"Erratic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... luck he has with Jaybird, Tutt an' me is led to believe thar's no real object in followin' him no further. I don't press my s'ciety on no gent; shorely not on some locoed tenderfoot that a-way who's pulled his gun an' is done blazin' away erratic, without purpose ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... grunted a melancholy sigh at every rut. The morning drives were silent; but in the evening, coming home, Jean-Pierre, tipsy, was viciously muttering, and growled at the confounded woman who could not rear children that were like anybody else's. Susan, holding on against the erratic swayings of the cart, pretended not to hear. Once, as they were driving through Ploumar, some obscure and drunken impulse caused him to pull up sharply opposite the church. The moon swam amongst light white ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... concealment, and yet not strong enough to break through the inherited habit of self-command. The General had broken through, I acknowledged, but then was not the very greatness of the great man the expression of an erratic departure from traditions rather than of the perfect adherence ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... so large a comet as is now interesting the astronomical world, almost contemporaneously with our victory in Egypt, would have been looked upon as an omen of great portent, and it is a curious coincidence that the first glimpse Sir Garnet Wolseley had of this erratic luminary was when standing, on the eventful morning of September 13, 1882, watch in hand, before the intrenchments of Tel-el-Kebir, waiting to give the word to advance. As may be seen in our sketch, the comet is seen in Egypt in all its magnificence, and the sight in the early morning from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... of Newfoundland. This bank consists of alluvia, or large heaps of organic matter, brought either from the Equator by the Gulf Stream, or from the North Pole by the counter-current of cold water which skirts the American coast. There also are heaped up those erratic blocks which are carried along by the broken ice; and close by, a vast charnel-house of molluscs, which perish here by millions. The depth of the sea is not great at Newfoundland—not more than some hundreds of fathoms; but towards the south is a depression of 1,500 fathoms. There the Gulf Stream ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... managed to dip below the crests of the outlying hills until only one barely moving craft was in sight. This had received the brunt of our fire and seemed to be entirely unmanned, as not a moving figure was visible upon her decks. Slowly she swung from her course, circling back toward us in an erratic and pitiful manner. Instantly the warriors ceased firing, for it was quite apparent that the vessel was entirely helpless, and, far from being in a position to inflict harm upon us, she could not even control ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... other chief pitchers on the nine, Toe Barter, Sam Willard and Slim Cooney. Slim and Toe were veterans, and the mainstays of the team, and Sam Willard was one of those chaps so often seen in baseball, a brilliant but erratic performer. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... same broad felicity prevails in "The Mill on the Floss." Mr. Tulliver, indeed, fails in business; but his failure only serves as an offset to the general integrity and prosperity. His son is obstinate and wilful; but it is all on the side of virtue. His daughter is somewhat sentimental and erratic; but she is more conscientious yet. Conscience, in the classes from which George Eliot recruits her figures, is a universal gift. Decency and plenty and good-humor follow contentedly in its train. The word which sums up the common traits of our author's various groups is the word respectable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... overview: The Republic of Cyprus has a market economy dominated by the service sector, which accounts for 76% of GDP. Tourism and financial services are the most important sectors; erratic growth rates over the past decade reflect the economy's reliance on tourism, which often fluctuates with political instability in the region and economic conditions in Western Europe. Nevertheless, the economy grew a healthy ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... replied the doctor. "In that respect the women's struggle for independence resembled revolutionary movements in general, which, in their earlier stages, go blundering and stumbling along in such a seemingly erratic and illogical way that it takes a philosopher to calculate what outcome to expect. The calculation as to the ultimate outcome of the women's movement was, however, as simple as was the same calculation in the case of what you called the labor movement. What ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and run? It was a time of bewildering apprehension, too, going through the streets of the town, so that a milk cart barely escaped destruction under Mr. Hoopdriver's chancy wheel. That recalled him to a sense of erratic steering, and he pulled himself together. In the lanes he breathed freer, and a less ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... erratic on some other line, that's all. You're absolutely the only thoroughly sweet ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... why the erratic Graemer had come to see her. He hadn't the remotest intention of bothering to answer the oft-reiterated claims of the persistent Miss Modder; he wasn't at all interested in any unknown Miss Day. The person he had come to see was Mademoiselle Folly and he had come purely on ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... The winter had been erratic; spells of intense cold when ice-floes piled up about the piers of the bridges, and even gave rise to anxiety concerning the safety of those structures; then mild winds from the south driving the smoke of the Smichov factories across Castle Hill. This, too, has its beauties when reluctant rays of ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... occurs I shall always be ready.' And this blissful and transforming thought, this vehement purpose, allayed somewhat the misgivings which she had long had about Millicent, and which her recent glimpses into the factitious and erratic world of the theatre had only ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... established so complete a mastery over the Government, that even men of far greater ability and force of character would have been impotent for good. Her whole dependence was on Mirabeau; and his course at this time was so capricious and erratic that it often caused her more perplexity and alarm than pleasure or confidence. He regarded himself as having a very difficult part to play. He could not conceal from himself that he was no longer able to lead the Assembly as he ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... have tried hard to keep right; and if I am not as full as I can hold of one-sided and erratic opinions, I think it some praise. . . . I do strive to keep in my mind a whole rounded circle of truth and opinion. It would be pleasant to let every mental tendency run its length; but I could not do so. It may be pride or ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... career of Bernard Barton. If it have not left behind it the brilliant track of other poetical comets, it has been less erratic in its course; and if it have not been irradiated by the full blaze of a noonday sun, it has nevertheless been illumined by the silver lustre of the queen of night; and his Parnassian vespers may be said to possess all the mild and soothing beauties of the evening star. If his muse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... most funny accent even yet, though she spent so many years abroad, so many in Paris. I do not know what would have become of my guardian if it had not been for her. Her father loved her, but was very erratic and undisciplined. Mrs. Talcott has been with my guardian for almost all the time ever since. It is a great and silent devotion. She is very reticent. She never speaks of herself. She talks to me sometimes in the evenings about ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... course of my erratic wanderings through the grand old city, with its host of monuments of a glorious past, I was one morning passing the great marble-built cathedral and noticed a number of people entering. There seemed to be an unusual number of visitors, so having nothing ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... the water, fellows!" he exclaimed, as well as he was able, while being tugged along by the erratic ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go; As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing, For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... were heavy and halting, and his way down the long chamber was devious and erratic. His fancied strength and elasticity were born of the ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... intervals from this monument stood seven pillars, [Greek: kata tropon oimai archaion,] placed, says he, as I imagine, according to some antient rule and method; which pillars were supposed to represent the seven planets. If then these exterior stones related to the [707]seven erratic bodies in our sphere, the central monument of Hippos must necessarily have been designed for the Sun. And however rude the whole may possibly have appeared, it is the most antient representation upon record, and consequently the most curious, of ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... admitted. According to her lights the coming of Colonel Osborne, after all that had been said, would be like the coming of Lucifer himself. The Colonel was, to her imagination, a horrible roaring lion. She had no idea that the erratic manoeuvres of such a beast might be milder and more innocent than the wooing of any turtle-dove. She would have asked whether the roaring lion had gone away again, and, if so, whether he had taken his prey with him, were it not that she was too much frightened at the moment ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Cypriot economy is prosperous but highly susceptible to external shocks. Erratic growth rates over the past decade reflect the economy's vulnerability to swings in tourist arrivals, caused by political instability in the region and fluctuations in economic conditions in Western Europe. Economic policy ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of Theramenes, fit for all feet. It is double and diverse, and the matters are double and diverse too. "Give me a drachm of silver," said a Cynic philosopher ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... qualm of conscience. The child really was too simple to be made game of. Besides, he felt sure that she had spoken the truth, so far as she herself was concerned. She didn't know where her erratic aunt had gone; and any further questioning would only frighten her without winning him the knowledge he sought. He therefore took the parcel back, said some soothing words and made his way across the walk to his taxi. But the number he gave the chauffeur ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... accompanied the performance. The Saint's encounter in the grove of Alephane with the golden-haired lady was a masterpiece of histrionic art; so was his solemn preaching among the black natives. Tears flowed freely at his violent death—a scene which was only marred by the erratic movements of his venerable beard; that mill-stone, too, of PAPIER MACHE, played lovely pranks upon a pea-green ocean. Best of all was the cannibalistic feast of the Crotalophoboi ending with a tempestuous, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... men in many ages. It was the Liberal Education of Aristotle; the jack-of-all-trades artistry of Leonardo da Vinci and his friends; the august amateurishness of the Cavalier Person of Quality like Sir William Temple or the great Earl of Dorset. It has appeared in literature in our time in the most erratic and opposite shapes, set to almost inaudible music by Walter Pater and enunciated through a foghorn by Walt Whitman. But the great mass of men have always been unable to achieve this literal universality, because of the nature of their work ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... was a French noble and a soldier of fortune, who rose to be governor of Guienne. His parents entered him at the Jesuit College, where he completed his novitiate and took the first vows, and in 1635 he was ordained as a priest. Early manifestations of an erratic temperament, a mystical habit of mind, and physical frailty, led to his severance from the Society of Jesus. He entered upon a preaching mission, and, coming under the attention of Pere Gondran, second general of the Congregation of the Oratory at Paris, he ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... that Aunt Matilda might behave in such an erratic fashion (which was obvious from the evidence), I couldn't imagine ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... westwards in a broad, open, stony valley, bounded by Kinchinjhow on the south, (its face being as precipitous as that on the opposite side), and on the north by the Peukathlo, a low range of rocky, sloping mountains, of which the summits were 18,000 to 19,000 feet above the sea. Enormous erratic blocks of gneiss strewed the ground, which was sandy or gravelly, and cut into terraces along the shallow, winding river, the green and sparkling waters of which rippled over pebbles, or expanded into lagoons. The already scanty vegetation diminished rapidly: it consisted ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... President chose to take notice of the threats and acts of South Carolina and to ignore the threats and acts of Georgia, without ever being troubled by the inconsistency of his course. His political career affords many such illustrations of the arbitrary and even erratic character of his mind. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... ranch wagon to Cameron City. Elizabeth was enchanted with the ingenious introduction of odd bits of rope into the harness, by means of which the whole establishment was kept from falling apart. She thought the gait of the lazy old nag the most amusing exhibition possible, and as for the erratic jolts and groans of the wagon, it struck her that this was a new form of exercise, the pleasurable excitement and unexpectedness of which surpassed all former experiences. At Cameron City she made purchase of a saddle-horse, a very well-made bronco with dramatic possibilities ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... whatever grim ghost of Puritanic strictness might be lingering in the sombre depths of a New England heart, among severe and sunless remembrances of the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the catechism, and for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to take the long-hoarded sting out of these compunctious smarts by attending divine service in the open air. On a cart outside of the Park-wall (and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of Berenguela, the person most interested, had not been consulted in any manner whatever. It is not on record that Eleanor was opposed to this arrangement for her daughter, not from any lack of independent spirit,—for she came of a self-willed race, as the erratic life of her brother, Richard Coeur de Lion, will show,—but because such marriages were the common lot of the royal maidens of her time and were accepted as matters of necessity. It must be remembered that the ideals of marriage were yet much undeveloped ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... I shall make over the place at Grafton," she said after a time. Her husband looked at her with some surprise. She was standing at the window, gazing down into the cavernous city in the twilight. He could not possibly follow the erratic course of ideas through her brain, the tissue of impression and suggestion, that resulted in such ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... suffered more, or more nobly redeemed an apparently lost cause, than the one which was defeated at Quebec and victorious at Saratoga. The train of misfortunes which brought Burgoyne's erratic course to so untimely an end was nothing by comparison. And the quickness with which raw yeomanry were formed into armies capable of fighting veteran troops, affords the strongest proof that the Americans are a nation ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... holiday. Running hither and thither in wild confusion were the denizens of this underground colony; their six little legs carrying their curious globular bodies backward and forward over the disturbed area from which the stone had been removed. At first the movements of the ants were extremely erratic and purposeless. Panic and alarm appeared to be the order of the day during the few minutes which elapsed after removal of the stone. But soon the eye could discern movements of purposive kind on the part of the alarmed residents. There was "racing and chasing" in all ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... until almost level with the peaks of the mountains in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over the mountaintops, and then tilted once more and went racing up the valley in which the landing-grid was plainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an erratic ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... been brought, By Fairy hands, and as a changeling left In human cradle, the sad substitute For a more smiling infant—Shelly sings Vague minstrelsies that speak a foreign birth, Among erratic tribes; yet not in vain His moral, and the fancies in his flight Not without profit for another race! He left his spirit with his voice—a voice Solely spiritual, which will long suffice To wing the otherwise ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... at this stage that Thomas Mugridge's erratic soul brought him into the scene. He had been listening at the galley door, but he now came out, ostensibly to fling some scraps over the side, but obviously to see the killing he was certain would take place. He smirked greasily up into the face of Wolf Larsen, who seemed ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... this direction were not very serious, though I allow that he did us more harm thereby than we him. For our trench mortars were in an experimental stage, made locally by the R.E., and constructed of thin gas-pipe iron and home-made jam-pot bombs, whose behaviour was always erratic, and sometimes, I regret to say, fatal to the mortarist. (Poor Rogers, R.E., a capital subaltern, was killed thus, besides others, ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... that just because a man could slop color all over an otherwise innocent sheet of canvas, making outre and garish patterns, that that made him an artist. They didn't think that just because a man could write nonsense and use erratic typography, that that made him a poet. They had other beliefs, too, that Edway Tarnhorst saw only dimly, but he saw them well enough to know that they were better beliefs than the obviously stupid ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... failed to develop any aptitude for kicking. Cloud and Clausen occupied similar positions on the first eleven, and behind them stood Wesley Blair, the best full-back that Hillton Academy had possessed for many years. The full-back on the second eleven was Ned Post, a veteran player, but "as erratic as a mule," to use the ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... however, unnecessary to our narrative to relate the erratic discourse that ensued. The old man eluded the annihilating blows of his adversary, as the light armed soldier is wont to escape the efforts of the more regular warrior, even while he annoys him most, and an hour passed away without bringing ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was Thomas De Quincey, who had been led by his reverence for Wordsworth and Coleridge to take up his residence, in 1808, at Grasmere, where he occupied for many years the cottage from which Wordsworth had removed to Allan Bank. De Quincey was a shy, bookish little man, of erratic, nocturnal habits, who impresses one, personally, as a child of genius, with a child's helplessness and a child's sharp observation. He was, above all things, a magazinist. All his writings, with one exception, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... all these things that everything is still very erratic, and that the men remain badly distributed. Nor is this all. The general command over the whole of the Legation area is now plainly modelled on the Chinese plan—that is, the officer commanding does not interfere with the others, excepting when he can ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... up, in the water. When the others came up to the same place, to their surprise, they found themselves doing the same thing. They couldn't possibly stay on the ground. 'I don't want to go up,' said erratic Cricket, kicking, and shamefaced Will called to the sparkling gnome, to know what was the matter. 'Nothing at all,' he called back, cheerfully, 'only gravity doesn't happen to act just there. Sometimes it doesn't and then you're just as likely to ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... but erratic Earl of Peterborough, had been engaged for two years, after the unsatisfactory inquiry into his conduct in Spain by the House of Lords in 1708, in preparing an account of the money he had received and expended. The change of Government brought him relief from his troubles; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... The Avenger was erratic and uncertain in her voyages. She evidently sailed to the principal islands of the South Seas, and did business with them all. From one of these voyages, Henry, her captain, returned with a wife,—a dark-haired, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... to one side, his hands up as though he feared for his life if he lowered them. The motor's hum increased to the steady roar which Johnny's ear recognized as the sound Bland got from it when he started. And with an erratic wabbling the plane moved forward jerkily, steadied a bit as Johnny set his teeth and all his stubbornness to the work, and gradually—very gradually—lifted and went whirring away through ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... went on, I had comprehended the erratic tendency in Ben's character, good and honorable as he was, but impressive and visionary. Did ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the King of Macedon, was remarked as a rare thing—viz. that his mind, not settling down into any kind of condition, went wandering through every manner of life, thus showing such flighty and erratic conduct that neither he nor others knew what sort of man he was: this seems to me to apply nearly to the whole world, and more especially to one of that ilk whom this description would eminently fit. This, indeed, is what I ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... written thoughts and confessions had influenced her imagination and swayed her mind since childhood, that she could not detach herself from the idealistic conception she had formed of his character,—and to her the sixteenth-century "Amadis" had become embodied in this modern man of brilliant but erratic genius, who, if the truth were told, had nothing idealistic about him but his art, which in itself was more the outcome of emotionalism than conviction. He drew her gently down beside him, feeling her quiver like a leaf touched ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... only terrified but angered, and whirling about, he brought down his gun with spiteful violence on the writhing body. The reptile struck again, but it was already wounded to that extent that its blow was erratic, and, though it came near reaching the hand of Jack, it missed by a ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the leaders of his craft—such as Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and George Sand—were on the whole cordial. He had trouble with Sainte-Beuve, however, and often felt that his brother-writers begrudged his success. His constant attacks on contemporary journalists, and his egotistic and erratic manners naturally prejudiced the critics, so that even the marvelous romance entitled 'La Peau de chagrin' (The Magic Skin: 1831),—a work of superb genius,—speedily followed as it was by 'Eugenie Grandet' and 'Le Pere Goriot,' did not win him cordial recognition. One ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... band was a man far from illiterate: he was able to travel by the stars or the compass, and had marked in his erratic expeditions such places as are most worthy the notice of a passenger. He observed to me that buildings are always best preserved in places little frequented and difficult of access; for when once a country declines from its primitive ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... 20, appeared a statement of the test to ascertain the accuracy of the meter used, which showed that in an aggregate of twelve tests it varied nearly three per cent in its record from the actual quantity delivered, while at times it was so erratic that it varied in one instance over ten ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... and elaborate work, in which the writer goes into the investigation of all the phenomena of mind in the erratic operations and phantasies of ghost seeing and spectral hallucinations, and aims to give the true philosophy of all such delusions. He is a medical man of considerable eminence, and has spared no pains in his researches, giving a great number of facts and cases to illustrate his ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... regretted it. Reviewing was carried on in small type, in the backs of certain magazines. Most of it was verbose and much of it was worthless as criticism. The belated recognition of the critical genius of Poe was due to the company he kept. He was a sadly erratic reviewer, as often wrong, I suppose, as right, but the most durable literary criticism of the age came from his pen, and is to be found in a review, a review of Hawthorne's ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... in various parts of the History show the interest—sometimes an amused interest—that Clarendon took in his strange and erratic character. 'The temper and composition of his mind was so admirable, that he was always more pleased and delighted that he had advanced so far, which he imputed to his virtue and conduct, than broken or dejected that his success ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... man, he was for a time a friend of the erratic and gifted Rousseau, and was afterwards not unknown to Condorcet, the secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, so liberal in his views and so bitter an enemy of the Church; and though constantly ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the little sloop should have been preparing breakfast, as he had for many mornings past, but, instead he swung his little craft into the wind and watched for near an hour the erratic rushes and shivering haltings of the larger ship. But long before this time had passed Thorpe knew he was observing the aimless maneuvers of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... and for five years were busily engaged in bringing proofs of the new science before the commission. These were M. de Foissac, M. Dupotet, M. Chapelain, and M. de Geslin. It would be but an unprofitable, and by no means a pleasant task to follow the commissioners in their erratic career, as they were led hither and thither by the four lights of magnetism above mentioned; the four "Wills-o'-the-Wisp" which dazzled the benighted and bewildered doctors on that wide and shadowy region of metaphysical inquiry — the influence of mind over matter. It will be better to state at ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... do not agree," Fred was saying. "The correlation is erratic; it makes no statistical sense. Malone, there ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Strassburg boatmen refused to go any farther so they were sent home. The guiding of the press boat was now left to the tender mercies of Simnick. Some of the press men occasionally volunteered to help him. His erratic steering brought him showers of abuse, the occupants of the boat became so nervous that they earnestly desired Paul to remain as near them as possible. Paul knowing that his baggage was aboard, did not require a second invitation. Once Simnick landed the party on a bar, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... if I can keep any place!" said Michael, whose movements were truly so erratic and uncertain that Winthrop's mood of thoughtfulness was more than once run down by them. — "The trunk's too weighty for me, yer honour, — it will have its own way and me after it — here we go! — Och, it wouldn't turn ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... archangelic manner he told her how he had undertaken to show (what indeed had been attempted before, but not with that thoroughness, justice of comparison, and effectiveness of arrangement at which Mr. Casaubon aimed) that all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions of a tradition originally revealed. Having once mastered the true position and taken a firm footing there, the vast field of mythical constructions became intelligible, nay, luminous with the reflected light of correspondences. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of the shining marks which disasters at sea seem invariably to involve have lived to tell the Lusitania's tale. Vanderbilt, the sportsman, is gone. Genial Charles Klein, the playwright, is gone. That erratic American literary genius, Elbert Hubbard, is gone, and with him a wife to whom he seemed particularly devoted. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which has just had a long expected dinner suddenly snatched away from it; but the worse he became the louder M'Allister shrieked with laughter. The latter was now simply rolling about the room—for it could not be termed walking, it was so erratic—holding his sides and laughing, whilst the tears were chasing each other down his cheeks. He kept trying to speak, but had no sooner stuttered out the words, "Heh, mon! heh, mon!" than he was off again into another wild paroxysm of laughter, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... wages. The proximity of countries in which cheap labour predominates counterbalances the minimum demand of white men in these parts. Those who have had experience of aboriginals as labourers, understand their erratic disposition; yet with considerate treatment, the exact and prompt fulfilment of obligations and promises, the display of some little sympathy with their foibles, interest in their doings, and ready response to any desire expressed to "walk about," they are not wholly ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the erratic course of his wild dance. He whirled and screamed in front of the King and fell headlong, as if in a fit, with eyes injected and foam upon the black tufts of beard. Bakahenzie clutched his belly and began ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... The greater number of women advance like the fleas, by erratic leaps and bounds, They owe their escape to the height or depth of their first ideas, and any interruption of their plans rather favors their execution. But they operate only within a narrow area which it is easy for the husband ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... both; and the years as they roll do but swell the rich revenues of his praise. Lamb's popularity shows no sign of waning. Even that most extraordinary compound, the rising generation of readers, whose taste in literature is as erratic as it is pronounced; who have never heard of James Thomson who sang The Seasons (including the pleasant episode of Musidora bathing), but understand by any reference to that name only the striking author of The City of Dreadful Night; even these wayward folk—the dogs of whose criticism, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... were erected, and barrels of beer were broached. Suddenly, several hundred skaters, each bearing a lighted lamp at his waist-belt, emerged from the crowd, and shot under the bridge on to the Serpentine, and commenced quadrilles, polkas, and divers figures; in a few minutes their erratic motions were illuminated by red, blue, crimson, and green fires, lighted on the banks, and by rockets and other lights. This fantastic and beautiful exhibition was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... course was so winding that he speedily disappeared from sight. The boy, who was compelled to sit still and await his return, at perhaps the most dangerous portion of the road, felt anything but comfortable over the erratic proceeding of his friend. But, fortunately, the latter had been gone but a short time when he reappeared, hurrying forward as if somebody was ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... this incident, which I have told many times, shows how fantastic, erratic, despotic, and hypercritical men generally are. You will come to your senses some time and realize that no one is likely to bear with your perversities more patiently than Arthur Wilde or Lee Wadsworth, who have both wasted a winter dangling ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a word he was saying, after those first jerky sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town which could permit ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... battle still raged, though of course Jack could not decide which side might be getting the better of it. His interest focused chiefly on the bombing machines, which he found were now far away, moving along in erratic courses as their pilots strove to get in exact position for a successful blowing up ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Metemma, under Commander Keppel, again steamed south to reconnoitre Mahmud's position. The next day they were joined by the Fateh, and on the 3rd the three larger boats ran the gauntlet of the forts. A brisk artillery duel ensued, but the Dervish aim was, as usual, erratic, and the vessels received no injury. It was observed that the position of the Dervish force was unchanged, but that three new forts had been constructed to the south of the town. The gunboats continued on their way and proceeded as far as Wad Habeshi. The ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... changeful; changing &c. 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform|; versatile. unstaid[obs3], inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c. v.; restless; agitated &c. 315; erratic, fickle; irresolute &c. 605; capricious &c. 608; touch and go; inconsonant, fitful, spasmodic; vibratory; vagrant, wayward; desultory; afloat; alternating; alterable, plastic, mobile; transient &c. 111; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as well as the sheaf of papers rather fascinated the watcher outside the window—somehow Jack conceived the idea that there before him was spread all the incriminating evidence needful to bring the erratic career of this amazing man to an abrupt end—to put a stop to the mammoth illegal operations he had so long conducted in secret and by which he had impudently flaunted all the powers in Washington, just as though he had sent them ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... for instance, that when a bayou was struck the chances were there would be a point of land jutting out immediately below it, formed by the dirt swept out by the erratic current. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... placid; groves of sea-weed delighted the eye; patches of yellow sand invited to a siesta; the curiously-twisted and smashed-up remains of a wreck formed a subject of interesting contemplation, while a few wandering crabs, and an erratic lobster or two, gave life and variety to the scene, while the temperature, if not warm, was at all events considerably milder than that overhead. In short, strange though it may seem, Edgar was in rather an enviable position ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... lay himself out for social successes; but he is a man who seems to know more of every subject than the men about him. I doubt if he will ever succeed at the Bar. He has so little perseverance or steadiness, and indulges in such an erratic, desultory mode of life; but he has made his mark in literature already, and I think he might become a great man if he chose. Whether he ever will choose ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... part, whatever might be the erratic actions of a few of its freakish individuals, my faith in my country and its people is my faith in my God. I was old fashioned enough to believe every man his brother's keeper. There was nothing more for me ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... wildly all about the shed; Bab rattled the cups into her dish-pan with dangerous haste, and Betty raised a cloud of dust "sweeping-up;" while mother seemed to be everywhere at once. Even Sanch, feeling that his fate was at stake, endeavored to help in his own somewhat erratic way,—now frisking about Ben at the risk of getting his tail chopped off, then trotting away to poke his inquisitive nose into every closet and room whither he followed Mrs. Moss in her "flying round" evolutions; next dragging off the mat so Betty could brush the door-steps, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... new constructions for the old, all had been disintegration. French society was to be reorganized only after further pulverizing; cohesion would begin only under pressure from without—a pressure applied by the threats of erratic royalists that they would bring in the foreign powers to coerce and arbitrate, by the active demonstrations of the emigrants, by the outbreak of foreign wars. These were the events about to take place; ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Soto, Governor of Cuba, leaving that island in charge of his wife, set sail for Florida, where he soon safely disembarked, and sent his ships back, in order to leave no opportunity for relentment in the stern resolves of his followers. After a somewhat erratic journey, on his way passing through Georgia, Alabama, and Northern Mississippi, he struck the 'Great River' at the Lower Chickasaw Bluffs, as they are still called, and upon which now stands the city of Memphis. The expedition crossed the river at that point, and spent some time in exploring ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the others, I fear they did not prevent me feeling an almost equal tide of affection towards the sleepy acumen and ingrained sense of humour of Ida, the second girl and book-reader for the family: or Violet, a veritably delightful child, with a temper as formless and erratic as her tempest ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Mayo. This is too big a matter to fool with. If you are reasonable, you can help me fix it up—and that will help the girl. She's Mar-ston's daughter, all right, and her father understands how erratic she is and makes allowances for her freaks. But he can't stand ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... low, passionlessly vehement statement somehow made him feel that it wasn't a boy to whom he was talking, but a little and grave old man. And suddenly the desire seized him to hear more of that low, direct voice; the impulse came to him and Caleb, whose whole life had been as free from erratic snap-judgments as his broad face was of craft, found joy in acting upon it forthwith, before it had ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... me particularly to look you up, and 'take care of' you ... you made a hit with him ... but he's very much concerned about you—thinks you're too wild and erratic." ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... fear, was to be found in the darkness there. At first I hesitated. Then Margot came with the candle, and as it guttered, the flame threw distorted shadows; at one moment lighting up a dark spot with a sudden flash, and then sending queer, erratic reflections chasing across the oak panelling. Then a flicker displayed the unmade bed on which Margot had lain.... ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... in name but in nothing else, the least said the better. He was born in London, but spent his childhood in Aberdeen, under the alternate care or negligence of his erratic mother. At ten he fell heir to a title, to the family seat of Newstead Abbey, and to estates yielding an income of some L1400 per year,—a large income for a poet, but as nothing to a lord accustomed to make ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... find himself a man of note; a prophet, even in his own county, where feathers had been ruffled a little by his erratic proceedings. Hence a discreetly changed attitude in the neighbourhood, when Lilamani, barely nineteen, had presented her husband ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... fun. Certainly Ferry was an accomplished tobogganist, for he steered with great skill over a somewhat complicated course, including excursions between trees set rather closely together, over hummocks and through erratic dips, at a pace which quite ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... and predominant states of the mentality and physiology. As long as the constitution remains unimpaired, the eye is clear and bright, but becomes languid and soulless in proportion as the brain has been enfeebled. Wild, erratic persons have a half-crazed expression of eye, while calmness, benignancy, intelligence, purity, sweetness, love, lasciviousness, anger, and all the other mental affections, express themselves quite as distinctly by the eye as voice, or ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... fence which surrounded the house. There was a little stable at the back, but it was never used. He unharnessed the horse, fixed his nosebag, and sat down to read his favourite newspaper; a little journal which dealt familiarly with the erratic conduct of the upper classes. He was not a quick reader, and there was sufficient in the gossipy journal to occupy his attention for three or four hours. At the end of an hour he thought he heard his lady's voice calling him, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... had gone out to furl the awnings against the rising wind. His kindly little eyes were peering through their spectacles at sea and sky when suddenly they rested on a frail canoe that was taking an erratic course toward the island. Instantly he was around at the other side of the cottage. "Boys, boys," he shouted frantically, "Quick, get out the sailboat, Hal's canoe ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... approached the table, stopping just outside the area of illumination shed by the shaded lamp. But since Victor continued to smoke absently, paying no attention, Nogam resigned himself to wait with entire patience: the perfect pattern of a servant tempered by long servitude to the erratic winds of employers' whims; efficient, assiduous, mute unless ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... at Hobart and Launceston the former returning six members and the latter four. At the first election, in 1897, the possibilities of the system were not appreciated, and electors voted on the old lines; and although the results were rather erratic and unexpected, they were considered fairly satisfactory. But the second election, held early in the present year, proved a great blow to the system. No less than three of the successful candidates were intensely unpopular; and one of them, ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... evenings she would come down stairs with her head wrapped in a pink knitted "nubia," and stroll back and forth along the gravelled walk, her gaunt figure passing into the dusk of the cedar avenue and emerging like the erratic shadow of one of the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... joy out of his cursing passages. The battle scenes also interested me and I went about spouting the extraordinary harangues of Satan with such vigor that my team one day took fright of me, and ran away with the plow, leaving an erratic furrow to be explained. However, my father was glad to see me taking on the voice of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Their own primitive diagrams, like a badly drawn Euclidean problem, satisfy their idea of studies from the life. Their schemes of colour are limited to harmonies in crimson lake, cobalt and gamboge, their skies are very blue, their grass arsenically green, and their perspective as erratic as ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... family. The son of a small tobacconist, he had grown up a sign-painter's apprentice; idle, lawless, and practically letterless until he had drifted into the night classes of the Albert League, where Ghillini sometimes lectured. From the moment he came under the eye and influence of that erratic Italian, then a political exile, his life had swerved sharply from its old channel. This man had been at once incentive and guide, friend and master, to his pupil. He had taken the raw clay out of the London streets and molded it anew. Seemingly he had divined at once where ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... everything was quiet. Harry Fleming saw a wonderful sight—a whole people aroused and determined. There was no foolish boasting; no one talked of a British general eating his Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even Dick Mercer, excitable and erratic as he had always been, seemed to have ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... watching the slanting volleys of rain driven by a strong southwester against the windows of the hotel reading-room, I was struck by the erratic movements of a dripping figure outside that seemed to be hesitating over the entrance to the hotel. At times furtively penetrating the porch as far as the vestibule, and again shyly recoiling from ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... one of the most eagerly sought game birds of the east. Their flight is very rapid and erratic, and accompanied by a peculiar whistling sound made by the rapid motion of the wings; it requires a skillful marksman to bring them down. They frequent boggy places especially "runs" lined with alders, where they bore in the soft ground for worms and grubs. Their eggs ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... social development among the Greeks, the inquirer is met by an initial difficulty. The Greeks were not one great people like the Israelites, migrating into and settling in a new country, flowing with milk and honey. Their movements were erratic and various, and took place at very different times. Several partial migrations are described in Homer, and others are referred to as having taken place only a few generations back. The continuation of unsettled life must have had the effect of giving cohesion ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... adorned Young Denny's chin as he had been. And yet, even while he hesitated, feeding his imagination upon the choicest of premonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifying the unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger old brain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride which resulted therefrom—pride in the contemplation of his ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... river, which takes its rise in the distant mountains of the Mimbres, passes under various names through an immense extent of sandy barren country, the arid monotony of which is interrupted only by the ravines hollowed by the waters, which in their erratic course, ravage without fertilising. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... and fell into the same distemper, which affected the other side of her face. This second time, "By the blessing of God, she was cured in sixteen days." But on May 24 of the same year she was struck down with an erratic fever. Sometimes she was hot, by-and-by sweating, again cold, all in the space of half an hour. Her father's treatment again healed her; "the symptoms remitted daily till she was well, thus was she delivered from death and deadly diseases, and was well for many ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... found the idea amusing, therefore our payment. One of our editors will work your manuscript into less-erratic typescript ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... youngsters in that nest, too, for there had been four greeny-blue, brown-spotted eggs to start with. But even crows have their troubles. And the pair that owned this particular nest were a somewhat original and erratic couple. When the mother had laid her last egg and was getting ready to sit, she decided to take an airing before settling down to work. Though her mate was not at hand to guard the nest, she flew off down to the farm to see if there was anything new going on among those ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... horror, they watched the craft's erratic course, as it swung loggily westward and headed toward that yawning abysm from which they had all so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... pandies, who are artillerymen trained by ourselves; here you will see the real genuine native product; and as the manufacture of shell is in its infancy, and as the shot seldom fits the gun within half an inch, or even an inch, you will see something erratic. They may knock holes in the wall, but it will take them a long time to cut enough holes near each other to make a breach. There, do you see? there are another lot of elephants and troops coming from the left. We shall have the whole countryside ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... No one but an erratic fox-hunter such as I am,—a fox-hunter, I mean, whose lot it has been to wander about from one pack of hounds to another,—can understand the melancholy feeling which a man has when he first intrudes himself, unknown by any one, among an entirely new set of sportsmen. When a stranger falls thus ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... follow and to trace, geographically, the erratic course of Cabeza de Vaca with any degree of certainty. His own tale, however authentic, is so confused[12] that it becomes utterly impossible to establish any details of location. We only know that, in the year A.D. ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... Skidmore were Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright of the "Free Enquirer," a paper advocating all sorts of extreme social and economic doctrines. It was not strange, therefore, that the new party was at once connected, in the public mind, with all the erratic vagaries of these Apostles of Change. It was called the "Fanny Wright ticket" and the "Infidel Ticket." Every one forgot that it aimed to be the workingman's ticket. The movement, however, was supported by "The Working Man's Advocate," a new journal ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... workable pass law at all the Chamber had to prepare it in every detail, together with plans for the creation and working of a Government department; and that in order to diminish the litigation under the gold law, and to make that fearful and wonderful agglomeration of erratic, experimental, crude, involved, contradictory and truly incomprehensible enactments at all understandable, the Chamber had to codify it at its own expense and on its own initiative, illustrate both the indispensable character ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... not in the patiently marching Una to be a creative thinker, yet she did hunger for self-mastery, and ardently was she following the erratic gibes at civilization with which young Walter showed his delight in having an audience, when the brown, homely Golden ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... trouble! The old gentleman had been odder than ever the last day or so. He had ceased even to pretend that his guest's presence was anything but an annoyance. He had refused utterly to enter into any connected conversation and had been restless and erratic to a degree. "Too muchy moon-devil," according to Li Ho. That very afternoon he had met them coming down from their talk upon the rocks and the ironic courtesy of his greeting had been little less than baleful. At ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Alcide Echauffourees, also a Zephyr, who had his nickname from the marvelous changes of costume with which he would pursue his erratic expedition, and deceive the very Arabs themselves into believing him a born Mussulman; a very handsome fellow, the Lauzun of his battalion, the Brummel of his Caserne; coquette with his kepi on one side of his graceful head, and his mustaches soft as a lady's hair; whose paradise was a score of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... joyous in closest imprisonment! His liberty gone, his freedom contracted to a few cubic feet, his space diminished almost to the mould of his body, the great wild philosopher created his own liberty, made it out of his own love of it. Like a live, erratic shuttle he went to and fro, unweaving, unravelling, unwinding, drawing out the knot of confinement, flinging out, radiating and spreading and breathing out space in all directions, by multitudinous motion of disentanglement! Space gone from him, space in the abstract should replace it! He would ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... pieces over the sward; at the second it had met with some stone coping; and at the third it had turned over in complete dissolution, and Jack was free to tear up the turf with his hoofs, until finally his erratic course was stopped by the small boy who was responsible for the animal's behaviour. The arrival of Hubert and Emily saved the small boy from many a cuff and the donkey from a kick or two; and Jack stood amid the ruin he had ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... revolving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, originally called Asteroids, all of recent discovery, and the list, amounting to some 400, as yet made of them understood to be incomplete. They are very difficult of discovery, many of them from the smallness of their size and their erratic movements. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a few months before Raphael. Several of his pupils were artists of ability, and lived to carry on his traditions of painting in the north of Italy. Leonardo himself had been so erratic, produced so little, and so few of his pictures survive, that many know him best in his pupils' work, or through copies and engravings of his great 'Last Supper'—a picture that became an almost total wreck upon the walls of the Refectory in Milan, for ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... and Swift, as well as Congreve, we see the fertile erratic fancy of Ireland improved by the labour and reflection of England. Sterne's humour was inferior to Swift's, narrower and smaller; it was a sparkling wine, but light-bodied, and often bad in colour. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... a nebulous but suggestive remark that the newspaper occupies the borderland between literature and common sense. Literature it certainly is not, and in the popular apprehension it seems often too erratic and variable to be credited with the balance-wheel of sense; but it must have something of the charm of the one, and the steadiness and sagacity of the other, or it will fail to please. The model editor, I believe, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the formation of the gorge; it still wound its erratic course between precipitous cliffs. In places it widened out and again it became very narrow and always deeper the further south they traveled. Presently the bottom of the gorge began to slope more rapidly. Here ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The Greek Cypriot economy is small and prosperous, but highly susceptible to external shocks. Industry contributes 23% to GDP and employs 25% of the labor force, while the service sector contributes 72% to GDP and employs 62% of the labor force. Erratic growth rates in the 1990s reflect the economy's vulnerability to swings in tourist arrivals (caused by fluctuations in political and economic conditions in Western Europe and the Middle East) and the need for structural changes ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... perfection. Near Bennett's Hotel—a favorite resort, not only with the citizens of Rio, but with all sojourners there who care to leave the town occasionally for its beautiful environs—may be seen a great number of erratic boulders, having no connection whatever with the rock in place, and also a bluff of this superficial deposit studded with boulders, resting above the partially stratified metamorphic rock. Other excellent opportunities for observing this formation, also within easy reach ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... up to the time of its being mentioned by the Lord Mayor, the consequence of which was that a Committee was formed at the Mansion House for the purpose of receiving subscriptions and deciding upon the best means of capturing this erratic genius. Probably feeling that he had sufficiently terrorised the districts before mentioned, he turned his attention to the East end of London, and particularly favoured Bow. A case is given in the Times of 23 ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... to set it forth in such terms. There is no small difference between random and fugitive desires and those more fundamental desires that express truly the nature of a man. Desires organized and harmonized gain great strength, and are enabled to overcome and expel from the mind erratic impulses, the obedience to which may easily be followed by regret. Action taken without a clear foresight of consequences, with an imperfect conception of the relation of means to ends, is blind and irrational ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Dent actually mispronounces 'Vogons' as 'Bogons' at one point] 1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see {quantum bogodynamics}). For instance, "the Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Evelyn were accustomed to sudden and erratic movements on the part of Charles, and to Molly he was a sort of archangel, who might arrive out of space at any moment, untrammelled by such details as distance, trains, time, or tide. But to Lady Mary ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... should have thought it extremely improbable," answered the doctor emphatically. "Still, women are sometimes erratic, as we doctors know to ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... by his own limitations, angry, too, with his erratic mental departure from the realm of reason into the realm of fantasy—for so he called the debatable land over which intuition held sway—Artois hounded out his mood and turned ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to grief that most erratic of sovereigns was a visitor at his house—as indeed where was she not?—coming thence from Hampton Court in 1568, and remaining a day with him; and when her successor, James I., came to take up her English sceptre, he, mindful of what the Howards had suffered for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... I met in the country, who showed me a good deal of kindness. From Yorkshire. Man named Browning. Very good fellow, but erratic. Said he'd wait for me in the cab, and disappeared before I could come down. Had an idea I should make him lose his train, I suppose. Well, never mind him. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... States; Washington Irving, Count Volney, Humbolt, the geographer; Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat; Lorenzo Dow, the eccentric preacher; several young naval officers from the Tripolitan War; and John Randolph of Roanoke. I wonder if it was from this old tavern that that brilliant but erratic statesman went out across the Chain Bridge to fight his duel with Henry Clay? It is recorded by a marker, just at the end of the bridge on the Virginia side, and reads thus: "Near here Henry Clay and John Randolph ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... electromagnetic phenomenon, is transmitted at a distance through the air by the intermediary of the luminous ether. But electric influence can hardly be used, as the distances it would allow us to traverse would be much too restricted, and electrostatic actions are often very erratic. The phenomena of induction, which are very regular and insensible to the variations of the atmosphere, have, on the other hand, for a long time appeared serviceable ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... the Roman Catholic Chapel he had now resolved to become a priest, though curiously enough he began this career by eloping, as we are assured by Ramsay of Ochtertyre, with a Roman Catholic actress. His father followed the pair to London, and there, it would seem, prevailed on the erratic neophyte to abandon his fair partner, whose existence would certainly have been a fatal barrier to the proposed priesthood. At least, like his friend Gibbon of later days, if he sighed as a lover, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... full-grown genius of commonplace parents. Rather his fate threatened that he should always be known as the son of his father. And certainly it was asking much of a boy that he should live up to a father who was one of the most conspicuous, clever, and erratic statesmen of the later Victorian era, and a mother who is as brilliant as she ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... fortunate indeed, if, on your nightly rambles, you find one of the large night moths winging its silent flight over the moonlit glade, resting for an instant on a mullein-stalk, then dancing away in his erratic flight, like some pixy ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... who both loved and respected his niece, to defer his remarks to another time: and Katherine, springing from her chair with childish eagerness, flew to the side of her cousin, who was directing a servant that had announced the arrival of one of those erratic venders of small articles, who supply, in remote districts of the country, the places of more regular traders, to show the lad into the dining-parlor. The repast was so far ended as to render this interruption less objectionable; and as all felt the object of ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... them suffering from a bad attack of yaws) propelled the craft from her forward part in erratic zig-zags; amidships sat Captain Kettle in a Madeira chair under a green-lined white umbrella; and behind him squatted his personal attendant, a Krooboy, bearing the fine old Coast name of Brass Pan. The crushed marigold smell from ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... an apt pupil; and though for the first ten minutes or so the course of the ship was a trifle erratic, and steering in a straight line proved to be not quite so simple and easy a matter as she had deemed it, Miss Sibylla soon caught the knack, and at the end of half an hour the Flying Cloud was making as straight a wake ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... which we had on our right as we descended the Oka continued now on the same side as we came down the Volga. The Volga, however, has nothing of the wild, erratic instincts of its tributary. It is a grand, calm, dignified stream, keeping to its course as a respectable matron, and gliding down in placid loveliness, without weir or leap, fall or rapids, or break of any kind—a fine, broad, almost unrippled ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... including the wildest statistics about the habits of tigers in winter. This was quite natural, however, as he was a thorough Irishman and had never seen a tiger in his life. Mr. Currie Ghyrkins vainly attempted to stem the torrent of his eloquence, but at last pinned him on some erratic statement about tigers moulting later in the year and their skins not being worth taking. Kildare would have asserted with equal equanimity that all tigers shed their teeth and their tails in December; he was evidently trying to rouse Mr. Ghyrkins ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... himself in the shack on the hillside of The Briers, that looked out over the Harpeth Valley, he had unconsciously buried that frozen hero in "The Emergence" and had gone to work and resurrected him in a kind of Samuel Foster Crittenden. Instead of being a complicated, heroic, erratic genius he was just a big, simple, strong young man who was doing his part in the corner of the world's vineyard where he had been sent to work. To help him Peter had written in a wonderful girl with a great deal of brains for one ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... restored to the table from which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped at the very moment it was so withdrawn; nor, despite all the skill of the watchmaker, has it ever gone since—that is, it will go in a strange erratic way for a few hours, and then come to a dead stop—it ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... generously to the pictures themselves. This, as I shall explain in another essay, is, to my mind, the proper function of criticism. I shall never forget my first visits to the Caillebotte collection; and in the unforgettable thrill of those first visits M. Mauclair's bad science and erratic judgement counted for something—much perhaps. They put me into a mood of sympathetic expectation; and such a mood is, even for highly sensitive people, often an indispensable preliminary to aesthetic appreciation. There are those who have got to be made to feel something before they can ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... bacteriological output of Australasia was remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus—grotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
