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Automatic   /ˌɔtəmˈætɪk/  /ˌɔtoʊmˈætɪk/   Listen
Automatic

adjective
1.
Operating with minimal human intervention; independent of external control.  "A budget deficit that caused automatic spending cuts"
2.
Resembling the unthinking functioning of a machine.  Synonyms: automatonlike, machinelike, robotic, robotlike.  "Machinelike efficiency"
3.
Without volition or conscious control.  Synonyms: reflex, reflexive.  "A reflex knee jerk" , "Sneezing is reflexive"



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"Automatic" Quotes from Famous Books



... of these congenial diversions and tiring of the shop talk that has been going on, the second dentist returns to his original prey and the party who has you in charge tries a new experiment. He arms himself with a kind of an automatic hammering machine, somewhat similar to the steam riveter used in constructing steel office buildings, except that this one is more compact and can deliver about eighty-five more blows to the second. Thus equipped, he descends far below your high water mark and engages ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... regards its mere animal life—in active functions, such as those connected with hunger, respiration, sleep, digestion; in many passive ones, such as we are accustomed to call mental, as in memory, the perception of color, sound—a purely automatic action of the body, which it pursues simply by following out its own laws, independent of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... on a hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... modern part of his equipment was his weapon. He did not want to carry one openly, so he had purchased a small but highly efficient automatic pistol, which he wore in a shoulder scabbard inside his shirt and ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... been dealt with in The Hague Convention, No. viii. of 1907, ratified with a reservation, by Great Britain on November 27, 1907. By Art. 1 it is forbidden "(1) to lay unanchored automatic-contact mines, unless they are so constructed as to become harmless one hour at most after he who has laid them has lost control over them; (2) to lay anchored automatic-contact mines which do not become harmless as soon as they have broken loose from their moorings; (3) to ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... inquiries, that all his Punches speak by the card. But as to even the smallest of the Punch family being "fed" on cards, or getting his or her living by cards, the statement is utterly at variance with the facts. Mr. P. is quite sure that the "Jacquard Automatic Reading and Punching Syndicate" will at once retract the injurious statement, or the youthful, vigorous and pugnacious Punches will be inquiring of Mr. P., as Sam Weller did of Mr. Pickwick when that gentleman's great name was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various

... forcibly contended that any improvement in the material condition of the mass of the people would result in an increase of the birth rate which, by extending the supply of labour, would bring down wages by an automatic process to the old level. There would be more people and they would all be as miserable as before. The actual decline of the birth rate, whatever its other consequences may be, has driven this argument from the field. The birth rate does not increase ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... next room. At the production of the coat during the demonstration of the markings of the bullet, Mrs. Parker had betrayed great emotion, Mr. Bruce had done likewise, and nothing more than ordinary emotion had been noted for the rest of us. Miss La Neige's automatic record during the tracing out of the sending of the note to Parker had been especially unfavourable to her; Mr. Bruce showed almost as much excitement; Mrs. Parker very little and Downey very little. It was all set forth ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... good nor harm. But for the whole period there was an incessant and fierce discussion. That discussion was terminated by the Act of 1844. By that Act the currency manages itself; the entire working is automatic. The Bank of England plainly does not manage—cannot even be said to manage—the currency any more. And naturally, but rashly, the only reason upon which a public responsibility used to be assigned to ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... door of the automatic restaurant and walked over to the vending wall. The big dining room was only about three quarters full of people, and there were plenty of seats available. He fed coins into the proper slots, took his sandwich and milk over to a seat in one corner ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... scientific mind there is special interest in the sequacity of sheep, their habit of following one another with automatic imitation. This instinct, we are told, has been developed by ages of wild crowded racing on narrow ledges, along precipices, chasms, around sudden spurs and corners, only the leader seeing when, where and how to jump. If those behind ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... always seemed to be something comic in that flapping skirt and short cover-coat above it; but now, under the glare of the mid-day sun, with those faces gathered round them, it appeared rather to add a grotesque horror to the scene. The dragoman salaamed like some ungainly, automatic doll, and then, as the chief rasped out a curt word or two, he fell suddenly upon his face, rubbing his forehead into the sand, and flapping ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... the direction of the sounds. From all directions came the sounds of footfalls as other plain-clothes men raced to be in at the death. Bentley held his automatic tightly gripped in his right hand. He knew exactly where he was going to aim if the ape were not ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... original recommendations were: that publishers or importers of comics should apply for registration of every title and that only suitable titles should be registered. The sale of unregistered comics was to be an offence. This procedure may be preferable to the subsequently suggested system of automatic registration ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie

... fuel charges for the engine and automatically mixes them with the proper amount of air to form a highly combustible gas. The Marvel Model "S" Carbureter is of the automatic air valve, heat controlled ...
— Marvel Carbureter and Heat Control - As Used on Series 691 Nash Sixes Booklet S • Anonymous

... The Ambassador was a perfect machine, automatic, self-adjusting, self-regulating. It was built to last and do its job without failure under any and all conditions, as long as there was a universe around it. And it could not fail. There was no ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... soldier, and in obtaining for him a guarantee that the wage shall continue until he obtains civil employment on standard terms at the conclusion of the war. It must make impossible the scandal of a monstrously rich peer (his riches, the automatic result of ground land-landlordism, having "no damned nonsense of merit about them") proclaiming the official weekly allowance for the child of the British soldier in the trenches. That allowance is eighteenpence, being less than one third of the standard allowance for an illegitimate child under ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... up an S.O.S. rocket, and his machine-gun jammed. In a minute they were all mixed up, at it tooth and claw as merry as a Galway election, the big Bosch officer, throwing off a hymn of hate, the life and soul of the party. He came for Patrick with an automatic, and Patrick thought all was up; and so it would have been but for Goldilocks, who materialized suddenly out of nowhere, deftly tripped up his officer from behind, and, dancing on his stomach with inspired hooves, trod ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... wide stairway under the unlighted porte-cochere. It was a dark night, and the lights of the motor-cars cut as sharply through the blackness as knives would cut through solid substance. The obsequious lackey—the automatic genie of the house which belonged to none of the three men,—stood like a graven statue after having helped them in. The fur-coated chauffeurs bulked dimly in their seats. One after the other, like spurred steeds, the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... should happen while the guests were still there." Then he added, gravely: "In strict confidence, I had planned to have it fall just as we were pushing back our chairs, but the confounded thing disappointed me. That's the trouble with these automatic climaxes; they usually hang fire. It was to have been a sort of Fall of ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... maimed and mangled among the railroad men injured [Footnote: of the country in a single year." Various reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission state the same facts.] or slain largely because the railroad corporations refused to expend money in the introduction of improved automatic coupling devices, these workers or their heirs were next confronted by what? The unjust and oppressive provisions of worthless employers' liability laws drafted by corporation attorneys in such a form that the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... control of this democracy of consumers it has directly or indirectly kept down prices, and protected the wage-earning class from exploitation by the Credit System and from the extortions of monopolist traders and speculators. By this same device on purchases, and the automatic accumulation of part of the profit in the capital of each society and in that of the Wholesales, it has demonstratedly added to the personal wealth of the manual working class, and has, alike in Great Britain, and in other countries, afforded both a valuable financial reserve to the ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... nowhere, the chauffeur had produced a thin black automatic and was now lazily pointing it, not so much at Ross Wooley as at Dr. Braun and Patricia. He said evenly, ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... him, laughed alone. Gwynplaine had nothing to do with it. The outside did not depend on the interior. The laugh which he had not placed, himself, on his brow, on his eyelids, on his mouth, he could not remove. It had been stamped for ever on his face. It was automatic, and the more irresistible because it seemed petrified. No one could escape from this rictus. Two convulsions of the face are infectious; laughing and yawning. By virtue of the mysterious operation to which Gwynplaine had ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... In acquiring an automatic habit, which technique should become, principles tend to crystallize into rules, and a few such I have; counsels of perfection many of these, too often unrealized. I do not like the same word repeated in the same paragraph, though this ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny, white cotton undershirt covered his torso; and from a belt about his middle dangled a tobacco pouch, a sheath-knife, filled clips of cartridges, and a huge automatic pistol in ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... forward. The further inward folding of the hinge of this rod next appears to divide the wing into two, the second portion passing under the first, and thus bringing the wing down to half its original size. By this time the mechanical or automatic folding process stops, and the rest of the folding up has to be done by the aid of the pincers at the end of the body. Finally the packing up is complete, and the two hard outer cases, like a couple of tarpaulins, are drawn over the delicate wings ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... the new organs were for—whether they were a good or a bad thing. He had not taken a dozen steps up the ravine before he found out. Just as he was in the act of jumping down from the top of a boulder, his vision altered and he came to an automatic standstill. He was perceiving two worlds simultaneously. With his own eyes he saw the gorge as before, with its rocks, brook, plant-animals, sunshine, and shadows. But with his acquired eyes he saw differently. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... that. Well, my pater had an orchestrion put in the drawing-room. One of these automatic things you switch on, you know. Makes a devil of a row. Bennett can't stand it, and Mortimer insists on playing it all day. Well, they hotted up a goodish ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... closet, he rose at the stroke with the mechanical precision of the figures which are made to move by springs in the German toys. He would then advance slowly towards the players, give them a glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, "Go away!" There were days when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely annoying, and would ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... values of this series were issued in coil form for use in automatic vending machines. These were first issued in November, 1912, perf. 8 vertically and imperforate at top and bottom. In October, 1913, the 1c was issued perf. 8 horizontally and imperforate at the sides and shortly afterwards the ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... pause, 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. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... when not interpreted materialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers, when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future not so much similar to the past, as better. ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... is! Most of the things brought here are so absurd. Automatic hat-tippers, self-defrosting galoshes, punching bags that defend themselves—" Disdainfully she indicated the display collection of screwball items we call our Chamber of Horrors. "It's simply marvelous to meet a man who has invented ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond

... begged to forward the enclosed acrostic, and might he be allowed to print it in the Mudborough Young Men's Mutual Improvement Magazine? Messrs. Smith & Smith would be extremely obliged if Mr. Lionel Moore would honor them with his opinion of the accompanying pair of their patent silver-mounted automatic ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... things much more quickly, and with fuller cooperation than man ever could. In a matter of hours, under the direction of C-R-U-1, they had built a great automatic machine on the clear bare surface of the rock. In hours more, thousands of the tiny, material-energy driven machines ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell

... 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 ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... 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 out and the Press must be at work. You'll see, my ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... filled with a noisy racket. Exhaust pipes on roofs puffed out violent jets of steam; an automatic sawmill added a rhythmic screeching; a button factory shook the ground with the rumbling of its machines. She was looking up toward the Montmartre height, hesitant, uncertain whether to continue, when a gust of wind blew down a mass of sooty smoke that covered the entire street. She ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... than had been the case when General Suvaroff had led his daring raid behind the German lines in the effort to capture von Hindenburg. For five minutes the fighting was fast and furious. Fred could hear the clash of steel against steel and the spiteful spitting of revolvers and automatic pistols. Then the wild Russian shout of victory arose, and he heard sounds of galloping fast dying away. Even though he could see nothing, he knew ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... Smugglers' Cove, and the girl soon perceived the ingenuity of his automatic signal. He securely bound the block of wood to a tree where it was hidden by the undergrowth. Breaking the bullet out of a cartridge, he placed the blank charge in position in front of the striker, the case being ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... discover in Americans those permanent and universal traits common to all nationalities. In his commentary upon Bourget's 'Outre Mer', he declared that there wasn't a single human characteristic that could safely be labelled "American"—not a single human detail, inside or outside. Through years of automatic observation, Mark Twain learned to discover for America, to adapt his own phrase, those few human peculiarities that can be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the name of the nation ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... would I, reasoning wisely, pronounce you just a beast? Your actions "automatic," not "conscious" in the least? Set myself so high above you, As not to know and love you, And toss you but a bone while ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... Hughes programme prevented the Premier from taking stock of the nation. He permitted Hughes to treat Quebec as an automatic part of Canada at war—which it was not; and he failed to use even the Machiavellian energies of Bob Rogers in getting a line on the psychology of the West, supposed to be useful only in elections. Sir Robert had long known of the menace of Germany, and his Naval Aid Bill was ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... males are surely due to "natural" or "automatic" as opposed to "conscious" selection. If there were gradations in the sounds produced, from mere noises, up to elaborate music—the case would be analogous to that of "colours" and "ornament." Being, however, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... coiled in his hand and his head was turned towards the girl, his brain busy with his thoughts of her and her wilfulness. From the tail of his eye he caught the first lunge of the bull, and that automatic mental adjustment to unexpected situations, which we call presence of mind, sent a knee-signal to Surry which that ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... you returning from the front and bringing within their carefully closed walls the finished product, the fruits of the day's grinding, or a fraction thereof. And about the whole thing there was a sense of the mechanical rather than the human, something that suggested an automatic, a machine-driven, movement; it was as if an unseen system of belts and engines and levers guided, moved, propelled this long procession upward and ever toward the mysterious front where the knives or the axes or the grinding ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds

... detour through the woods so as to approach the cabin on the side away from the path, where there was little likelihood of those inside keeping a lookout. Very cautiously they advanced from the concealment of the woods, Frank Brandon with his right hand on the butt of a deadly looking automatic pistol. They crept close to the wall of the cabin, and listened intently for some sign of ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... sat like some stone image, or like a dead man set upright. At first, under the fiery torrent of the Gadfly's despair, he had quivered a little, with the automatic shrinking of the flesh, as under the lash of a whip; but now he was quite still. After a long silence he looked ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... 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 ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... miles per hour; the altitude was at the same time increased to ten thousand feet; the course was set to south, by compass, and the travellers, with a feeling of perfect security, retired to rest, confident that the professor's clever automatic devices would not only maintain the ship at her then elevation, but would also steer her straight in the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... uttered in an emphatic voice, half-surprised remonstrance, half-automatic rebuke; "I am astonished!" She looked it. She pursed her lips more tightly, and gazed at the pair of culprits as though she had hoped better things of them and again had been disappointed. "You know quite well ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... minute to shove his automatic into his pocket and secure his rifle from the corner. Groping his way to the door he stood shivering on the threshold, staring into the thick ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... lighted, and when the furnaces required more coal, suddenly a whistle brought fifty stokers or firemen, the automatic furnace doors flew open, and a gleam of light flooded everything. Long lances made draft-holes in the banks of burning coal, through which the air was sucked with increasing roar. The round, red mouths of the hundred craters ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... Percy was rapidly developing a considerable taste), and a good deal of discussion on all sorts of topics, they were deep in constructing the model of a new kind of bookcase, designed by Percy, with some ingenious contrivances for keeping out dust and for marking, by means of automatic signals, the place of any book which should be taken from its shelf. This wonderful work of art promised to eclipse every bookcase ever invented. The only drawback to it was that it was too good. Percy insisted ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... mostly in the night—when I would write and write so rapidly that morning would find me often not able to decipher the greater part of what I had written ... five or ten poems in a night ... scrawled madly almost like automatic writing.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... the case, then, we find the reason why the life, love, and beauty of the Spirit are not visibly reproduced in every human being. They ARE reproduced in the world of nature, so far as a mechanical and automatic action can represent them, but their perfect reproduction can only take place on the basis of a liberty akin to that of the Originating Spirit itself, which therefore implies the liberty of negation as ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... it comes more as a shock than as an image, and we find that it is felt more as a feeling mass than as an image. Even in our ordinary life the elements which precede an act of knowledge are probably mere feelings. As we go lower down the scale of evolution the automatic actions and relations of matter are concomitant with crude manifestations of feeling which never rise to the level of knowledge. The lower the scale of evolution the less is the keenness of feeling, till at last there ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... prayer to herself. She was nearer the door than Craig by about half-a-dozen paces. Her hand groped in the little bag she was carrying and gripped something hard. She clenched her teeth for a moment. Then the automatic pistol flashed out ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a machine, an automatic one, which produces things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no others, are the result of one universal and eternal process ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... 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

