"Automatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... freedom, which did not die out at once after that epoch had begun. This opinion, which from all I can learn seemed as natural then, as it seems absurd now, was, that while the ordinary daily work of the world would be done entirely by automatic machinery, the energies of the more intelligent part of mankind would be set free to follow the higher forms of the arts, as well as science and the study of history. It was strange, was it not, that they should thus ignore that aspiration ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... nearly the program is lived up to. By dint of such and other stimuli, the transition in habits can be made, after which the "rules" cease to be rules, as carrying any sense of restriction, and become automatic like putting on ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... further down the platform, to their great delight, they discovered an automatic machine, but were greatly disappointed to find that it only professed to supply "furniture polish," ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal would be for ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... possibility of his greatness, and also of his baseness, lies. Now, an instinct may be defined as an inborn and inherited system of means for the attainment of a definite end of such a nature that once the appropriate external stimulus is applied the system tends to work itself out in an automatic manner until the end is attained, and independently of any control exercised by the individual. The working out of such an action may be accompanied by consciousness, but the power of memory would only be valuable ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... introduction adopted the process, and put it into their mills, and by employing American skilled artizans and millers to set up and operate their machinery, succeeded in securing the first absolutely perfect automatic mill of the new kind in the country. General Washburn, having imported Hungarian millers to start and operate his experimental mills, found himself somewhat handicapped by their inefficiency and sluggishness in adopting ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... sure aim, and cut his man through with the blow of the Spitzer bullet of the Springfield piece. But even as he did so Waldhorn himself had fired with the heavy automatic pistol which he carried. The bullet caught Sim Gage high in the chest, and passed through, missing the spine by ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... filled with such devices, producing all the varied needs of a very needful human race. But there had been no machine to produce peace. The crossing shock waves of fused hydrogen had destroyed the machines by the tens of thousands, along with all the automatic shipping lines, leaving only, in the quirk of a pressure cross-pattern, an undisturbed taffy-making machine, oozing its special lava on the ...
— Sweet Their Blood and Sticky • Albert Teichner
... two dominant moods, both of extreme activity, but one calm and philosophic, and this was the mood always on that night in the week, when she answered questions upon her system; and as I look back after thirty years I often ask myself 'Was her speech automatic? Was she for one night, in every week, a trance medium, or in some similar state?' In the other mood she was full of phantasy and inconsequent raillery. 'That is the Greek church, a triangle like all true religion,' I recall her saying, as she ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... several hundred elephants, that, satiated by the woody roots which they had devoured during the day, came to quench their thirst before the hour of repose. One would really have supposed that all these trunks, lowered and raised by the same automatic movement, would have ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... Listen, sir, that's just one more field that's been automated right out of existence. Category Food Preparation, Sub-division Cooking, Branch Chef. Cooking isn't left in the hands of slobs who might drop a cake of soap into the soup. It's done automatic. The only new changes made in cooking are by real top experts, almost scientists like. And most of them are Uppers, ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... strictly. There was a telephone on the table near her and he expected her to summon help; but to his surprise she calmly seated herself, resting her right elbow on the arm of the chair, her head slightly tilted to one side, as she inspected him with greater attention along the blueblack barrel of her automatic. Unless he made a dash for liberty this extraordinary woman would, at her leisure, turn him over to the police as a housebreaker and his peaceful life as a chicken farmer would be at an end. Her prolonged silence troubled The Hopper. He had not been more ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... makes up for their deficiency in reasoning force. They do not conclude from the premisses of their observation, they /know/ that this man is to be feared and that trusted. In fact, they share with the rest of breathing creation that self-protective instinct of instantaneous and almost automatic judgment, given to guard it from the dangers with which it is continually threatened at the hands of man's over-mastering strength and ordered intelligence. Ida was one of these. She knew nothing to Mr. Quest's disadvantage, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... problem of the relation of form to function, and he left no place in his mechanical system of preformation for functional or second-period development; he conceived all development to be in Roux's sense embryonic, and due to the automatic unpacking of a complex germinal organisation. Roux himself was to a certain extent a preformationist, for the development of his first-period characters is conditioned by the inherited organisation of the germ-plasm, and is purely automatic. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... rose to protest, but the doctor pulled him down. Winifred began to cry behind her veil as the applause continued. A responsive note had been struck. When quiet was somewhat restored, the automatic clerk called the next name—the name of the senator who had promised Eva his vote. Since Latimer's death he had heartily wished for some excuse to be absolved from that ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... consisted of a Dutch cheese, the "Germania" on the top was represented by a smartly aproned chambermaid on horseback, the horse being led by a footman in imperial livery, while the whole was labeled "Der gipfel des geschmack,"—the acme of taste. Another item of the programme was a sort of automatic machine, which, when a gold medal was placed in the slot, would perform "Der gesang an Ihr,"—the song to her—meaning, of course, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... think that for a moment. You see the European war has called for the use of a large number of aeroplanes, and as the pilots of them frequently have to fight, and so can not give their whole attention to the machines, some form of automatic stabilizer is needed to prevent them turning turtle, or going off at ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... personally directed to me, of course; the armed truce under which we lived did not permit of that—had convinced me that I had not to dread anything more ferocious than the pigs, and the wildest of them would retire before a stick or stone. Besides, I boasted a little automatic, which I carried strapped about my waist in a businesslike manner. Mr. Vane had almost got me to the point where I could shoot it off ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... 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 ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... NA domestic: fully automatic network international: microwave radio relay and SHF radiotelephone links to Martinique and Guadeloupe; VHF and UHF radiotelephone ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... first, 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, he caught himself speculating what ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... seen that face before, and that the long mustache and side-whiskers had grown in a remarkably short space of time. Could it be that there were two men who could spread a smile over the lower half of their faces in that automatic way, while the spider-eyes had no sort of sympathy with it? Surely, this man with black whiskers and mustache was not just like the singing-master at Sugar-Grove school-house, who had "red-top hay on to his ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... movement the elbow scarcely moves from its position at the side, a fact gratefully appreciated by one's next neighbor. What is more awkward than the arm projected, holding the fork pointing backward at a right angle to the lips, the mouth opening wide like an automatic railway gate to an approaching locomotive—the labored and ostentatious way in which food is sometimes transported to its destination? Nor, once in the mouth, is it lost to sight forever. Other people, seated opposite, are compelled to witness it in successive stages of ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... through the village on the way to Tad Jones' home, Frank had purchased an automatic mouse. Being wound up, the mouse would run swiftly across ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... round on the motor-tricycle himself, and mentioned casually that his wife was ailing. The Doctor, in the act of mounting the machine, put a brief question or two, registered the replies in the automatic sub-memory he kept for business, and told the man to send her round at ten o'clock upon the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... fourth shift moved at a more leisurely rate toward 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 ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... once, and with emphasis. "That is, if you mean by the term 'spiritualist' a credulous person who believes in mediumistic trickery, automatic writing and the like. That ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... to learn all that could be read in the pockets of his victim. There was only one thing. That was a stub-nosed, heavy automatic. ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... case it is clear that a change had begun to pass over scientific inquiry, of which we have seen the culmination in our own day. There had begun that easy automatic habit, of science as an oiled and smooth-running machine, that habit of treating things as obviously unquestionable, when, indeed, they are obviously questionable. This began with vaccination in the Early Victorian Age; it extended to the early licence of vivisection ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... be expressed in mere words apparently, for Mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, and other disastrous omens, now began to display themselves profusely in the Haunted Chamber. Accustomed as I had become to regard all these appearances as mere automatic symptoms, I confess that I heard with pleasure the crow of ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... she flies to an older flower at the bottom of another one. Here a marvellous thing has happened. The passage which, when the flower first expanded, scarcely permitted a bristle to pass, has now widened through the automatic downward movement of the column in order to expose the stigmatic surfaces to contact with the pollen masses brought by the bee. Without the bee's help this orchid, with a host of other flowers, must disappear from the face of the earth. So very many species which have lost the ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... spoken of by Suffragists as if it were something exterior to and apart from the individual voters—a code of laws that had been set going and would run of itself, the laws being changed by more or fewer votes, but the power to execute being automatic and continuous. As this is the opposite of the actual situation, these rebels will have to "break their ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... that makes it impossible to hurt another's interest without hurting one's own, or to help one's own interest without promoting equally all other interests. As to its economic bearings it may be said that it makes the Golden Rule an automatic principle of government. What we would do for ourselves we must of necessity do also for others. Until economic solidarity made it possible to carry out in this sense the idea that every citizen ought to have a stake ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... will show you all my plans. I have also invented an automatic crane for hanging the paper on the rods in the drying-room. Next week I intend to take up my quarters in the factory, up in the garret, and have my first machine made there secretly, under my own eyes. In three months the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... essential for success is safety, which will probably only be attained with automatic stability. The underlying principle is that the centre of gravity shall at all times be on the same vertical line as the centre of pressure. The latter varies with the angle of incidence. For square planes it moves approximately as expressed by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a 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.
... among bankers and occasionally with the government as to the advantage it might be to grant the Bank of England an automatic power to augment the note issue on securities when necessary, similar to that possessed by the Bank of Germany (Reichsbank). One of the hindrances to the success of such a plan has been that the government, acting on the advice of the treasury, required an extremely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... an automatic contrivance for propelling the blood through my system, and so long as it keeps me in becoming colour, I have no right to complain. The theory of hearts entering into connubial contracts, is as effete ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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
... From the deck of the unterseeboot a signalling apparatus similar to that employed by the spies was in use. By an ingenious automatic arrangement it projected a beam of light, derived from the same sources as that on St. Mena's Island, rigidly in a fixed direction, regardless of the "lift" of the submarine under the action ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... into the garden again and ran races, and Mrs. Red House held all our spectacles for us and cheered us on. She said she was the Patent Automatic Cheering ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... a Dr. Mackey. This gentleman and Miss Turner said that things had occurred since Emma came, for which they could not account. On 13th November, however, Miss Turner, looking out of a window, spotted Emma throwing a brick, and pretending that the flight of the brick was automatic. Next day Emma confessed to her tricks, but steadfastly denied that she had cheated at Woods Farm, and Weston Lullingfield, where she had also been. Her evidence to this effect was so far confirmed by ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... of the seance-room that may be genuine," he heard him saying, "are produced by this fluid, detachable portion of the personality, the very thing we have been speaking about. They are projections of the personality—automatic projections ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Fleet lifeboats all came off an old Grand Commerce liner which was up for scrap eighty, ninety years ago. They're designed so any fool can tell what to do, and the navigational settings are completely automatic. Of course if it is a native firemaker—with mighty keen eyesight—down there, that could be different! A creature like that mightn't think of going near the scout. Should I start easing the Cat in towards the ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... 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 months of stern exertion to extract from ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... has also been dealt with in The Hague Convention, No. viii. of 1907, ratified with a reservation, by Great Britain on November 27, 1907. By Art. 1 it is forbidden "(1) to lay unanchored automatic-contact mines, unless they are so constructed as to become harmless one hour at most after he who has laid them has lost control over them; (2) to lay anchored automatic-contact mines which do not become harmless as soon as they have broken loose from their moorings; (3) to employ ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... right of kings. Of course you do not think so; but I do not see that that will prevent you from aiding me to fling the anachronism into the scrap-heap. For I tell you now that the time has come when mere food and shelter and similar sordid things shall be automatic, as free and easy and involuntary of access as the air. I shall make them automatic, what of my discovery and the power that discovery gives me. And with food and shelter automatic, the incentive of material gain passes away from the world for ever. With food and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... 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 as ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... 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 Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... chest plate. While the others checked with their eyes, they inspected the nipples of the moisture-reclaimer and chlorophane air-restorer capsules. They lifted the helmet of clear, darkened plastic over his head, and dogged it to the gasket with the automatic turnbuckles. By then, Gimp Hines' own quick fingers, in the gloves, were busy snapping this and adjusting that. There was a ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... a shock that I found myself looking directly along the barrel of a .45 automatic pistol, which a stout gentleman, wearing a green mask, white kid gloves, and immaculate evening-dress, was pointing immediately ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... stop and enter into explanations with bulls when they look "horstile." A swift get-away is the thing to do. It took me some time to learn this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a bull in New York City. Ever since that time it has been an automatic process with me to make a run for it when I see a bull reaching for me. This automatic process has become a mainspring of conduct in me, wound up and ready for instant release. I shall never get over it. Should I be eighty years old, hobbling along the street on crutches, and ...
