"Locomotive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come nigh to a tres'le 'crost a holler, deep an' wild, Suddenly I saw a baby, 'twuz the station-keeper's child, Toddlin' right along the timbers with a bold an' fearless tread, Right afore the locomotive, not ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... knew well. From a secret cache back in the willows, George and Mike produced coffee and condensed milk and even butter. So we lunched, and far away we heard a sound which showed us how completely our wilderness days were over—the screech of a railway locomotive. ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... filtered through the window-panes of the station, fell on her like the rays of an immense hour-glass which measured for her the minutes of happiness lost. She was lamenting her fate, when, in the red light of the sun, she saw the locomotive of the express stop, monstrous and docile, on the quay, and, in the crowd of travellers coming out of the carriages, Jacques approached her. He was looking at her with that sort of sombre and violent joy which she had often observed in ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... interchangeable," has brought about a revolution in the manufacture of other articles besides fire-arms. It is applied also to watches, sewing-machines, knitting-machines, and even to agricultural implements and the building of locomotive engines. ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... whistling with those tubelike tongues, and drooling dry coal dust, but Pat swung one of his boots in an arc that splashed all over the ground in front of them, and they turned tail (literally) and clattered off down another tunnel, sounding like a locomotive ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... question, there it stood, nearly ready. Just behind the great hissing locomotive, with its parabolic headlight and its coal-laden tender, came the baggage, mail, and express cars; then the passenger coaches, in which the social condition of the occupants seemed to be in inverse ratio to their distance from the engine. First came emigrants, "honest miners," ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... When Descartes had learned something of the mechanism of the human body, and had placed the human soul—hospes comesque corporis—in the little pineal gland in the midst of the brain, the conception in his mind was not unlike that which we have when we picture to ourselves a locomotive engine with an engineer in its cab. The man gives intelligent direction; but, under some circumstances, the machine can do a good deal in the absence of the man; if it is started, it can run of itself, and to do this, it must go through a ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... five days more the decrepit little locomotive strained along, dragging after it the rattling' old cars. The scenery was intensely monotonous. It was a flat, almost unending, stretch of pine barrens and the land so poor that a disgusted Illinoisan, used to the fertility of the great American ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... made sage speculations about locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... ground. Presently a large ground sloth came to the pool to drink, lapping up the water at the sides that had partly cooled. In an instant the black armored monster rushed down the slope with the speed of a nineteenth-century locomotive, and seemed about as formidable. The sloth turned in the direction of the sound, and for a moment seemed paralyzed with fear; it then started to run, but it was too late, for the next second the enormously exaggerated ant—for such it was—overtook ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... himself can hardly withstand. Beach, more like the slow worm, insinuates gradually into the bowels of the enemy making his presence only felt by the effect, while Hall, on the contrary, rushes right onward like the locomotive scattering obstacles to right and left, and treating his antagonist with no more ceremony than if he were a cow ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... out into the flat valley, and stopped with a grind of the emergency brake that caused the wheels to skid, ripping up the dust and gravel. For a moment in the jar and confusion we did not realize what had happened, then we saw a great locomotive lying on its side, and a line of Pullmans, sunk to the axles ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... hastily made, with a single track, the rails simply spiked down, and the work done at the rate of from a mile to a mile and a half a day. Before the Bokharans fairly realized what was afoot, the iron horse was careering over their level plains, and the shrill scream of the locomotive whistle was startling ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that point of skill at which a man knows every pound of metal in a locomotive; seemed to feel just what was in his engine the moment he took hold of the levers and started up; and was expecting promotion. While waiting for it, he hit on the idea of studying a more delicate machine, and married a wife. She was the daughter of a woman at ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Billy Carew, as a whistle was heard, and, down the long line of glistening rails, the smoke of a locomotive was seen. The station agent went ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... might have been shot as a spy. As half-charlatan and half-madman, he was sure of national sympathy. During the three days of his stay the old podesta had found himself accessible to reason, the podesta's daughter to the tender passion, and the treasures of the state to the locomotive skill of the French detachment, that waited in the mountains the result of their officer's diplomacy. The lion of St. Mark, having nothing else to do, probably disdained to remain, and in the same night took wing from the column, to which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... instance,—my honorable friend, if he will allow me to call him so,—him as belongs to Smith's bookstall. Why, he no more dares to be up to our Refreshmenting games than he dares to jump atop of a locomotive with her steam at full pressure, and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at limited-mail speed. Papers, he'd get his head punched at every compartment, first, second, and third, the whole length of a train, if he was to ventur' to imitate my ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... seen that the term, fact of consciousness, is very elastic, and that for a reason easy to state. This is, that all facts which exist and are revealed to us reach us by the testimony of the consciousness, and are, consequently, facts of consciousness. If I look at a locomotive, and analyse its machinery, I act like a mechanic; if I study under the microscope the structure of infusoria, I practise biology; and yet the sight of the locomotive, the perception of the infusoria, are just facts of consciousness, ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... in seeing the rapid movement of the Liliputian locomotive; and one of the scribes of the commissioners took his seat upon the car, while the engineer stood upon the tender, feeding the furnace with one hand, and directing the diminutive engine with the other. Crowds of the Japanese gathered round and looked on the repeated circlings ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... thirty miles, while by the right-hand path I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of grass at the foot of the guide-post appeared an object which, though locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver's portable mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered wagon—or, more properly, a small house on wheels—with a door on one side and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses munching ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to be able to say, "well, if woman can do these things, they can't vote after all." I heard some boys discoursing thus not long since. I told them they reminded me of a story I heard of two Irishmen the first time they saw a locomotive with a train of cars. As the majestic fire-horse, with all its grace and polish, moved up to a station, stopped, and snorted, as its mighty power was curbed, then slowly gathered up its forces again and moved swiftly on—"be jabers," says ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the train have a weird character, and Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, and Stamford are rather points in dreamland than well-known towns of New England. As the train stops you drowse if you have been waking, and wake if you have been in a doze; but in any case you are aware of the locomotive hissing and coughing beyond the station, of flaring gas-jets, of clattering feet of passengers getting on and off; then of some one, conductor or station master, walking the whole length of the train; and then you are aware of an insane ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... to express "unmetalled," we had yet another form of conveyance to make acquaintance with. It was a palkee, rudely strapped upon the body of a worn-out "Dak garee;" and although a more unpromising-looking locomotive perhaps never was placed upon wheels, the actual reality proved even worse ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... The locomotive whistled, the cars gave a jolt, and Anna Moore was launched on her tragic fate. She never knew how the time passed after leaving Mrs. Tremont, till Sanderson joined her at the next station. She felt as if her will power had deserted her, and she was dumbly obeying the behests ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... profitable question arises at once. How is it that the steam locomotive appeared at the time it did, and not earlier in the history of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... propelling boats and cars, etc. To prevent loss of life, engineers must pass an examination and secure a certificate of qualification. And boilers must be inspected at least once a year to prevent explosions. The latter duty devolves upon the state boiler inspector and his assistants. Locomotive engines on railroads are sometimes exempt from government inspection, because of the invariably high skill of the engineers and the great care ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... might have averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill scream of the locomotive as it stopped for a moment and then dashed on into the white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half three-quarters, until at last he heard the clock strike the half-hour past seven, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... were going they soon overtook a carriage, as they would have overtaken any thing less rapid than a locomotive or a whirlwind. It was lucky that Leslie had taken the precaution to note the number on the hack, as otherwise they would have been at fault after all. As they dashed by the carriage, which was going at good speed, that cosmopolitan saw that the number on the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... be expected when one of the most intricate of problems is undertaken by those who have given scarcely a thought to the principles on which its solution depends? For shoe-making or house-building, for the management of a ship or a locomotive engine, a long apprenticeship is needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding of a human being in body and mind is so comparatively simple a process that any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever? If not—if the process is, with one exception, more complex than any in ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... accustomed channels and deluges the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure; of distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging gold; when he finds joint-stock companies of all kinds forming; railroads, canals, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side; when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro table; when he beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... to a stop with a stentorian Wo, he unhooked the wheelers, dropped the chain from each yoke, and turned them loose to graze or lie down as each pair might decide; then he went around the corner of the house and set to work making a fire in the stove. It was an outdoor stove of the locomotive variety, having two large iron wheels upon which it had traveled thousands of miles in the service of the J. W. Cattle Company. Mr. Hicks had fastened its tongue or handle to a staple in the chimney of the house, for ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... heard the welcome sound of the approaching locomotive. The train came to a stop, and among the first to enter it was the eminent elocutionist. He took a seat beside the window looking out toward the village. What did he see that brought such an anxious look in ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... and red station, but there was no familiar form in the throng, the gay throng which excited my charges. Everything interested them; the black face of the Sudanese engine driver who looked down from his huge British locomotive, the display of English, French and German literature mingled with Greek, Italian, Arab, or Turkish papers on the bookstall; the ebony and copper-coloured luggage carriers who seemed eager to take one another's ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... in this upstairs room is the inexorable isolation of their souls. No one speaks. One or two look up from their food as the author makes his way to the window from which he commands a glimpse of blue sky, the elevation of an enormous brick wall, and possibly a locomotive having its firebox cleaned on a siding and panting as though afflicted with lung trouble. He takes his seat not far from a young woman who is breakfasting on a bun and a glass of milk. She is reading a book, a fat novel in fine print, the covers soiled ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... movement and celerity that was wonderful, practiced hands dropped the fresh rails one after another on the ties exactly in line. Hugh sledges sent the spikes home,—the car rolled on and the operation was repeated; while every few minutes the long heavy train behind sent out a puff of smoke from its locomotive and caught up with its load of material the advancing work. The only limit to the rapidity with which the track could thus be laid was the power of the road ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... good left hand, as though he had rested it on the rim of a wheel that was spinning with bewildering swiftness. No eye could follow the knife in its circlings. There was one smooth gleam like the polished periphery of the "driver" of a locomotive. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... by the aid of steam-power, and we think and speak of a locomotive or a steamboat as we once thought and spoke of a horse or a man; and no little feeling of self-sufficiency is engendered by the conclusion that this new source of power has been brought under control and put to work in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the Olancho Mining Company (Limited), and of his able lieutenants, Mr. Theodore Langham and Mr. MacWilliams. The building on the extreme left is the round-house, in which Mr. MacWilliams stores his three locomotive engines, and in the far middle-distance is Mr. MacWilliams himself in the act of repairing a water-tank. He is the one in a suit of blue overalls, and as his language at such times is free, we will drive rapidly on and ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Follenvie supped at the farther end of the table. The husband—puffing and blowing like a bursting locomotive—had too much cold on the chest to be able to speak and eat at the same time, but his wife never ceased talking. She described her every impression at the arrival of the Prussians and all they did and all they said, execrating them in the first place because they ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... according to my instincts of decorum, necessary, to call the attention of those charged with authority in such matters, and the public generally, to the growing misuse, in the hands of engineers, of the locomotive steam whistle, the employment thereof having especially in town districts, grown to be out of all dimensions of private service, injurious to those whether officially called, or who, pending the pleasure of ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... ton-mile than on the ocean, because the vessels are necessarily smaller than those built for ocean traffic. For a similar reason, river and canal freights are higher than lake freights. Railway transportation is economical, partly because a single locomotive will draw an enormous weight of goods, and partly because of the high speed at which the goods move from point to point. Animal transportation is more expensive than ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... locomotive whistled just then, and the novelty of getting aboard a train for the first time, helped her to be brave at the parting. She stood on the rear platform of the last car, waving her handkerchief to the group at the ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... traction engine; it has gone through worlds of fancy and reflection, dragging me behind it; and long experience has given it so great facility, that I have only to fire up, whistle, and fix my couplings, and away goes my locomotive with no ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... his Waltham Power-loom. Growth of Factory System. New Corporation Laws. Gas, Coal, and Other Industries. The Same Continued. The National Road. Stages and Canals. Ocean Lines. Beginning of Railroads. Opposition. First Locomotive. Multiplication of Railroads. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Gum Creek in Range of Hills. Started on the same course, 330 degrees, to a remarkable hill, which has the appearance at this distance of a locomotive engine with its funnel. For three miles the country is very good, but after that high sand hills succeeded, covered with spinifex. At six miles we got to one of the largest gum creeks I have yet seen. It is ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... development of man's inventive and constructive faculties; and, by leading to a more refined feeling of personal modesty, may have influenced, to a considerable extent, his moral nature. The erect form of man, by freeing the hands from all locomotive uses, has been necessary for his intellectual advancement; and the extreme perfection of his hands, has alone rendered possible that excellence in all the arts of civilization which raises him so far above the savage, and is perhaps ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... been lost on account of no greater thing than a loose saddle-girth. A loose screw will disable the mightiest engine in the world. A bit of sand in the bearing of an axle has brought many a locomotive to a standstill, and thrown out of order every train on the division. Lives have been lost, business houses wrecked, private fortunes laid in the balance, just because some one did not ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... down the rails. When snow covers this track, descent is sometimes made on a toboggan, but it is such a dangerous venture that all except the operatives are now forbidden to try it. The velocity attained of three and a half miles in three minutes may seem nothing to a locomotive engineer who is making up time; it might seem slow to a lover whose sweetheart was at the foot of the slide; to ordinary mortals a mile a minute is quite enough on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... familiar voices rang upon the air, and waving handkerchiefs caught the echoes even from the distant cupola of the now fast receding Normal School buildings. A number of torpedoes that had been placed under the wheels of the locomotive, had already apprised us that the train was in motion, and would soon hurry us out of sight. During all this excitement of the parting hour, which seemed to affect some so deeply, I was either looking into the future, ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... into completed machines. The result was that the United States, despite the high wages paid here, led the world in bicycle making and flooded all countries with this utilitarian article. Our great locomotive factories had developed on similar lines. Europeans had always marveled that Americans could build these costly articles so cheaply that they could undersell European makers. When they obtained a glimpse of an American locomotive factory, the reason became ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... wailing its complaint of the two high-loaded flat-cars behind. The ties beneath it were spiked to planks laid lengthwise over the semi-liquid road-bed, in places sagging beneath the surface till the humpbacked, short-waisted locomotive yawed and reeled and squealed like a drunken fish-wife. At night it panted wearily into the board station and there sighed and coughed and hissed away its fatigue as the coals died and the breath ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... same correspondent, without my having asked him in regard to this, gives me the following details: "When about seven years old I saw a locomotive, its fire and smoke. My father's stove also made fire and smoke, but lacked wheels. If, then, I told my father, we put wheels under the stove, it would move like a locomotive. Later, when about thirteen, the sight of a steam threshing-machine ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... the President was the center, was stopped at a railroad by Harper's Ferry, to let a locomotive pass, and look at the old engine-house where John Brown, the raider, was penned in and captured. The little switching-engine ran past with much noise and bustle, the engineer blowing the ludicrous whistle ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sudden loud Whoa! would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them from venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried, "Whoa!" to mankind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way. Whatever part the whip has touched is thenceforth ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... who were then little boys and girls, are now fathers and mothers—doubtless a large proportion being decent tradesfolk in Stowbury still; though, in this locomotive quarter, many must have drifted elsewhere—where, Heaven knows. But not a few of them may still call to mind Miss Leaf, who first taught them their letters—sitting in her corner between the fire and the window, while the blind was drawn down to keep out, first the light from her own ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... for London O'er Bulgaria's heavy sands To Rotten Row and muffins, soles, Chevalier and Brass Bands Ho' get away you bullock man You've heard the whistle blowed a locomotive coming down ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... the sun hung lower, the smoke of every river boat, every locomotive speeding along the shores below, lay almost motionless above the water, tinged with the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... follow the legs than it can the spokes of a carriage-wheel in rapid motion. If we take the above number, and twelve feet stride as the average pace, we have a speed of twenty-six miles an hour. It can not be very much above that, and is therefore slower than a railway locomotive. They are sometimes shot by the horseman making a cross cut to their undeviating course, but few Englishmen ever ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... lifetime, the moral pressure of my wife and children, the example of society, and the force of superficial public opinion and expectation were spinning it round and round in the direction of least resistance. As well attempt to alter my course as to steer a locomotive off the track! I could not ditch the locomotive, for I had a trainload of passengers! ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... straight line, gradually relaxing into its former smile of rather kindly mockery. He told himself, apparently, that there was no point in getting excited; and he seemed a master hand at taking his ease when he could. Neither the sharp whistle of the locomotive nor the brakeman's call disturbed him. It was not until after the train had stopped that he rose, put on a Panama hat, took from the rack a small valise and a flute-case, and stepped deliberately to the station platform. The baggage was already unloaded, and the stranger presented a check ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... less than locomotive speed, shot across the strip of sidewalk, caught its right forewheel against a sapling, swung heavily broadside to the drive, and turned completely over as it shot down the slope ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... you at the close of your last session in view of the public dangers disclosed by the unaccommodated difficulties which then existed, and which still unhappily continue to exist, between the railroads of the country and their locomotive engineers, conductors and trainmen. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Mulcahy, who drives the engine of the Montreal Express out of Grand Central every evening at 6.55. Smokey had been in the habit of taking a latest evening edition through to Pat in his engine cab. Mulcahy didn't get his paper one night, but next evening Jimmy turned up alongside the big locomotive and said: ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... sir," exploded the fat man, at last, "by tearing through the streets like a locomotive? You've nearly ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... station their train was waiting—the locomotive hissing its impatience; they got into the car, for there was but one, and in a moment were flying seaward. A man—the steward of the yacht—was busy at the far end of the car with a cooking apparatus, and the aroma of coffee came intoxicatingly to her nostrils. She remembered she ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying away a half an hour or so before the long day's sunset. One of the stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phoebe laughed, as she summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... crawling at the rate of four miles in the hour, with small trucks of stone and lime behind them.... Lean mules no longer crawl leisurely along the little rails with trucks of stone, through Croydon, once perchance during the day, but the whistle and rush of the locomotive, and the whirr of the atmospheric, are now heard all ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... obtain this, men consent to give useful things which have a value also. When, therefore, there are mines in a country, if that country obtains from them sufficient gold to purchase a useful thing from abroad—a locomotive, for instance—it enriches itself with all the enjoyments which a locomotive can procure, exactly as if the machine had been made at home. The question is, whether it spends more efforts in the former proceeding than in the latter? For if it did not export this gold, it would depreciate, ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... every branch, from track repairer to the man at the locomotive throttle, the railroad worker is responsible for the safety of human lives and the care of vast property. His high responsibility might well rate high his pay within the limits the traffic will bear; but ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... Cicadas, one large kind perched high on the trees around our little haven setting up a most piercing chirp. it began with the usual harsh jarring tone of its tribe, but this gradually and rapidly became shriller, until it ended in a long and loud note resembling the steam-whistle of a locomotive engine. Half-a-dozen of these wonderful performers made a considerable item in the evening concert. I had heard the same species before at Para, but it was there very uncommon; we obtained one of them ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... necessary here to detail the studies and experiments by which he afterwards sought to introduce a better steam-engine, for locomotive purposes, than was then, or is even now, in general use. His plan—not a new one, though it had never before been made available in practice—was to substitute for the ordinary reciprocating engine a machine which should at once produce a circular motion. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... interior of a railroad station, for instance, is interesting, as giving you certain mechanical results, construction, but it is not picturesque—that is, paintable—unless one could treat it as Pennell does, contrasting the black cars and locomotive with a puff of white steam, giving the vistas with the perspective of track, and a centre mass of people adding an idea of movement ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... comes again," said Miss Grant, as the horseman reappeared, riding slowly round them in ever-lessening circles; the colt meanwhile eyeing them with every aspect of intense dislike and hatred, and snorting between whiles like a locomotive. ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... in whatever direction most pleases himself, and feel confident, as he goes, that his ears will be saluted with the usual traveller's signal of "all's right." I can best compare the operation of your God-like and his votaries, to the action of a locomotive with its railroad train. As that goes, this follows; faster or slower, the movement is certain to be accompanied; when the steam is up they fly, when the fire is out they crawl, and that, too, with a very uneasy sort of motion; and when a bolt is broken, they who have just been riding ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the balloon was getting very tense, and the order was given to "ease her" by opening the top valve. The valve line was accordingly pulled, "and immediately afterwards we heard a noise similar to the escape of steam in a locomotive, and the lower part of the balloon collapsed rapidly, and appeared to fly up into the upper portion. At the same instant the balloon began to fall with appalling velocity, the immense mass of loose silk surging and rustling frightfully over our ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... further. I postulate we would all die for that baby if a locomotive was to trundle up right here and try to handle it. [To the GERMAN] I guess you don't know how good you are. [As the GERMAN is twisting up the ends of his moustache—to the ENGLISHWOMAN] I should like to have you express ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gradually growing dark, and suddenly he saw (as he really believed) the full moon approaching him. He did not know that it was the headlight of a locomotive ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... There is "a definite relation" between the straightness or want of straightness in a railroad and the speed of the train: ergo, the speed of the train, "instead of having any connection" with the locomotive and the force of steam, is "completely controlled" by the line of the road! It is by no means difficult to philosophize after this fashion; but if we are to have many professors of such philosophy, let the mediaeval cap-and-bells, by all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... many machines which contribute much more directly to the rapid accumulation of wealth in the persons of individuals, than does the railway locomotive, there is probably none which tends more to enrich a community. Unlike most other mechanical contrivances for the abridgment of labour, the railway locomotive unites in the effects which it produces the elements of social as well as commercial improvement. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... that the primary qualities are immediately perceived only in our organism as extended, and inferred to exist in extra-organic bodies. The external world is immediately apprehended only in its secundo-primary character, as resisting our locomotive energy. But as the organism, in this theory, is a material non-ego equally with the rest of matter, and as to press this distinction would only affect the verbal accuracy, not the substantial justice, of Mr. Mill's criticisms, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... of the delay. Over a small mountain stream a strong wooden bridge with iron frame had been built. Near the bridge grew a number of tall trees, and one of these had been washed loose by the water and overturned in such a manner that the largest branch blocked the progress of the locomotive. The strong headlight had revealed the state of affairs to the engineer, and he had stopped within five feet of the obstruction. Had he run on, it is impossible to calculate what amount of damage might have ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... anti-social force, when it frightens horses and upsets pedestrians. Adapting an old proverb, we may say, "Set a cad on a cycle and he'll ride"—well, all over the road, and likely enough over old ladies into the bargain. Whilst welcoming the latest locomotive development, we must not allow the "new social force" to develop into a new social ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... reason ready also to admire men of action, and is wide open for the influences of hero-worship. And while he cannot be argued into being a Christian, for he is not sufficiently awake to logic; and while he cannot be coerced, for he possesses the dynamic of a locomotive combined with the resistance of a mule, he can be magnetized into being a Christian if there is set as his teacher and example a virile, magnetic man. The boy will open his soul to him as he does his windows to welcome the breath of May. Such considerations ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... of Scott's political principles, is also the most fervent and expressive admirer of the novels, quite beyond the danger of modern progress, his judgment not corrupted at all by the incense of the cotton-factory or the charm of the locomotive. Hazlitt's praise of Scott is an immortal proof of Hazlitt's sincerity in criticism. Scott's friends were not Hazlitt's, and Scott and Hazlitt differed both in personal and public affairs as much as any men of their time. But Hazlitt has too much sense not to be taken ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... garden. The small orchard was old, sickly, and neglected. The trees were twisted, spindling, and overgrown with a gray moss. The sons and daughters were away in the cities, Saxon found out. One daughter had married a doctor, the other was a teacher in the state normal school; one son was a locomotive engineer, the second was an architect, and the third was a police court reporter in San Francisco. On occasion, the father said, they helped out ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... drizzly morning, was, with her face beaming out the radiance of hope, making a cup of tea on the stove of a caboose-car for the convalescent, who was snugly tucked away in the caboose-berth, waiting the final whistle of the locomotive that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... which his eye receives in a second must be proportionately increased. Thus the distance between two successive ether waves will be very slightly diminished. A well-known phenomenon of a similar character is the change of pitch of the whistle of a locomotive engine as it rushes past. This is particularly noticeable if the observer happens to be in a train which is moving rapidly in the opposite direction. In the case of sound, of course, the vibrations or waves take place in the air and not in the ether. But the effect of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... curious queen, Who came to see,—and to be seen,— Or something new to seek, And swooned, as ladies sometimes do, At sights that thrilled her through and through, Had heard, as she was "coming to," A locomotive's shriek, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... principle, I have made liberal use of a book issued by the U. S. Government—"The growth of industrial art." It gives, in pictures, with only a line or two of description, the progress of different industries—such as the locomotive, from the clumsy engine of 1802 to the elaborate machinery of the present day; the evolution of lighting, from the pine-knot and tallow-dip to the electric light; methods of signalling, from the Indian fire-signal to the telegraph; time-keeping, etc. A child will get more ideas from one page ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... after-length kept on trailing out straight, like a loose rope behind a boat, through the perishing glare and the heat-flurry that seemed to be making the whole world jump up and down, as it does when you look at it over the top of a locomotive-funnel. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... days of the grand-dukes of Lithuania, giant trees that threw their shade right up to the very edge of the towns? Where were such things nowadays? Thaddeus was very amusing, for it was he, certainly, who had cut them away tranquilly enough and watched them vanish in locomotive smoke. It was what was called Progress. Ah, hunting lost its national character assuredly with tiny new-growth trees which had not had time to grow. And, besides, one nowadays had not time for hunting. All the big game was so far away. Lucky enough if one seized the time to bring down a ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... train, with hissing air-brakes, Solomon-magnificent sleeping cars, and a locomotive large enough to swallow whole the small affair that used to bring the once-a-day train from Atlanta, had just backed in, and the boy took its royal measure with eager and curious eyes, walking slowly up one side of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... visit to a friend at a distance (we will call the friend's name Smith, for convenience sake), Mr. Smith asked Mr. Parker how Mr. Ripley was getting along with his "Community." "Oh," said the faithless Parker, "Mr. Ripley reminds me, in that connection, of a new and splendid locomotive dragging along ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... reporters' drafts; no minute and insulting inquiries respecting the last moments of a horse ridden to death in the service; no grumbling about the precise terms of a steamboat charter, or a special locomotive. A reporter returning from the army laden with information, procured at a lavish expense, was received in the office like a conqueror coming home from a victorious campaign, and he went forth again full of courage ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... have walked back," said Belle. "We have been waiting for you ever since we heard the locomotive whistle." ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... aggressive perfumery of some sort seemed inevitable. He found himself wondering what trait in her father had led him to this deduction, and drifted idly about in the haze of heredity until the whistle of the locomotive warned him to withdraw his feet from their elevation and betake himself to the platform. Half a minute later the engine panted onward and the young man found himself, with uplifted hat, confronting a slender figure clad very much as he was, save for the skirt that ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... little Vulcan swung about in an effort to keep up with her principal. On she rushed, shaking and puffing like a locomotive, her bright flags flying the submarine warning, as if the speeding giant ahead of her were likely to ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the gravel with his hobnailed shoes: "I'll ask you: Am I responsible for the pressure, or the water company?" Sawdy undisturbed, continued to stroke his heavy mustache. "The water it takes to cover you, Henry," sputtered McAlpin, "would run a locomotive from here to ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... is within three miles of Loch Ard, and by the time this book is in the hand of the reader there will most likely be a railway station at Aberfoyle itself. Shade of Bailie Nicol Jarvie! what would you say if you were now to be allowed to haunt the old spot? to hear a locomotive screech where formerly you thought yourself so far "frae the Sautmarket o' Glesca"? We don't like the idea ourselves, and doubt very much if it will pay. However, it is the fishing alone which concerns us meantime, and we can ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... professing Christianity; among Jews, Mohammedans, Heathen; among Deists and unbelievers of all sorts, who build better than they know. For says Jesus, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof.... So is every one who is born of the Spirit." A locomotive must run on a track, a wagon on a road. But there is no track laid through the sky for the south wind; there is no time-table to determine the starting and arriving of the soft breeze which comes from the far prairies, laden ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... his respectable friend had recently accepted a responsible situation in a locomotive gaming-house, and was at that time absent on a professional tour among the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... pulled the car-cord twice. Far up ahead, in the cab of the locomotive, a little whistle blew twice, and the engineer knew that meant for him to go ahead. It's just like that on a trolley car. One bell means to stop, and ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... used the whip did not promise well for the dogs' backs. Zanko was now harnessed in the team. On my return to Framheim I saw no one, so I slipped into the pent-house, and waited for an opportunity of getting into the kitchen. This was not long in coming. Puffing and gasping like a small locomotive, Lindstrom swung in from the passage that led round the house. In his arms he again carried the big bucket full of ice, and an electric lamp hung from his mouth. In order to open the kitchen-door, he had only to give it a push with his knee; I slipped ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... practical jokes upon one another and amused themselves by leaning out of the windows and jeering at the men who were guarding the railway bridges and culverts. At the stations they grasped their coffee-pots and rushed to the locomotive to secure hot water with which to prepare their beverage. It seldom happened that any Boer going to the front carried any liquor with him and, although the delays and vexations of the journey were sufficiently irritating to serve as an excuse, drunkenness practically never occurred. ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... "As for me, I will not speak; I will only say one word. I know right well that I have outrun more than one hare. The other day I broke the hind legs of one of the young ones. I was sitting on the locomotive before the train: I often do that. One sees so well there one's own speed. A young hare ran for a long time in front of the engine: he had no idea that I was there. At length he was just going to turn off the line, when the locomotive ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... the bridges and many culverts had to be rebuilt, and from long disuse of the line the rank grass, that in Louisiana springs up so freely in every untrodden spot above water, had grown so tall and thick and strongly matted that the troops had to pull it up by the roots before the locomotive could pass. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... the engine, which, because of its weight, had sunk quite deeply into the ground. The jacks were small, but one man worked the handle, which pumped water from one part of it to another, and elevated a piston, that, in turn was forced up with terrible pressure, thus raising one end of the ponderous locomotive. ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... school teaching, shop keeping; and those, in turn, are rated as differently from plumbing, being a chauffeur, dressmaking, subcontracting, or stenography, as these are from being a butler, lady's maid, a moving picture operator, or a locomotive engineer. And yet the financial return does not ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... pretend to deny that a locomotive with a light train, flying at the rate of forty miles an hour, consumes more fuel than one with a heavy train, moving at the rate of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... been there since the day before, waiting for a locomotive to come and move the hospital train that waited outside. In that railway station the boy had had his leg ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... produced. Chimneys are simple means of accomplishing this, and this is their function whether on oil-lamps or factories. Other means of forced draft have been used, such as small fans or compressed air. In the railway locomotive the short smoke-stack is insufficient for supplying large quantities of air to the fire-box so the exhausted steam is allowed to escape into the stack. With each noisy puff of smoke a quantity of air is forcibly drawn into the fire-box through the burning fuel. In the modern ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... Kate, when the whistle of the locomotive was heard in the distance. "I must have a ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... Lion's Creek" station the colonel told his men that they were to travel the rest of the way by rail; whereupon they gave a ringing cheer and started at a prodigious pace to walk down the line in momentary expectation of meeting the presumably approaching train. Each man seemed to go like a locomotive with full head of steam on, and it took me all my time and strength to keep up with them. Nevertheless that train never met us. It never even started, and at that puffing perspiring pace the battalion proceeded all the way on foot. We had indeed ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... restless, eager expectancy. Little wonder. Her pet brother, the one next older than herself, a promising young theologue, was coming home to spend Thanksgiving. It was time he appeared. The shriek of the locomotive had announced the arrival of the train; and her ardent little spirit could scarcely endure the moments intervening before she would almost concentrate herself into a rapturous kiss and embrace of welcome, for the favorite brother had ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... was that the stranger represented a firm that had put up the money to build a locomotive with a patent boiler for burning a patent fuel—she had an improved valve motion, too—and they had asked our G. M. M. for a good engineer, to send East and break in and run the new machine and go with her around the country on ten-day trials on the different roads. He offered ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... reflection that his painting was refused admittance because the donkey had gradually grown to be emblematical of the state—in fact, was so popularly known to the forestieri as the Roman Locomotive, with allusions to its steam whistle, &c., highly annoying to the chief authorities—and therefore, its introduction in a painting was intolerable, and not ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... studying on the same bench with them,—he is as clean, as well-dressed, as well-behaved, as they. Now, five years hence, to what occupation can that colored boy turn? He can be a bootblack, a servant, a barber, perhaps a teamster. He may be a locomotive fireman, but when he is fit to be an engineer, he is turned back. Carpentry, masonry, painting, plumbing, the hundred mechanical trades,—these, for the most part, are shut to him; so are clerkships; so are nineteen-twentieths of the ways by which the white boys ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... was filled to suffocation. Assuming that the crowd's intention was to view the unaccustomed locomotive, it was strange it did not occur to them that the opposite side of the track or the adjacent prairie would afford more elbow room. They huddled together on the boards of the platform as though the appearance of the spectacle depended on every last individual's keeping his feet ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... road for some distance. A lady in pink satin was chained to the rails—placed there by the villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the offing, waiting for his next cue. The lady in pink satin had made a little dugout for herself under the track, and as the locomotive thundered up she was to slip underneath—a job that the mines of Golconda would not have tempted me to try. Moving-picture actors have a very high order of courage. We could not stay for the denouement, as we had a nervous old lady with us, who firmly declined to witness ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... by equally curious changes of colour. Mr. Browning compares these changes to those which are seen when a cloud of steam of varying depth and density is illuminated from behind by a strong light, as when we look through the steam escaping from the safety-valve of a locomotive at a gas-lamp immediately behind it. This appears to be the true explanation of the phenomenon. [Footnote: Popular Science Review, 1871, p. 307.] These belts are probably due to vast masses of steam, poured forth with great force from ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... not quick enough. The boy landed against the broncho with a jolt that nearly knocked the little animal over, while to Phil the impact could not have been much more severe, it seemed to him, had he collided with a locomotive. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... walks, because your inward sense and the inclination of your hearts are wholly perverted and corrupted by nature. You know the moving faculty is subordinate in its operations unto the knowing, feeling, and apprehending faculties: the locomotive power is given for a subsidiary and help to the apprehensive and appetitive powers, because things are convenient and disconvenient, good or evil, to the nature of the living creature, without it; and it could not by mere knowledge, or desire, or hatred of things, either come into possession ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... vivid and graphic description of the sad fate of the pig and the locomotive. The wonder was how Ford should have failed to tell it before. No such failure would have been possible if his head and tongue had not been so wonderfully busy about so many other ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of the masquerader, the moving-picture cowboy. He held the eye, even of Hereford, but only because they liked to gaze upon a good man on a good horse. His body responded to every shift of Pronto, jigging impatiently, showing off, pretending to be afraid of the panting locomotive, body shining like metal of bronze and aluminum, his nostrils pink as the inside of a shell, ears twitching, rider and mount one in every movement. Grit stood with plumy tail erect and waving gently, ears up, red tongue playing between white teeth, his eyes ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... proved that the colour of a luminous body, like the pitch or note of a sounding body, must be changed by velocity of approach or recession. Everyone has noticed on a railway that, on meeting a locomotive whistling, the note is lowered after the engine has passed. The pitch of a sound or the colour of a light depends on the number of waves striking the ear or eye in a second. This number is increased by approach ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... level of the street, the four principal churches of the town stood out starkly, even while their misshapen spires were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm. Near the railroad station, the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to an enormous locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a pyramidal row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for a few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter location. But the pride of Genoa—the great Crammer Institute ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... opportunity and grasped it. Long purses might be lacking, but not shrewd heads. The unfinished Plug Mountain was immediately bonded for more than it ever promised to be worth, and in the hottest heat of the forwarding strife it was extended at the rate of a mile a day until the welcome screech of its locomotive whistles was added to the perfervid clamor of the new camp in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... town had come out of the haze of the distance,—a straggling village of weather-beaten wood and weather-beaten white paint, picturesque, but no longer a vision of gray stone and pale marble. A coal-yard, and a brick locomotive house, and rambling railroad sheds stretched along the water-front. They found their way easily enough through the sparse shipping to the steps at the end of the wooden pier, where Libby dropped the sail ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to carry the Duke of Bridgwater's coal from Worsley to Manchester. The first railroads were laid around Newcastle to convey the coals from the pit mouth to the river. George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive, began life as a ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... degree of such torpor or exertion, are perhaps more material than the time of their duration. Besides this some muscles are less liable to accumulate sensorial power during their torpor, than others, as the locomotive muscles compared with the capillary arteries; on all which accounts a long cold fit may often be followed by a ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... smell cut through the odours of dust and creosote which reeked along the track. It came from a cord of cedar-wood piled up close by, and she found it curiously refreshing. The drowsy roar of the river mingled with the panting of the locomotive pump, but there was a singular absence of life and movement in the station until the door of the baggage-car slid open, and her father sprang aside as her trunks were shot out on to the platform. A bag or two of something followed them, the ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the six specimens with the utmost care, and having scrupulously examined the ovaria in other Cirripedes during their early stages of development, even before the exuviation of the larval locomotive organs, and in specimens of smaller size than the male Ibla, I am prepared to assert that there are no ovaria, and that these little creatures are exclusively males. It should be borne in mind, that in some of the specimens there were perfect ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... from the deserted heights of the third galleries, sounding through the house like the whistle of a locomotive. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... burned in locomotives with greatly increased efficiency and capacity and with less smoke than the same coal not briquetted. These tests have shown that, with the same fuel consumption of briquettes as of raw coal, the same locomotive can very materially increase its hauling capacity and thus reduce the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... Shafts. In addition, a number of stiff-leg derricks were set up along the open-cut section, and were operated by Lidgerwood or Lambert air hoisting engines, or by electric motors, as circumstances dictated. A 15-ton Bay City locomotive crane was also used along part of the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... wheels under the sonorous arch was traversed by a strange, piercing shriek, and Decoud, from his back seat, had a view of the people behind the carriage trudging along the road outside, all turning their heads, in sombreros and rebozos, to look at a locomotive which rolled quickly out of sight behind Giorgio Viola's house, under a white trail of steam that seemed to vanish in the breathless, hysterically prolonged scream of warlike triumph. And it was all like a fleeting vision, the shrieking ghost of a railway ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... o'clock was an unreasonably late hour for a hanging. Tortured with these fears, I unconsciously increased my pace with every step, until it was almost a run. I stripped off my coat and flung it away, opened my collar, and unbuttoned my waistcoat. And at last, puffing and steaming like a locomotive engine, I burst into a thin crowd of idlers on the outskirts of the town, and flourished the pardon crazily above my head, yelling, "Cut him down!—cut ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... suicide; the Christian Scriptures nowhere explicitly forbid it; and yet it is a rare thing. Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the desire vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set in. A wise physician once said to me: "I observe that every one wishes to go to heaven, but I observe that most people are willing to take a great deal of very disagreeable medicine first." The lives that one least envies—as of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... universe collapsed, his cosmos came tumbling about his ears the instant that it became impossible for him to follow in a train. It was all one that Archibald tore and tugged at the bit, or roweled him red. He could as easily have reined a locomotive from its track as to have swerved the creature from its direct line of travel by so much ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... other districts. His habit is that of the jay and magpie, and of the dog with a bone to put by till it is wanted. Possibly the rural police have not yet discovered this habit of the gipsy. Indeed, the contrast in mind and locomotive powers between the gipsy and the village policeman has often amused me; the former most like the thievish jay, ever on mischief bent; the other, who has his eye on him, is more like the portly Cochin-China fowl of the farmyard, or the Muscovy ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... astonished me. I had never heard fifty men play with such force before and could not account for it, but the explanation soon became manifest. As the band ceased playing, the same note continued in the blast of a passing locomotive that had opportunely chimed in ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa |
