with hooks of steel, as Hamlet says. Or was it Harold Bell Wright? Do you care for reading, Miss? I've got a neat little library inside, besides an automatic piano and a patent ice-box.... By the way, Miss, is that policeman doing setting-up exercises or motioning us to move on? I think ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... by a woman's hand, we are reminded of man, the pigmy guiding an elephant. We seem conscious, moreover, of what almost approaches human intelligence, so much of the work achieved appearing voluntary rather than automatic. The skins reach Rheims direct from Australia and are here dressed, cleaned and prepared for working up into cloth. If machinery is brought almost to the perfection of manual dexterousness, human beings attain the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... 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 the muscles that flex the toes. Now when the bird's ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... He does not give the reason for this, and at first sight it might seem like a contradiction of the "one thing at a time" idea. But a closer examination will show us that the minor work (the cutting leaves, etc.) is in the nature of an involuntary or automatic movement, inasmuch as it requires little or no voluntary attention, and seems to "do itself." It does not take off the Attention from the main subject, but perhaps acts to catch the "waste Attention" that often tries to divide the Attention ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... signal from the leading plane, and only just in time. Out from the German hangars came several battle machines. Harris dropped his pencil and got ready the automatic gun, but it was not needed, for, after approaching as though about to attack, the Huns suddenly veered off. Later the reason for this became known. A squadron of French planes had arisen as swiftly to give battle, and however brave the Hun may be when he outnumbers ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... did not average six inches, and with a frowning brow, and dress gathered up, she stood perched on a little stone, like a bird that had just alighted with ruffled plumage, while Zell was on the porch laughing at her. The man with his gaunt team soon came round again opposite her, with slow automatic motion as if the whole thing were one crazy piece of mechanism. The man's head was down, and he paid no heed to Edith. The rim of his old hat flapped over his face, the horses jogged on with dropping head and ears, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... shut up in a large oblong closet, he rose at the stroke with the mechanical precision of the figures which are made to move by springs in the German toys. He would then advance slowly towards the players, give them a glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, "Go away!" There were days when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely annoying, and would ransack ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... instant the scout boat suddenly moved forward. From the spy boat a pistol-shot rang out. Before another could follow, an electric torch was shining full on the spy craft, and the agent in the scout boat was covering the fugitives with his automatic. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... general assessment: poor domestic service, but improving domestic: 90% of telephone network is automatic; trunk network is mostly microwave radio relay, with some fiber-optic cable; about one-third of exchange capacity is digital; roughly 3,300 villages have no service international: country code - 40; satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat; new digital, international, direct-dial exchanges operate ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 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 ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... 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 ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... chewing on his cigar. Then, he crosses room briskly and lowers the blind at each window. Opens valise and examines revolver. Places the revolver in his left hip pocket. Then, in a matter-of-course manner from his right hand pocket, he draws his automatic pistol. This, as though assured he would find loaded, he examines in a quick, perfunctory way, and replaces. He crosses left to desk, and taking from it a cheque book, writes out a cheque, which he tears from the book, and holds in his right ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... attention. He stood fully fifteen seconds gazing in my direction, evidently wondering what it was on the other side of the hedge. Then he passed out of range. I hurried across the field with my aeroscope (an automatic camera), and stood at the end of the path ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... quite automatic. When the external temperature is high there is a relaxation of the skin. The pores open, the perspiration goes to the surface and evaporates, thus cooling the body. When the surface is cool the skin contracts, closing the pores and conserving the heat. Radiation always ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... judgment in disfavour of the lady. "Of course—the minx! As if she didn't know what she was about the whole time. As if she wasn't leading him on!" Because that is the attitude of mind of the correct human person in such a case made and provided. That is, if an inevitable automatic action can be called an attitude of mind. Is rotation on its axis an attitude of a wheel's mind? To be sure, though, a wheel may turn either of two ways. A ratchet-wheel is ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... do in the shop and all sorts of outside appointments to keep, not to speak of my brief trips as traveling salesman. To all of which I attended with automatic regularity, with listless doggedness. The union was a constant source of worry. In addition, there was a hitch in my relations with the "marriage broker." But even my worrying seemed to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... about "striking the electric chain"? —To be sure I do. I sometimes think the less the hint that stirs the automatic machinery of association, the more easily this moves us. What can be more trivial than that old story of opening the folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some ancient English hall and finding the flakes of Christmas pastry between its leaves, shut up in them perhaps a hundred years ago? And, lo! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... like an automatic figure, rigid and silent,—till Sergius Thord signed to his three new associates to advance. Then with a movement, rapid as a flash of lightning, she suddenly drew a dagger from her scarlet girdle, and held ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... accordance with the working of our minds," still further illuminated by the side-lights which science has thrown on it since Agassiz died. The ultimate decision in the individual mind will be according to the bias for or against the "conscious mind" or automatic creation; and it must not be forgotten that one of the most powerful arguments for a large evolution was the discovery by Agassiz that the embryo of the highest organizations passes through an evolution similar to that of the animal creation. Professor Martins—a leading ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... 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 that way remained ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... his cry, in a tone of dismay mingled with disgust. "Why, there are two holes, one far above the other! I reckon it came from below, after all. But the tank is empty, and only for that automatic feed change, meant for such an emergency, we'd have been running on ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... 