"Mechanically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while workingmen laughed and quarrelled—a confusing symphony of the business world. While Steve hurriedly gave his orders Mary Faithful in almost the panoramic fashion of the drowning swiftly recalled the incidents of Steve's life and of the Gorgeous Girl's and her own as well, forcing herself mechanically to say yes and no in answer to his questions and ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... then, amid the maladies of her body, that she found relief to her over-burdened soul in prayer. She no longer prayed with a book, mechanically and by rote, but mentally, with earnestness, and with the understanding. And she prayed directly to God Almighty, and thereby came, she says, to love Him. And with prayer came new virtues. She now ceases to speak ill of people, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... almost virgin to the idea. Our theories assume, and our language is fitted to thinking of government as a frame—Massachusetts, I believe, actually calls her fundamental law the Frame of Government. We picture political institutions as mechanically constructed contrivances within which the nation's life is contained and compelled to approximate some abstract idea of justice or liberty. These frames have very little elasticity, and we take it as an historical commonplace ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... around in his seat and regaled his listless eyes with a long stare into the senorita's pretty face. Behind the careless ease of repose he was mechanically isolating the faint clatter of ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... readily suppose that both are objected to as 'roll-calls of proper names.' Now, it is very true that nothing is more offensive to the mind than the practice of mechanically packing into metrical successions, as if packing a portmanteau, names without meaning or significance to the feelings. No man ever carried that atrocity so far as Boileau, a fact of which Mr. Landor is well aware; and slight is the sanction or excuse that can ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... future than almost any other type. It has chalk and water instead of blood in its veins. It is as cold as if it had been made by machinery and then refrigerated, instead of being brought into being by a mother's love; and it never has an impulse, but just passes through the world mechanically, taking up space that could be better occupied by some warm, struggling, ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... portion of her luxuriant hair—to fill, as she coolly informed her victim, 'an order from a wig-maker.' The screams and struggles of the poor dupe were of no avail, and when finally thrust out of doors by her tormentors, she was so frightened that she wandered mechanically along, up and down streets, until she met a policeman, who, on hearing her story, called a carriage and had her conveyed home, but was not able from her incoherent and inaccurate description, either to identify the place where the outrage was committed, nor the people by whom ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... with a violent start, he wondered what set of brain-cells had been stirred to reproduce rhymes that he had, or so he deemed, long ago forgotten. And still musing, he almost mechanically went on with the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... with me!" Hilda implored; but she spoke mechanically, as though saying something which she was bound to say, but which she ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... congestion of the head, in Beethoven, who made use of cold douches to relieve it, etc. This elevation of the vital tone, this nervous tension, translates itself also into motor form through movements analogous to reflexes, without special end, mechanically repeated and always the same in the same man—e.g., movement of the feet, hands, fingers; whittling the table or the arms of a chair (as in the case of Napoleon when he was elaborating a plan of campaign), etc. It is a safety-valve for the excessive flow of nervous impulse, and ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... him. He began to feel bad as he met the doctor's cold look; and he followed him mechanically ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... unjust!" thought Dick bitterly, as he went on eating mechanically. He no longer knew, really, whether he were eating meat, bread ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... He walked mechanically, like a machine set to go, and going without consciousness or effort—without a question or a thought, without a glance to either ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... echolalia, the child, unobserved, repeating correctly and like a machine, often in a whisper, all sorts of syllables, when he hears them at the end of a sentence. The normal child, before he can speak, repeats sounds, syllables, words, if they are short, "mechanically," without understanding, as he imitates movements of the hands and the head that are made in his sight. Speaking is a movement-making that invites imitation the more because it can be strictly regulated by means ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... sans-culottes and partisans of the "Mountain."[3383] Ordinarily, in a section assembly, they number "ten or fifteen," at most "thirty or forty," "organized into a permanent tyrannical board."... "The rest listen and raise their hands mechanically."