"Automatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concentrated on the man,—and yet I recall a curious bifurcation. Instead of experiencing that automatic righteous indignation which my father and mother had felt, which had animated old Mr. Jules Hollister when he had sternly forbidden his daughter's name to be mentioned in his presence, which had made these people outcasts, there welled up within me an intense sympathy and pity. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on some impulse, went into the house, took a roll of fine wire, a small cowbell, a heavy pair of wire clippers and a pocket torch from his desk and pocketed them. A pair of automatic handcuffs he also took, and a dozen clips to fit the brace of ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... any action that showed it, he seemed incapable. He could not place one brick upon another, or slip one Japanese box inside its fellow. His temper seemed to be always gentle; and in simple matters of daily conduct and habit Zelie had her own ways of getting from him an automatic obedience. But he heard nothing; and in his pathetic look, however clearly his eyes might seem to be meeting those of a companion, there was ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... oppressed him so that he felt powerless; some hidden influence surrounded James, sucking from his blood, as it were, all manliness, dulling his brain. He became a mere puppet, acting in accordance to principles that were not his own, automatic, will-less. His father sat, as ever, in the dining-room by the fire, for only in the warmest weather could he do without artificial heat, and he read the paper, sometimes aloud, making little comments. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... man is unsuccessful in one kind of work, a trial is made with him in another department, and that by such shifting the right place can often be found for him. Young people, to whom, in spite of long trial and the best will, it seems impossible to supply certain automatic machines, become excellent workers at much more difficult labor in the same establishment. Women who are apparently careless and inattentive when they have to distribute their attention over a number of operations do high-class work when they are engaged in a single activity; ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... Challoner seated at his table dead, shot through the head. He had an automatic pistol in his hand." Sir James paused; his voice had become husky with emotion. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... information regarding the history and mechanical construction of platen printing presses, from the original hand press to the modern job press, to which is added a chapter on automatic presses of small size. 51 pp.; ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... on with her coat and handed her her handbag, then shrugged into his own overcoat and belted it about him, the weight of the flashlight and the automatic sagging the pockets. He'd need both, the gun as much as the light—New York had more than its share of vicious criminals, to whom this power-failure would be a perfect devilsend. Handing Doris the light, he let her take his ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... safe retreat. One of these was prepared for the Voivodin, and there she remained, except for such times as she was on show—and certain other times of which I shall tell you. Provision was made for the possibility of any accidental visit to the church. At such times, warned by an automatic signal from the opening door, she was to take her place in the tomb. The mechanism was so arranged that the means to replace the glass cover, and to take the opiate, were there ready to her hand. There was to be always a watch of priests at night in the church, to guard ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... A few crisp words in a low tone. A minor hubbub began suddenly back at the house. Canalejas climbed into the passenger's seat as if looking for something. And Bell presented his now useless automatic pleasantly at the head of the nearest staring mechanic, and while he froze in horror, scrambled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... violently precipitated toward the gurgling and oozing tide below. He threw out his arms desperately, caught at a strong girder, drew himself up with the energy of desperation, and staggered to his feet again, safe—and sane. For with this terrible automatic struggle to avoid that death he was courting came a flash of reason. If he had resolutely thrown himself from the pier head as he intended, would he have undergone a hopeless revulsion like this? Was he sure that this might not be, after all, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... charge of his craft, to that gentleman's no small delight, Tom and Mr. Damon began an inspection of the electrical and other machinery. There was much that needed attention, but Tom soon had the automatic apparatus in working order, and then less attention need be ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... Colleges were closed, and closed were the doors of the lodging-houses. Every night, for many years, at this hour precisely, Mrs. Batch had come out from her kitchen, to turn the key in the front-door. The function had long ago become automatic. To-night, however, it was the cue for further tears. These did not cease at her return to the kitchen, where she had gathered about her some sympathetic neighbours—women of her own age and kind, capacious of tragedy; women who might be relied on; founts of ejaculation, wells of surmise, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... limbs being attenuated and withered. The organs of special sense had in many nearly lost all activity some generations back. Some had lost the use of their limbs for more than a decade or a generation; but the organs of life and the "great sympathetic" still kept up their automatic functions, not recognizing the fact, and surprisingly indifferent to it, that the rest of the body had ceased to be of any use a generation or more in the past. And it is remarked that "these thoracic ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... its despatches over its 399:12 body, but this so-called mind is both the service and message of this telegraphy. Nerves are un- able to talk, and matter can return no an- 399:15 swer to immortal Mind. If Mind is the only actor, how can mechanism be automatic? Mortal mind perpetuates its own thought. It constructs a machine, manages it, 399:18 and then calls it material. A mill at work or the action of a water-wheel is but a derivative from, and continua- tion of, the primitive mortal mind. Without this force 399:21 the body is devoid of action, and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... earliest reactions follow the clicks which they are intended to represent, but presently the series of motor impulses generated by the sounds and the voluntary movements which the subject makes fuse into a voluntary type of reaction in which the cycle has become automatic and definite, and the clicks take their proper places as cooeperating and controlling factors along with the motor cues of the process itself. The accuracy of the judgments of time, if such judgments be made, or ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... ball. He squeaked like a rat, leaped to his feet, hurled the chair on which he had been sitting crash against the door from which Windy Bill et al had withdrawn hastily, and ended by producing a small wicked-looking automatic—then a new and strange weapon—and rushing out into the main saloon. There he announced that he was known to the cognoscenti as Art the Blood and was a city gunman in comparison with which these plain, so-called bad men were as sucking doves to the untamed eagle. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... that it was what the railroad builders call a steel dump: a metal wagon capable of carrying thirty or forty tons of ballast, with an automatic arrangement for throwing out ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... owner; but he was gone, so we turned one or two of the carts off, and made them go round. But we could not stay there all night. The horse was too done, and too much injured by the cruel passage to move, so Jan reluctantly pulled out his "automatic" and, standing clear of its hoofs, put two bullets through its brain. It shuddered, lifted two hoofs and beat the air and ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... according to his character, his inclinations, his impressionability, etc. Hypnosis does not run all subjects into a uniform mold, and make pure and simple automatons out of them, moved solely by the will of the hypnotist; it increases cerebral docility; it makes the automatic activity preponderate over the will. But the latter persists to a certain degree; the subject thinks, reasons, discusses, accepts more readily than in the waking condition, but does not always accept, especially in the light degrees of sleep. In these cases we must know the patient's ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments—a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... as at a music-hall. For a time, but only for a time, "Long Tom" held his tongue, and gradually the noise of battle ceased—the bang and squeal of the shells, the crackle of the rifle, the terrifying hammer-hammer of the enemy's two Krupp automatic guns. It was about half-past two and blazing hot. The rest of the day was quiet, but for rumours of the lamentable disaster of which one can hardly speak at present. The Gloucesters and Royal Irish prisoners—1,100 at least ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... feel, and that's a little punishment maybe you deserve. I'll say this for your comfort. You probably followed the plan that had been impressed on your brain by Mr. Graham. You came here, no doubt, and stood around. With an automatic appreciation of your condition you may have taken that old precaution of convivial men returning home, and removed your shoes. Then your automatic judgment may have warned you that you weren't fit to go in at all, and you probably ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... you should go at all, my dear," his wife answered with a cheerfulness that had become automatic. "I have some cards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I'll drop in at about half-past three and stay long enough to make poor Amy feel that she hasn't been slighted." She glanced hesitatingly at her daughter. "And if Newland's ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... by— Not one in all the crowd knew me and not a one knew I! "Oh, for a touch of home!" I sighed; "oh, for a friendly face! Oh, for a hearty handclasp in this teeming desert place!" And so, soliloquizing as a homesick creature will, Incontinent, I wandered down the noisy, bustling hill And drifted, automatic-like and vaguely, into Lowe's, Where Fortune had in store a panacea for my woes. The register was open, and there dawned upon my sight A name that filled and thrilled me with a cyclone of delight— The name that I shall venerate unto my dying day— The proud, immortal ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... walls separating various minds one from another all of a sudden are opened wide, and by a partial interpenetration of one mind by the other the several minds join together to produce by mutual determination automatic action. And it is in these special psychical states that "supernormal" phenomena, viz., ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... stranger for a friend, a leaf for a sparrow, one word for another. The wonder is that we are not oftener wrong; considering how small a part present sensation has in perception, and how much of every object observed is supplied by a sort of automatic judgment. You see something brown, which your perceptive mechanism classes with the appearance of a cow at such a distance; and instantly all the other properties of a cow are supplied from the resources ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... ranch out of sight behind her than she pretended that she was lost. Yellowjacket had thereupon walked a few rods farther and stopped, patiently indifferent