— The Road • Jack London
... of the fight was out of their antagonist, and the muzzle of the automatic, thrust beneath his nose, completed his subjugation. After they had gagged him, they bound his wrists and ankles with handkerchiefs, and then straightened and looked at each other, listening. Marishka's eyes were sparkling and the color was coming ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... 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 ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Westley-Richards double-barrel 12-gauge smooth-bores; two Smith hammerless 10-gauged ditto; two Remington U.M.C. 12-gauge six-shot repeating smooth-bores; and six Colt Government model seven-shot .45 calibre automatic pistols. But, as Earle explained, "when you go exploring and hunting, you need a variety of weapons for different purposes; and there is also the contingency of possible loss to be considered; moreover, in a fight, with tremendously heavy odds against you, a strong ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... gates swung open the truck—really a giant armored tank—ground slowly forward. There was a second gate beyond the first, that did not open until the interior one was closed. Jason looked through the second-driver's periscope as the outer gate lifted. Automatic flame-throwers flared through the opening, cutting off only when the truck reached them. A scorched area ringed the gate, beyond that the jungle began. Unconsciously Jason ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... difficulty be greater in weaning himself from it. I mean, of course, before the will is killed. When that takes place he is of necessity as powerless as any other victim, and his craving for it is as automatic as in the case of any other opium slave. What he becomes then, I have attempted to describe, and in doing so have suppressed much in consideration of the feelings ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Automatic action in the moral world; the reflex movement which seems to be self-determination, and has been hanged and howled at as such (metaphorically) for nobody knows how many centuries: until somebody shall study this as Marshall Hall has studied reflex ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... 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 Lee and ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... "It's only automatic writing, dear," he replied. "You may not have been aware you were writing, but it probably reflects ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... There are nice ones. My own mother had this power in her youth, so my father tells me. Her people were living in Wisconsin at the time when this psychic force developed in her, and the settlers from many miles around came to see her 'perform.' An uncle, when a boy of four, did automatic writing, and one of my aunts recently wrote to me, in relation to my book The Tyranny of the Dark, that for two years (beginning when she was about seventeen) these powers of darkness made her life a hell. It won't ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... a good or a bad thing. He had not taken a dozen steps up the ravine before he found out. Just as he was in the act of jumping down from the top of a boulder, his vision altered and he came to an automatic standstill. He was perceiving two worlds simultaneously. With his own eyes he saw the gorge as before, with its rocks, brook, plant-animals, sunshine, and shadows. But with his acquired eyes he saw differently. All the details of the valley were visible, but the ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... was thorough, but to set it in motion required an effort which constituted an automatic obstacle to extortion. The lands and people of the uji were governed by the Emperor but were not directly controlled by him. On the other hand, to refuse a requisition made by the Throne was counted ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... launched from their outside cradles by mechanism within the boat. In the torpedo chamber are twice as many spare torpedoes as there are tubes, made fast along the sides. Here too the anchor winch stands with the cable attached to the anchor outside the boat and an automatic knife which cuts the cable ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... for registration of every title and that only suitable titles should be registered. The sale of unregistered comics was to be an offence. This procedure may be preferable to the subsequently suggested system of automatic registration followed by ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie
... I claim an automatic toy having the legs of the horse and the head and arm of the driver actuated by mechanical devices, in manner substantially as herein described and for the purposes ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... unconcernedly to fleck lint as if they had been broadcloth from Fifth Avenue. He stood bending above the breakfast-table, his lean, shadowed hands perfectly at home, his lean, shadowed face all automatic attention. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... as their automatic attempts to save themselves buried both knives in the body of their friend. Then they went crashing down, ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... task which every admiral in his service knew to be beyond the strength of the Imperial Navy. Nor did Napoleon even approach a solution of the problem he had set himself—invasion over an uncommanded sea. With our impregnable flotilla hold covered by an automatic concentration of battle-squadrons off Ushant, his army could never even have put forth, unless he had inflicted upon our covering fleet such a defeat as would have given him command of the sea, and with absolute control of the sea ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... upon him. 