... as minute and fine as that of an engraver upon stone is slowly executed on my person; and their lean hands harrow and worry me with automatic precision. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... The People were naturally aesthetic; that The People's own untutored instinct would always unerringly select the best; that it was an insult to the noble idealism of The People to try to educate them; they were, so to speak, born with an education, ready-made, automatic, in sound working order from the beginning. Now, anyone almost may have theories, but if they are wise souls they won't try to apply them. If they have never been practically tested they can't be proved fallacious and thus may be treasured and loved and petted indefinitely, ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... then, than in this very department of applied mechanics. To-day such a model as Watt constructed in the cellar would be simple work indeed. Even the gasoline or the electric motor of to-day, though complicated far beyond the steam model, is now produced by automatic machinery. Skilled workmen do not have to fashion the parts. They only stand looking on at machinery—itself made by automatic tools—performing work of unerring accuracy. Had Watt had at his call only a small part of the ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company. The manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in railroad tickets, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... the ways. One man attempts form and adjustment by locally influencing the parts,—the tongue, the lips, the soft palate, the larynx, etc. This results in muscular singing and artificiality. We have found that form and adjustment, to be right, must be automatic. This condition cannot be secured by any system of direct local effort, but must be the result of flexible, vitalized bodily movements—movements which arouse and develop all the true conditions of tone; movements which allow the ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer

... sporting goods store that made a specialty of fitting out travelers who hunted in the wilds, Mr. Alcando wanted to purchase for Blake and Joe complete camping outfits, portable stoves, guns, knives, patent acetylene lamps, portable tents, automatic revolvers and ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... fashion of an over-inflated 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, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... Simultaneous Attention or observing, which consists in giving attention to a number of things at once; and (3) Disparate Attention, or giving attention to two or more things over a period of time. Memory may be (1) Automatic, (2) Voluntary, or (3) Retentive. The function of the tests is to determine just which one of these processes are weak or strong and discover a method of education which is suited to the individual. Other mental ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... line about "striking the electric chain"? —To be sure I do. I sometimes think the less the hint that stirs the automatic machinery of association, the more easily this moves us. What can be more trivial than that old story of opening the folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some ancient English hall and finding the flakes of Christmas pastry between its leaves, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... multitudes, as are the dwellers in cities today. To a degree almost all animals are gregarious, but the units of organization are much smaller with them than with man, excepting possibly in the case of the ant and the bee, insects which seem specially adapted to live a highly automatic and cooperative life, such as human beings cannot possibly reach. But primitive men and their direct ancestors lived in small groups. They could not have preserved their life in any other way. They lived by fishing and hunting and by gathering roots, berries and herbs. Later they ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... domestic: automatic digital network international: country code (Saint Helena) - 290, (Ascension Island) - 247; international direct dialing; satellite voice and data communications; satellite earth stations - 5 (Ascension Island - 4, Saint Helena ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... no detail of Claude's life in camp so trivial that Mrs. Wheeler did not want to hear about it. She asked about the mess, the cooks, the laundry, as well as about his own duties. She made him describe the bayonet drill and explain the operation of machine guns and automatic rifles. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal would be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and expectation which makes virtue easy. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... secret sub-conscious alliance with the will, is a permanent automatic energy, working in the hidden darkness of the roots of things like an ever-flowing subterranean stream. The revelations of intuition, on the other hand, are not flowing and constant, but separate, isolated, distinct and detached. In the subject-matter of their revelations, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... should have lost Bridget because of the loves of Wombo and Oola! It was an irony—as if God were laughing at him. He set his teeth and laughed—the mirthless laugh which had startled Harris.... Well, whether it were automatic or planned retribution on the part of the High Powers, the trouble could be evened up and done with. 'I was a damned fool,' he said to himself; 'and I've been taught my lesson too late for me to benefit by ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... men in the automatic room are shaping for trouble," he said, as soon as their greetings ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... once more and tighten and knot together the loosened threads which represented the unfinished record that his race had woven into the social fabric of the metropolis was merely an automatic matter ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... were reading a paper by a man of that science which deals with life on strictly physical lines, and drawing from it an immense consolation because it reaffirmed that the soul has not only its old excuse for being in the unthinkability of an automatic universe and the necessity of an intentional first cause, but with Evolution, in the regard of some scientists, tottering on its throne, and Natural Selection entering the twilight into which the elder pagan deities have vanished, is newly warranted in claiming existence as that indestructible ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... the nearest shack, rifle in one hand and a small automatic in the other. She saw the blood on Adrian's collar and made straight for him. For a moment her ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... the proportion of the commodity that it controls in its operations. It is my belief that if this were made the datum point for regulation, and if regulation were made of a rigorous order, this pressure would result in such business keeping below the limit of regulation. Thus the automatic result would be the building up of a proper competition, because men in manufacturing would rather conduct a smaller business free of governmental regulation than enjoy large operations subject to governmental control. There are probably only a very few concerns in the United States that would ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... she snatched the automatic pistol from her bosom and, dropping the muzzle, fired. The man stumbled back with a cry. He stood grabbing at his shoulder, his florid face turning white, his eyes starting with terror and pain. She saw him reel and fall through the open hatch ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... was murderously suspicious of him, and I walked about with my automatic arsenal ostentatiously displayed. But he looked like such a miserable little shrimp that I became ashamed of my precautions. Besides, as he cheerfully pointed out, a little koonti soaked in my drinking water, would have done my business for me if he had meant me any physical harm. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... not new to him, and during the two past weeks of aimless wandering he had carried with him his service automatic. To reassure himself he laid his fingers on its cold smooth surface. He would wait, he determined, until the musicians had finished their concert and the women and children had ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... cut into the proper lengths by a small steel knife, so arranged that when the regular length of wire is drawn, the knife descends and cuts it off. Next, each small piece of wire, for we can hardly call it anything else yet, is headed by a sharp rap from a small automatic hammer. Lastly, the blunt ends are pointed by passing over a series of rapidly revolving emery-wheels, and the pin falls, the essentially completed article, into a large box, at the rate of three or ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... the automatic control and go to an electelscope which had been equipped with an infra-red device. He directed it rearward on Satellite III, back along the course the Sandra had described, and peered through its eyepiece for several minutes. Then he turned to ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... sarcasm passed miles over his head. She had touched the spring of the automatic card-index system known as his memory and the ingenious machinery worked on. Presently it pushed out and laid before him the complete record, neatly ticketed and arranged, the full dossier, of all that had passed between him and the girl. But ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... she exclaimed, with renewed animation, patting his shoulder in a brisk, automatic way, to point the beginnings of her confidences: "I'll tell you something. It's about myself. I've got a religion of my own, and it's got just one plank in it, and that is that the time to separate the sheep from the goats is on Judgment ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... the fact that a lady who lived with us, a Miss L. S., developed the power of automatic writing. Of all forms of mediumship, this seems to me to be the one which should be tested most rigidly, as it lends itself very easily not so much to deception as to self-deception, which is a more subtle and dangerous thing. Is the lady herself writing, or is there, as she avers, ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle

... contrivances in mills that they call 'automatic sprinklers.' When the fire touches them it melts away a covering, and a gas is set free that puts the fire out. And if we let in the thought of God, it will extinguish any flame. 'The sun puts out the fire in our grates,' the old ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... jolly face of our president, the D.A.D.M.S., nor the irrepressible spirit of our A.P.M., son of a distinguished father who commanded an Army, nor the dry common-sense humour of our Field Cashier. What delight they took in ragging the Senior Chaplain, whose automatic ears, as he averred, prevented his hearing the things he should not. Nor must we forget the Camp Commandant, often perplexed like Martha with much serving. It was a goodly company and one much addicted to bridge and other diversions. I shall not forget the continual appeals of a ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... a fact 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 ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... now all along our coasts and inland streams signals of specified strength have been installed, a commission deciding just what size signals shall be used and where they shall be placed. There are lighthouses of prescribed candle power; automatic flashlights and whistling buoys; coastguard stations with carefully drilled crews; all regulated by law and matters of compulsion. If men and ships are lost now it is because it is beyond human power ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... bus conductor usually gives with the movement of the bus, so that he is prepared for whatever it does. So with Ski-ing. Look ahead and see what the ground is like, and then suit your balance to what is likely to occur as the ground rises or falls. This soon becomes automatic but it needs thinking ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... batman was cleaning his officer's revolver. In rest camps revolvers are not supposed to be loaded, but this one was, and the batman was so unversed in the ways of revolvers that he failed to recognise the fact. A revolver in the hands of a novice is almost as dangerous as an automatic pistol. In fact it spells considerable danger to all in the vicinity. It was therefore scarcely surprising that the batman let off a round in his efforts to remove the cylinder. As ill luck would have it the Divisional General chanced at that moment ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... both "gave it up"—in other words, resigned themselves in a hopeless weary way to their fate, and went on in an automatic fashion, resting, tramping on again over patches of sand and clean hard places where the rock had been worn smooth. The pangs of hunger attacked them more and more, and then came maddening thirst which they assuaged by drinking from one ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... 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

... excellent training for hand and eye. Avoid, however, the very high power modern firearms—that kind that "shoot today and kill next week," as there is too much danger of reaching some one that is out of sight. The same may be said of the automatic pistol which fills too large a circle with ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... rose to protest, but the doctor pulled him down. Winifred began to cry behind her veil as the applause continued. A responsive note had been struck. When quiet was somewhat restored, the automatic clerk called the next name—the name of the senator who had promised Eva his vote. Since Latimer's death he had heartily wished for some excuse to be absolved from that ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... and printing presses preserve a likeness more apparent than actual. Our telephones, electric lights, gas engines, and steam turbines, our lofty office buildings and huge factories crowded with wonderful automatic machinery are creations of the generation of business men and scientists still ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... a delighted oath as he examined the small, bottle-necked shell of the automatic variety. ".38 Luger!" he said. "A high-pressure 'gat' like that is oncommon hereabouts!" Passing it on to the coroner he whistled softly. "My God! Fwhativer sort av a gun-artist is ut that—even allowin' for th' moonlight—can pick a man ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... 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 ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... again a mysterious and forbidding figure as he took a seat at the table and rang a bell and gave orders, after laying an automatic pistol in front of him. Seated on the couch some distance away, Myra had the sensation of watching and taking part in a play or a game of make-believe when, after a few minutes, Tony Standish, guarded by two villainous-looking but picturesquely-attired brigands, was marched ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... not only before a helpless curtailed parliament, not only before an illusory high court, but before the whole world, raising our voice against the Premier who is a typical representative of that Austria whose mere existence is a constant and automatic prolongation of the war. One of the obstacles to peace is the oppression of nationalities in Austria and their domination by the Germans. In this war the Germans, even if they do not openly admit it, have come to the ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... manufacture of steam-engines was conducted mainly by hand. There was usually a considerable waste of steam, which the expedients of chewed paper and greased hat packed outside the piston were insufficient to remedy; and it was not until the invention of automatic machine-tools by the mechanical engineers about to be mentioned, that the manufacture of the steam-engine became a matter of comparative ease and certainty. Watt was compelled to rest satisfied with imperfect results, arising from imperfect workmanship. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... sewing-machines, which embodied the main features of the machine used at present; to wit, a grooved needle provided with an eye near its point, a shuttle operating on the side of the cloth opposite the needle to form a lockstitch, and an automatic feed. On December 28, Iowa was admitted to the Union ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... told that I am naturally very clairvoyant — if I were developed I would make a splendid medium. Mediums have seen shapes hovering around my head, and once when I was at school I did some automatic writing. ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... it was genius, and could only note contributing circumstances—an eye that took in the preacher from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot; an almost uncannie insight into character; the instinct to seize on every scrap of evidence; a memory that was simply an automatic register; an unfailing sense of fitness; and an absolute impartiality ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... 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. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke

... Of the automatic steering of submarine torpedoes by means of gyroscopes, so that when deviated by any obstacle or accident from their set course they will actually return of themselves to ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter

... adjournment; PRINCE ARTHUR rises to reply. Irish Members, pulling themselves together, walk steadily out, amid ribald laughter from Ministerialists. Once more the CURSE OF CAMBOURNE turns up. This seems, quite naturally, to suggest the Closure; sort of automatic procedure; CONYBEARE—Closure. One more division just to wind up, and at ten minutes past two Vote carried ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various

... click and the room became illuminated. Mr. Hall had pulled the chain that turned on the automatic gaslight. The two teachers were sitting up in their beds, ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young

... rocket juice, suggesting they drink Martian water instead. The briefing was interrupted by the automatic warning beep from the tele-scanner informing them that they had passed the outer beacon on the approach to the municipal spaceport on the Moon. The four spacemen immediately began the routine task of landing their ship safely on ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... ended by just reversing the water-valve switch. This valve was supposed to be used only for repairs, after the pile was damped. When the water was cut off with the pile in operation, it had started to overheat and the automatic safeties had dumped the ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison

... of which dwelt a little live pig, an infant of a few weeks. In the middle of the row, descending to the ground, was an inclined board, with raised edges, such as is often installed in swimming-baths to make diving automatic, and beneath each cage was a hole a foot in diameter. The spectators and participants crowded outside the enclosure, and the thing was to throw balls, which were hired for the purpose, into the holes. Nothing could exceed ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... fact, be really unconscious. And, in the second place, it has come to be realized that we have no right to class all the actions of the brutes with those reflex actions in man which we are accustomed to regard as automatic. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... as the over-attention has produced the acceptance of the belief, all further effects are automatic and necessary. If I tell the hypnotized person that he cannot speak and he absorbs this proposition, with that completeness in which he accepts it as a fact, not speaking itself unavoidably results. The motor ideas with which ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... saddle, the hunter wore English riding breeches and leggins. Otherwise he was dressed as a Texas cowboy of the past generation. His sombrero was almost Mexican in its size and ornateness. But his rifle was of the latest American pattern, and in place of the conventional Colt's he carried an automatic pistol. As his horse patiently clambered with him up towards the top of the escarpment the man gazed indolently about between half-closed eyelids and inhaled the smoke from an unbroken ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... open, peering out into the hall. Everything was still, the rays from my lamp barely extending to the head of the stairs. I could neither see, nor hear anything, and yet I had a strange premonition that I was not alone. There was an automatic revolver in the pocket of my coat, and I stepped back after it, picking up the lamp on my return, determined on a thorough examination of the upper story. There was no doubt about the shot—the sound was no effect of a dream. I wondered if the girl had been awakened by the report, and paused to ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... learn all that could be read in the pockets of his victim. There was only one thing. That was a stub-nosed, heavy automatic. ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... the river to the saint of the island, though there were various opinions as to which saint had done the miracle; it is attributed to Brigit daughter of Cu Cathrach (LL, 2399) and to Diarmait (CS, 753). For parallels to the automatic transfer of objects by water, see Plummer, VSH, i, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... Surrender. Federals march In. Richmond in Flames. Blue-Coats fight the Fire. Sad Scenes. Automatic Shelling. Discipline Wins. At the Provost-Marshal's. A City of the Dead. Starvation plus Suspense. The Tin-Can Brigade. Drawing Rations. Rumors and Reality. The First Gray Jacket returns. General Lee ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... in his service knew to be beyond the strength of the Imperial Navy. Nor did Napoleon even approach a solution of the problem he had set himself—invasion over an uncommanded sea. With our impregnable flotilla hold covered by an automatic concentration of battle-squadrons off Ushant, his army could never even have put forth, unless he had inflicted upon our covering fleet such a defeat as would have given him command of the sea, and with absolute control of the sea the passage of an ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... officer selected the third man, routed his dossier and Sir Harold's order back into the automatic processing system, and returned to the film of primitive dancing girls he had been watching before this matter of decision had ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... Valmiki. But the Commentator says that automatic figures only are meant. Women would have seen ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... body of the insect and must, therefore, be applied before the nymphs develop wings. The best spray is a half pint of Black Leaf 40 to a hundred gallons of water or bordeaux mixture. It is applied to the under side of the foliage by a trailing hose or by an automatic grape leaf-hopper spray devised by F. Z. Hartzell and described in bulletin 344 of the New York Experiment Station. The destruction of hibernating places is almost as effective a method of control as spraying. ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... shake of the head, we consented to get into the automatic carriage. My father sat in front with Mr. Ney, and David and I behind; a pressure by Ney upon the lever, and the machine noiselessly moved off towards the Eden lake. The banks of this lake—except on the north-western side, where quays ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... on to say 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 ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... 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 the unreliability ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... at such a moment, making a note in his tablets; but without further allusion to the student-habit, I would remark that, in cases where strongest passion is roused, the intellect has yet sometimes an automatic trick of working independently. For instance from Shakspere, see Constance in King John—how, in her agony over the loss of her son, both her fancy, playing with words, and her imagination, playing with ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... easy chairs and hammocks, sent forth a mild glow from a silk-shaded lamp or two. Across the evening air floated the sounds of light conversation and laughter from these verandas, the tinkle of a banjo, the thrum of a guitar. Automatic sprinklers whirled and hummed here and there. Their delicious artificial coolness struck refreshingly ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centres as was induced by thinking and the automatic movements of the viscera. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... Street the policeman paused, then crossing slowly over, turned into Dane Street, down which he continued to ride with the same mechanical and automatic tread. At length, when within a few feet of a certain shop, over which is a flat that has long borne a reputation for being haunted, the horse came to a dead halt, and horse and rider, veering slowly round, looked at me. What I saw I shall never forget. I saw the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... provision reads thus: "Debts bequeathed by inheritance shall be divided by automatic liability (ipso iure) proportionally [among the heirs], after the ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous

... had taken his automatic from his belt and pointed it, and in that instant the girls saw a black and yellow skinned snake coiled, its head poised with darting tongue, ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... half an hour they came up, panting, their horses having been left behind as not being adapted to mountain work. When they stepped out on a little plateau they found themselves looking into the muzzles of six automatic revolvers, held in the hands of the civil service men ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... intimate centre—over the widening circle of their friends and 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 been, just as a man of letters, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... would impede the free exchange of credit and necessitate a more frequent production of gold in evidence, then there comes an undue appreciation of money as against the general commodities of life, and an automatic impoverishment of the citizens in general as against the creditor class. The common people are mortgaged into the bondage of debt. And on the other hand an unexpected spate of gold production, the discovery of a single nugget as big as St. Paul's, let us say—a ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... "Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt" is the first volume of a 2-volume set. The letters were translated into English by Francis Hueffer. Each page was cut out of the book with an X-acto knife and fed into an Automatic Document Feeder Scanner to make this e-text; hence, the original book was disbinded in order to ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... Paris. Like punishing parents they seemed resolved to let Adelle taste the dregs of her folly by herself. Each quarter they deposited with the Paris bankers twelve hundred and fifty dollars and notified them not to honor Mrs. Davis's drafts in excess of this amount. It was automatic. That was the ideal of the trust company, as it is of many private persons, to reduce ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... in a monotonous voice, "something happens within the next few days I'll begin to feel queer in my head; and if I feel it coming on, I'll blow my bally nut off. Or somebody's." And he touched his service automatic in its ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... thing, which usually works. We just took a pan of water, with a solenoid valve and float such as you have in the modern hot air furnaces and put a magnetic switch on it. As the water boiled it helped raise the temperature, and it gave off vapors. The automatic switch and the wet and dry bulb from the thermometer and thermostat will shut the water off and shut the heat off automatically when you get the required temperature and the required humidity. In that machine our nuts start at the top, take 30 minutes to travel through. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... five being especially intended for big game and fighting; three Westley-Richards double-barrel 12-gauge smooth-bores; two Smith hammerless 10-gauged ditto; two Remington U.M.C. 12-gauge six-shot repeating smooth-bores; and six Colt Government model seven-shot .45 calibre automatic pistols. But, as Earle explained, "when you go exploring and hunting, you need a variety of weapons for different purposes; and there is also the contingency of possible loss to be considered; moreover, in a fight, with tremendously heavy odds against ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... had been speaking when he was struck." Now, at first sight, this seems a strong confirmation of "the materialistic hypothesis." A shock to the brain stopped its action and suspended consciousness. Automatic animal functions went on, but there was no perception, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... operating the great interstate freight lines of the country, and especially of the yardmen and brakemen. A petition signed by nearly 10,000 railway brakemen was presented to the Commission asking that steps might be taken to bring about the use of automatic brakes and couplers on ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... a gentleman of the old school used to be in his power of saying what he meant, and being silent when he ought, (not to speak of the higher nobleness which bestowed love where it was honourable, and reverence where it was due); but the automatic amours and involuntary proposals of recent romance acknowledge little further law of morality than the instinct of an insect, or the effervescence of a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... but 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

... think that for a moment. You see the European war has called for the use of a large number of aeroplanes, and as the pilots of them frequently have to fight, and so can not give their whole attention to the machines, some form of automatic stabilizer is needed to prevent them turning turtle, or going off at ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... to be the packer of currency under James F. Meline, the Assistant Treasurer of the United States, who, says that his is a place where automatic safeguards and checks fail, and where the government must trust to the honesty of ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... spectroscope revealed the existence of two stars in beta Aurigae is a beautiful illustration of the unexpected and, so to speak, automatic application of an old principle in the discovery of new facts not looked for. It was noticed at the Harvard Observatory that the lines in the photographed spectrum of beta Aurigae (and of a few other stars to be mentioned later) appeared single in some of the photographs ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... with the number of volitions required of it to keep every joint in action, and every organ performing its proper function. It would not delegate the control of the fingers to an inferior power, nor contrive mechanical or automatic means for moving the extremities. Within its sphere, it is sole sovereign, and is not perplexed with the variety and constant succession of its duties, extending to every part of the complex structure of which it is the animating and directing spirit. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... hundred eggs we set we must not count on hatching more than 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 ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... and nasal because Hank was wearing a nose respirator that was just long enough to suggest an elephant's trunk. In his right hand was a large blue-black automatic pistol. ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... carefully how her face felt with that placid expression and studied to keep it always with that feeling, until by and by her features were fixed and now the placid face is always there, for she has established in her brain an automatic vigilance over it that will not allow the muscles once to ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call

... the snub nose of a small automatic, concealed from the rest of the car by a newspaper, ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley

... they are built in such fashion as to make loading as easy and as rapid as possible. Sometimes there are as many as fourteen or sixteen hatches in one of these great ships, into each of which while loading the ore chutes will be pouring their red flood, and out of each of which the automatic unloaders at Cleveland or Erie will take ten-ton bites of the cargo, until six or seven thousand tons of iron ore may be unloaded in eight hours. The hold is all one great store-room, no deck above the vessel's floor except the main deck. No water-tight compartments ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... discussion of outlines. They are necessary, if any subject is to be covered comprehensively. But if they are overelaborated, the whole performance becomes automatic and dull. A little spontaneity is always needed. Even when working from a manuscript, a speaker should be ever-ready to depart from his text if a sudden idea pops into his mind. It is better to try this and to stumble now ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... happiness now, the misery belonged to tomorrow. But suddenly that last unrealized fact—at once immaterial and the most leaden reality of all—lost its weight. The greater freedom she had lately grown into became an absolute indifference, a half willful and half automatic shutting of her eyes to everything but the present, the actuality of Gerrit Ammidon walking by her side. She wanted him to speak, so that she could discover his thoughts, feelings; yet she was reluctant to have their companionship ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer



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