to the location of his oats box. Lorraine had waited until his head began to droop lower and lower, and his switching at flies had become purely automatic. Yellowjacket was going to sleep without making any effort to find the way home. But since Lorraine had not told her father anything about it, his injunction could not have anything to do with ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... says Valmiki. But the Commentator says that automatic figures only are meant. Women would have seen Hanuman ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... all its attendant horrors, has broken loose, the "Critique of Weapons" has been set up, and the weapons of criticism are consequently broken. This is not merely the inevitable result of the automatic limitations which would be imposed by any state of war, but rather—though this is but a transitory phase—because of an absolute lack of interest in any sort of critical estimate of the whole situation. In breathless suspense, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... remembered his appointment with Katherine at three o'clock. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to the hour, and, beyond a cleaning yesterday afternoon, no preparations were made. In an automatic way he unlocked some cases and drew out his treasures, wiped the sword-blades tenderly with chamois leather, and laid them on the long, baize-covered table. Here and there from the cornice he selected a helmet. The great mace used by his ecclesiastical ancestor he unhooked from the wall. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... set forth from Brussels in a taxicab to find out. At Hal, where we intended to abandon the cab and continue on foot, we found out. We were arrested by a smart and most intelligent-looking officer, who rode up to the side of the taxi and pointed an automatic at us. We were innocently seated in a public cab, in a street crowded with civilians and the passing column of soldiers, and why any one should think he needed a gun only the German mind can explain. Later, I found that all German officers introduced themselves and made requests ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... an object into the air and hit it 12 times before it struck the ground, I using an automatic shot gun. ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... established the point that Christianity is a part of the common law of the land. Criminal lawyers quote Webster's argument in the great Knapp murder trial, that the voice of conscience is the voice of God, as the world's best statement of the moral imperative, and the automatic judgment seat God has set up in the city of ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... it banged shut and The Laird was alone. The incident was closed. The impossible had come to pass. For the strain had been too great, and at nine o'clock on a working day morning, steady, reliable, dependable, automatic Andrew Daney having imbibed Dutch courage in lieu of Nature's own brand, was, for the first time in his life, jingled to an extent comparable to that of ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... loaded. Before he was ready to begin—before he had announced to himself that he was about to fight—he threw the obedient, well-balanced rifle into position and fired a first wild shot. Directly he was working at his weapon like an automatic affair. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... learned the other's secret; each realized that the success of his plans depended on the silence of the other; each resolved instantly to procure that silence at any cost. Von Staden reached for his hip pocket, but before he could draw his automatic pistol and cover the skipper, Michael J. Murphy had hurled ten pounds of code book into the geometric centre of the supercargo's face. It was the first weapon his hand closed over, and he did not disdain it. The instant it landed and von Staden reeled before the blow, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... about twenty yards from the herd, one bull woke up, gave a grunt, poked another, woke him, and then—bang! bang! bang! we opened fire. Mac had a Winchester automatic rifle, and he got off five shots so fast that before the first one left the muzzle the other four were chasing it. He dropped a large bull, which gave a convulsive flop and rolled into the water with a splash. I hit a couple, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... a water tank on the railway, a 4-in. branch pipe is carried to the bottom of the tank and up to the top, where it is capped by an automatic valve. A gate-valve is placed in the branch pipe at its junction with the ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... manner that he was very tired, from the way he sat down, taking off his cap, and his attitude as he leaned his head back against the pillar. She knew this without thinking about it, mechanically, with the automatic certainty of a long-since acquired knowledge of him. And when he spoke, although his voice was quiet and level, she felt a great fatigue ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... 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 as Stahl's ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and Necessity he grants a third position of mine—that a man's mind is a mere machine—an automatic machine—which is handled entirely from the outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing; not an ounce of its fuel, & not so much as a bare suggestion to that exterior engineer as to what the machine shall do nor how it shall do ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... automatic movement to extricate himself; then he sat perfectly still. His face, which he turned over his shoulder, was white beneath the stains of tan, and his ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... due in the publisher's office at the end of the month. He sprang up to kiss his wife, held her embraced for a long happy moment. And then they went hand in hand, to the side of the room and punched a series of buttons on a panel—a simple way of ordering breakfast sent up the automatic ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state is this physiological law, or this divine ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... table, sugar in his chicory, one foot on the bench, which had reminded him again of the absence of the hatchet from his belt and brought an automatic frown. Then the glance toward the gunsmith's shop, and across the parade ground, at the houses into which so much labor had gone; the wall that had been built from rubble and topped with pointed stakes; the white slabs of marble from the ruined building that ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... treachery, foreign to every sentiment within her heart, cowardly, abject, the unconscious outcome of this strange magnetism which emanated from him and had cast a spell over her, transforming her individuality and will power, and making of her an unconscious and automatic instrument of Fate. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... marking an automatic close of the subject. Deeply as I admired both women, I shrank from the idea of their meeting. It seemed curiously indelicate, in view both of my former engagement to Eleanor and of Lola's frank avowal of her feelings towards me before what I shall always regard as my death. It is true ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... deliberate steps, the imaginary winding-sheet dragging slowly after him. There was an automatic precision ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... suggested perseverance; when the following conclusion converted seeming nonsense into sense: "b l e take a pencil and write." The result was that one of the party rapidly developed into an interesting automatic writer. ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... unknown, I was passed from one automatic servant to another till I finally reached the Torishihimari or mistress of ceremonies. By clock-work she offered me a seat on the floor, a fan and congratulations. This last simply because I was me. The house was ancient and beautiful. The room in which I sat ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... take place periodically by automatic arrangement, and representation shall bear some definite relation to the number ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Gayfield on the five o'clock afternoon train, carrying with him a suitcase and an automatic pistol ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... table or one's thigh has. Laughter is spontaneous, that is to say, the movements are not designed or directed by the conscious will. But in mankind, in proportion as individuals are trained in self-control, it is more or less completely under command, and in spite of the most urgent tendency of the automatic mechanism to enter upon the progressive series of movements which we distinguish as (1) smile, (2) broad smile or grin, (3) laugh, (4) loud laughter, (5) paroxysms of uncontrolled laughter, a man or woman ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... stealthily forward, the grenades in their right hands and their automatic revolvers in their left. Making almost no sounds, they walked gingerly around the corner of the passage and there before their eyes they saw what had caused Jacques to draw back so speedily a few moments before. Standing in the center of a little room similar to the one they had ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... Young fellow, too— almost a kid. When I got up this morning—" Billy shrugged his shoulders again and pointed to his empty pistol holster. "Everything was gone— dogs, sledge, extra tent, even my rifle and automatic. He wasn't quite bad, though, for he left me my grub. He was a funny cuss, too. Look at that!" He pointed to the bakneesh wreath that still hung to the front of his tent. "'In honor of the living,' " he read, aloud, "Just a sort of reminder, you know, that he might have hit me on the head ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... of the explosion puffed upward and, where it had been, the marshal saw Ned Napier's automatic magazine revolver under ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... all structural variations of animal parts, which are not absolutely insignificant. When the insects acquired wings they must also have acquired the mechanism with which to move them—the musculature, and the nervous apparatus necessary for its automatic regulation. All instincts depend upon compound reflex mechanisms and are just as indispensable as the parts they have to set in motion, and all may have arisen through processes of selection if the reasons which I have elsewhere given for this view are correct. ("The Evolution ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... and turned to the door. A girl had come silently into the room. It was Agnes Sterling. Her dark hair was tangled. Her small face was flushed, and her brown eyes were wide with fear! In a white hand, which shook a little, she carried a small, gold-plated automatic pistol. ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... now creating an immortal being whose word may bend a million wills to his. And you are doing this mighty work solely by your mind. The physical processes are simple and automatic. ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... yours right now!" Darrin challenged. Swiftly he changed the revolver into his left hand as he still covered the pair. Then he reached for his own automatic, ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... that she had just begun to read the second piece of automatic writing and had only finished a few lines—enough to see that it was very different from the first—when she felt a clutch of hands around her throat and realized that Fauvette had crept up cunningly from behind. There had been a struggle in which the medium tried vainly to cry ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... phenomena 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
... He had to keep his wits fully about him, lest a sudden flaw tilt the biplane over. And it was at that moment of uncertainty that the young aviator had reason to rejoice because of that new device under the aeroplane whereby an automatic balance was ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... naturally the scholastic one, with an exceedingly refined and subtile logic, and with deficient ideas upon physics. By the study of Latin, and their philosophic systems, they converted their pupils into automatic machines rather than into practical men prepared to battle with life."—Census of the Philippine Islands (Washington, 1905), Volume III, pp. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... 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
... "The rest was automatic; I could no more have stayed the deadly blow than I can now hope to escape its consequences. Revolt from almost a lifetime of pitiless, persistent persecution filled me with an irresistible impulse to destroy ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... results of a psychological investigation carried on in America by Miss Gertrude Stein among the ordinary male and female students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College. The object of the investigation was to study, with the aid of a planchette, the varying liability to automatic movements among normal individuals. Nearly one hundred students were submitted to experiment. It was found that automatic responses could be obtained in two sittings from all but a small proportion of the students of both sexes, but that there were two types of individual who ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... fifty chicks. Incubators are a constant care. The most important objection to an incubator is that it is against the rules of most fire insurance companies to allow it to be operated in any building that the insurance policy covers. If the automatic heat regulator fails to work and the heat in our incubator runs up too high we may have a fire. At any rate, we shall lose our entire hatch. The latter is also true if the lamp goes out and the eggs become too cool. I have made a great many hatches with incubators of different makes and my ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes, The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, And wrung by keenest sympathy for all Who give their loved ones for the living wall 'Twixt law and treason,—in this evil day May haply find, through automatic play Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, And hearten others with the strength we gain. I know it has been said our times require No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm, But the stern war-blast rather, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... this country seems an ordinary and almost automatic proceeding—a part of one's regular routine, as natural as going to the barber or to church. Why seek for reasons? They are so hard to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one lurking in the background, a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of Nature's "weak side" since that momentous era in the industrial history of the world; and the nineteenth century, as Watt clearly foresaw, has been emphatically the age of steam power. In the condenser, the high pressure cylinder and the automatic cut-off, which utilises the expansive power of steam vapour, mankind now possesses the means of taming a monster whose capacities were almost entirely unknown to the ancients, and of bringing it into ready and willing service for the accomplishment of useful work. Vaguely ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... the friends of their friends, whose names form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by heart, they are gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner had ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Jimmy sit down in a corner, and while one of them guarded him the other called up central, made his report, and asked for an ambulance and the wagon. Then O'Donnell commenced to examine the room. A moment later he found an automatic behind the door across the room from ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... accumulating! The nineteenth century seems likely to be equaled if not surpassed in new material appliances of civilization and luxury. Railroad speed now often reaches ninety miles an hour, upon the straightened and generally elevated tracks in use; with the automatic block-signal system so complete, that collisions are nearly impossible. Coal-oil is now much used in locomotives, and almost universally on ocean steamers. The supposed dangers of its conveyance and employment have been readily ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... the one edged Tom. "I guess that clinches it. He's riding Maloney's hawss. He's wounded; so's the man we want. He answers the description— gray eyes, tall, slim, muscular. Same gun— automatic Colt. Tell you ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... capable of an educative work that can hardly be equalled elsewhere. When in combination they appeal to both eye and ear, they provide avenues for intellectual understanding and activity that neither school nor press can parallel. Recent mechanical inventions, such as automatic musical instruments and moving pictures, have added greatly to the range and effectiveness of music and the drama, but they only intensify and popularize the appeal to the senses. It is to be remembered that individual and social stimuli must ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... dwellings with communal open space between, some amenities like underground wiring—are tending to call their latest subdivisions "new towns" too. Many of them want to do things right, and if it can be proved that doing things right will pay off as well as doing them wrong, a certain amount of automatic improvement in the quality of suburbanization can be expected. However, it must be noted that the scale on which most developers can afford to operate, and the market scarcity of suitable large tracts of land even when major capital is available and the aims are noble ones, ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... from the foregoing description, the fermentation and bacterial action that takes place in a properly built septic tank system is automatic and needs no attention, although every second or third year it is advisable to remove the mud-like sediment from the tank. Otherwise, the latter's capacity ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... and Matilda Larson was particularly distressing, and ultimately led to the passage of a rather drastic law by the Council. Judge Malone was the father of this law. It provided for the automatic annulment of all previous marriages at the expiration of two years,—provided, however, the absent husband or wife didn't turn up to contest the matter. This law also granted absolute freedom to the absent husband or wife, who was thereby authorized to remarry without further notice,—or ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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