... "Three or four hundred Visionaries, whose devotion is as frank as it is stupid, and two or three hundred more to whom the result of the last revolution did not bring the places and honors they too evidently relied on," form the entire ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... comprehend this power which had kindled the world since she had left it? I was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana sat silent upon her peak in Darien. She preserved this utter immobility throughout the number from The Flying Dutchman, though her fingers worked mechanically upon her black dress, as though, of themselves, they were recalling the piano score they had once played. Poor old hands! They had been stretched and twisted into mere tentacles to hold and lift and knead with; the palms unduly swollen, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... devices to enable me mechanically to abide my waking hours. I squared and cubed long series of numbers, and by concentration and will carried on most astonishing geometric progressions. I even dallied with the squaring of the circle . . . until I found myself beginning to believe that that ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Mechanically almost he followed her to the window: she opened and displayed a baby's frock: the light of the torches fell strong upon it, and Sir Morgan recognized it well; for it bore in embroidered colours the bloody hand and the antient ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... gripping the arms of his chair, his bright and hollow eyes fastened upon the prosecutor, Doctor Sherman began in a low voice to deliver his direct testimony. Katherine listened to him rather mechanically at first, even with a twinge of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... us that anybody ever heard this for the first time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on, still unconsciously or mechanically,— ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... have often written before, we lose consciousness of this too, as fully as we do of the characters necessary to convey the substance to another person, and we shall find ourselves writing on as it were mechanically while thinking and talking of something else. So a paid copyist, to whom the subject of what he is writing is of no importance, does not even notice it. He deals only with familiar words and familiar characters ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... He smiled mechanically, thanked her, and passed on while she gazed after him, hurt and struck silent by the cold ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... went quietly and alone to church. St. Paul's stood in a neighbouring street, and its Gothic design would have interested a curious inquirer into the history of a strange revival. Obviously, mechanically, there was nothing amiss. The style chosen was 'geometrical decorated,' and the tracery of the windows seemed correct. The nave, the aisles, the spacious chancel, were reasonably proportioned; and, to be quite serious, the only feature ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... is simply mechanically mixed with a substance it presents but little difficulty. The combined water is a different matter. Slaked lime, even when perfectly dry, contains much water; and if the water of soda crystals were separated and frozen, it would occupy a volume equal to ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... espied a singular character in a grimy old regimental coat, a countenance at once grim and wizened, interwoven paralyzed legs, stiff as icicles, suspended between rude crutches, while the whole rigid body, like a ship's long barometer on gimbals, swung to and fro, mechanically faithful to the motion of the boat. Looking downward while he swung, the cripple seemed ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the darkness, and, at last, the rain subsiding somewhat, Jim stopped, partly to rest his smoking horse, and partly to feed his half-famished companions. Benedict ate mechanically the food that Jim fished out of the basket with a careful hand, and the boy ate as only boys can eat. Jim himself was hungry, and ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... creaked and rattled as the horses toiled up the long slope of the Dog Creek divide. The driver dozed on his seat, his eyes protected from the glare of the hot June sun by the wide brim of his hat, opened mechanically at intervals to glance along the white, dusty trail. Inside, Winthrop Adams Endicott smiled as he noted the eager enthusiasm with which his young wife scanned the panorama of mountains and plain that ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... while she began mechanically to undress, brushed her hair, moved about softly in the uncertain candlelight. And as she did so she became more and more unable to resist the temptation to say "Good-night" to Richie again. Neither brain nor heart was deeply involved in this desire, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... consider some of the practices of a virile race of some five hundred millions of people who have an unimpaired inheritance moving with the momentum acquired through four thousand years; a people morally and intellectually strong, mechanically capable, who are awakening to a utilization of all the possibilities which science and invention during recent years have brought to western nations; and a people who have long dearly loved peace but who can and will fight in self defense ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... they composed a crowd of whom Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . . Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom Mechanically ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... fault; he had killed a man, but that was rather an honourable act than a crime, and he only seemed to regret that it had turned out so unsatisfactorily. He did not seem to have much appetite, but swallowed his yam mechanically in great lumps. The boys shunned him visibly, all but Macao, who squatted down close before him, and gave him food with wild hatred in his eyes, and muttering awful threats. Icy-cold, cruel, with compressed lips and poisonous looks ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Almost mechanically he rolled out, and stood supporting himself by grasping the ledge of the bunk. The swaying, due partly to dizziness and partly to an unaccountable see-saw motion, would have thrown him to the floor but for the assistance afforded by the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... not be moved," he had read to them last night. The promise was being fulfilled in the men of his battalion. They could die at the wire or in the trench, but they could not be moved. While mechanically carrying on his work, his mind was with the fighting, dying remnant of his comrades. The O. C. of the C. C. S. passing on his rounds found Barry carrying on with tears blinding his eyes so that he could hardly see the figures he was ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... M. le Marquis?" repeated the old man mechanically. "I have the right to know," he added with ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... decision, for Mark was so confused with drowsiness that he dressed mechanically, and suffered himself to be led out on to the deck where the comparative coolness made him a little more aware of what was ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... sleepy, appeared presently; together the two went through the routine of chores, as they had done hundreds of times before. They worked mechanically, being still stiff and sore from the previous day's work, but swiftly, in the way mechanical work ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Mechanically, as he went into the kitchen, he drew his cigarette-case from his pocket. It was the proper gesture of a man in any minor crisis. He was not a frequenter of kitchens, and this visit, even more than the brief first one, seemed to ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... liquor away from the poppy leaves, and carried it to the hut. Measuring with great care a small quantity, he lifted the girl's head and placed it to her lips. She drank it mechanically. Then he watched beside her, until her breathing and her pulse changed in character. She slept. He turned aside then, and buried his face in his hands and prayed fervently for her life—prayed as we pray for the daily bread of the heart. He prayed ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Mechanically, Ganimard obeyed, and cracked the egg-shell with the blade of a knife. He uttered a cry of surprise. The shell contained nothing but a small piece of blue paper. At the request of Arsene he unfolded it. It was a telegram, or rather a portion of a telegram from which the post-marks had ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... Marion took Madame Beauvisage by the arm and led her to a sofa. Cecile, finding herself alone, returned to her former seat to avoid hearing Simon's answer to her speech, and the candidate was left standing rather foolishly before the table, where he mechanically played with the counters. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... his cards, "and very likely there is no risk in harboring him and his wife." He shuffled the cards mechanically, his eyes fixed on ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... always mechanically liked children; had ejaculated, "Oh, the pink little darling!" over each neighborhood infant; had pictured children of her own; but never till that night had the desire to feel her own baby's head against her breast been a passion. After ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... He sat down mechanically and looked round the dull little room, and the dulness of it, the dinginess, the unhomelikeness of it struck on his heart as it ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... poem before the Caliph, his rival, after having warmly applauded him, cast down his eyes by accident, and saw shining on the floor one of the pastilles that Osmyn, who was led away by the vivacity of his declamation, had let fall by mistake. The traitor snatched it up, and put it mechanically in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... not so agreeable as he who sits by him without any of those Advantages. When we read, we do it without any exerted Act of Memory that presents the Shape of the Letters; but Habit makes us do it mechanically, without staying, like Children, to recollect and join those Letters. A Man who has not had the Regard of his Gesture in any part of his Education, will find himself unable to act with Freedom ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was still wiping perspiration from his forehead, and he mechanically repeated to Warden the words he had uttered to himself immediately after Lawler left his office: "I'm glad it's over. I've been dreadin' it. He's the only one in the whole bunch that I was afraid of. There'll be hell to pay in this section, now—pure, unadulterated ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... mechanically and began loosing the top bar from its sockets, while he called in the cows to be milked. So many times had he taken down and put up that panel of bars that his hands knew from habit every roughness ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and glad to get it. Only I thought—" He stopped and washed down the mouthful he had torn from the cake with a draft of the coffee which emptied the bowl. She filled it mechanically from the pot in her hand, and he drank again more slowly, and devoured the pone ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... Mechanically, at last, she moved away, and with slow steps and downcast eyes passed through the favourite walk that led into the quiet burial-ground. The gate closed upon her, and now the lawn, the gardens, the haunts of Evelyn, were solitary as the desert itself; but the daisy opened to the sun, and the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Somehow, my eye and ear always disappointed themselves in the absence of rooks from such places. My senses ought to have been better instructed than to expect rooks in London, but they had been so educated to the sight and sound of rooks everywhere else in England that they mechanically demanded them in town. I do not even know what birds they were that sang in the spaces; but I was aware of a fringe of sparrow-chirpings sharply edging their song next the street; and where the squares were reduced to crescents, or narrow parallelograms, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... endurable than his insolence. Telling him that he need say no more, Mountjoy bowed to Mrs. Vimpany, and left the room. She returned his bow mechanically, in silence. Mr. Vimpany followed Hugh out—thinking of the diamond pin, and eager to open the house door, as another act of submission which might ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... took but a glance to satisfy him that what he had seen in his dream was but the reflection in his own thought of the idea in the Jew's mind. He did not stop to ask any explanation of the fact; the fact itself pressed too hard upon him. While the match was still burning he mechanically noticed the Jew's face, as it leaned over the paper near his own—not a handsome face, but gentle and noble in its expression. Then the match went out; it dropped from his hand, a tiny spark, into the grass, and for a moment ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... bronchi, &c. The ribs are the true enclosures of thoracic space, and, generally, in mammalian forms, they fail or degenerate at that region of the trunk which is not pulmonary or respiratory. In human anatomy, a teleological reason is given for this—namely, that of the ribs being mechanically subservient to the function of respiration alone. But the transcendental anatomists interpret this fact otherwise, and refer it to the operation of ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... but even his society Kenrick seemed to shun. He was in that morbid, unhealthy state when to meet others inspires a positive shrinking of mind. He seemed to have no pleasure except in shutting himself up in his study, and in taking long lonely walks. He performed his house duties mechanically, and by routine; when he read the lessons in chapel, his voice sounded as though it came from afar, like the voice of one who dreamed; he sat with his books before him for long hours, and made no progress, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... a fog. I steered mechanically. The face I had seen at the open port of the Peveril was still before me, as in a vision. I knew I had not been tricked by any hallucination. I had not even been thinking of the fellow at the time. And I was sure that the ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... word, Chris took the folded clothes that seemed so unfamiliar off the stool and dressed behind the other leather chair, his lower lip trembling. Mechanically, as boys will, he shifted everything from his pockets to those of the trousers he had just put on. With careful slow gestures he folded up the knee breeches, the full-sleeved shirt, the long white hose and silver buckled shoes, the flare-backed jacket last of all, and put them where his ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... necessity for trying to bring the chest out or the shoulders far back. The simple movements of the neck alone as described, if properly performed, will fulfill all requirements. For these movements tend mechanically to raise and arch the chest and to throw the shoulders far backward. Remember also the necessity, when taking these movements, of keeping the abdominal region expanded as fully as possible. Do not draw in the waist line. The importance of this admonition cannot be too strongly ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... thunder down Trafalgar Road, and stopped for him with a jar, and he gingerly climbed into it, practising all precautions on behalf of his violoncello. The car slid away again towards Bursley, making blue sparks. Mrs Swann stared mechanically at the flickering gas in her lobby, and then closed her front door. He was gone! The boy ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... matter-of-fact, that he ceased to think of it. Nothing could influence him any more. Even if some vague current of soul activity should revolt at the very last moment, he was certain that his hand would mechanically ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... And mechanically Phina's hand sought the key-board and rippled along a series of sinking sevenths, which spoke of a plaintive sadness, unintelligible perhaps to the ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... the sonorous melody, rising to enthusiasm till the music of massed bands followed it as a flag follows a flag-stick. The hymn was one composed ten years before, and all England was familiar with it. Old Mrs. Bland lifted the printed paper mechanically to her eyes, and saw the words that ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... upon her suddenly. Some one had left a newspaper in the sick-room; it was weeks since she had seen one, and in a brief interval, while her father slept, or seemed to sleep, she took it up half mechanically. How much it would have interested her a little while ago, how meaningless it all seemed to her now. "Latest Telegrams," "News from the Seat of War," "Parliamentary Intelligence" a speech by Sir Michael Cunningham, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a machine-shop, or a forecastle, provided he has learned to work with thoroughness the soil he knows. After all is said and done, however, books remain the chief quarries. Johnson declared, putting the thing perhaps too mechanically, "The greater part of an author's time is spent in reading in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book." Addison collected three folios of materials before publishing the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... still continuing, the master began mechanically to look over the desks for forgotten or mislaid articles, and to rearrange the pupils' books and copies. A few heartsease gathered by the devoted Octavia Dean, neatly tied with a black thread and regularly left ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... with him mechanically, and let him hold her hand in his while he wiped off the blood with his own handkerchief, treating her with a tenderness for which he could hardly account himself. He pitied her, he said, suspecting that she had repented of her rashness, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... to the commanding stranger; and Henry, almost mechanically, obeyed his direction, muttering to himself, "Free and easy, upon my honor." He had scarcely entered the usual reception-room and made his bow to Mrs. Duffield, when the servant presented his brother's card. He watched her closely, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... their destination. Lasse awoke as they drove on to the stone paving of the large yard, and groped mechanically in the straw. But suddenly he recollected where he was, and was sober in an instant. So this was their new home, the only place they had to stay in and expect anything of on this earth! And as he looked out over the big yard, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... his bachelor room at the Club, he realised that fever was on him again: his eyeballs burning; little hammers beating all over his head. Mechanically, he picked up two letters that lay awaiting him: one from his father, one from Jeffers, congratulating him, in rather guarded phrases, on his ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... captain-scientist replied, soberly. "Mechanically, the ship is as nearly perfect as our finest minds can make her. She is stocked for two years. All the iron-bearing suns within reach have been plotted. Everything is ready except the iron. Of course the Council refused to allow us any of the national ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... answered I, stepping forward and mechanically touching my hat; and "Here I am, sir," answered Tom Copplestone, suddenly appearing from nowhere ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... took the chair the general had vacated, and began mechanically the closing of the letters; but when that to the Governor of New Jersey was reached, he paused in the process. After a little, he took from his pocket Janice's frantic supplication, and reread it, his face ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the man with the crawling toy, and of the pedler of colored Christmas candles passed him by unheard. Women with big baskets jostled him, stopped and fingered his cabbages; he answered their inquiries mechanically. Adam's mind was not in the street, at his stand, but in the dark back basement where his wife Hansche was lying, there was no telling how sick. They could not afford a doctor. Of course, he might send to the hospital ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... chair, mechanically secured the little garment, and then, leaning back, looked down moodily at her feet. The little boy began silently to put on and lace ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the hundred thousand men covering that plain. If I were wounded, I should be in an hospital, carelessly treated by ignorant surgeons. All that I had heard of surgical operations returned to my memory. My heart beat violently; and mechanically I arranged, as a species of cuirass, the handkerchief and portfolio that I carried in the breast of my uniform. I was overwhelmed by fatigue, and continually fell into a doze, but as often as I did so, some sinister idea awoke me with a start. Fatigue, however, at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to it. Perhaps even a more conclusive evidence is that the eggs (every form of both vegetable and animal life develops from an egg) of some animals rather high in the one tree of mundane life, which has a common root and a stump, but two stems, the vegetable and the animal, can be mechanically fertilized by chemical processes. ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Balzac has twenty-four stories on his list, whereas only two, "The Chouans" and "A Passion in the Desert," were executed. But surely, sufficient was done, looking to the comedy as a whole, to force us to describe the execution as well as the conception as gigantic. Had the work been more mechanically pushed to its end for the exact plan's sake, the perfection of scheme might have been attained at the expense of vitality and inspiration. Ninety-seven pieces of fiction, the majority of them elaborate novels, the whole involving several thousand characters, would be impressive ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the hours as they went by. As yet our strength was not materially decreased. Though our arms ached, we could still mechanically labour at the oars when we got into our seats; but I very much doubt that we made as much as three ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... huddled against the closet-door she never knew. The first thing of which she was clearly conscious was the feel of a key stealthily moved in the lock beneath her hand. Then the sounds of footsteps lightly tiptoeing away. Mechanically she turned the knob, the door yielded, and she staggered blindly out from the darkness into the sunlit room. It ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... causes of the balance being destroyed, and thus re-instate the lost equilibrium of solids and liquids. He therefore concludes, that a medicine supposes a flowing of the humours or liquids; that it operates mechanically; that it acts only mediately; that its good or bad effects depend entirely on the bulk, motion, and figure of the acting particles, and that the destruction of the balance must be deduced from the solids. So that, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself with a skimmer. When the party had spread the lunch on the ground and gathered around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them mechanically, but his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is not enough of him left for ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... mechanically, in a low, quiet voice. All the sense of it that came to her brain was Tristram's firm utterance, "I, Tristram Lorrimer Guiscard, take thee, Zara Elinka, to be my ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... the paper mechanically. He wanted it as a diversion to the conversation merely, for his interest in the doings of Surrey and Yorkshire had waned to the point of complete indifference in competition with ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... said, that the sons of the Godolphin Arabian had better wind than other Horses, and that this perfection of the wind was in the blood. But when we consider any Horse thus mechanically made, whose leavers acquire more purchase, and whose powers are stronger than his adversaries, such a Horse will be enabled by this superiority of mechanism, to act with greater facility, and therefore it is no wonder that the organs of respiration (if not confined or straitened ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... with wild and unconnected images floating through her heated brain, she followed almost mechanically to the cottage. ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... orders. I thought we would keep out of sight well enough! We were going up hill—up the hill on which Fort Runyon now stands. Here is a shanty. What if it should be full of the enemy, and we but four poor frightened men, with our battalion hidden by the turn in the road. Mechanically I cocked my rifle and opened the door, and strained my eyes into the darkness. Nobody. I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... turned, and on those bright hopes pondered Whereof yon gay fancies were the type; And my hand mechanically wandered Towards my left-hand pocket for ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... much has been done in which I take great pride. But this is not personal pride. It is pride in the people, in the Nation. It is pride in our political system and our form of government—balky sometimes, mechanically deficient perhaps, in many ways—but enormously alive and vigorous; able through these years to keep the Republic on the right course, rising to the great occasions, accomplishing the essentials, meeting the basic ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... Mechanically, Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to Edward's brother, and suddenly clasped her infant closer to her bosom when she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of Gloucester—Warwick's grim avenger in the future—fixed upon that harmless life, destined to interpose ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. So, again, when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art, conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... the wind among the pines—all were anxiously noted by his overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly in front of his line, he heard a faint, confused rumble, like the clatter of a falling building translated by distance. The lieutenant mechanically looked at his watch. Six o'clock and eighteen minutes. At the same moment an officer approached him on foot ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... and he wasn't especially brilliant. But after another day and night he hit on the notion of sending one of the coolies back with the news while he and the other men waited and watched. They kept her supplied with food. She must have eaten almost mechanically. But she never left that ledge. And yet—and yet—she was kept from taking the one step that would have ended it all. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... ready to be mobilized in the defense of it; or between these and the still more general preparedness through the organization and control of the human factor in ways that are not specifically military or mechanically ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... I knew not where to direct my steps. I was dropping with wet, and shivering with the cold. I was destitute of habitation and friend. I had neither money nor any valuable thing in my possession. I moved forward mechanically and at random. Where I landed was at no great distance from the verge of the town. In a short time I discovered the glimmering of a distant lamp. To this I directed my steps, and here I paused to examine the contents ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... instincts of the villain were re-awakened; mechanically he drew the long knife from his boot, and held its point over the heart of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... moved as mechanically as those of an automaton and her face was as expressionless. "Oh!" Her eyes seemed burning through Armitage. "And you made ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... stable-yard. By this entrance, no doubt, had come the keeper, a small, brown-faced, brown-clothed man of mature years, with the strap of a pouch over his shoulder, who stood looking at the contents of the shelves. He mechanically saluted Thorpe in turn, and then resumed his occupation. There were numerous gun cases on the lower shelf, and many boxes and ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... were busily employed in her. The little boat had just left her laden with a heavy cargo. Smart and the two maids were apparently waiting to receive what she brought, and assist in unloading her. Scattered in numerous and pretty groups along the shore were all my loved companions. I slowly and mechanically counted them, as if I feared from the unwonted stillness some were missing; but they were all there; I thanked God, and sat down to recover myself. One of the dogs barked, and I saw my cousin run forward to silence him. The little girls were feeding the ducks and chickens, at least two ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... also are not absorbable, and they act with benefit in some cases. About the worst thing to do, in general, is to take physics constantly. These are not physics, however; they act mechanically. Even the C.S. (common-sense?) individual can take these. The agar may be taken two or three heaping teaspoonfuls in a large glass of water before retiring, or in the morning before breakfast, or in lieu of 4 o'clock tea. Drink it down rapidly—for goodness' sake, ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... he spoke, and as the smoke rose and he looked up, loading mechanically the while, he caught sight of a long gun dropping swiftly down, barrel first, to fall close by one of the camels, grunting and moaning as it bore its balanced load along ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... Maupassant, in the fever of production, became less careful. He early accustomed himself to composing in his mind. "Composition amuses me," he said, "when I am thinking it out, and not when I am writing it." ... Once he had thought out his novels or romances, he transcribed them hurriedly, almost mechanically. In his manuscripts, long pages follow each other without ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... mechanically, for he was no longer able to stand. He closed his eyes, and for a minute or two life seemed to pass from him; then he recovered, and saw the good doctor's gaze fixed on him with great compassion. He silently stretched forth his hand towards the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
