"Clockwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she ain't come again," the man growled. "She's as regular as clockwork! Wonder what ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I am with you," remarked Juanito, rolling his eyes like some dolls that are moved by clockwork, and to make the resemblance more real he ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... altar whose basement formed the glass isolating "island" which all of us who have ever seen an electrical machine know so well. The electric machine itself, a battery of Leyden jars was hidden under the altar and connected by a piece of clockwork with that opening covered with metal in which ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... we have a new departure. Gill at the Cape, having the comet 1882.ii. all to himself in those latitudes, wished his friends in Europe to see it, and employed a local photographer to strap his camera to the observatory equatoreal, driven by clockwork, and adjusted on the comet by the eye. The result with half-an-hour's exposure was good, so he tried three hours. The result was such a display of sharp star images that he resolved on the Cape Photographic Durchmusterung, which after fourteen years, with Kapteyn's aid in reducing, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... the Prince, with lips just parted and breath very gently coming and going. Dotty would not believe at first that her waxen bosom palpitated by clockwork. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... had been the result of much thought and preparation was transparent even to the unreflecting. Like an elaborate piece of clockwork, the whole affair was not as yet in motion. But a glance on the foredeck of the steamer showed, mingling amongst the fashionable crowd, Spanish singers with their guitars, Tyrolese joedelers, and some two ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... the company through half a dozen movements of the manual of arms, next marching the company away in column of fours. The regulars, of course, responded like clockwork. They made a fine appearance as they started off under their freakish second lieutenant. Ere they had gone far Ferrers swung them into column of twos ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... and well contented crew, and everything seemed to be running like clockwork, when suddenly "another dish of trouble", as Mother Atterson called it, was served them in ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the rotation of the shell to give a regular motion to clockwork have been tried, but so far no practicable form of these ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... That working is coldly mechanical, and is not distinguished either by lightness or by sureness of touch. A dozen of Mendelssohn's pupils could have done as well or better. In the andante their is neither grace nor feeling: the music does not flow spontaneously, but is got along by a clockwork tick-tick rhythm. The best stuff is in the finale. Here we find at least sturdiness ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... having the house searched, and in a dark closet at the top we came upon a most extraordinary contrivance. This was no less than an exact representation of the agent's head and neck in wax. In it was a wonderfully skilful imitation of a human larynx, which, by a cunning mechanism of clockwork, could be made exactly to simulate the breathing and low moaning of a human being. This the man had, of course, utilized with the connivance of his wife and Wickham in order to prove an alibi, and the deception was so complete that only ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... that she takes an hour or so to dress; that carries her on till two; then she goes for a walk in the Tuileries in the sight of all men, and she is always in by four to be ready for you. She lives like clockwork. She keeps no secrets from her maid, and Reine keeps nothing from me, you may be sure. Reine can't if she would—along of my son, for she is very sweet upon him. So, you see, if madame had any intimacy with Monsieur Crevel, we should be bound to ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... stupendous task awaits the angel of the resurrection, when all the countless millions of old rickety, rusty, worm-eaten clocks are to be resurrected, and wiped, and dusted, and repaired, for mansions in the skies! There will be every kind and character of clock and clockwork resurrected on that day. There will be the Catholic clock with his beads, and the Episcopalian clock with his ritual. There will be an old clock resurrected on that day wearing a broadcloth coat buttoned up to the throat; and when he is wound up he will go off ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... to Bedford, in reply to his letter, "suppose me a troublesome man to deal with, pertinacious about trifles, or standing upon punctilios of authorship. No, Grosvenor, I am a quiet, patient, easy-going hack of the mule breed; regular as clockwork in my pace, sure-footed, bearing the burden which is laid on me, and only obstinate in choosing my own path. If Gifford could see me by this fireside, where, like Nicodemus, one candle suffices me in a large room, he would see a man in a coat 'still more threadbare than his own' when he wrote his ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... It was always so with Lloyd. Her charges were not infrequently persons whom she knew, often intimately, but during the time of their sickness their personalities vanished for the trained nurse; she saw only the "case," only the mechanism, only the deranged clockwork in imminent ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents ...
— The Velveteen Rabbit • Margery Williams
... said Chevenix with sudden energy. He wheeled round upon her as he spoke. "We all have to be. We go by clockwork. You get the striking all wrong if you play tricks." He resumed the photograph. "By Jove, but that suits you. Child of Nature, what? I suppose you're ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... the reply, "and she's enough to keep us goin'. Gits round reg'lar as clockwork once a month to collect the two dollars from Perez. It's her day now, and I told Perez that that was why he sneaked off to Barry's. You see, 'Gusty's after him to buy the history of Methuselah, or some old critter, and he don't like to see her. She's ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... machine into a weak thread, and here we see the use of the young hands, boys and girls, who piece one of these pipes as they are drawn through the machine by a slow clockwork motion, bending one knee every time as they curtsey sideways toward the machine. They earn very good wages and look healthy; but, where the wool is dyed, what with the dye and what with the oil, the piecers are all ready toileted to sing to a banjo; and sometimes, with rubbing ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... Clockwork can often be employed for propulsion purposes, but this method is not very satisfactory. It is also very difficult to obtain suitable clockworks to install in a boat. Oftentimes it will be possible to salvage the works of an old alarm-clock, providing the main-spring is ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... not to be had, and woke up shaking so as you'd hardly believe it! And I don't really think that I've gone to bed hardly one night without wondering whether Lydia had fastened the door and the little window into the yard, which is not safe if left open. As regular as clockwork, when the time came round, I'd mention ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... divining his incredible intention. If he had not started at once, if his legs had not started of themselves, he would never have started; and, not being in command of a fiver, he would afterwards have cut a preposterous figure in the group. But started he was, like a piece of clockwork that could not be stopped! In the grand crises of his life something not himself, something more powerful than himself, jumped up in him and forced him to do things. Now for the first time he seemed to understand what had occurred within ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... had the habit of her, of her strong capable ways, the clockwork precision of her household and parish arrangements. But as time went on he saw that perhaps he was more comfortable without her: as a reformed drunkard sees that it is better not to rely on brandy for one's courage. He saw it, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... with riding-whip tucked under his arm, came up the pebbled pathway, drawing on his gauntleted gloves. Dicky trotted beside him. Manasseh followed in attendance. Behind them in the porchway the landlady bobbed unregarded, like a piece of clockwork gradually ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... crowd the work on—it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery—it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day. In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... girl found that the Bear did no harm, but only growled in a make-believe, jolly fashion, she decided to make friends with him. She sat down on the floor close beside him, and when the clockwork inside the toy had run down, and the Bear was still, Nettie took him up in her arms ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... with hardly a casualty. This was owing partly to the two trench mortars lent us by the French and partly to the extraordinary fine shooting of our own battery of 4.5 howitzers. The whole show went like clockwork—like a Field Day. First the 87th Brigade took three lines of trenches; then our guns lengthened their range and fuses and the 86th Brigade, with the gallant Royal Fusiliers at their head, scrambled over the trenches already taken ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... out the order of the camp, and every cart as it arrives moves to its appointed place. This business usually occupies about the same time as raising camp in the morning, for everything moves with the regularity of clockwork. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... in the province, indeed.' (He drew nearer to me.) 'But, then, Panteley Eremyitch is such a wonderful man! He has only to wish for anything—he has only to take an idea into his head—and before you can look round, it's done; everything, you may say, goes like clockwork. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... is somewhat complex. It will suffice to say that within the meter box are thin disks which are moved by the stream of gas that passes them. This movement of the disks is recorded by clockwork devices on a dial face. In this way, the number of cubic feet of gas which pass through the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... with a drug called phenacetin, and to the lay mind a wonderful drug it appears. It is not effective with every one. A man in the next bed to him might have been taking breadcrumbs for all effect it produced. With him, however, it worked like clockwork. No sooner was a five-grain dose swallowed than the temperature stopped in its upward course. Then, gradually, like in a good Turkish bath, the pores of his skin opened, and a most complete and profuse perspiration ensued, which ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... mirrors attached to the magnetic needles of three variometers. A ray of light is reflected from the mirrors for several feet on to a slit, past which revolves sensitized photographic paper folded on a drum moving by clockwork. The slightest movements of the suspended needles are greatly magnified, and, when the paper is removed and developed in a dark-room, a series of intricate curves denoting declination, horizontal intensity and vertical force, are exquisitely traced. Every ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... hurt at the idea that she might find Aunt Sophy's pony too much for her—a sleepy little 'slug of a thing,' as she privately called it, which pattered along exactly like a clockwork animal in urgent ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... streak-of-lightning man to say, that the present companies in operation do not afford us that to our heart's content. It is but a very few years ago since we used to glorify ourselves in the rapidity of the mail-coach, doing its ten miles an hour with the punctuality of clockwork. Now we have arrived at the ratio of forty within the same period, and yet we are not content. Next year, within fourteen hours we shall be transported from Edinburgh to London. That, it seems, is not enough. A company offers to transport ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... anything—anything at all. Seeing her would have no more effect on me than if she was a piece of clockwork." ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... perfect, but a mental centre which is, in itself, an independent source of action. Hence by the requirements of the case man should be capable of placing himself either in a positive or a negative relation to the Parent Mind, from which he originates; otherwise he would be nothing more than a clockwork figure. ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Christmastide have no toys. This year they shall not go without; so I am sending them all—the doll's house and the rocking-horse, and all the queer contents of the nursery shelves, and the fairy stories well thumbed, with here and there a loose page, and the boxes of bricks and the clockwork mouse—all, ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... bedroom of Mamma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the blossoming, the whir of the machine and the feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress went like mad clockwork, while in and out Mamma's friends came hurrying, at the rumor, to hint of congratulation or suggest a style, ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... is shown diagrammatically. While current passes through M the armature is pulled towards it, the end P, carrying an inked wheel, rises, and a mark is made on the tape W, which is moved continuously being drawn forward off reel R by the clockwork—or electrically-driven rollers R^1 R^2. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... the Himalayas, on the Chaldean plains, in the Persian and Median deserts, and upon the banks of that great, strange River, the Nile. To them the Universe was alive—instinct with forces and powers, mysterious and beyond their comprehension. To them it was no machine, no great system of clockwork; but a great live creature, an army of creatures, in sympathy with or inimical to man. To them, all was a mystery and a miracle, and the stars flashing overhead spoke to their hearts almost in an audible language. Jupiter, with his kingly splendors, was the Emperor of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... o' that?" he said to his wife. "He goes as pat to the music as if he was made o' clockwork. I used to be a pretty good un at dancing myself when I was lighter, but I could niver ha' hit it just ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... our troubles here. You can't administer thousands of acres, control hundreds of slaves, and run an estate like a piece of clockwork without creaks in the machinery. I've built it all up out of next to nothing. I landed in this country with my little fortune of two thousand pounds. This estate is worth at least a quarter of a million now. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Orpington in Kent, which remained his home and the seat of his labors for forty years; that is, until his death on April 19th, 1882. In a letter to his friend Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle, written in 1846, Darwin says, "My life goes on like clockwork, and I am fixed on the spot where I shall end it." Happily, he was possessed of ample private fortune, and never undertook any teaching work nor gave any of his strength to the making of money. He was able to devote himself entirely to the studies in which he took delight; and though suffering ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... with brilliant detail reorganizations. The shipping department, first; the correspondence division next; the accounting department third, and he literally swept through the office like the proverbial new broom, caught up all the loose ends, and established a routine like clockwork. So successful was his work that the directors hastened to add supervision of sales ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... shows how the apparatus is theoretically arranged for this purpose. P is the writing style, which is held in the writer's hand in the ordinary way, while he shapes the letters one by one on paper pulled uniformly underneath by means of clockwork. To P are attached, at right angles, two arms, a a, one for each circuit; but as it is only necessary to consider one of the circuits, say that sending up and down motions, we will confine our attention for the present ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... severity of a hungry man. "It seems to me they don't amount to ANYthing. Here I am, at my time of life, up the first one in the house. I ring the bell for the cook at quarter-past six every morning, and the breakfast is on the table at half-past seven right along, like clockwork, but I never see anybody but you till ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in a superb diamond necklace, which she wore in honor of him, and, if report is to be believed, showed her regard in ways much more extraordinary. It is said that a statue of him in ivory, which moved by clockwork, was placed daily at her table, that she had a wax doll made in imitation of him, and that the feet of the doll were regularly blistered and anointed by the doctors, as poor Congreve's feet had been when he suffered from the gout. A monument was erected to the poet in Westminster Abbey, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... continents if we called this strip of sea the Straits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors of Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... met with in every railway-carriage, or at every dinner. The man we actually meet is one whose joke, though we have signalled it a mile off, we are powerless to stop, whose opinions come out with a whirr as of clockwork. Besides, it always happens in life that the man—or woman—with whom we would like to talk is at the next table. Those who really have something to say to each other so seldom have a chance ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... into Eternity with it, for it is so simple and easily managed that there seems to be no impediment to this! In the mean time we will have a conference on the subject. The mathematical precision of clockwork is of course greater; yet formerly, in watching the little experiments you made in my presence, I thought there was something worthy of notice in your metronome, and I hope we shall soon succeed in setting it thoroughly right. Ere long I hope to ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... she said, "for she has all sorts of advantages. She's got bells, and ribbons, and a clockwork mouse, but she hasn't a very nice disposition. She often scratches. Miss Mervyn's quite afraid of her, and mother would send her away at once if ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... "As regularly as clockwork," snapped Miss Husted. "Half price, but how long will he be able to pay even that? Only three pupils, and only one of them pays him in cash. Oh, how people round here have changed since I first came here; how much they do expect ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... things accumulate betimes, till affairs begin to press all at once, and no brain can stand the confusion." We should steadily cultivate the habit of punctuality. We can cultivate it until it becomes with us a second nature, and we do everything, as the saying is, "by clockwork." In rising in the morning and going to bed, in taking up different kinds of work, in keeping appointments with others, we should strive to be "to the minute." The unpunctual man is a nuisance to society. He wastes his own time, and he wastes the ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... rest. Like clockwork from the Mississippi's banks beyond came the boom and shriek of the coehorns on the barges. The big shells hung for an instant in the air like birds of prey, and then could be seen swooping down here and there, while now ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said the fiend, "begin, And keep the bowl a-flowing on— A working man needs pints of gin To keep his clockwork ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... gone purposely to pick up the mud in the four quarters of the town in order to bring it in here afterwards; and poor Francoise is almost off her legs with the constant scrubbing of the floors, which your masters come and dirty every day as regular as clockwork. ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... as she had fallen under the last of McTeague's blows, her body twitching with an occasional hiccough that stirred the pool of blood in which she lay face downward. Towards morning she died with a rapid series of hiccoughs that sounded like a piece of clockwork running down. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... of evening began to raise their jubilant notes. From a tree nearby the olive thrush sang like clockwork; over beyond carolled eagerly a black-throat, a myrtle warbler, a dozen song sparrows, and a hundred vireos and creepers. Down deep in the blackness of the ancient woods a hermit thrush uttered his solemn bell note, like the tolling of the spirit of peace. And in Thorpe's heart ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the smooth Roman road at a splendid pace, "the ponies going like clockwork," as Vixen remarked approvingly; but poor Miss McCroke thought that any clock which went as fast as those ponies would be deemed the ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... proper place where it should be left when not in use. Nails, pins, hammers, and other articles which come in constant use, should be kept in a large box near the stage. By working systematically, every thing will move on with clockwork nicety, and all confusion be avoided. Colored fires should be burnt in the ante-rooms at the sides of the stage; smoke and clouds should be produced at the back, or in the centre of the stage. The preparation ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... you'd visit the camp and see us drill. We go like clockwork, Peter and I. They call ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... say somethin' to me, do you?" he inquired briskly. "If you do, out with it! Don't set there workin' your face as if 'twas wound up, like a clockwork image." ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wheel is worked by clockwork inclosed between two disks, and would rotate continuously were it not for the catch, G, working in and out of the cogs. Through this catch, G, the wheel is dependent on the movement of electro-magnet. This cogged wheel is a double one, consisting of two wheels coupled together, exactly ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... silence was broken by a shrill sound like the creaking of a rusty spring. It startled Don Juan; he all but dropped the phial. A sweat, colder than the blade of a dagger, issued through every pore. It was only a piece of clockwork, a wooden cock that sprang out and crowed three times, an ingenious contrivance by which the learned of that epoch were wont to be awakened at the appointed hour to begin the labors of the day. Through the windows ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... I ain't got a quarrel with 'em, the Lord knows. I go to church like clockwork, and pay my pew-rent, too, which is more than some do that gabble the most about salvation. If I pay for the preacher's keep it's only fair that I should get some of the good that comes to him hereafter; that's how it looks to me; so I don't trouble my head ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... together, and if they get loose in camp never leave the lines. It is a nuisance sometimes, if you have to act as a single mount, and ride away on some errand. My Argentine greatly resents such a move, and tries to circle like a clockwork mouse. She has grown as fat as a pig, though some horses are doing poorly. The oats are of a ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... supper with me, Paul," suggested Jack, when they were more than half way back to town, with the double column moving along like clockwork, every right leg thrust out in unison, as though forming a ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... we had lived previously. The little extra exertion demanded to pass the sentry without creating any suspicions in his mind now told on me. Once I had passed out of his sight the reaction set in, and I fell into a clockwork pace. I was determined to fulfil my mission at all hazards, so plodded along slowly. I could see nothing, and heeded nothing, being only conscious of the fact that I was going to get something to ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... were organised with the celerity and precision of clockwork, and then sent forward westward, perfectly equipped—in the highest sense a national army, being over four hundred ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... born, Bradley invented a self-rocking cradle for it. He constructed the motive-power of the machine from some old clockwork which was operated by a huge steel ribbon spring strong enough to move a horse-car and long enough to run for a week without rewinding. When the cradle was completed, he put the baby in it upon a pillow and started the machinery. It worked beautifully, and after watching it for ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... arsenic in it, and it makes your head ache, and you're liable to blood poisonin'. One the girls fainted and had spasms, and as soon as he found it out he took her right off; and he's just like clockwork to pay. I think it'll do everything for S'tira to be along 'th me there, where ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... present hall you will see (if permitted) a fine store of plate, four pieces of which escaped the Great Fire, including a curious waggon and tun, the gift of W. Baude in 1573, which moves along the table by clockwork. The entrance colonnade, which occupies the site of the ancient cloister, with its Doric columns, is attractive, and a fine stone staircase protected by a wooden portcullis leads to the hall and court rooms. The hall itself is a noble chamber, panelled by Rowland Wynne ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... the dull croaking of the frogs amid the water grasses, and the shrill cries of children playing on the green turf. Every now and then a steamer would skim across the surface of the water in an airy manner, looking more like a child's clockwork toy than anything else, and Vandeloup, when he saw one of these arrive at the little pier, almost expected to see a man put in a huge key to the paddle wheels ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... by means of clockwork, were fed with mineral oil, a refined kerosine; and the refraction was caused ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... brisk, straight, and soldierly in bearing. Their captain was proud of them, and his very step showed it. He was like a skilled operator pressing the key of some great mechanism, and at his command they moved like clockwork. Seen from the side it was as if they were all bound together by inflexible iron bars, and as the end man moved all must move with him. The crowd was full of exclamations of praise and admiration, but a tense quiet enveloped them as Company "A" came from columns of four into ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... complainingly. At last it reached its destination at the head of the thick part of the mast, but about ten or fifteen feet beneath the ball. As it neared the top, Jerry sprang up the chain-ladder to connect the lantern with the rod and pinion by means of which, with clockwork beneath, it was made to revolve and "flash" once every third ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... world was presently to know more, and the same must be said of another inventor, Dr. Barton, of Beckenham, who shortly completed an airship model carrying aeroplanes and operated by clockwork. In an early experiment this model travelled ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... shown is called an equatorial. The convenience of this peculiar style of supporting the instrument consists in the ease with which the telescope can be moved so as to follow a star in its apparent journey across the sky. The necessary movements of the tube are given by clockwork driven by a weight, so that, once the instrument has been correctly pointed, the star will remain in the observer's field of view, and the effect of the apparent diurnal movement will be neutralised. The last refinement in this direction is the application of an electrical ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... she heard Travers say in her ear. "Things went just like clockwork. Five minutes' conversation got the whole clubhouse out of him, and what you managed in your quarter of an hour, goodness knows. You are a clever ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... the binnacle was. And, answering these signs of existence, could be distinguished the red and green lights of steamers, the firm rays of lighthouses, and the red or white warnings of gas-buoys run by clockwork. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... are only so many immense cinders—mere refuse slag—of no conceivable interest to science, except to predicate the ultimate conclusion—"a played-out universe, resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream, which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun extinguished, the stars darkling ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... already gone on for six days, pronounce it to be a law of the clock's nature that it should go on for ever without being again wound up? Would the insect philosopher's dogmatism be one whit less absurd than that of those human ephemera who so positively lay down the law about the clockwork of the universe? Those laws of nature to which unerring regularity and perpetuity of operation are so confidently attributed, may they not, perchance, be but single clauses of much farther reaching laws, according to whose other provisions the force of these isolated clauses may, in novel combinations ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... to their last stump. The excitement in the crowd was intense. Aleck's team was moving swiftly and with the steadiness of clockwork. The blacks were frantic with excitement and hard to control. Ranald's last stump was a pine of medium size, whose roots were partly burned away. It looked like an easy victim. Aleck's was an ugly-looking ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... that of the Medical Corps, the R.A.M.C., or the Red Cross. It is all the same. It is all run with the precision of clockwork. Its whole aim for the comfort and succor of Tommy. Of this department I speak ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... this: that Nature, in Skitzland, never removes the stomach. Every man has to feed himself; and the necessity for finding food, joined to the necessity for buying clothes, is a mainspring whereby the whole clockwork of civilized life is kept in motion. Now, if a man positively can not feed and clothe himself, he becomes a pauper. He then goes to the Workhouse, where he has his stomach filled with a cement. That stopping lasts a life-time, and he thereafter needs no food. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... had fallen to almost a dead calm, and as she lay she saw little rabbits stealing out to play in the sunshine on the sands. She watched them running in circles like things on wheels and moving by clockwork. Then she closed her eyes, but still she saw them ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... said Saunders, "and try to catch it. If we can't do that, we shall have to wait till the bally clockwork runs down. After all, if it's flesh and blood, it ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... well through from first to last, gripping the water the instant the oar is back and the body and arms forward, and dragged clean through without jerk or plunge, the swing of the bodies regular as clockwork, the feather clear and rapid—this essentially is the kind of rowing which not only puts most pace into the boat, but is capable of being sustained far ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... people, these Germans, in their stage management. Of course this was precisely the thing that they desired that he should feel. They had sent their shells at the right moment, the whole performance had gone off like clockwork. Those poor blackened masses of humanity in the house below were the cost that was represented in the performance. And since there is much still left to burn in Verdun, the Germans may repeat ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... Clockwork Mice, and Coloured Marbles Painted Bird that sweetly warbles, Dolls of every age and size, With flaxen hair ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... trust his liberty, his life even, to the keeping of any other human being. I start from the hypothesis that he alone planned and carried out the crime, so I do not lift my hand and cry 'Impossible,' but I ask myself, 'How was it done?' Well, there are several methods worthy of consideration—clockwork, electricity, even a time fuse attached to the proper mechanism. I haven't really bothered myself yet to determine the means, because when that knowledge becomes indispensable we must have our ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... in the way! Here were no dragons. As he went down the High Street people smiled at him and waved hands. The town sparkled under the afternoon sun. It was market-day, and the old fruit-woman under the green umbrella, the toy-man with the clockwork monkeys, the flower-stalls and the vegetable-sellers, all these were here; in the centre of the square, sheep and pigs were penned. Dogs were barking, stout farmers in corduroy breeches walked about arguing and expectorating, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... could do that easily, and if you wanted a green-house on the north side it would only be necessary to set up a few looking-glasses to pour a blazing sun upon it all day long. You might need a little clockwork to keep them adjusted at the right angles, but Yankee invention ought to be equal to that. I have no doubt we shall see patent sunshine-distributors in the market very shortly if your idea gets abroad; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised to hear that a company proposed to set up mammoth reflectors ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... is a pen drawing a continuous line on a cylinder which revolves once every hour and is worked continuously by clockwork in an exact record of time. It moves in a straight line when there is no disturbance, and it jumps from right to left and back again when there are serious oscillations of the earth. The extent of these movements of the pen measures the grade of the oscillation. You may think it is a fantastic ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... christened the Fortune, and on this the mine was to be exploded by a slow match, cut so as to explode at a calculated moment. The mine on board the Hope was to be started by a piece of clockwork, which at the appointed time was to strike fire from a flint. Planks and woodwork were piled on the decks to give to the two vessels the appearance of simple fireships. Thirty-two small craft, saturated with tar and turpentine and filled with inflammable materials, were ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... awoke Heritage to the supreme unpleasantness of his position. He was utterly alone on the headland, and his allies had vanished into space, while the enemy plans, moving like clockwork, were approaching their consummation. For a second he thought of leaving the Tower and hiding somewhere in the cliffs. He dismissed the notion unwillingly, for he remembered the task that had been set him. He was there to hold the fort to the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... do the guessing, Monig. All right, maybe it's got a clockwork fuse that didn't break with the impact. Or a gyroscopic fuse. Stick a stethoscope on it and see if you pick up a ticking or anything that sounds ...
— One-Shot • James Benjamin Blish
... two Leggos, and th' old seal would lie there sleepin', innocent as a child, and let them come close under the rock, and even climb it. But soon as ever they made a pounce—c'lk!—he rolled off the slope and into deep water. Regular as clockwork it happened; quiet and easy as a door on a greased hinge; and every time it made the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... said, and the man who had brought the clockwork bird received on the spot the title of 'Bringer of the Imperial ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... Ouida is right when she maintains that "the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... looked as if she was as intelligent as any of them; but the sight was not an agreeable one to men accustomed to discipline. The contrast when the TAMERLANE came along an hour or so after was emphatic. Every man at his post; every order carried out with the precision of clockwork; the captain pacing the quarter-deck as if she were a line-of-battle ship—here the airs put on were almost ludicrous in the other direction. Although she was only "a good jump" long, as we say, whenever an order was given, it was thundered out as if the men were ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... (Journal Franklin Inst., 1886) employed a cylinder driven by clockwork, making ten revolutions per second. The surface was divided into 100 equal parts, each equal to 1/1000 second. The time marks were made by two galvanometer needles, when successive screens were broken by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... guest had no sport, the blame for it should rest upon Lord Plowden's over-arrogant keeper. Then a noise of a different character assailed his ears, punctuated as it were by distant boyish cries of "mark!" These cries, and the buzzing sound as of clockwork gone wrong which they accompanied and heralded, became all at once a most urgent affair of his own. He strained his eyes upon the horizon of the thicket—and, as if by instinct, the gun sprang up to adjust its sight ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... lad. He knows just where his orf forefoot ought to be at one o'clock, and his near hind-foot at two. Why, he goes like clockwork. I just winds him up once with a bit o' corn and a drink o' water, starts him, and there's his old legs go tick-tack, tick-tack, and his head swinging like a pendulow. Use 'is secon' natur', and all I've got to do is to tie up the reins to the fore ladder and go to sleep if I like, ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... discussions. There was hardly a solitary who did not talk of ‘automata.’ To beat a dog was no longer a matter of any moment. The stick was laid on with the utmost indifference, and a great fool was made of those who pitied the animals, as if they had any feeling. They said they were only clockwork, and that the cries they uttered when they were beaten were no more than the noise of some little spring that had been moved, and that all this involved no sensation. They nailed the poor animals upon boards by the fore-paws, in order to dissect them while still alive, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... seen engaged in a song and dance. They were about eighteen inches apart, and alternately jumped two feet into the air, alighting always in the same spot. As soon as one bird alighted the other bird jumped up, their time being like clockwork in its regularity, and each "accompanying himself to the tune of 'to-le-do'—'to-le-do'—'to-le-do,' sounding the syllable 'to' as he crouched to spring, 'le' while in the air, and 'do' as he alighted." The performance was kept up for more ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... next year, when Father came home from Paris again, he brought a large, flat, polished box, in which there were a dozen different games, French games with balls, and battledores and shuttlecocks, games which grown-up people liked playing, too; and there were carriages which went round and round by clockwork, and a tumbler who turned somersaults backwards down a flight of steps as soon as he was placed on the top step. Those were things that the people in ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... crossed my mind I replaced Pugh's puzzle on the dressing-table. The idea did not commend itself to me at all. The box evidently contained some curious mechanism. It might be more curious than comfortable. Possibly some agreeable little device in clockwork. The tick, tick, tick suggested clockwork which had been planned to go a certain time, and then—then, for all I knew, ignite an explosive, and—blow up. It would be a charming solution to the puzzle if it were to explode while I stood there, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... about the hypnotic eyes of this here Nature lover. He was quiet enough, but vicious, acting like he'd love to do some dental work on the poet that might or might not be painless for all he cared a hoot. He was taking his own drinks all alone, like clockwork—moody but systematic. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... mounted on the Sawhorse, and the people cheered him almost as loudly as they did their lovely Ruler. Behind him stalked with regular, jerky steps, the famous machine-man called Tik-tok, who had been wound up by Dorothy for the occasion. Tik-tok moved by clockwork, and was made all of burnished copper. He really belonged to the Kansas girl, who had much respect for his thoughts after they had been properly wound and set going; but as the copper man would be ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum. |