... of the jollification a hush began to spread over the room. It began at the tables near the main entrance of the restaurant; then the men began to get briskly to their feet. With automatic precision they came to attention, saluting the officer who had entered with that jerky little downward gesture of the forearm typical ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... 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
... solid element under ordinary conditions, gives rise by transmutation to a gaseous element—the emanation of radium. The new element is a heavy gas at ordinary temperatures and, like other gases, can be liquified by extreme cold. The extraordinary property of transmutation is entirely automatic. No influence which chemist or physicist can apply can affect the ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... for a moment and then providing himself with an automatic revolver and an electric searchlight, the two boys left the camp and soon disappeared in the darkness. They had been gone scarcely five minutes when a shot came ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... can wring from a reluctant environment into real property or the banks; the young folks put their inheritance into phonographs, Fords, boiled shirts, yellow shoes, cuckoo clocks, lithographs of the current mountebanks, oil stock, automatic pianos and the works of Harold Bell Wright, Gerald Stanley Lee and ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... entirely alone on potatoes and dry vegetables, and which she did not leave once in the course of a month. On seeing her pass, you might have thought her to be one of those delicately white old nuns with automatic gait, whom the cloister has kept apart from all the concerns of this world. Her pale face, always scrupulously girt with a white cap, looked like that of a dying woman; a vague, calm countenance it was, wearing an air of supreme indifference. Prolonged ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... The crude values of natural magnetism, the automatic functions of unconscious magnetism, demonstrate at their best solely as they climax ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... "It's only automatic writing, dear," he replied. "You may not have been aware you were writing, but it probably reflects something in ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... 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 in so far as ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... one matter of great moment—the effect of Lord Ashbourne's Act—a correspondent sends me a statement, which I reproduce here, as it gives a very satisfactory account of the automatic financial machinery upon which that Act ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... thoroughfares are apt to believe that Fifth Avenue notices nothing; but they are mistaken; it is New York that is preoccupied, not Fifth Avenue. The Fifth Avenue eye, like a policeman's, familiar with a variety of types, catalogues you and replaces you upon the shelf with such automatic rapidity that you are not aware you have been taken down. Fifth Avenue is secretly populous with observers who take note ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... of supreme importance that actions, the performance of which at first requires even painful effort and deliberation, may, by habit, be rendered automatic. Witness the slow learning of its letters by a child, and the subsequent facility of reading in a man, when each group of letters which forms a word is instantly, and without effort, fused to a single perception. Instance the billiard-player, whose ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... 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 ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... where this trifling incident of his erratic life had chanced. He entered the neglected yard (now wilder than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock), stationed himself on the doorstep of the main entrance, and, opening his show-box, began to play. Each individual of the automatic community forthwith set to work, according to his or her proper vocation: the monkey, taking off his Highland bonnet, bowed and scraped to the by-standers most obsequiously, with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from every narrow doorway, crying up the merits of Cosmoramas, views of Constantinople, marionettes, automatic chess-players, and performing dogs who would pick you out the prettiest woman in the company. The ventriloquist Fritz-James flourished here in the Cafe Borel before he went to fight and fall at Montmartre with the young lads from the Ecole polytechnique. Here, too, there were fruit ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... name is Delatour,—the widder Delatour,—ez she has herself give me permission to tell you," continued Mr. Bowers, with a certain abstracted and automatic precision that dissipated any suggestion of malice in the ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... is a great future," she said at last, "for the man who first introduces smoke-jacks into Tibet! Every household will buy one, as an automatic means ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... back to the fire; she began to nibble the upper joint of her forefinger, wondering just how to begin. This silent inspection of their shoulders made the little creatures quiver. Nannie crumbled her bread into a heap, and Blair carried an empty spoon to his mouth with automatic regularity; Harris, in the pantry, in a paroxysm of sympathy, stretched his lean neck to the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... 