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 ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company. The manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... way out of the difficulty," he declared, no longer attempting to disguise the hatred he felt, "is for you to take yourself off and never to show your face here again. I am amazed at you." He took his automatic pistol out of his pocket. "Don't you know that you are completely in my power? If I chose I could shoot you like a dog and sink your body in the river, and no one would ever know what ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... The automatic water heaters are made to heat water instantly and automatically upon opening any hot water faucet in the system. These heaters are made in various capacities from 2 to 8 gallons ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... But you have—I may tell you this much—the automatic increase of your property puts great possibilities of interference in your hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with your eighteenth ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... with brutal cruelty, did not indicate age; he might be thirty. In prison he had suffered his beard to grow; his head fell on his shoulder, his legs bent beneath him, and his movements were apparently automatic and unconscious. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... crowd, where it was tossed 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 ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... 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
... 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 ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... by a series of long high bounds. While in midair he half tucks up his feet, which gives him the appearance of an automatic toy. This gait looks deliberate, but is really quite fast, as the mounted sportsman discovers when he enters upon a vain pursuit. If the horse is an especially good one, so that the kongoni feels himself a trifle closely pressed, the latter stops bouncing and runs. Then ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... and more {210} any sense of legality it had at the outset. Its procedure still carries a semblance of legal method, but it is really an automatic machine for affixing a legal label on political murders. And the Tribunal, as it progresses in its career, becomes more and more insane in its hatred of the party it seeks to destroy, of the anti-revolutionist, of the aristocrat. Is it not recorded that it ordered the arrest ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... and their thoughts known to us. It is not my intention here to advocate any theory as to the cause of the phenomena described by Mrs. Underwood. I simply testify now to the accuracy of all those statements in her paper in regard to her automatic writing. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... caught himself lapsing into a doze. He had almost dropped his rifle. To make certain against its loss, he thrust it into his cartridge belt like a pistol. After this he drowsed off again into a half torpor of sleep and exhaustion. Some automatic functioning of his subconscious mind kept him ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... with a pump, while the ear fitly opens the chapter on acoustics. The reader who is unacquainted with physiology will thus be enabled to appreciate the better these marvellous devices, far more marvellous, by reason of their absolutely automatic action, than any ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... we turned the promontory, leaving Jersey on the left, the battery as we entered the harbour being in the foreground. The guns-bristled from this fortress with menacing aspect, and the sentinels, in light blue uniforms and Kosciusko caps, silently paced the ramparts with automatic regularity. This fortification, though formidable in appearance, and certainly in a commanding position, I was subsequently informed is little more than a mimic fort; this arises from the want of attention paid to defences of the kind in America, the little existing ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Schroeder J.A. representing the view of the majority of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Re Ontario Crime Commission (1962) 133 C.C.C. 116, although that case depends partly on Ontario statute law. There is little attraction in the idea of automatic exclusion. Commissions of Inquiry have compulsory statutory powers of insisting on evidence and their findings can affect rights in the ways already outlined. It seems to us highly unlikely that the New Zealand ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... gone to Lucy at once, but the telephone rang. He answered it, got his hat and bag and went out to the car. Years with David had made automatic the subordination of self to the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the case when General Suvaroff had led his daring raid behind the German lines in the effort to capture von Hindenburg. For five minutes the fighting was fast and furious. Fred could hear the clash of steel against steel and the spiteful spitting of revolvers and automatic pistols. Then the wild Russian shout of victory arose, and he heard sounds of galloping fast dying away. Even though he could see nothing, he knew ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... mangled among the railroad men injured [Footnote: of the 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 a form that the worker or his family ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... 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 ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... a pivot, and with hardly a glance at the prostrate form, dashed over the back-trail with the curious lumbering strides of the man who would hurry on rackets. He had jerked off his heavy mitten at the sound of the shot, and his bared hand clutched firmly the butt of a blue-black automatic. A spruce-branch, suddenly relieved of its snow, sprang upward with a swish, thirty yards away. MacNair fired ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... sufficient automatic telephone system domestic: NA international: linked to Swiss networks by cable and ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... contingent of the Imperial forces, the army and navy estimates must needs follow. In the present tension of international politics, a reduction is out of the question. Theoretically, the Reichstag can indeed oppose an increase, but practically the increase is almost automatic. The Reichstag could only postpone it, and in so doing would have to face unpopularity. Every party vies with its rivals in sacrificing their principles on the altar of patriotism. Whereas the Catholic party in Belgium has for twenty-eight years refused the means of national defence, and has made ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... she had neglected to memorize her cues. Not altogether, of course; she thought she'd learned them, but they were terribly scanty little cues anyway, just a single word, usually, and never more than two, and nothing short of absolutely automatic memorization was any good. So she sat serene through a five-second stage wait while Quan frantically spun the pages of his book to find the place—he ought to have been following of course, but he'd yielded to the temptation of trying to do something else at the same time ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the 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 started him off ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... and Charlie were given gas masks and shown how to use them. They were also each provided with an automatic pistol and were given uniforms. For they had to be on the firing line and on such occasions were not really of the non-combatant class, though they were not supposed to take part in the fighting unless it ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... filled up on beer, while he counted the ten shillings he had taken from the silk purse of the victim. Why, one of our American gangs that hold up a train, and get an express safe full of greenbacks, and shoots up a mess of railroad hands and passengers with Winchesters and automatic pistols, and blows up cars with dynamite and gets away and has to have a bookkeeper and a cashier to keep their bank accounts straight, could give those old Claude Duvals and Sixteen-String Jacks cards ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... in torpedo warfare were not confined to attempts to destroy hostile vessels by means of his submarine vessel. He made several attacks upon the enemy by means of automatic torpedoes, none of which met with complete success. One of these attacks, made at Philadelphia in December, 1777, furnished the incident upon which is founded the well-known ballad of the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... life, what had been. All the day long, as she sat at the upper window, the light came off the sea, constantly, constantly, without refusal, till it seemed to bear her away, and the noise of the sea created a drowsiness in her, a relaxation like sleep. Her automatic consciousness gave way a little, she stumbled sometimes, she had a poignant, momentary vision of her living child, that hurt her unspeakably. Her soul ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... be, only I can calculate exactly, by means of an automatic arrangement, just how far the charge of electricity will go. It stops short just at the limit of the range, and is not effective beyond that. Otherwise, if I did not limit it and if I fired at the scarecrow, through ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... charge of that chauffeur, McGroarty, and armed him with my automatic," he explained. He paused to wipe his eyes. The fumes from the film had distressed all of us. "Shirley and Marilyn Loring are both missing still," he added. "I've been asking everyone about them. No one ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the explosion puffed upward and, where it had been, the marshal saw Ned Napier's automatic ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... forty men in the break, in whose confidence he was, had already such power in the Prison that they were about to begin smuggling in automatic pistols by means of the guards they ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... through the door of the automatic restaurant and walked over to the vending wall. The big dining room was only about three quarters full of people, and there were plenty of seats available. He fed coins into the proper slots, took his sandwich and milk over to a seat in one corner and made ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... without communicating with each other, each of those transports began to weigh anchor, and except for the click, click, click of the machinery all was silent. Precisely at 9:05, without the blast of a whistle, the sound of a gong, or the hoisting of a signal flag on the mast, but like so many automatic machines, these vessels turned their prows to the sea ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... was held close to 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 ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... is glad, also, to have men about him who can dispense with blueprints altogether or can make their own. The difference between these two types of operatives spells the difference between leadership and mere blind, automatic following. Were all the workers in the factory mere followers, the work would be stereotyped and the factory would be unable to compete with the other factory, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... a friend, a leaf for a sparrow, one word for another. The wonder is that we are not oftener wrong; considering how small a part present sensation has in perception, and how much of every object observed is supplied by a sort of automatic judgment. You see something brown, which your perceptive mechanism classes with the appearance of a cow at such a distance; and instantly all the other properties of a cow are supplied from the resources of former experience: but on getting nearer, it turns out to be a ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... automatic recorder shows that the signals began again a little before five o'clock yesterday morning and continued ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... remark applies to the teaching of that modern Absolute Idealism which declares, with Green, that man is his motives, and that he is "free" inasmuch as it is by his own motives that he is governed. It would be as accurate to call an automatic machine "free" on the ground that it is by its own works that it is moved. This is only, as Professor William James aptly calls it, "soft Determinism." If the automaton could decide to slacken or increase its rate of speed, to go or ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... an exceptional number of babies and small children on board and my unfraternal little prairie-waifs did not see why every rattle and doll and automatic toy of their little fellow travelers and sister tourists shouldn't promptly become their own private property. And traveling with twins not yet a year old is scarcely conducive ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... direction at first thought seems amazingly intricate. In effect, that was not so. With space-time factors set as a destination, i. e., the place where the vehicle must end its change at a certain time, all the intermediate changes become automatic. With every passing second it must be at a reconcilable place—the direction of its passage perforce being the shortest path between ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... by the usual rout that attended her. She was herself in a mood of wild mirth, occasioned by the drolleries of an automatic female figure which a travelling showman introduced by Cantapresto had obtained leave to display at court. This lively puppet performed with surprising skill on the harpsichord, giving the company, among other novelties, selections from the maestro Piccini's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... His unnatural, automatic movements told their own story. He was walking in his sleep! Could it be in obedience to the ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... experienced an even more decisive fate. Down to my own time it was forcibly contended that any improvement in the material condition of the mass of the people would result in an increase of the birth rate which, by extending the supply of labour, would bring down wages by an automatic process to the old level. There would be more people and they would all be as miserable as before. The actual decline of the birth rate, whatever its other consequences may be, has driven this argument from the field. The birth ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... hot and cold water. If city water not available, should be pumped by power rams. Hot water boiler may be attached to coal range with auxiliary gas or oil heater for summer. Where gas rate is low, gas may be used alone. Automatic gas ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... must 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 ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman |
