"Mechanically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... city small hotels are numerous, their entryways well banked with potted palms. The usual stone courtyard, damp with water, is surrounded by the pony-stalls, where dirty stable-boys go through their work mechanically, smoking cigarettes. The dining-room and office occupy most of the second floor. This is the library, reception-room, and ladies' parlor, all in one; the guest-rooms open into this apartment. These are very small, containing a big Spanish tester-bed, with a cane bottom, and the other ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... uneliminated by-products resulting from long continued or over-taxing exertion of any sort. Under the influence of fatigue the power of the muscles to respond to any kind of stimulus is greatly reduced. (It is interesting to note, however, that muscular fibre detached from the living organism and mechanically stretched and relaxed shows after a period the same decrease in contractability under stimulation.) On the other hand any increase in adrenal secretion results in renewed sensitiveness to stimulation, that is by an ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... and yet accidents like those I have been speaking of so mechanically determine it; its essence being indeed the early familiar, as constituting our ideal, or typical conception, of rest and security. Out of so many possible conditions, just this for you and that for me, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... found you. Here's a letter for you. Pa—pa—he's been carryin' it around in his pocket, and when he changed his coat just now it dropped out. He sent me down with it, lickity-split," and the boy held out an envelope bearing a special delivery stamp. Blake took the missive mechanically. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time? unclasping her cloak and throwing it off as if it stifled her. He was bowing and quitting her, when an impulse which if she had been alone would have turned into a prayer, made her say with a sob ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Mechanically, his mind elsewhere, Chris shoved the button which reared the automatic clamp behind the cockpit in preparation for affixing the scout to the plane rack beneath the ZX-1. The dirigible, far in advance of the Blue Fleet, was roaring ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... other handsome pleadings of the simulacra of the powers he had set up to rule, were crushed at daybreak by the realities in a sense of weight that pushed him mechanically on. He telegraphed to Roland, and mentally gave chase to the message to recall it. The slumberer roused in darkness by the relentless insane-seeming bell which hales him to duty, melts at the charms of sleep, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Tik-Tok—he's a clockwork man and quite a funny sight— He talks and walks mechanically, when he's wound up tight; And we've a Hungry Tiger who would babies love to eat But never does because we feed ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... do hold your tongue!" from the whist-table caught her ear. "You deuced near made me revoke. What on earth makes you so red hot about this ball?" And the Squire mechanically looked round to his wife for telegraphic guidance as to what line he was ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... thoroughly that hard climb up the rocks, the strain of continued peril, and the long abstinence from food had sapped their strength, yet to remain where they were meant certain death; all hope found its centre amid those distant beckoning trees. Mechanically the girl gathered back her straying tresses, and tied them with a rag torn from her frayed skirt. Hampton noted silently how heavy and sunken her eyes were; he felt a dull pity, yet could not sufficiently arouse himself from the lethargy of exhaustion to speak. His body seemed a leaden weight, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... perish—that its prince's recovery was only protracted. In the midst of this anxiety, Lennox entered; and relating what he had just heard, turned the whole current of the auditor's ideas. Wallace started from his seat. His hand mechanically caught up his sword, which lay upon the table. Lennox gazed at him with animated veneration. "There is not a man in the citadel," cried he, "who does not appear at his wits' end, and incapable of facing this often-beaten foe. Will you, Wallace, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... or thread, the subsequent operations having for their object the strengthening of the yarn by combining two or more strands and afterward arranging them for weaving or for the purpose for which the yarn is required. It is also the last time that the fibers are mechanically drawn over each other or drafted, and this is invariably done from a single roving. The humidity and temperature of the spinning room must be adjusted to conditions. Each spinner is provided with a wet and dry thermometer so that the best temperature can be ascertained. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... Horrible!" she cried as she sank into the nearest chair, and clapped her hands to her ears. But she could not shut it out. Still she heard the humming of the whip and the cruel sound of the falling blows. Mechanically she counted them, unconsciously almost, and at twenty she heard them cease. Was it over? Was he dead, this poor unfortunate? Moved by a curiosity that was greater than her loathing, she rose and went to the threshold ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... into the hands of the wrong people, and is grievously misrepresented. It has too often come to be identified, as you say, with human law, as a power which leaves one severely alone, if one behaves oneself, and which punishes harshly and mechanically if one outsteps the limit. It comes into the world as a great joyful motive; and then it becomes identified with respectability, and it is sad to think that it is simply from the fact that it has won the confidence of the world that it gains its awful power of silencing and oppressing. ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... opened her eyes, and Karen repeating her admonition in the same key, the child got up and went mechanically out of the room, as ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... sheet, mechanically. With half-blinded eyes, she glanced over the few earnest, fatherly, generous lines. When she came to the last, she ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... this manual work, while it has the advantage of giving a very homogeneous product, offers the inconvenience of taking a long time and being costly. The Alauzet machine, shown in the accompanying cut, is designed to perform this work mechanically. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... Luxellian's,' repeated the other mechanically. He then turned himself sideways, and keenly scrutinized the almost invisible house with an interest which the indistinct picture itself seemed far from adequate to create. 'Yes, that's Lord Luxellian's,' he said yet again ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... much talk nowadays and too little thinking. Some persons start their gab carburetors and they talk and talk mechanically, without any effort on any thought, just like walking, the motion just ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... incrustation, half an inch in thickness. It is quite white, compact, with some parts slightly spathose, and is firmly attached to the rock. After a short time it gradually disappears, being either redissolved, when the water is less charged with lime, or more probably is mechanically abraded. Lieutenant Evans has observed these facts, during the six years he has resided at Ascension. The incrustation varies in thickness in different years: in 1831 it was unusually thick. When I was there in July, there was no remnant of the incrustation; but on a point of basalt, ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... Densher mechanically accepted his tea. He was thinking of something else, and his thought in a moment came out. "What a brute then ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... with any number of arms that they please: let them exert themselves ever so energetically to train Chinese soldiers: let them even supply leaders: the Chinese Army will, nevertheless, even under the most favorable conditions, never be more than an artificially created, mechanically united, unstable organism. Subject it but once to the serious test of war, speedy dissolution will overtake such an army, which could never hope for victory over a foe animated with any real spirit." On the other hand, high testimony has been borne by other travelers and military critics to ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Jude watched her disappear in the direction of the hotel, and entered the railway station close by. Finding that it wanted three-quarters of an hour of the time at which he could get a train back to Alfredston, he strolled mechanically into the city as far as to the Fourways, where he stood as he had so often stood before, and surveyed Chief Street stretching ahead, with its college after college, in picturesqueness unrivalled except by such ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... in teaching, and children are learned to adopt certain technical rules in grammar, not because they are true, but because they are convenient! In fact, it is said by some, that language is an arbitrary affair altogether, and is only to be taught and learned mechanically! But who would teach children that seven times seven are fifty, and nine times nine a hundred, and assign as a reason for so doing, that fifty and a hundred are more easily remembered than forty-nine and eighty-one? Yet there would be as much ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand, to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... for Hare as per the formula furnished him. Some time after the above argument Alfred was summoned to the doctor's room. Holding in one hand a glass of water, the doctor handed Alfred a lump of darkish color, ordering the boy to swallow it. Alfred mechanically swallowed the lump, the doctor handing him the water to take the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... 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— ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Mechanically he took the preferred letter, and with his eyes still lingering in admiration upon the classic outlines of her face and form, leaned back comfortably against the velvet ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... sat twitching the water-worn pebbles with the end of his cane, switching them and turning them over. She, with a vague look in her eyes, had picked up three or four little stones and was slowly and mechanically dropping them from one hand into the other. Then her unsettled gaze, wandering over the scene before her, discerned, among the weedy rocks, her son Jean fishing with Mme. Rosemilly. She looked at them, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... themselves alone once more. Poor Dick was by this time past doing anything but plod wearily along, his tail down, his ears drooping, his tongue hanging out. Huldah herself was in a half-dazed state, she scarcely knew where she was, or what she was doing. She plodded on and on mechanically, every step becoming harder, every yard a greater tax on her. She had almost given up hope, and decided to lie down under a hedge for the night, when her dim eyes were attracted by a light which suddenly shone out on the darkness, down a ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... fighting, fire and fury there seemed to be no moisture left in him. Then, his burning thirst satisfied at last, he went to where Foy lay unconscious and began to pour water, little by little, into his mouth, which, senseless as he was, he swallowed mechanically and presently groaned a little. Next, as well as he could, Martin examined his comrade's wounds, to find that what had made him insensible was a cut upon the right side of the head, which, had it not been for ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... expressed in fragments, like a sculptor's chips thrown off as the inspiration seizes him, not mechanically sawn to a set line. Now and again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time, the large white daisy stars, the grass with yellow-dusted tips, the air which comes so softly unperceived by any precedent rustle of the hedge. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... sat down on a straight chair inside the door, and stared ahead. Then, slowly and mechanically, he took off his new uniform and donned the old one. He would have put on civilian clothes, had he possessed any. For by the deeds of that day he had forfeited the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the perfect hostess—that impartial smile which falls, like the rain from Heaven, on good and bad indifferently. "SO charmed to see you again, Dr. Cumberledge!" she bubbled out, with a cheerful air—she was always cheerful, mechanically cheerful, from a sense of duty. "It IS such a pleasure to meet dear Hugo's old friends! AND Miss Wade, too; how delightful! You look so well, Miss Wade! Oh, you're both at St. Nathaniel's now, aren't you? So you can come together. What a privilege for you, Dr. Cumberledge, to have ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one in Norfolk, and married a wealthy widow. His verses are mechanically correct, but are empty ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... and the barns, working on the farms, wading the mud and water of the river bank, or tingling with cold on the ice went two Dannies. The one a dull, listless man, mechanically forcing a tired, overworked body to action, and the ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Rorie lifted her up and carried her to the gate where her horse was waiting. The doctor forced a little brandy through the locked lips, and between them Rorie and he placed her in the saddle. She had just consciousness enough by this time to hold the bridle mechanically, and to sit upright on her horse; and thus led by Roderick, she rode slowly back to the home that was never any more to be the same home that she had known and lived in through the joyous sixteen years of her life. All things were to be different to her henceforward. The ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... wasteful lives which so many of our women are living. They seem utterly destitute of purpose. They make no effort to give them shape or plan, or to set up a goal in the distance, to be reached by some kind of industrious application. They drift along listlessly and mechanically, in the old well-worn tracks, trusting to accident to give them a new direction. It is a sad thing, this waste of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... John McIntyre mechanically turned the leaves. He experienced a grim satisfaction in the boy's complaints. What did these wordy friends of Job know of sorrow and despair? As though they were conditions that could be explained away! ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... dinner I noticed how she broke into speech abruptly as a bird breaks into song, and she stopped as abruptly. I never saw a woman so like herself, and sometimes her beauty brought a little mist into my eyes, and I lost sight of her or very nearly, and I went on eating mechanically. Dinner seemed to end suddenly, and before I knew that it was over we were getting ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Mechanically he took his instrument up. The tune was simple and he knew it well, but even as he played his eye wandered from the sheet before him to scan ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... the kitchen the cooking is carried on almost mechanically by means of an electric clock controlling the heating circuits to the various utensils. The cook, knowing just how long each dish will require to be cooked, turns on the current at the proper time and then sets the clock to automatically ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... to give up what I hold to-day, and that the necessary effect of such a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward rebellion relieving itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of ignoring the whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying every thing that the Church says, and leaving to others the defence of it. As then I have above spoken of the relation of my mind towards the Catholic Creed, so now I shall speak of the attitude which it takes up in the view of the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... plac'd in the bow, to whom they often called, "Look well out before there," and he as often answered, "Ay ay;" but perhaps had his eyes shut, and was half asleep at the time, they sometimes answering, as is said, mechanically; for he did not see a light just before us, which had been hid by the studdingsails from the man at the helm, and from the rest of the watch, but by an accidental yaw of the ship was discover'd, and occasion'd a great alarm, we being very near it, the light appearing to me as big as a cart-wheel. ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... to talk to me about Nina," Richard said. Harriet somehow moved her dizzy eyes toward Blondin, and she smiled mechanically. But she had to moisten her lips before ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... splashed, sometimes through ice, water, and snow, and sometimes across the shingly beach, till the day was far spent, when I became so exhausted that I could scarcely drag one foot after the other, and moved along almost mechanically. My man, too, strong as he was, exhibited symptoms of fatigue; though, to do him justice, he was at least seven times ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... portion of the stand. The chief desiderata—stability and ease of manipulation—are attained in the first by means of the "spread" of the three feet, which are usually shod with cork; in the second, by the dead weight of the foot-plate. The tripod is mechanically the more correct form, and for practical use is much to be preferred. Its chief rival, the Jackson foot (Fig. 41, c), is based upon the same principle, and on the score of appearance ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... and in all the wonderful contrivances of the structure. All these, too, are carried out with such precision that, notwithstanding the immense superincumbent weight, no settlement in any part can be detected to an appreciable fraction of an inch. Nothing more perfect mechanically has ever been erected ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... "I wish they did!" he said; "my own belief is that, in education as well as religion, we want more individualism, more elasticity. I think it is very doubtful whether great ideas, rigidly interpreted and mechanically enforced, have any value at all for undeveloped minds; the whole secret lies in their being ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... passion. Fear, confusion, and undefined soul-longing seemed to move rapidly across it, each leaving its momentary impression, and all mingling at times in a surging flood that swelled the veins of his temples to the point of rupture. Mechanically he paced his narrow cell, throwing frequent furtive glances at the closed door, as if he suspected himself watched. Often he stopped abruptly, and with head bowed and brows furrowed, seemed to surrender his soul to the forces with ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, and every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a finer reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it was some time before Elizabeth was sensible of any of it; and, though she answered mechanically to the repeated appeals of her uncle and aunt, and seemed to direct her eyes to such objects as they pointed out, she distinguished no part of the scene. Her thoughts were all fixed on that one spot of Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... great groups—apathetic or insensitive animals, animals endowed with sensation, and intelligent animals. The first group, which comprise all the lower Invertebrates, are distinguished from other animals by the fact that their actions are directly and mechanically due to the excitations of the environment; they have no principle of reaction to external influences, but passively prolong into action the excitations they receive from without. They are irritable merely. The second group are distinguished from the first by their possessing, in addition ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... heard him singing and shouting over his second toilet. I crept miserably out of the house and made my way to the mews. The ostler saddled my horse, a beautiful chestnut mare which Master Freake had given me, and I rode out of town, deep in thought. Mechanically, I went the way we had intended to go, and found myself at last on the heights that overlook London from the north. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... them all depart. As for myself, I resolved to remain until the last; but I was in a state of feverish agitation, which made me restless. As I paced up and down the room, the newspaper caught my eye. I laid hold of it mechanically, and looked at it. A paragraph rivetted my attention. "His Majesty's ship Immortalite Chatham, to be paid off." Then our ship has come home. But what was that now? Yet something whispered to me that I ought to go and see Captain ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... touches, and into her mind came a sudden blank and alarm. All that evening she was unable to settle down either to work or rest. Ellen had gone to bed early, convinced of the good effect of sleep on her complexion, and Joanna prowled unhappily from room to room, glancing about mechanically for dust which she knew could not be there ... the farm was just a collection of gleaming surfaces and crackling chintzes and gay, dashing colours. Everything was as she wished it, yet did ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... page of a poem in his hand, and was reading it mechanically, for its length had already declared against it, unless it might chance to be the precious gem out of a thousand, which must be chosen in spite of its twenty stanzas. But as the editor read, his interest awakened, and ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... and then turned to his daughter. Had he been half an hour later, Emily would have cast her arms round his neck and told him all; but as it was, she remained self-involved, even in his presence—answered indeed mechanically—spoke words of affection with an absent air, and let the mind still run on upon the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... canvasbacks suddenly appeared over the clamoring decoys, so close in that, as they came driving by the blind and rose slightly, wings bowed, Marche could almost see their beady little eyes set in the chestnut red of the turning heads. Mechanically his gun spoke twice; rap-rap, echoed Miss Herold's gun, and splash! splash! down whirled two gray-and-red ducks; then a third, uncertain, slowed down, far out beyond the decoys, and slanted sideways to the water. ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... paper lay on a table in the living room. She unfolded it mechanically; looked at it but saw no print, merely an unsteady haze of greyish tint on which she could not ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... solitary life, who experience, sometimes by instinct and sometimes on moral grounds, a strong repugnance for these manifestations of auto-erotism. As one highly intelligent lady writes: "I have sometimes wondered whether I could produce it (complete sexual excitement) mechanically, but I have a curious unreasonable repugnance to trying the experiment. It would materialize it too much." The same repugnance may be traced in the tendency to avoid, so far as possible, the use of the hands. It is quite common to find this instinctive ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... devised experiments to discover whether Archibald was conscious that he was singing, or whether it was an act performed mechanically, while the mind was otherwise engaged. After the child was in bed, he quietly arranged a lamp so as to cast a circular space of light upon the ceiling above the bed, the rest of the room being left in shadow. Not a word of any song was heard that night; and ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... friend might sit down, there was no repose about her; she was continually in motion. Her head turned from side to side, as regularly, and apparently as mechanically, as an elephant weaves his great head and trunk. Sometimes she turned her attention to me, and leaned far over, with her large, dark eyes fixed upon me with interest or curiosity. But never was there the least fear in her bearing; ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... made the paddlewheel, though it revolved in air, would not move in the water, the machinery being not powerful enough. This, says Capt. Sueter, was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... restored to Gideon Spilett that self-possession which he had lost in a moment of discouragement on feeling his great responsibility. He seated himself close to the bed. Cyrus Harding stood near. Pencroft had torn up his shirt, and was mechanically making lint. ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... and swallowed, mechanically and certainly with no relish, he fitted one fact to another to make a picture of this Hawaikan time period in which they were now marooned. Of course, his picture was based on facts they had learned from their captive. Perhaps he ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... Mechanically, the man reached into his pack for the compass he carried. A moment's search failed to reveal it, and he suddenly stood upright again, cut through with the knowledge that it had been taken ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... 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 obviously wrong was the substitution of a low 'chancel ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... nature, and that none of it's real. And I say to myself, 'What if I've been believing all my life, and when I come to die there's nothing but the burdocks growing on my grave?' as I read in some author. It's awful! How—how can I get back my faith? But I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking of anything. How, how is one to prove it? I have come now to lay my soul before you and to ask you about it. If I let this chance slip, no one all my life will answer me. How can I prove it? How can I convince ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as if turned to stone. Mechanically, she listened to the voice of the priest reciting the De Profundis; she listened to the call of the crickets shrilling through the summer night without; she listened to the heart-breaking sobs of faithful black Mandy crouching on ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... compare our English words farmer and goodness with such words as height and depth, we cannot fail to be struck by a notable difference in the affixing technique of the two sets. The -er and -ness are affixed quite mechanically to radical elements which are at the same time independent words (farm, good). They are in no sense independently significant elements, but they convey their meaning (agentive, abstract quality) with unfailing ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... learned that the great statesman, although weary with travel, would be delayed for an hour by a failure to make close connections, "allow me to introduce you to Mr. James, one of our most distinguished citizens." "How do you do, Mr. James?" asked Webster mechanically, as he glanced at a thousand people waiting to take his hand. "The truth is, Mr. Webster," replied Mr. James in a most lugubrious tone, "I am not very well." "I hope nothing serious is the matter," thundered the godlike Daniel, in a tone ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... His mother then called him by name for the first time in those terrible hours, and bade him bid his father good-night. As he went mechanically to do so, his father seemed to keep Hal's hand in his own numb fingers, and to look most imploringly, the mother's hand on to Harry's. The mother, as the hands met, said, "Hal will take care of me, dear," and Hal exclaimed, "I will." Then they knew ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... old box—packed away, and lost to memory for years—an hour ago I found a musty package of gilt paper, or rather, a roll it was, with the green-tarnished gold of the old sheet for the outer wrapper. I picked it up mechanically to toss it into some obscure corner, when, carelessly lifting it by one end, a child's tin whistle dropped therefrom and fell tinkling on the attic floor. It lies before me on my writing table now—and so, too, does the roll entire, though now a roll no longer,—for my eager ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... the properties which they severally connote. For the propositions can not keep the meaning of the words alive, if the meaning of the propositions themselves should die. And nothing is more common than for propositions to be mechanically repeated, mechanically retained in the memory, and their truth undoubtingly assented to and relied on, while yet they carry no meaning distinctly home to the mind; and while the matter of fact or law of nature which they originally expressed is as much lost sight of, and practically ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... in spite of himself, Ben could not stay at home; he strolled along, a prey to his bitter thoughts, and mechanically walked in the direction of the splendid grounds of the wealthy jeweler, Mr. Grandin. The sound of music ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... passed the days quietly and sadly, caring for nothing, and going through mechanically the routine of each day. His spirit was crushed—not so much from the effects of his treatment, but because his long thought of, long desired, purpose was come to naught. He paid but little attention to the affairs of those about him. They went and came, carried on their game of ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... and weevilly biscuits served out to the navy in those days, and for very many days later; indeed, where is the naval officer, under the rank of a commander, or I may say a lieutenant, who does not tap every bit of biscuit on the table before he puts it into his mouth? He taps mechanically now, but he learned the habit when it was necessary to ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... need of a change, but still even the sound of his flute was a great relief in the dreary night marches. Occasionally, when the fancy took him, and he made some variations in the airs, the camel men, who slept while mechanically walking, would join in to sing in ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... whether a jockey can mechanically assist his horse, does not rest on the same footing. I believe he can, thus. If a man sits astride of a chair, with his feet off the ground, and clasps the chair with his legs, by the muscular exertion of his lower limbs he can jump the chair along. ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... more and more abstracted, eating mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child's body might be there at the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... some dingy corner, perhaps, in some damp kennel which is supposed to be a room, an artisan has just awakened from sleep. All night he has dreamt—IF such an insignificant fellow is capable of dreaming?— about the shoes which last night he mechanically cut out. He is a master-shoemaker, you see, and therefore able to think of nothing but his one subject of interest. Nearby are some squalling children and a hungry wife. Nor is he the only man that has to greet the day in ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... When you quarrel with a man, says Christ in effect, prudence enjoins to make it up as soon as possible, before he sets the law in motion. If once he, as plaintiff, has brought you before the judge, the law will go on mechanically through the stages of trial, condemnation, surrender to the prison authorities, and confinement till the last farthing has been paid. So, if you are conscious that you have an adversary,—and any man that you hate is your adversary, for he will appear against you at that solemn judgment to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Leopold, I was greeted by a clap of thunder overhead. A shell demolished a house across the street and about thirty yards down. The concussion knocked over a couple of babies. I picked them up, put them back in the doorway of the house where they seemed to belong, saying over and over again mechanically, "There, there, don't cry. There is nothing to be frightened about"; and then, just to show how little I myself was frightened I began to run. I ran for all I was worth. I ran right into the fire. The shells were falling fairly thick on the Boulevard de Leopold; every two or three ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... Then he mechanically glanced at his timepiece. His "farewell" call had lasted over two hours. But even so it had been all too ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... "Thanks," said Ferris mechanically, and he went away. He laughed to himself at this keen irony of fortune; he was prepared for the confirmation of his doubts; he was ready for relief from them, Heaven knew; but this blank that the turn of the wheel had ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... years now, and 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 challenge of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... Mechanically she shook hands and her lips murmured some vague response. She heard the door of the flat close behind him, followed almost immediately by the clang of the iron grille as the lift-boy dragged it across. It seemed to her as though a curious note of finality sounded in the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Monsieur Joseph was not in bed. He looked a quaint figure, in a dressing-gown and a tasselled night-cap, and he sat at the table writing a long letter. He started when Riette touched the door, and Angelot saw that his hand moved mechanically towards a pair of pistols that lay beside him. Monsieur Joseph did not trust entirely to his dogs ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... house grew quieter; once, about six o'clock, there were voices outside, the door from the hall was unlocked, and a heavily-built, ruddy man came in with two pikemen, locking the door behind him. They paid no attention to the prisoner, and he watched them mechanically as they went round the room, running their eyes up and down the panelling, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Elspeth," echoed the sea rover, mechanically sheathing his sword, and speaking in an altered voice that had a touch of tenderness ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... turned mechanically into a side road, shadier than the highway and leading by a short cut to the plaza and the heart of the town. She was still in the open country, with orchards stretching out interminably on either side and not even a peon within hailing distance, when the chug and snort of a motor reached her ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... a coarser fibre than the rest of the family, the reason for which, seeing that both girls had equal advantages and opportunities, only an expert psychologist could explain. She had gone through school mechanically as an unpleasant task to be gotten over with as soon as possible, taking no interest in her work, and when she came out her brain was a sluggish and unresponsive as one might expect. Well aware of ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... the room behind her and idly cleared a scrap of paper from a chair. Mechanically her hands went to the litter on his desk and she had straightened it all before she realised that there was no longer any need. To-morrow would bring a voice she did not know; would usher a stranger into her room to take her measure from behind a barrier of formality. For ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... He mechanically pursued his way round the piers into his own seat in the north aisle. The lower atmosphere of this spot was shaded by its own wall from the shine which streamed in over the window-sills on the same side. The only ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... on Trapa, and of the gills of fish, seem to serve another purpose besides that of increasing their surface, which has not, I believe, been attended to, and that is to facilitate the separation of the air, which is mechanically mixed or chemically dissolved in water by their points or edges; this appears on immersing a dry hairy leaf in water fresh from a pump; innumerable globules like quicksilver appear on almost every point; for the extremities of these ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the hearse reached Old Kennett meeting-house. The people of the neighborhood, who had collected to await its arrival, came forward and assisted the mourners to alight. Alfred Barton mechanically took his place beside his wife, but again buried his face in his handkerchief. As the wondering, impatient crowd gathered around, Gilbert felt that all was known, and that all eyes were fixed upon himself and his mother, and his face reflected her own firmness and ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... part in the duet, caught little ends of the whispers going on beneath her, such as "Perfectly exquisite." "Most wonderful range." "Shall certainly ask her to sing." And again she saw Jasper's beaming face, while Ben took no pains to conceal his delight. And she sat down to the piano mechanically, and began in a dazed way to help Miss Porter through with the duet that was to have been one of the finest things on ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... some one waiting still, far away? We do not know. He does not know now. Years and years ago, utterly discouraged, yet mechanically keeping on, ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... the floor mechanically, some vague recollection crossed his brain of a childish story of the man standing where the two great roads of life parted. They were open before him now. Money, money,—he took the word into his heart as a miser might do. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... to recognize a mere effect of organic structure in the Epeira's art? We readily think of the legs, which, endowed with a very varying power of extension, might serve as compasses. More or less bent, more or less outstretched, they would mechanically determine the angle whereat the spiral shall intersect the radius; they would maintain the parallel of the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Spenser's gallant knights, advances from triumph to triumph vanquishing evil at every step. It is impossible to become absorbed in his personages, who have less body than his spectres, and whose adventures take the form of a walk through an exhibition of horrors, mechanically set in motion to prove their prowess. Dr. Drake seems happier when the hideous beings are put to rout, and the transformation-scene, which places fairyland before us, suddenly descends on the stage. Yet ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... once, mechanically, the poor man made that eloquent, horse-dealer's gesture of his. Instinctively, also, the visitor showed a movement of recoil so prompt, so hurt, that the Nabob understood that he was making a mistake, and took the trouble to examine the young ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... would repudiate the facts that I am about to reveal, and who will not believe that in their own careless talk they themselves actually pronounce the words very much as Mr. Jones prints them,[18] should remember that the sounds of speech are now mechanically recorded and reproduced, and the records can be compared; so that it would betray incompetence for any one in Mr. Jones' position to misrepresent the facts, as it would be folly in him to go to the ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... Aminta by Signora Rovero, he was so agitated by the events of the evening that he could not consent to seek repose. Love, hope, and jealousy, disputed for the possession of his heart. Seated in a vast arm-chair, near the hearth, the fire on which flickered faintly, the eyes of Maulear were mechanically directed to one of the windows of his room, by the beating of the rain against it. All at once he saw, or thought he saw, a white figure on the other side of the window pause for a few instants, as if it sought to enter his room. Maulear ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... extraordinarily white fingers along the edge of the sheet. I was doing this quite mechanically when I noticed a look of alarm in Margaret's face, and I vaguely remembered that playing with the edge of the sheet was supposed to be a trick of the dying. So I stopped, more for Margaret's sake than for anything else. I could not move my head much, in fact scarcely at all; ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the desert. You know how terrible the first hours of the night are. When the moon comes up, huge and yellow, a sharp dust seems to rise in suffocating clouds. You move your jaws mechanically as if to crush the dust that finds its way into your throat like fire. Then usually a kind of lassitude, of drowsiness, follows. You walk without thinking. You forget where you are walking. You remember only when you stumble. Of course you stumble often. But anyway it is bearable. "The ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... voice came from the sunlight and he gripped his musket as he started forward. He had caught only the last words, and he repeated them half mechanically, as he stepped out from the brushwood. Once again, when he stood on the trampled broom-sedge, he said them over with a nervous jerk, "Wait until they come within fifty yards—and, for God's sake, boys, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... for this very hour for twenty years; and yet he found himself wholly unprepared for it. Like one led by confused and uncertain thoughts, he went about the room mechanically locking up his papers, and the surgical instruments he valued so highly. As he did so he perceived the book he had been reading when Houston entered. It was lying open where he had laid it down. A singular smile flitted ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... little turn of the pen, and a little tracing in ink, men were magically warding off impending disaster, or adding thousands to the thousands accumulated already—men, too, were writing without thinking, mechanically copying or posting, scribbling letters of form, with heads clear or heads aching, with hearts burning or cold; full of ambition and hope, or vaguely remembering country hill-sides and summer rambles—a day's fishing—a night's frolic—Sunday-school—singing-school, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... women began to think! It's inconceivable. The greatest revolution in history would break out; a volcanic eruption would convulse society. It's quite right—only the few are supposed to think. There must be dead bodies without will, to live mechanically, to do mechanically what they are told. A thinking world—no, thank you! No, Mamsell, we'll stick to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Giovanni trembled and the sweat on his body grew cold: less from reaction than from the thought that actual murder had been snatched from his hands. For several minutes he waited, dreading, but there was no further sound. He searched mechanically for his knife, recovered it, and then crept down the abrupt side of the gorge till he found them. They were both dead. A cloud swept ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... shaken nerves steadied and jarred brains cleared. They all rose weakly. Trickles of earth were still coming down from the sides of the gully, and the little stream, which had been clear and sparkling, was roiled with mud. Mechanically, Kalvar Dard brushed the dust from his clothes ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... missive with such deep attention that she had not perceived an approaching tread on the soft grass. Looking up, however, as she mechanically folded it she saw Lord Warburton standing ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... unexpected an object in the young gentleman's hand Captain Obadiah's jaw fell, and his cavernous mouth gaped as though he had suddenly been stricken with a palsy. He lifted a trembling hand and slowly and mechanically passed it along that cheek which was so discolored with gunpowder stain. Then, suddenly gathering himself together and regaining those powers that appeared for a moment to have fled from him, he cried out, aloud: "I swear to God ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... had a notion, he said, that a good deal might be made out of them without Plato's Demiurgus; another, for the constituents of the vital automata of Descartes: he had been misled to believe, that, if animals could be mechanically produced, the whole universe might have been so produced also. The Archangel assured them and others, with much politeness, that, if the philosophers in question could in any way make their meaning intelligible, Heaven would do its poor best to realize their ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... cheerful prison presents, to the convent of Santa Teresa, the most celebrated of all the ten or fifteen nunneries now in operation about the city of Mexico. In a cold, damp, comfortless cell, kneeling upon the pavement, we may see a delicate woman mechanically repeating her daily-imposed penance of Latin prayers, before the image of a favorite saint and a basin of holy water. This self-regulating, automaton praying machine, as she counts off the number of allotted prayers by the number of beads upon her ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... draws them to the nursery door; and there they are observed by Amy and Ginevra who enter from the hall. The screen is close to the two girls, and they have so often in the last week seen stage figures pop behind screens that, mechanically as it were, they pop ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... said Clerambault with his beaming smile; his own boy was in his mind. He closed the door, and stood for some minutes with the lamp in his hand in the vestibule before he realised where he was. It was nearly midnight and he was very tired, but, instead of going into the bedroom, he mechanically turned again towards his study;—the apartment, the house, the street were all asleep. Almost without seeing it, he stared vaguely at the light shining on the frame of an engraving of Rembrandt's, The Resurrection of Lazarus, which ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... same direction also by another line. The exigencies of the modern industrial system frequently place individuals and households in juxtaposition between whom there is little contact in any other sense than that of juxtaposition. One's neighbors, mechanically speaking, often are socially not one's neighbors, or even acquaintances; and still their transient good opinion has a high degree of utility. The only practicable means of impressing one's pecuniary ability on these unsympathetic observers of one's everyday life is an ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... stock newspaper platitudes of regret at the loss of a distinguished and rising young light of science—the ordinary glib commonplaces of obituary notices which a practised journalist knows so well how to adapt almost mechanically to the passing event of the moment; but they seemed to afford the shattered old country grocer an amount of consolation and solemn relief that no mere spoken condolences could ever possibly have carried with them. 'See what a wonderful lot they thought ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... piano and two violins in a desert of expanse, added a nervous chill. When at last the music struck up—somewhat hesitatingly and protestingly, from the circumstance that the player was the church organist, and fumbled mechanically for his stops, the attempt to make up a cotillon set was left to the heroic Brooks. Yet he barely escaped disaster when, in posing the couples, he incautiously begged them to look a little less as if ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... avail herself of the pretext, and as if she neither could nor would encounter that strange double creature in the dark; but somehow she had been as much fascinated as terrified, and, in spite of her resolve, she found herself mechanically following Jumbo, shuddering all over and as ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... each step he took seemed all in despite of his personal inclinations. Some of the passers-by bowed to him, and one or two paused as if to shake hands and exchange greetings. He nodded responses mechanically, but did not stop. It was as if he feared to interrupt the process of lifting his reluctant feet and propelling them forward, lest they should wheel and scuttle ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... mournful reminiscence, not of this, but of other summers,—the same wind that De Quincey heard at noonday in midsummer blowing through the room where he stood, a mere boy, by the side of his dead sister, —a wind centuries old. As I wrote on mechanically, I became conscious of a presence in the room, though I did not lift my eyes from the paper on which I wrote. Gradually I came to know that my grandmother—dead so long ago that I laughed at the idea—was in the room. She stood beside her old-fashioned ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Markleham looked as if he would really like to pitch the American girl and her flowers into the river, and then, almost mechanically, he took ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... me in silence, his gray eyes expanding like those of an eagle, then calmly, mechanically he got down and began to unhitch the team. He performed each habitual act with most minute care, till I, impatient of his silence, his seeming indifference, repeated, "Don't you understand? Mother has had a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... expressions of anger and severity than were absolutely required to rouse the constitutional torpor of her daughters' nature; and where disgust has once rooted itself, and been habitually expressed in tones of harshness, the mere sight of the hateful object mechanically calls forth the eternal tones of anger, without distinct consciousness or separate intention in the speaker. Loud speaking, besides, or even shouting, was required by the deafness of the two girls. From anger so constantly discharging its thunders, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Gonzaga glanced mechanically round the chamber at the emission of these treasonable words. But there was nothing in its rude stone walls to harbour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... table beside him. He took it up mechanically, scarcely knowing what he did. It was an elegant edition of Mrs. Hemans' poems, and had been the gift of Agnes to his sister a few weeks ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... moment a look of defiance. Her dress had been rich; it was now torn and damp, and clung in dank folds to her limbs. The child she carried appeared to be four months old. She held it convulsively at her breast, and when it gave forth a feeble cry she rocked it mechanically. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... stupefied by the infidelity of that woman of whom I had never been jealous, whom I had never had cause to suspect. What I had seen left no room for doubt, I was stunned as though by a blow from a club. The only thing I remember doing as I sat there, was looking mechanically up at the sky, and, seeing a star spin across the heavens, I saluted that fugitive gleam in which poets see a blasted world and gravely took off my hat ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... dreary sound along the shore. A few heavy drops of rain fell around him. Mechanically he quickened his pace. He came at length down the steep cliff-path to the gate that led to the village. And here to his surprise a shuffling footstep told him of the presence of another human being out in the desolate darkness. Dimly he discerned a bulky shape ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... mechanically repeated the old sibyl. Even the glance of her dimmed eyes was a caress as she fondly ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... mechanically. Everything seemed to have become very still and cold; feeling had frozen in her limbs; terror clutched at her icily out of the gloom. There were two lighted windows in front of her, two baleful yellow gleams, like the eyes of a monster of the night. At any instant the door would ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Betty that she became suddenly cold, all over. Yet she was sure there was no outward manifestation in face or manner of what she felt. She answered mechanically, indifferently, that she 'would see'; and they went forward to rejoin their companions. But of the rest of the objects that were shown them in the Abbey she simply saw nothing. The image of Esther was before ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... taken from her, and half the time they went cold and hungry. Little Mary had always been extremely delicate, and she sunk under it and died, and was buried beside her mother. Angel despaired then, and went on for the future in a kind of maze of bewilderment, doing that which her hand found to do mechanically. Only God, who had bereft her, pitied her still, and helped her to resist temptation when it ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... be scientists and engineers, etc., but some of them have talents for such things! Give them a chance! A good many of them have unmistakably artistic gifts! Why not give them a chance too! And the mechanically inclined should have a chance! Why can we not differentiate according to their tastes ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... times almost into grandeur. There are passages in the elegy on Cornelia (which concludes the series) whose noble naturalness and stirring emphasis bespeak a great and patriotic inspiration; and no small part of this effect is due to his vigorous handling of a somewhat feeble metre. [26] Mechanically speaking, he is a disciple in the same school as Ovid, but his success in the Ovidian distich is insignificant; for he has nothing of the epigrammatist in him, and his finest lines all seem to ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... chemist. They hold their own with the best, and rank high for homely cures, because of their proved constituents. Their manifest healing virtues are shown to depend on medicinal elements plainly disclosed by analysis. Henceforward the curtain of oblivion must fall on cordial waters distilled mechanically from sweet herbs, and on electuaries artlessly compounded of seeds and roots by a Lady Monmouth, or a Countess of Arundel, as in the Stuart and Tudor times. Our Herbal Simples are fairly entitled at last to independent promotion ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... over. But when he, having sent on all their luggage by a respectable old four-wheeler, got into the hansom beside her, and put his hand inside her arm, and bade her be of good cheer that she should have such a pleasant morning to welcome her to London, she said "Yes," mechanically, and only looked out in a wistful fashion at the great houses and trees of Euston Square, the mighty and roaring stream of omnibuses, the droves of strangers, mostly clad in black, as if they were going to church, and the pale blue smoke that seemed to mix ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of her solitude, no melancholy recollections, no dread of the future disturbed Sydney's mind. The one sense left in her was the sense of fatigue. Vacantly, mechanically, the girl rested as a tired animal might have rested. She saw nothing, heard nothing; the one feeling of which she was conscious was a dull aching in every limb. The moon climbed the heavens, brightened the topmost leaves of the trees, found the gloom in which Sydney was hidden, ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... ask, sir," Harry replied mechanically. His father's appearance had sent a chill through him; he would hardly have known him had he met him on the street. Not only did he look ten years older, but the injury to his sight caused him to glance sideways at any one he ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... on the contrary, with an air of total indifference to her proximity, continued their walk until they reached the end of the piazza, and then turned and proceeded mechanically to retrace their steps. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... Mechanically enclosed impurities are also frequently present, and it is to these that the colour is often due. A remarkable case of enclosed impurities is presented by the so-called Fontainbleau limestone, which consists of crystals of calcite of an acute rhombohedral form (fig. 3) enclosing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... that day so that it always brought back the mottled sunshine, the flowers blooming along the walk, and the song of a robin from a lilac bush near by. She folded the letter carefully, and put it inside her dress, and then moving mechanically, took it out and read ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... hand, which she had mechanically held out, and with a sudden impulsive gesture, she threw her arms round the neck of her beloved and kissed him with tenderness. The grave man, being still upset by the manner of his arrival, remained ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... I followed Simon mechanically; but my thoughts were far from Palissy and his enamelled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the dark after a great discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame Vulpes, set me on a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... on people and things from Perpignan to Douai and from Rochelle to Besancon, it does not adapt itself to the requirements of the public; it subjects its public to the exigencies, rigidity and uniformity of its play and structure. Now, as it acts mechanically only, through outward pressure, the human material on which it operates must be passive, composed, not of diverse persons, but of units all alike; its pupils must be for it merely numbers and names.—Owing to this our internats, those huge stone ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