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 ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... major concluded he drew from behind him a leather case which he sprung open as he presented it to the astonished master of the institution. There, in the case, rested a very fine automatic pistol, its polished handle engraved with Colonel Colby's name and also the fact that it was presented to him by the school, with the date. The hat had been passed around among the boys for contributions to this gift, and every cadet had ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... sound of his voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight. The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, as she said, in a voice full of the old ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... acted as might have been expected: complied with the former suggestion, but flatly refused to touch their masterpiece. They had been glorifying their work too energetically to destroy it in its infancy. It was said you could recognize a legislator that year in any crowd by his automatic repetition of the phrase, "Thirteen hundred—fellow-citiztens!—and fifty miles of railroad!" There was nothing to be done but to go on with the stupendous folly. Loans were effected with surprising and fatal facility, and, "before the end of the year, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... been built upon two of the most potent driving forces in all the world—hunger and ambition—the driving force that comes from the empty stomach and the driving force that comes from the desire for betterment. Thus job-owning, based upon an automatic self-drive principle, enables the job-owner to exact a return in faithful service that neither slavery nor serfdom ever made possible. Job-owning is thus the most thorough-going form of mastery yet devised ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... night in middle October when Billy and Caroline met by accident on Thirty-fourth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Caroline stood looking into a drug-store window where an automatic mannikin was shaving himself with ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... supplied her with a pencil and a quantity of sheets of foolscap paper, for this trembling and twitching implied that Reschia, an ancient Egyptian priestess, was longing to use the Princess's hand for automatic writing. After a few wild scrawls and plunges with the pencil, the Princess, though she still continued to talk to them, covered sheet after sheet in large flowing handwriting. This, when it was finished and the Princess sunk back in her chair, proved to be the most wonderful spiritual discourse, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... produce an article almost from raw material to finished product: now he has learned to stand at an automatic and labour at a single part. In short, he is becoming a specialist which makes him a cog in the machine of ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... was an impressive thing to observe two men, who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in conversation—said their pauses and accompanying movements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines. One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles upon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 or ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... 5s. 2d. during the last twenty years, and now send it to you in the Automatic Toast and Muffin Distributor Co., which I see guarantees a return of 500 per cent., with an anticipated increase of 200 per cent. from the sale of concessions in suburban districts. "The Muffins," you say, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... of machines. At length the plate is taken in hand by a machine, or rather a group of machines, which can do almost anything. Before they let it go, they actually perform one hundred and forty-two different operations, each bringing it nearer completion. These machines are automatic, but nevertheless they must be constantly watched by expert machinists to keep them in order and make sure of their turning ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... the address than I perceived a flaw in that part of it; but I have left the passage unaltered ever since, because the flaw did not spoil its illustrative value. The flaw was evident when, as a case analogous to that of a godless universe, I thought of what I called an 'automatic sweetheart,' meaning a soulless body which should be absolutely indistinguishable from a spiritually animated maiden, laughing, talking, blushing, nursing us, and performing all feminine offices as tactfully and sweetly as if a soul were in her. Would any one regard her as a full equivalent? ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... happily there were hundreds of thousands who plainly saw that without the rights of citizenship his freedom could be maintained only in name, and that without the elective franchise his citizenship would have no legitimate and (if the phrase be allowed) no automatic protection. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... ordered the vuescreen as he came in, "robot audio out." With people talking in the house it was still necessary to put the machines under master automatic and manual control. Some of the less sophisticated robots might pick up some chance phrase of conversation and interpret it as an order if ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... areas which lie above them. Such "third-level" functions are those of the life-sustaining processes generally: breathing, heart-beat, vasomotor action (securing the circulation of the blood), etc. These are all called Automatic processes. They go regularly on from day to day, being constantly stimulated by the normal changes in the physiological system itself, and having no need of interference from the mind ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... a blot of ink he sits across the way, Upon the smiling terrace of the Cafe de la Paix; That little wizened Spanish man, his face is ghastly white, His eyes are staring, staring like a tiger's in the night. I know within his evil heart the fires of hate are fanned, I know his automatic's ready waiting to his hand. I know a tragedy is near. I dread, I have no peace . . . Oh, don't you think I ought to go and call upon the police? Look there . . . he's rising up . . . my God! He leaps from out his place . . . Yon millionaire from Argentine . . . the two are face to face ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... wrong. In spite of himself he could not but admit a note of pathos. The automatic voice of politeness would not come at his bidding. He should have left her on the other side of the bridge, where the harsh bells allowed ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... around the table, behind Kato Sugihara and Farida Khouroglu and Heym ben-Hillel, and stood looking down at the man he had killed. He dropped the automatic within a few inches of the dead renegade's outstretched hand, then ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... as outlined above apply equally well for the care of the barrel of the automatic pistol. Special attention should be paid to cleaning the chamber of the pistol, using the soda solution. It has been found that the chamber pits readily if it is not carefully cleaned, with the result that ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... as long as children retain consciousness, a particular part of the head is not commonly pointed out, but asked about it the majority point to the forehead. With small children automatic movements are noticed that also seem to refer to headache, and which consist in rapidly placing the hand on the head and ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... country in a single year." Various reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission state the same facts.] or slain largely because the railroad corporations refused to expend money in the introduction of improved automatic coupling devices, these workers or their heirs were next confronted by what? The unjust and oppressive provisions of worthless employers' liability laws drafted by corporation attorneys in such a form that the worker or his family generally ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... way for the automatic feed conveyors were rapidly moving across our section. First we heard a diminution of sound from one direction, then a hasty scuffling and a happy grunting beneath us and, as the conveyors moved swiftly on, the squealing receded into the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... have gone to Lucy at once, but the telephone rang. He answered it, got his hat and bag and went out to the car. Years with David had made automatic the subordination of self to the demands of ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... cuttings as well as leaf-bud cuttings; numerous hormone treatments using several different hormones in solution and as powders, over a wide range of concentrations, have been tried; a special chamber in which an automatic atomizer nozzle sprays the cuttings intermittently has been used. Results have always been poor. Dormant cuttings have broken dormancy, sent out new leaves, formed an abundance of callus on the basal end, but failed to develop any roots, and finally after several ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... disabled gun was brought up and repaired, subsequently participating in the fighting. The dynamite gun, under Sergeant Borrowe, 1st Volunteer Cavalry, cooperated with the battery thus formed, and the whole battery, including the two Colt automatic rapid-fire guns under Lieut. Tiffany, 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, did good work in all the subsequent fighting. I supplied about eight thousand rounds of captured Mauser cartridges to Tiffany, which had been captured ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... 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 patents must be taken ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... is carried out of his usual tense, conscious self into unconscious rythmic expression of his feeling. What nature does for us in times of great excitement Delsarte will do for us at all times by means of his exercises, practiced until the conscious mechanical motion becomes unconscious, automatic, and the body grows responsive to all high emotions ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... not hesitate to say that there will be a final judgment and an ingathering of the elect from all quarters of the earth.[38] There will be, as the parable of the Ten Virgins suggests, a division and a shut door.[39] But punishment will be automatic. Sin will bring its own consequences. Those only will be excluded at the last who even now are excluding themselves. For Christ is already here, and is judging the world every day. By the common actions ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... new automatic piano in the parlour. As far as the new cabinet was from the what-not this modern bit of mechanism was from the old cottage organ—the latter with its "Casket of Household Melodies" and the former with its ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... herself was wound up every morning. She might have been a clock. She was wound up by Brodrick; otherwise she was self-regulating, provided with a compensation balance, and so long as Brodrick wound her, incapable of going wrong. Jane envied her her secure and secret mechanism, her automatic rhythm, the delicate precision of her ways. Compared with them her own performance was dangerous, fantastic, a dance on a tight-rope. She marvelled at her ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... 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 in the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy |
