"Out of gear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man whose name and birth-place are alike unknown. His reason has been unseated by some sudden shock, the doctors say, though of what nature they are unable to determine. "It is the most delicate machine which is most readily put out of gear," they remark, and point, in proof of their axiom, to the complicated electric engines, and remarkable aeronautic machines which the patient is fond of devising in his ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the maps. Give the child an ordinary conventional map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since the days of good Gerardus ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... themselves! I study the heavens and take no heed of your sublunary divisions. But they have eaten and drunk me out of house and home; at that hour, too, when the most meteors were predicted: and what is worse they invaded my garret in their clumsy jack-boots, and have thrown my Orchestra Coeli out of gear. I was mending it when you knocked. By the way,' he added more kindly, 'I can go on mending it while you wash your wound, which will appear less horrid when cleansed of all this blood. I have a fire ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... that very nice, put on a languid air, like a poor little jaded thing that had got out of gear: ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the main road just west of Frasnes, when at twenty minutes before 11 o'clock the Brigade-Major (Captain A.J.M. Tuck, M.C.) informed us that an armistice had been signed which came in force at 11 o'clock. The consequent halt threw our time-table out of gear, and we finally stumbled in to our billeting area in the dark, covered with ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... don't understand machinery and the like, but there was something about a wheel out of gear, and a band bursted, or something, anyhow a big wheel flew to pieces, and as he was standing near, he ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... you'll come to no good," he said, shaking his fist at the disappearing plane. "You've scared me half to death with your shots, and I hope that both your rudders will get out of gear and stay out of gear! I hope that the wheel controlling them will be smashed up! I hope that the top plane will crash into the bottom one! I hope that a French shell will shoot your tail off! And I hope that you'll ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... account for it. Indeed, had it not been for many applications of that "precious oil of unity," with which the good Doctor daily anointed the creaking wheels of Whitbury society, John Briggs and his master would have long ago "broken out of gear," and parted company in mutual wrath and fury. And now, indeed, the critical moment seemed come at last; for the lad began afresh to declare his deliberate intention of going to London to seek his fortune, in spite of parents and all ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... after which came a stretch of open sea for two hours, and at noon we reached Bjoro, near the mouth of the Namsen Fjord. Here there was half a dozen red houses on a bright green slope, with a windmill out of gear crowning the rocky hill in the rear. The sky gradually cleared as we entered the Namsen Fjord, which charmed us with the wildness and nakedness of its shores, studded with little nooks and corners of tillage, which sparkled like oases of tropical greenness, in such a rough ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... as she rode high on this wave of approbation, Laura suffered another of those drops in the esteem of her fellows, another of those mental upsets, which from time to time had thrown her young life out of gear. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... they fall and sleep their drunkenness off. Now, if something intervenes unexpectedly during the performance of this ha- bitual activity, especially some opposition, some superfluous cajolement, correction, or similar thing, the intoxicated actor is thrown completely out of gear, and can not be restored to it, nor is he able properly to oppose this obstacle. Hence he acts against it reflexly, and in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... ridden away, looking back until she turned the corner, he tried to lure the two dogs once more to their pose. But they would sit no more, going continually to the door, listening and sniffing; and everything felt disturbed and out of gear. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... walked over to the window; he stood staring into the street with misty eyes. He had never had death brought home to him like this before. It seemed to have made an upheaval in his world; to have thrown all his schemes and calculations out of gear; life was all at once a thing to be feared ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... complexion, seeing I had the faculty of being able to write wherever I was, and never admitted chairs and tables, and certain rows of bookshelves, to form part of my mental organism, without which the rest of the mechanism would be thrown out of gear, I had yet reasons for wishing to be in London; and I intended to take my departure on the day but one after the final meeting.—I may just remark, that before this time one or two families had returned to Purleybridge, and others were free from their Christmas ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... used for each cylinder, and to reverse the engine this eccentric had to be loose on the axle. "A lever and gear worked by a treadle on the footplate controlled the position of the eccentrics. When starting the engine, the driver put the eccentrics out of gear by the treadle; then, by means of a lever he raised the small-ends[5] of the eccentric rods, and, noting the position of the cranks, or, if more convenient, the balance weight in the wheels, he, by means of another handle, moved the valves to open the necessary ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... children that if one keeps things where they belong, they are true with regard to each other, but that if one drags these things out of the shadowy atmosphere of the "make-believe," and forces them into the land of actual facts, the whole thing is out of gear. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... engine; and the best fly-wheel is the layman. The tendency, you know, of the Pulpit is toward an unpractical sort of idealism. Its theories are all very good, but my professor in physics used to tell me that the best mathematical theory is put out of gear by friction when you come to illustrate it in practical physics, and so with even the best kind of theoretical philanthropy. The theoretical solution of the problems, social and economic, which confront ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... cud of contemplated abasement, he waded round the car, satisfying himself that there was nothing else out of gear; and apprehensively cranked up. Whereupon the motor began to hum contentedly: all was well. Flushed with this success, Maitland climbed aboard and opened the throttle a trifle. The car moved. And then, with a swish, a gurgle, and a watery whoosh! it surged forward, up, out of the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... which the writer looks upon as one of the greatest improvements in this mill, is its being furnished with circular knives, which can be set to any desired width, and put in or out of gear at will; and which are used for dressing up the finished sheet in the longitudinal direction. This is a simple mechanical arrangement, but one which is found to be of immense benefit, and which, in the writer's opinion, ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... though with sorrow, that on the Committee Ship that day Captain Cai did not shine. He bungled two "flying starts" by nervously playing with his stop-watch and throwing it out of gear; he fired off winning guns for several hopelessly belated competitors; he made at least three mistakes in distributing the prize-money (and nobody who has not committed the indiscretion of paying out a first prize to a crew which has actually come in third can conceive the difficulty ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... impotency. This is to be achieved by the adjustment and careful admixture of officers and units from different races. All this can be and is maintained only by extra cost and extra-active co-operation on the part of the people. The slightest withdrawal of assistance must put such machinery out of gear. This is the basis of the programme of progressive non violent non-co-operation that has been adopted ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... right note-catching to those finely-touched spirits who can divine without half a whisper, whose intuitiveness is proof against all the accidents of inconsequence. In respect of the less alert, however, should any one's train of thought be thrown out of gear by a consecutive piping of vocal reeds in jarring tonics, without a semiquaver's rest between, and be led thereby to miss the writer's aim and meaning in one out of two contiguous compositions, I shall deeply ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... occurrence—your going out and seeing the wolf;" said Blake. "If you hadn't taken that shot, we would not have known your rifle was out of gear. My first bullet merely made the sneak rise up to pot me. If the rapidity of the next three shots hadn't rattled him, I believe he would have potted me, instead ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... excitement for the past twenty-four hours; his nerves during that time had been kept at straining point. Passion, joy, happiness, deadly danger, and moral fights had worn his mental endurance threadbare; want of proper food and a sleepless night had almost thrown his physical balance out of gear. This blow came at a moment when he was least able to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... But what I mean is, the war doesn't really touch us in the routine of our every-day living. We don't have to darken our windows at night and take, every now and then, to the cellars. The machinery of our lives isn't thrown out of gear. We don't live hand in hand with danger. But lots of us think we're killed if we have to use our brains a little, if we're asked to substitute for wheat flour, and can't have thick frosting on our cake and eat meat three times a day. Oh, I've heard 'em ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... hardly shown to any one, so that the whole younger generation of dealers and collectors knew of them only by hearsay. Then you know the effect of suggestion in such cases. The undefinable sense we were speaking of is a ticklish instrument, easily thrown out of gear by a sudden fall of temperature; and the sharpest experts grow shy and self-distrustful when the cold current of depreciation touches them. The sale was a slaughter—and when I saw the Daunt Diana fall at the wink of a little third-rate brocanteur ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... hear of workmen in armaments works who refuse to work a full week's work for the nation's need. What is the reason? They are a minority. The vast majority belong to a class we can depend upon. The others are a minority. But, you must remember, a small minority of workmen can throw a whole works out of gear. What is the reason? Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes it is another, but let us be perfectly candid. It is mostly the lure of the drink. They refuse to work full time, and when they return their strength and efficiency are impaired by the way in which they have spent their leisure. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... explain that you live quietly, and that he will find a warm welcome. Then give him just what you give John, and make no apologies. Above all, do not let him feel that any additional labor caused by his presence throws the whole course of the household machinery out of gear. Do not invite to your home those for whom you have to make so great a change in your daily life. If you keep house as a lady should, you need not fear to entertain anyone who is worthy to be your friend. It is no disgrace ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... destruction of the City Hall—and Post-Offide and other central ganglia had hopelessly disorganised the co-operation of part with part. The street cars and railways had ceased; the telephone service was out of gear and only worked intermittently. The Germans had struck at the head, and the head was conquered and stunned—only to release the body from its rule. New York had become a headless monster, no longer capable of collective submission. Everywhere it lifted ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... good as being clever. In a very short time I became one of the best drivers on the Line. That was allowed. I took a pride in it, you see, and liked it. No, I didn't know much about the engine scientifically, as you call it; but I could put her to rights if anything went out of gear—that is to say, if there was nothing broken—but I couldn't have explained how the steam worked inside. Starting a engine, it's just like drawing a drop of gin. You turn a handle and off she goes; then you ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... way to the big wheel," said Uncle Dick, throwing open a door at the end. "They go out here to oil and repair it when it's out of gear. Nasty spot too, but there's a wonderful ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... admiration for Geoff. She had been as the sun to him. She had been as God, the only known and visible representative of all love and authority, the one unchangeable, ever right, ever true. And now she had changed, and all life was out of gear. His heart was sick, not because he was wronged, but because everything had gone wrong. He did not doubt his mother's love, he was not clear enough in his thoughts to doubt anything, or to put the case into any arrangement of words. He felt only that he could not bear it, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... were in splendid working order, nothing out of gear. Rapid and regular as a steam-engine the great host of toilers moved onward daily with a march which promised an unusually early completion. Mr Gordon was not in high spirits, for so cautious and far-seeing a captain rarely felt himself so ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... stopped running, though it was out of gear. But now Uncle Toby took off the brakes and began to go into first speed, and slowly the car moved up the hill. The snow was very slippery and more than once the ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... except the four in the mill. It did not concern me particularly, except that I had to work on odd jobs that should not have concerned me either, and I did not think much about it. What I really did think about—and it put me out of gear more than anything else at La ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... force of soul and spirit, brain and heart into things from which we may be summoned without a moment's notice? Is it worth while to live, and then go to pieces through the effort at living, live on day after day like a machine out of gear (held together oftentimes only by the surgeon's skill), then break down completely, give a final sigh and be hurried away to add a lot of useless fragments to the already accumulated scrap heap of ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... straightforward subject would take a perfectly unconscionable time to dispose of, while, on the other hand, an apparently extremely knotty problem might be solved within a few minutes and so throw the time-table out of gear. The result was that in the course of months one spent a good many hours, off and on, lurking in the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... bring into harmony the solar and the lunar years, was still in the hands of the priests, and here the results of their growing ignorance were most appalling. The calendar became terribly disordered; and this again had its reaction on religion, for the calendar month occasionally fell so out of gear with the natural seasons that it was impossible to celebrate some of the old Roman festivals, which had a distinct bearing on certain seasons ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... know what you mean, Brad, all right," spoke up Colon, sensitive to anything like criticism; "every one knows that I weakened toward the end, and that's what threw us out of gear. Couldn't help it, if you killed me. That little trouble I had with the river yesterday must have still bothered me. Never had such a queer feeling grip me before, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... found a big Howe truss bridge on fire and didn't get in for two days. The road was blocked, everything out of gear and I had to double back again, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... suggested in which Molly would not be expected to refund what she had spent, and would have the possession of Westmoreland House and its contents. The sale would realise enough to save her from actual want, and yet she would not be receiving a pension from Lady Rose. Her mind got out of gear and flashed through these thoughts until, unable to check it in any way, she burst into tears. She felt the self-deception of such plans with physical pain. What was that money in the bank at Florence but blackmail gathered in ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... organisation's cleverest leaders, and his indifference to Cornell's interests left a jagged wound that was not soon to heal. Moreover, it could not be concealed that Morgan's nomination was a Pyrrhic victory. In fact, the conventions at Cincinnati and Saratoga had thrown the Conkling machine out of gear, and while the repair shop kept it running several years longer, it was destined never again to make the speed it ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... understanding of the spiritual soul is so closely united in its action and its very being with the organic body that the two ever act conjointly, like the two wheels of a vehicle. If one wheel breaks down, the other is thrown out of gear. Thus it is readily understood that mental unsoundness is an affection of the brain, a bodily disease, which may often be relieved and even cured by bodily remedies, by the use of drugs or wholesome food, healthy exercise, fresh ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... tendency to develop his emotionalism, his sloth, and his vanity, and it has no tendency to develop those parts of his character which are in a rudimentary state and much want it; thereby throwing the whole character of the man out of gear. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Ezra, and those who belonged to him had to be doubly kind. They could not change his luck, but they might sweeten it. They said the world had not gone well with him; though sometimes it was hinted that Ezra, being out of gear, could not go with the world. All the rivers ran away from him, and went to turn some other mill. He was ungrudging of John's prosperity, but still he looked at it in some disparagement, and shook his head. His cheeks were channeled long before youth was over; his feet were weary with honest ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... the night in tossing about and reflecting what a sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober, hard-working yeoman as his father had ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... depth of winter is really a month after the shortest day. Indeed, at this time of the year, it is much too bright at twelve for even so sleepy a place as a churchyard to yawn. And if any ghost peeped out, 'twould only be to duck under again, all a-tremble lest, the underground horologes being out of gear, a poor shade had somehow overslept cockcrow and missed ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... half the original cost, because of the possibility of error occurring in the text. How much more may error occur, then, when tenuous messages are being sent from high sources by the power of thought, and when the receiving instrument is so often imperfect, so frequently out of gear, and when that instrument in addition is more than a trifle wilful and tainted with selfishness. Inspiration is ever ready, it floats around us like tuned wireless vibrations waiting to be picked up by a sympathetic ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... Elinor had given herself up to silent enjoyment of the rapture of swift motion, and Ormsby had respected her mood, as he always did. But when they were on the high hills beyond the mining-camp of Megilp, and he had thrown the engines out of gear to brake the car gently down the long inclines, there ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... time all recollection of certain past events, or of whole periods of our lives, or of everything but one system of ideas which monopolizes the field of attention. Sometimes great systems of memories, instincts, and complexes are alternately shifted in and out of gear, leaving first one kind of person on top and then another.[25] Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not so fantastic a character as he seems. Any one who doubts the ability of the mind to split ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Jack, following the example of Robinson Crusoe, attempted to tie knots on the tail of time by cutting notches with his knife on the leg of the table, but most days he forgot to perform this operation, and so his wooden almanac fell hopelessly out of gear. He estimated that he had been a little more than a week in prison when he heard by the clang of the bolts that the next cell was ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... one of those arrangements that look so promising and plausible until fairly tried, but before many months had passed there was a hitch—something out of gear ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sparrow, which had been taken from the nest, and which consequently had no experience of the external world. Much patience was needed, since the toy required careful adjustment and was easily thrown out of gear, but I managed it at last. The sparrow pecked at the little mill as soon as he was put into the cage, and he grew up accustomed to its motions. I then took the sparrow out of the cage and put in a finch, which had also been taken from the nest, but was reared far from such a machine, and ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... looked, until all outer things seemed to take their colour from his own mind. He had loved Marian Nowell as it is not given to many men to love; and with the loss of her, it seemed to him as if the very springs of his life were broken. All the machinery of his existence was loosened and out of gear, and he could scarcely have borne the dreary burden of his days, had it not been for that one feverish hope of finding the man who had ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... had acquiesced cheerfully in this arrangement. She had lost her right hand in losing Geraldine; and during the brief honeymoon both she and her younger daughter Audrey felt as though the home machinery were somewhat out of gear. No arrangement could be effected without a good deal of wondering on Mrs. Ross's part as to what Geraldine might think of it, and without a lengthy letter being written ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... States Government would accept no excuses; the machinery of its vast, admirable business could not be thrown out of gear for an hour or a day, and stand idle while the clerks waited for the holder of Claim Number One to come from some distant part and step into his own. So there was a good deal of nervousness and talking, and speculating and crowding ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... crises impend, the fluctuations will be three or four times as great. During the latter part of October, 1907, and in November, the exchange market fluctuated with greater violence than, perhaps, at any other time since the gold standard was firmly established. Thrown completely out of gear by the premium of 3-1/2 per cent. a day for currency during the panic time, the exchange markets for some time would rise and fall several cents in the pound on the same day. Completely baffled by this erratic movement, many bankers temporarily ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... an edge of anger, too. "All right," she snapped. "But I'll tell you this, Joe Mauser. The world is out of gear, but the answer isn't for individuals to better their material lot by ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... choice? The fact was, he had simply obeyed an irresistible impulse,—and to-morrow he would be glad of it. To-night, after that interminable journey, his head ached atrociously. He felt limp as a wet dish-clout; his nerves all out of gear ... Perhaps those confounded doctors were not such fools as they seemed. He cursed himself for a spineless ineffectual—messing about with nerves when he had been lucky enough to come through four years of war with his full complement of limbs and faculties ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... deck chair, he proceeded to make certain calculations upon a leaf of a notebook which he drew from his pocket. At the expiration of a period of twenty minutes the professor threw the self-steering apparatus out of gear for a moment, altered the course a trifle to the eastward, threw the self-steering apparatus into gear again, and waited another twenty minutes, when the same process was repeated a second time, and so on, a slight alteration of the ship's course being effected at intervals of twenty ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... across and poured from his own store of sympathy into that dry, atrophied soul upon the bed. 'It's a question how much she will be able to transmit, though,' he said doubtfully. 'The spiritual machinery is so stiff and out of gear from long disuse. In Miss Waghorn's case it's only physical—I've just been there—but this is spiritual blackness. We shall see to-morrow. Something will get through at any rate, and we must do this ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and be independent of society, even laugh at its impotent rage. No man's house is his castle now. He is at the mercy of every imbecile and every fanatic. His whole life is regulated by delicate mechanisms which can be put out of gear by a touch. There is nothing so fragile as civilisation, and no high civilisation has long withstood the manifold risks it is exposed to. Nowadays any naughty grown-up child can say to Society: Give me the sugar-stick I want or I'll make your ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... to be sure I know it! Why, the last time but one I passed that way, taking note that one of the window-hinges was out of gear, I knocked and asked leave to repair it. A lady with side-curls opened the door, and after the job was done took me into the parlour an' gave me a jugful of cider over and above the sixpence charged. I believe she'd have made ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... compass, thrown out of gear by the electric currents, confirmed me in a growing conviction. The mineral crust of the globe threatened to burst up, the granite foundations to come together with a crash, the fissure through which we were helplessly ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... some rapid turn of thought May throw the life-machine all out of gear, Clouding the windows with the steam of doubt, Filling the eyes with dust, with noise the ear! Who knows not then where dwells the engineer, Rushes aghast into the pathless night, And wanders in a land ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... come from being too dignified about them. It is pleasanter to think oneself the battle-ground for high and tragical forces of a spiritual kind, than to realise that some little homely bit of common machinery is out of gear. But we must resist the temptation to feel that our fears have a dark and great significance. We must simply treat them as little sicknesses and ailments ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... more use than they do when they choose to exercise their intelligence and bestir their energies. Then the increasingly complicated nature of production, distribution and exchange has also to be considered. A piece of grit will often throw elaborate and delicate machinery out of gear, but we do not regard it as a revolutionary agent on that account. The control of a few engineering workshops by shop stewards, puffed out with vanity and a "little brief authority," will not provide the food necessary to feed the people of these islands. We ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee
... ample gin and water to enrich it and poverty to point it. He was the brilliant Morgan O'Doherty of "Fraser" and "Blackwood," and was nearly, but not quite, "Captain Shandon" in "Pendennis." Thackeray had an affectionate admiration for his talents. But the times and the doctor were out of gear; he lost sympathy through his persecution of "L.E.L.," and his misfortunes led him to follow a class of journalism out of all consonance with his powers and better feeling; he is credited with having ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... organization. It does not take an open-eyed onlooker long to discover that social organizations of all kinds are infested with many evils. Social machinery is never perfect in its construction or operation. It is always getting out of gear; there is endless friction and clatter and confusion; it takes a great deal of trouble to keep it moving, and its product is often of poor quality. When men get together and try to cooeperate for any purpose, by orderly methods, they are always sure, because of ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... changes of structure produced by such changes of function, are inheritable, then the re-adjustment of parts throughout the organism, taking place generation after generation, maintains an approximate balance; but if not, then generation after generation the organism must get more and more out of gear, and tend ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... were well we should know), it becomes daily more empirically certain, and will some day doubtless become scientifically obvious, that there are works of art which awaken such emotion that they can be delectable only to creatures with instincts out of gear and perception upside down; while there are others, infinitely more plentiful, which, in greater or lesser degree, must delight all persons who are sane, as all such are delighted by fine weather, normal exercise, and kindly sympathy; and, vice versa, that as these wholesome works of art ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... centre of the exterior back wall of each mill twenty feet, to guard still further against the effects of an explosion. Behind these the powder-makers stood, for safety, while starting or stopping the motion of the ponderous rollers. This was done by means of a long lever, which threw in or out of gear the friction arrangement, which worked each set beneath the floor, in the thick archway which extended from end to end beneath the mills. It has already been stated that this archway contained the great iron shaft which imparted motion to all the mills, and which derived its own ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... to speak and Fall had walked to the switchboard and was about to put the deadly apparatus out of gear, when a sharp voice ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... in my mind—big, ambitious thoughts and plans upon which great things depend. They no doubt make me seem preoccupied and absent-minded; but it is a wife's part to understand, and make allowances, and not intrude trifles which may throw everything out of gear. Don't think I'm scolding, my girl. I only speak to reassure you and—and help you to comprehend. Of course I know that you wouldn't ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... That's the passengers' glass. I told the steward to put it out of gear so that you might not be frightened; it is an old trick. Look at this," and he produced one of the portable variety out of ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... all proper, and kept within the lines! Affairs would soon be reduced to mere machinery. There are moments, even days, when all interests and movements appear to be settled upon some universal plan of equilibrium; but just then some restless and absurd person is inspired to throw the machine out of gear. These individual eccentricities seem to be the special providences ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... arrived to make use of the intellectual machinery which my money had started into operation, something occurred which almost threw the whole thing out of gear. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... and senseless in his place, Prone and sprawling on his face, More like brute than any man Alive or dead, By his great pump out of gear, Lay the peon engineer, Waking only just to hear, Overhead, Angry tones that called his name, Oaths and cries of bitter blame,— Woke to hear all this, and, waking, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... have provided the usual cycle pitched chain so that, in the event of a breakdown, the rider can propel his machine with the pedals. Indeed, this is always necessary in starting, though a few strokes with the pedals suffice, and as soon as the engine is started the pedal clutch is thrown out of gear. In mounting a steep gradient the pedals are also useful as an auxiliary to the motor. The mechanical power provided is sufficient to drive the machine on a good and level road at the rate of 20 kilometers an hour. It can also travel up grades ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... the pin of the valve shaft is usually steeled, to prevent inconvenient wear; for when the sides of the notch wear, the valve movement is not only disturbed, but it is very difficult to throw the eccentric rod out of gear. It is found to be preferable, however, to fit this notch with a brass bush, for the wear is then less rapid, and it is an easy thing to replace this bush with another when it becomes worn. The ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... to fear. Now could Robur get back to the island for three or four hours if his screws were out of gear? By that time the "Albatross" would have been destroyed by the explosion, and be no more than a wreck floating on the sea; those whom she bore would be mangled corpses, which the ocean would not even give up again. The act of vengeance ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... starvation among a great number of poorer people. Not the well-to-do would suffer, but the poor of the great cities and those dependent upon them, who would be quite helpless if the machinery by which they are fed—on which they are dependent for wages—was thrown out of gear. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... the other along the row, and returning the same way, while two assistants steady him by holding his hands. In the case of the smaller children, the priest considerately steps on their thighs, to avoid throwing their internal apparatus out of gear; but if the recipient of his holy attentions is, in his estimation, strong enough to run the risk, he steps square on their backs, The little things jump up as sprightly as may be, kiss the priest's hand fervently, and go trooping out of the door, apparently well pleased ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... regiment detained by horse sickness), had sailed for South Africa. This was Lord Wolseley's task, and it was promptly and efficiently performed. The War Office was not inefficient; but the refusal to mobilise in June had thrown the whole scheme of the offensive and defensive campaign out of gear. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... handful of human beings worked in Marcella like some fevering torture. She was wholly out of gear physically and morally. Another practically sleepless night, peopled with images of horror, had decreased her stock of sane self-control, already lessened by long conflict of feeling and the pressure of self-contempt. Now, as she lay listening for Aldous Raeburn's ring and step, she hardly ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... realization of which money possesses no purchasing power. To relieve the pungent pinchings of penury with raiment, food and shelter, and so send the sunshine of gladness to the poor and needy, is something—indeed is much. But, ah! the delicate and intricate mechanism of mind is out of gear, a secret sorrow swells and sways the heart, and unitedly they cry: "Who will show us any good? Who remove this rankling sorrow? What good Samaritan competent to the task of affording relief to this dazed brain?" Oh! it is here that the trained votaries of the ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... this moment he was dissatisfied with life. But that was Lady Sellingworth's fault. If he were sitting with her now in Berkeley square the scheme of things would probably not seem all out of gear. He wondered where she was, what she was doing! The footman had said he believed she was near Monte Carlo. Craven remembered once hearing her say she was fond of Cap Martin. Probably she was staying there. It occurred to him that possibly she had told some ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... there would have been no effects. If, after creating the world, He withdrew from it to an inconceivable {92} distance, it is none the less His handiwork; if it is in and through His absence that the cosmic mechanism has got out of gear, it is yet He who willed to be so absent, well knowing what results would supervene; if a power other than He and hostile to Him has usurped the place and title of Prince of this world, such usurpation would have been ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... hundred and thirty head of horned cattle, and hogs, sheep; and poultry in proportion, is manifestly a most complicated machinery. No wonder it should have been difficult to manage during slavery, when the main spring was absent, and every wheel out of gear. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... "Something's out of gear," he said, with a laugh due rather to his philosophical nature than to mirth. "I'm afraid we'll have to finish on ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... Marshall, "which led off the water after it had passed under the wheel. After we got the mill to going, about the middle of January, last year, we found the tail-race wasn't big enough to carry off the water fast and make a current that would turn the wheel. So I threw the wheel out of gear, one night, and lifted the head-gate of the race full open, to flow a hard stream through and wash the tail-race deeper. Next morning early, which was January 24, I went down with Weimer (you know Weimer, Mr. Grigsby; he served in the Fremont battalion during the conquest), who was helping me, to ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... this apparently baffles the Electors. The truth is that you three are so subtle, and so much afraid of one another, so on the alert lest you be taken by surprise, that a straightforward action on my part throws all intrigue out of gear. Now, I'll warrant you cannot guess ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... suggested the thing he followed it up eagerly, as he does every new idea, asking me many keen questions as to his relatives, who had paid for his education, etc. Of the actual facts of his cure he knows little except that there was special functioning out of gear, and that now the wheels have been greased. Doctor Mach is desperately proud of him, especially of the way in which he responds to normal diversion-environments and friendships. You must instruct his mother very carefully as to references to his former condition. It is best that he should not ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... is out of gear, when I would pray, my senses go all astray, I cannot recollect myself, and if I succeed in pulling myself together, five minutes do not pass but I am all astray again; no, I have neither fervour nor true contrition, I do not love God enough, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Here at last I have arrived. We could not get away from Tahiti till Christmas Day, and then had thirty days of calms and squalls, a deplorable passage. This has thrown me all out of gear in every way. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... machinery of his voice would not turn. The power ran through his throat like cogwheels out of gear. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... were on a full run down the field, with a barbed-wire fence ahead. Hugh could do but one thing. He circled them about toward the outside of the field by the one line he could control, while he frantically jammed the lever down, which threw the machine out of gear, but at the speed at which the machine was going the lever would not act. The one line swung the horses around in a short circle, and as the thoroughly alarmed man raised his head he was horrified to find that Elizabeth, encumbered with ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... swordsman should have as much care for his person as a tenor has for his voice. The wrist is as delicate an organ as the throat—the articulations of the legs as sensitive as the vocal chords. The mechanism suffers from the smallest disturbance; the instrument gets out of gear and will not answer to the player. After a night of play or drink, Camillo Agrippa himself could not thrust straight, and his parries were neither sure nor rapid. An error of a hair's breadth will suffice to let three inches of steel into one's body.' They were at the top of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... featherweights. By so doing they would spare themselves a great amount of exertion, and they would certainly get better results, for it is always much more difficult to get good results with a light club than with one of medium weight. With the featherweight the swing is very liable to get out of gear. It is cut short, and is apt to wander out of its proper direction. There is, in fact, no such control over the club as there is when one can feel the weight of the head at the end of the shaft. A lady may require clubs a trifle shorter in the shaft, ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... were objects of interest and close scrutiny to the little knots of volunteers who had sauntered in to pick up points. To the former it looked odd and out of gear to see the forage-caps and broad white stripes of commissioned officers mingling with the slouch hats and ill-fitting nether garments of the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... domineering in proportion as it became more successful. If a political question arose, which in any way interfered with his opportunities, the good American began to believe that his democratic political machine was out of gear. Did Abolitionism create a condition of political unrest, and interfere with good business, then Abolitionists were wicked men, who were tampering with the ark of the Constitution; and in much the same way the modern reformer, who proposes policies looking toward a restriction in ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Martin Holt nudged Hurliguerly with his elbow, and both regarded Hunt with pity, while West observed him without speaking. Captain Len Guy made me a sign, meaning that nothing serious was to be got out of this poor fellow, whose mental faculties must have been out of gear for a ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... at the back at H and can be lifted up, thereby throwing the A-wheels out of gear. When thus raised the figure disks can be set to any figures; at the same time it can slide to and fro so that an A-wheel can be put in gear with any C-wheel forming with it one "element." The number of these varies with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... got on my nerves. For I pitied the unwieldy poor, the numberless muddle-headed crowds down there in the tenements, and it seemed to me perfectly criminal that a lot of these young high-brows should be allowed to stir them up. Their own thinking was so muddled, their views of life so out of gear. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... doctor, with the automatic jerk of a hireling whose neck has been put out of joint by perpetual acquiescence. Then followed an awkward pause, the conversation being, as it were, thrown out of gear by this sudden and unexpectedly violent effusion from a young fellow usually very civil and self-possessed. The sun was oppressive, and was reflected off the dry stone walls on each side of the steep road, up which the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... carry out their purpose, but we know also that they are often defeated by the failure of some contemptibly small process on which success depends. A little thrombus in a statesman's meningeal artery will throw an empire out of gear. Therefore I cannot even hint at any solution of the pragmatic issue. I have only wished to show you that that issue is what gives the real interest to all inquiries into what kinds of activity may be real. Are the forces that really ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... I can run across lots, and spend half an hour with you, Toby," Jack announced; "though I couldn't promise to stay late, because I ought to be doing some of my lessons, you know. This football work afternoons throws everything out of gear." ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... universe; God's messenger, Death—these are facts with which we stand in relation, and if our relations with Him are out of gear, then He and all of these are legitimate objects of dread ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... wedding. Lady Laura showed herself among her guests, for a quarter of an hour or so, in a semi-hysterical flutter; so anxious that everything should go off well, so fearful that something might happen, she knew not what, to throw the machinery of her arrangements out of gear. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Dowd? Say, son, your guesser is way out of gear. You ought to get better posted on the Order ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... sufficient quantity of air into the proper chamber to restore the equilibrium. But, as we may desire occasionally to direct the flight of the ship in an upward or a downward direction, I have so arranged matters that the apparatus shall be thrown out of gear when the tiller is sloped in either direction out of the horizontal; and as we shall not require it when the ship is on or below the surface of the ocean, I have here provided a small knob by pressing which inwards the apparatus can also be thrown out of ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the eleventh." That is to say, he took as civil first month the twelfth astronomical month, or that in which the sun enters Sagittarius. Thus we see that in 2000 years the calendar had got about 90 days out of gear; or, roughly, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... too, that if you have one set of Irish members in London it is a moral certainty that disturbing rivalries, disturbing intrigues would spring up, and that the natural and wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in the Irish Assembly would be complicated and confused and thrown out of gear by the separate representatives of the country. All ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey |