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 ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... like an automatic machine. He saw now what the trainer was attempting to do, and was seeking for some means of helping the man. But what could a slender boy hope to do against the power of a great, savage brute ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... power, and finally registered by the Deputies at Montecitorio on May 19. It was virtually made, I say, the tumultuous week that came on the resignation of the Salandra Government. What followed the return of the ministry to power was merely automatic, as peaceful as any day's routine. Parliament was called to meet on Wednesday, the 19th. The Sunday afternoon before, the piazza, and the palace and all other elements of Roman citizenship met in a great gathering of content and consecration ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... religious evolution already far advanced; the god has separated himself from his worshippers, and assumed an anthropomorphic form. Indra, while still retaining traces of his 'weather' origin, is no longer, to borrow Miss Harrison's descriptive phrase, 'an automatic explosive thunder-storm,' he wields the thunderbolt certainly, but he appears in heroic form to receive the offerings made to him, and to celebrate his victory in a solemn ritual dance. In Greek art and literature, on the other hand, where we might expect to find an even more advanced conception, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... the window at last and glanced at his watch impatiently. One hour and forty minutes! In another half an hour the little bell over his desk should ring. That would mean that a pigeon had arrived from—from out there, and that the automatic door had closed upon it as it entered the cote. But if it didn't come— if it didn't come! Then what? There was only one conclusion to be drawn, and he shuddered a little when he thought of it. There could only ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... Gunther coordinates required by that particular field. One impeccably rigorous analysis showed that the ship would shift into the nearest solar system possessing an Earth-type planet; which was believed to be Alpha Centauri and which was close enough to Sol so that orientation would be automatic and the return to Earth ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... struggle the door was wrenched open and two figures darted out and joined in the melee. It was soon over. Three to one are heavy odds. The sentry, gagged and securely bound, was hustled inside the cabin. His hat, overcoat, and automatic were appropriated for Jim Spurling, who took his place. So skilfully had the coup been conducted under cover of the disturbance in the cove that none of the other smugglers had ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... '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 ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... family cut their hair off and threw it on. After that they set fire to the outfit, and, when the poles bad burned through, the whole business fell into the trench of its own accord. It was the neatest, automatic, self-cocking, double-action sort of a funeral I ever saw. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... I remember getting sick and light-headed and just before I passed out I flipped out of subspace and the automatic finder, of course, took the ship to the nearest planet. I must have landed by reflex action. I sure ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... living in New York that winter, and in the rotation of dinners I found myself one evening at Mrs. Amyot's side. The dimple came out at my greeting as punctually as a cuckoo in a Swiss clock, and I detected the same automatic quality in the tone in which she made her usual pretty demand for advice. She was like a musical-box charged with popular airs. They succeeded one another with breathless rapidity, but there was a moment after each when ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... 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 was the joy of his life to ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... 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 a fundamental trait in the character ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... machinery has been carried. As we gaze upon these huge engines, only occasionally touched 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 precision ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... say that this is the right system. I only advance it to emphasize my belief that there is need for the adoption of some system which shall be automatic and open to all sound banks, so as to avoid all possibility of discrimination and favoritism. Such a plan would tend to prevent the spasms of high money and speculation which now obtain in the New York market; for at present there is too much currency at certain seasons of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... single class of insects, a single family of 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 tires ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... traversed the Place du Chatelet diagonally, regained the quay, and returned with automatic precision to the very point which he had abandoned a quarter of an hour previously, leaned on his elbows and found himself again in the same attitude on the same paving-stone of the parapet. He did not appear ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... here an me roight"—and Costigan jerked a shoulder towards the boy—"will be afther closin' that silf-feeding automatic dictionary av his for a moment, I shud be glad to call the attintion av the coomp'ny to somethin' in the nature av an ixtinuatin' circoomsthance in the case ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... an 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. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... tilt, the children scuttling to the cabin. Johnny swore at the dogs and they did not bite. He followed the children and they did not stop. So he came presently to the oak and roused Cliff, who came promptly to an elbow with a wicked looking automatic pointed ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... had agreed on a code of silent signals: One kick with the heel or one pinch with the hand meant "stop"; two meant "back"; three meant "get together." They carried no rifles, because the rifle is an awkward tool for a noiseless crawler to lug. But each man had a big trench-knife and a pair of automatic pistols, with ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... mouth-piece containing the reed. But the reed is double, consisting of two very thin membranous edges, which are made tense or relaxed, and have the interval between them through which the air rushes narrowed or widened by the instinctive, automatic action of a set of little muscles. The vibration of these membranous edges (chordae vocales) produces a musical sound, just as the vibration of the edge of a finger-bowl produces one when a wet finger is passed round it. The cavities of the nostrils, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... the moment ten o'clock began to strike on a clock which he kept 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 her closets ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... a task of no inconsiderable difficulty, for the service was automatic—the dishes were set upon the table and the waiter disappeared for the next lot. Anything intervening was almost impossible. Monsieur, Kendricks declared, pointing indignantly across the table, had not been served with chicken! The waiter shook his head. It ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... take ten years, says a Post Office official, to replace the present telephone system with automatic exchanges. Persons who have already registered calls are urged not to make too much of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... half-story attic was Life. From one corner of the room deep, regular breathing marked the unvarying time of healthy physical life asleep. Nearby a clock beat loud automatic time, with a brassy resonance—healthy mechanical life awake. Man and machine, side by side, punctuated the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... herself realised scarcely anything about it. It was her nature to be grateful, sweet, responsive; but her gratitude and her sweetness during these hours were automatic, unconscious. She was the spectator, so to speak, of a moving picture which carried her on with it, in which she was merely passive. The crowded boat, the grey misty sea, the destroyers to right and left, she was aware of them in one connection ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Ditmars-Horst reactor was that it lacked any automatic negative-feedback system. If a D-H decided to go wild, it went wild. Fortunately, that rarely happened. The safe limits for reactions were quite wide—wider, usually, than the reaction limits themselves, so ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... muttered exclamation, put down the glasses, snatched an automatic from a drawer in a table and raced toward the little wharf, throwing ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... which is due in large measure to the inventions of a colored man, Elijah McCoy, is that of making automatic lubricators for machinery. Mr. McCoy is regarded as a pioneer inventor in that line. He completed and patented his first lubricating cup in 1872. Since then he has patented both in this country and abroad ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... they are built in such fashion as to make loading as easy and as rapid as possible. Sometimes there are as many as fourteen or sixteen hatches in one of these great ships, into each of which while loading the ore chutes will be pouring their red flood, and out of each of which the automatic unloaders at Cleveland or Erie will take ten-ton bites of the cargo, until six or seven thousand tons of iron ore may be unloaded in eight hours. The hold is all one great store-room, no deck above the vessel's floor except the main ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... as he examined the small, bottle-necked shell of the automatic variety. ".38 Luger!" he said. "A high-pressure 'gat' like that is oncommon hereabouts!" Passing it on to the coroner he whistled softly. "My God! Fwhativer sort av a gun-artist is ut that—even allowin' for th' moonlight—can pick a man off thru' th' head ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... was in fishing up a cylindro-conical projectile, the walls of which were so smooth as to offer no hold for the hooks. On that account Engineer Murchison hastened to San Francisco, and had some enormous grappling-irons fixed on an automatic system, which would never let the projectile go if it once succeeded in seizing it in its powerful claws. Diving-dresses were also prepared, which through this impervious covering allowed the divers to observe the bottom of the sea. He also had put on board an apparatus ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... the first volume of a 2-volume set. The letters were selected by La Mara, and translated into English by Constance Bache. The edition used was an original 1893 Charles Scribner edition, printed in America. Each page was cut out of it and fed into an Automatic Document Scanner to make this e-text; hence, the original book was fragmented in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... part of the gunnery that was not learnt on board ship, such as rapidity of fire 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, they have on at least one occasion—namely Zwartz Kop—taken their guns up a ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... beating on all borders, hemmed them in; England outside seemed hardly to contain for them a wider space. Lorne, with his soul full of free airs and forest depths, never failed to respond to a note in the Park that left him heavy-hearted, longing for an automatic distributing system for the Empire. When he saw them bring their spirit-lamps and kettles and sit down in little companies on four square yards of turf, under the blackened branches, in the roar of the traffic, he went ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Kennedy-Jones of the movement to lift Art from her pedestal for a few days only—in the interests of the Allies and to the lasting detriment of Germany—and then replace her. But there is no need to trouble about the replacing. That will be automatic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... done in the morning, before the first freshness of maid and day is worn away. After you have established a satisfactory schedule abide by it and oblige your maid to do the same. It soon becomes automatic and is, therefore, accomplished with less exhaustion of mind and body. The regular day's work is about as follows: The maid rises an hour or an hour and a half before the breakfast hour, throws open her bed and window, and goes to ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Jones writes: "When you have a character or several characters you haven't a play. You may keep these in your mind and nurse them till they combine in a piece of action; but you haven't got your play till you have theme, characters, and action all fused. The process with me is as purely automatic and spontaneous as dreaming; in fact it is really dreaming while you ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... selected the third man, routed his dossier and Sir Harold's order back into the automatic processing system, and returned to the film of primitive dancing girls he had been watching before this matter of decision had ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... to oscillate in a manner destructive of all stability. A more satisfactory system, especially for lateral balance, was that of arranging the wings in the shape of a broad V, to form a dihedral angle, with the center low and the wing-tips elevated. In theory this was an automatic system, but in practice it had two serious defects: first, it tended to keep the machine oscillating; and second, its usefulness ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... altogether; but for some inexplicable reason—perhaps by a spring or a weight—the ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked to, with a formidable rumble and a noise like the falling of an automatic bar. ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson |
