"Miscalculation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had a right to a long stretch of unbroken sunshine. As I stood and looked at her I felt the heart-burning, the indefinable indignation that we feel in the presence of death when it is the young and fair who have died. Here is a miscalculation, a mistake. It ought ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... parent voles were busy with their work of family training, the old cannibal trout suddenly appeared, rose quickly at one of the youngsters swimming near the edge of the current, but, through a slight miscalculation, failed to clutch his prize. The mother vole, ever on the alert, plunged down, and, heedless of danger, darted towards her enemy. For a second or two she manoeuvred to obtain a grip, then, as she turned to avoid attack, the jaws of the trout opened wide, and, like a steel trap, closed ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the door, and suddenly sees that FERRAND himself is standing there. Sticking out his lower lip, TIMSON gives a roll of his jaw and lurches forth into the street. Owing to a slight miscalculation, his face and raised arms are plainly visible through the window, as he fortifies himself from his battle against the cold. FERRAND, having closed the door, stands with his thumb acting as pointer towards this spectacle. He is now remarkably dressed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a queer feeling," he said, as Fred joined him, "when I was right over the middle of the canyon, and knew, if I had made any miscalculation, I should never stop until pretty well down toward the centre ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... It soon became apparent that the number of existing parishes throughout the country had been grossly miscalculated. There were not more than 9,000, and the amount of assessment had to be proportionately raised. It was necessary to summon a council at Westminster in June, to remedy the miscalculation that had been made in March. Half of the representatives of the late parliament were summoned to meet the king, and among them two of the city's members, Bartholomew Frestlyng and John Philipot—"the first Englishman who has left behind him the reputation of a financier."(579) The mistake was ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... still no sign of the figures he sought, and, wondering whether they could have passed through some miscalculation on his part, he stepped forward quickly to make sure, when he became visible to Brettison, who ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... consequences of the measures taken by the British Government to promote Western education in India has been attentively studied by the author of this volume. It is a story of grave political miscalculation, containing a lesson that has its significance for other nations which have undertaken a similar enterprise. Ignorance is unquestionably the root of many evils; and it was natural that in the last century certain philosophers ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... be said about it is that though I employed detectives for some time to try to get evidence bearing on the subject, no such evidence was ever obtained. The shortage in the turnover was due simply to the usual miscalculation of the herd; the herd which never before had been counted and could not, under ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... this, for the knowledge had been forced on him that there were an incredible number of intriguers at that time, spies and conspirators, often in the pay of both parties, impartially betraying the one to the other, and sometimes, through miscalculation, meeting the fate they richly deserved. Many a man who had begun enthusiastically to work in underground ways for what he thought the righteous cause, became so enamoured of the undermining process, and the gold there to be picked up, that from a wrong-headed ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was set up. We could see at once that when we had put in all the stores and provisions we would need, there would not be room enough for six boys and a man to stretch themselves out comfortably in it. Bill had evidently made a miscalculation, but he suggested that we remedy the error by building an annex for ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... kind and very calm," she said at last; "he said but little; and, I think, these were his words: 'I find, Janet, I have made a great miscalculation—I thought my hour of danger had passed. We have been many years together, but a parting must sooner or later be, and my ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... this form of publication. "I could not write a line till three o'clock," he says, describing the close of that number, "and have yet five slips to finish, and don't know what to put in them, for I have reached the point I meant to leave off with." He found easy remedy for such a miscalculation at his outset, and it was nearly his last as well as first misadventure of the kind: his difficulty in Pickwick, as he once told me, having always been, not the running short, but the running over: not the whip, but the drag, that was wanted. Sufflaminandus ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... long felt himself sure of being one day dictator by public acclamation, and to have been deceived by that dreamer, Robespierre, was most humiliating. But Robespierre would not dare to put him to death! Grave miscalculation! He was immolated like the rest; the crowd looking on with indifference. Along with him perished Camille Desmoulins, a young man of letters, and a Jacobin, but convicted of advocating clemency. Robespierre was one of Camille's private and most valued friends; he had been his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... Make no miscalculation of their ability to fight. This year, 1918, will see them sawing their own lumber in their own saw-mills in British Columbia. If necessary, they can grind their own flour in their own flour mills, dig their own coal from ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of that rule for changing counter-balance you wanted. There has always been a miscalculation about the weight of counter-balance; they are universally too heavy. The weights are in pieces; take out two pieces; this treatment would even improve a mule sweep. When once out, pieces should be changed or placed where careless or malicious persons cannot get hold of them and replace them. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... news of General Crittenden's utter defeat at Mill Springs, on the 17th of January—of the disastrous results of his miscalculation, or misguided impetuosity, and of the death of Zollicoffer—came with stunning effect; opening wide the eyes of the whole country to the condition in which apathy, or mismanagement, had ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... By a miscalculation on the part of the little district attorney the heavy man entered the room a moment before Gordon left. They came face to face just within the portieres. There was no mistaking the hostility, the open hate, between the two men. Both Kennedy and I ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... rashly decided that a visionary of this stamp might be useful for furthering certain projects of his own. He hoped, by placing under an obligation, to fashion out of the young reformer an amenable instrument—a miscalculation which he lived (though not for long) to repent. Under the Procurator's aegis, Bazhakuloff was summoned to the Capital. The political period was beginning. Moscow, on the whole, was glad to see the last of him—particularly ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... hurry to reach the spot that he must needs make an unfortunate miscalculation when attempting to climb up the steep bank, or else a root upon which he depended proved ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... later than B.C. 4, since Herod died about the first of April in that year (Jos. Ant. xvii. 6. 4; 8. 1, 4). The awkwardness of having to find a date Before Christ for the birth of Jesus is due to the miscalculation of the monk, Dionysius the Little, who in the sixth century introduced our modern reckoning from "the ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... weeks; then return the cattle, and the grass will be as sweet as before. It requires practice to know the number of cattle, and the proper time to put on these cattle, to secure the full benefits of new grass. Three days' miscalculation may cause a heavy loss. I have been bit so often, and found the difficulty so great, that I fear to extend my observations on this part of the subject, when I am addressing gentlemen many of whom make their young ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... undeceiving him. To quote again from an old friend: "There is nothing more conducive to the production and maintenance of a healthy mind in a sound body than enterprise and industry, even when, owing to misapprehension or miscalculation, their exercise leads ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... often disappearing and ever re-appearing, the efforts made by the country for the accomplishment of her hope. Why then did not France sooner and more completely attain what she had so often attempted? Amongst the different causes of this long miscalculation, we will dwell for the present only on the historical reason just now indicated: France did not find, as England did, in the primitive elements of French society the conditions and means of the political ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... whose loyalty and courage he knew he might implicitly rely. The first step was to secure the passes of the Guaitara, a chain of hills that hemmed in the valley of Zangalla, where Almagro was at present established. But, by some miscalculation, the passes were not secured in season; and the active enemy, threading the dangerous defiles, effected a passage across the sierra, where a much inferior force to his own might have taken him at advantage. The fortunes of Almagro were on the wane. His thoughts were now turned ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... A hyper-pilot is always anxious just before crossover. You've got to be, because the slightest miscalculation can send you fifty thousand light ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... to move for the last mile or two in a more extended formation. A line of battalion double-company columns is most difficult to preserve in the darkness, and any confusion may lead to disaster. The whole mistake lay in a miscalculation of a few hundred yards in the position of the trenches. Had the regiments deployed five minutes earlier it is probable (though by no means certain) that the position would ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... down rapidly and shot out some feet from the bottom, as he had, from an advantageous point of view on Blackfriars Bridge, seen sacks of meal shoot from a Thames warehouse into the barge beneath. If, however, he made a miscalculation, he inevitably rolled off sideways and landed in a heap on the floor. Either result appeared to afford him infinite enjoyment and exhilaration. On this occasion he performed the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... repeatedly sought to make clear our position in this matter so that there would not be danger of Communist miscalculation. The Secretary of State on September 4th made a statement to the same end. This statement could not, of course, cover every contingency. Indeed, I interpret the joint resolution as requiring me not to make absolute advance commitments ...
— The Communist Threat in the Taiwan Area • John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower
... that his enemies had not made any miscalculation. For five minutes the air rushed fiercely past Jack, fanning the tremendous flame which leapt from the blazing pile and carrying it upwards to the rift, then it began to slacken, and the flame, instead of roaring upwards to a point, began to sink, and spread its wide red wings abroad in the cave, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... young men with not too broad a vein of envy. He was no woman hater—anything but that. Indeed, those who wished him ill had from time to time hoped to see him tumble down, through miscalculation in some of his audacities with women. No—he did not hate women. But there were several women who hated him—or tried to; and if wounded vanity and baffled machination be admitted as just causes for hatred, they had cause. He liked—but he did not wholly ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... extent he was responsible for the estimates of the number of troops necessary is not known. It is certain, however, that everyone—Ministers, generals, colonists, and intelligence officers—concurred in making a most remarkable miscalculation. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... nothing, for she knew that he had lied. His miscalculation was all the other way. She bent again over her work. It was all that he could do not to lift her arms gently but firmly from the table, to take away her pen and ink, and put out her lamp. He would have liked to have done some violence ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... unattainable, but now it had been suddenly thrust forward almost within my reach. If true, this would mean the well-nigh certain achievement of my heart's desire—the completion of my husband's work. Yet there were the rapids, where the skill and judgment of the men were our safeguards. One little miscalculation and it would take but an instant to whelm us in disaster. Still we had come so far on the way with success, surely it would be given to us to reach the goal in safety. But here inevitably thought flew to one who had been infinitely worthy but ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... that all the week. You see, when I made my table, by some miscalculation, one leg persisted in coming out shorter than the others, which necessitated its being shored up by a book until I made ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the great effort it cost him. Like the unfinished Faith by Mino da Fiesole,[59] it is laboured and experimental. They set to work hoping that later stages would enable them to rectify any error or miscalculation, but both found they had gone too far. The material would permit no such thing, and with all their skill one sees that the blocks of marble did not unfold the statues which lay hidden within. As hewers of stone, Donatello and Mino cannot ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... other clergyman has ever been able to reach the position he held with apparent ease, which amounted to a sort of primacy of New England. His dangers lay in the very fecundity of his mind. Though hampered by his education and profession, he was naturally liberal; and his first miscalculation was when, almost immediately on landing, he supported Winthrop, who was in disgrace for the mildness of his ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... miscalculation was his mistaken estimate of the actual distribution of power in the Entente on the one hand, and his surprising ignorance of national relationships in Europe, and especially in Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, which would ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... No vessel can hope to ascend the river safely without being in charge of one of these pilots. We saw a large iron steamship, which was a quarter of a mile ahead of the Teheran, in her attempt to make the mouth of the Hoogly, caught by an adverse current, through what seemed to be a very trifling miscalculation, and she was cast aground as quickly as though blown on a lee shore by a tornado. We passed her as we went in, with both her anchors out, adopting various nautical expedients to get afloat. As the accident occurred on a rising tide, we have no doubt that ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... trick at all, with the assistance of the mines, to advance our lines to what had been the German third line, but, right there, some one had made a miscalculation. It's a cinch our "higher-ups" did not know how much artillery the Germans had that they could turn on that salient. Our own artillery had been greatly increased and they evidently thought we were ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... defence at several points[136]. The Ottoman position by no means lacked elements of strength. The first of these was the Danube itself. The task of crossing a great river in front of an active foe is one of the most dangerous of all military operations. Any serious miscalculation of the strength, the position, or the mobility of the enemy's forces may lead to an irreparable disaster; and until the bridges used for the crossing are defended by tetes de pont the position of the column that has passed over ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... these reactions may affect practical administration. No reflection is needed to see that in proportion as business men fail to take account of forces outside the business, in that proportion they are likely to miscalculate the results of business policies. Striking examples of such miscalculation are found in the experience of Mr. George M. Pullman back in the nineties, and of Mr. Patterson, of the National Cash Register Company, a decade later. Each of these men, with apparent good faith, undertook to surround his laborers with ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... planned for stone vaulting. The builders seem to have thought that they could get in six bays between the transept and the space planned for one of the western towers; but found that, on the measurements they had adopted, there was room only for five. They corrected their miscalculation by broadening the division of the wall between the fourth and fifth bay of the aisles. When they came to build the arcades, they were conscious of their previous error, and planned them in five equal bays irrespective of the plan of the aisles. In churches of ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... slightest suspicion of our being near any, although the reckoning of the chart with increasing degrees showed only 120 miles, and the reckoning by the terrestrial globe only 50 miles distance from the land. But to this little attention had been paid. It seems certain now that the miscalculation involved in the plane chart from Cabo de bon' Esperanca to the Southland in 35 degrees latitude gives an overplus of more than 270 miles of sea, a matter to which most steersmen pay little attention, and which has brought, ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... of deceit; but there was no one who was so thoroughly deceived as Napoleon himself. By some extraordinary miscalculation on the part of his secret agents, he was led to believe that the the forces of whole force of Austria, both in the north and the south, amounted to only 100,000 men, [183] and it was on this estimate that he had formed his plans ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to believe that, after years of reflection upon his subject, Mr. Darwin should have written as above, especially in such a place, if his mind was clear about his own position. Immediately after the admission of a certain amount of miscalculation there comes a more or less exculpatory sentence, which sounds so right that ninety-nine people out of a hundred would walk through it, unless led by some exigency of their own position to examine it closely, but ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... been brought about our ears. Almost all countries wish for our destruction and are trying to bring it about. Italy deserts us. Even America, though you cringe to her, dislikes us and mentions Louvain when we speak of culture. What a masterpiece of folly and miscalculation and wasted opportunity it has all been. And the truth is that there's nobody to thank for it except your sublime self. Others have made mistakes, but you alone were capable of constructing this colossal monument of detestable blunders. Our fault has been that ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... desperate. I said to myself that I would find another weapon, even if I should have to take a leaf out of your own book, dad, to do it. I took the leaf, and I have the weapon. You drove Gryson away, but you made one small miscalculation. You didn't believe that his desire for revenge would be stronger than ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... charming paradox!" cried Ellis. "And so it is really true that every soldier who dies on the field of battle does so only by virtue of a miscalculation? And if he could but pull himself up and remember that, after all, the preservation of his life was the only motive that induced him to endanger it, he would run away like a sensible man, and try some other device to achieve his end, the device of society having evidently broken down, so far ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... even a remote possibility. I, perhaps, as the only one of the three who had had any practical experience of out-door life, should have kept just such a chance in mind. The fact remains that I overlooked it, and I can't say that then or at any other time was I sorry for my miscalculation. ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... out." With that he darted forward, until he supposed he had attained the required momentum, when suddenly making a twisting motion with his feet, he threw himself round. But unfortunately he had made some miscalculation or slip, for instead of alighting square upon the skates, his heels flew up, and with a tremendous thump, down came poor ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... tally of the number of baskets we took to market, and how much money each lot produced. His ridiculous miscalculation, the previous year, of what our profits would be, had so moderated his enthusiasm, that during all this season his anticipations were confined within very modest bounds. But as his column of figures lengthened, and he ciphered out for us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... us. The Groenland, a large transport, was wrecked some way south of Larrache. By some miscalculation or other she ran aground, going nine knots an hour, at high water, on a spring tide, at the foot of a cliff as high as those of the English Channel. When the fog cleared, some Arabs, very few fortunately, on the top of the rocks, saw her, and poured their ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... and Unity Dandridge, the one in her customary white, the other in a blue that marvellously set off dark hair, dark eyes, and brilliant bloom, entered Saint John's together and passed up the aisle to a seat halfway between door and pulpit. By some miscalculation of Unity's they were very early, a fact which presently brought a whispered ejaculation of annoyance from Miss Dandridge. "I love a flutter when I come in and the knowledge that I've turned every head—and here we've entered ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... who probably believed his strength to be superior to that of the scouts, advanced boldly and seized him, with the evident purpose of drawing him down among the others and making him a prisoner in spite of himself. But he found he had made a slight miscalculation when he was lifted like a child from the ground and hurled over the heads and among the glowering redskins crowding below. The momentum of his body was such that a half dozen were forced backward and almost off their feet. Had the Apaches chosen ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... merchant who buys silk at five dollars per yard takes his chances; he expects it to go up to six dollars; it may fall to four dollars. If a man, by straightforward operations in stocks, meets with disaster and fails, he deserves sympathy just as much as he who sold spices or calicoes, and through some miscalculation is struck down bankrupt. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... premeditated his deed. Woe to the judge, if he misses his calculation in adding or subtracting the third, or sixth, or one half, corresponding to the prescribed extenuating or aggravating circumstances! If he makes a miscalculation, the court of appeals is invoked by the defendant, and the inexorable court of appeals tells the judge: "Figure this over again. You have been unjust." The only question for the judge is this: Add your sums and subtract your deductions, and the prisoner ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... well the whole morning, and had appeared to be enjoying the walk quite as much as any of the others. Knowing, moreover, the passionate girl she was, he could only fear the worst if she had been told anything; and, since any disaster that might follow would be due to a miscalculation on his part, he felt it incumbent upon him to do everything in his power to repair the mistake ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... that moment needed all his fortitude. The least mistake or miscalculation on the part of his friends, and what might not be ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... breaks through the ridge in the southern section of the Effuenta property and unites with the Takwa. My aneroid showed the height of the crest to be 260 feet above sea-level, and about 160 above the valley. Mr. Wyatt has raised it to 1,400 feet—a curious miscalculation. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... imperative for there were places where a single instant's tardiness meant destruction. There was no time in that mad rush to rectify mistakes. A miscalculation, a stroke of the sweep too little or too much, would send the heavily loaded boat with that tremendous, terrifying force behind it, crashing and splintering on a rock ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... succor arrived. And scarcely had these hasty preparations been made, before the piratical schooner, which had made a wide tack outward to catch the wind, came swiftly sweeping round to their side, like a towering falcon on his prey. But, by some miscalculation of her helmsman, she went twenty yards wide of them—not, however, without betraying the full extent of her bloody purposes; for as, under the impulse of a speed she found herself unable instantly to check, she swept by on the long, rolling ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... cried Robinson quickly, "to the broad part here." Robinson calculated that the stream would protect his rear, and that safe he was content to wait and profit by the slightest error of his numerous assailants; this, however, was to a certain degree a miscalculation, for the huge ruffian we have called Jem sprang boldly across the stream higher up and prepared to attack the men behind, the moment they should be engaged with his comrades. The others no sooner saw ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the three lancets shows how the artists dealt with a difficulty that upset their rule. The border of the southern window does not count as it should; something is wrong with it and a little study shows that the builder, and not the glassworker, was to blame. Owing to his miscalculation—if it was really a miscalculation—in the width of the southern tower, the builder economized six or eight inches in the southern door and lancet, which was enough to destroy the balance between the colour-values, as masses, of the south and north windows. The artist was ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... of the voice sat on the table and hummed fiercely. In the stress of mental anguish caused by his position, Henry made a miscalculation, and in turning bumped the table ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... the conclusion he reached was based on a miscalculation. The only waterway to old Fort Winagog that he knew was from the main river and up the stream that formed the outlet for the lake. But there was another that was reached by a short portage through the woods from the subsidiary ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... of the croupier. Twice I corrected a miscalculation of his, and before I had played an hour his hand was trembling ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... him crazed! John Brown at Harper's Ferry is only a ridiculous old fool; his effort is absurd; even gentlemen in the North feel an "intellectual satisfaction" that he is hanged, because of his "preposterous miscalculation of possibilities." Yes, no doubt; you hang him, and there is an end; but "his soul goes marching on," and the slaves are freed! You want to abolish the Corn-laws?—all good society shrieks at you at first: you are a Radical, a regicide, a Judas Iscariot; but in time ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... childlike solemnity out of his big blue eyes, listened to both sides of the story, and to Henry's miscalculation, at no time during the recital did he laugh uproariously, or exclaim compassionately, or indicate that he shared any of ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... that I should have read nine millions in place of the numbers that were burning themselves into my brain. But what if it were rightly but two and a half millions, and the great sum on which all my market movements had been predicated was a hideous miscalculation on my part? Then inevitably was I hopelessly bankrupt, or saved from that only to find my neck irrevocably caught in the "Standard Oil" noose. I strove fiercely to steady my nerves, to arrest the stampeding terrors that had broken loose in my brain. There came to me a ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Russia, Prussia, and Austria to restore Syria and the Turkish fleet to the Porte. The consequent armed intervention made Beirut the seat of war. An English fleet bombarded the city, and the English officers, by a singular miscalculation, treated the Papal Maronites as their friends, and the Druzes as their enemies. Missionary operations were suspended. Mr. Lanneau, whose eyes had failed him, left on a visit to the United States. Messrs. Beadle, Keyes, and Leander Thompson spent the summer and autumn at Jerusalem, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... not until rebellion commenced was it ascertained of what strength they were; and eventually the city proved more formidable to the Bala Hissar than the Bala Hissar to the city. Such a blunder of ignorance and miscalculation, we believe, was never heard of. But, 2dly, Even that was a trifle by comparison with the capital evil—and the capital evil was this. The enemy was allowed, throughout the autumn of 1841, to accumulate ad libitum in Cabool. Retainers of the chiefs, Ghilzyes and others, gathered unwatched ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... gown without a pattern and with no mirror to guide her, the skirt was several inches shorter behind than in front, and a miscalculation put the gathers chiefly ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... growth in the size of the business unit is likely to diminish risk, the law of averages thus cuts both ways. The risks arising from the element of pure chance are more likely, those arising from miscalculation are less likely, to cancel out. Upon these grounds alone, it would be unsafe to conclude that there would be on balance an economy of risk under any system ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... probabilities of a problem, which do not involve any claim to be a prophet. The first is to tell the truth, and especially the neglected truth, about the tendencies that have already accumulated in human history; any miscalculation about which must at least mislead us in any case. We cannot be certain of being right about the future; but we can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... if you please, Has two or three (or more) degrees Of variation; And many a soul has gone to grief On this or that or t'other reef Through faith unreckoning or brief Miscalculation. Misguidance is of perils chief ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... back alleys and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no end of them, but never any sign of the boy. This greatly surprised him, but did not discourage him. To his notion, there was nothing the matter with his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thing," he went on, "to talk or sing into that microphone," pointing to a little disk-like instrument about the height of a man's head. "But even there the least miscalculation may wholly spoil the effect of the speech or the music. Now, in a theater, the actor is at least twenty feet or so from the nearest of his audience and the sounds that he makes in drawing in his breath are not perceptible. If he stayed too close ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... to the shore, and drawn up, and in their eagerness, each tried to gain the elevation first. A miscalculation was made, in the attempt to reach the object, which was not visible from their location, and they were compelled to thread their way down again and go around the broken side of the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... pigeons were flying, somehow relieving the mechanical outlines. Was the disproportion between the great arch, forming a kind of pedestal, and the outlines above due to mathematical miscalculation or to the interference of the ornamentation? We finally decided that the proportions had probably been right in the first place. But they had been changed by the Exposition authorities' cutting the Tower down one hundred ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... said little or nothing. His sensibilities were not acute, but he perceived that he had made a miscalculation. He hoped that there was no offence,—thought it might have been mutooally agreeable, conclooded he would give up the idee of a colation, and backed himself out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of his person to the risk of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... took the proposals seriously, and wished to accept them. But the money could only be procured by melting down the Church plate, and the clergy made objection. Some have thought that this was a fatal miscalculation. The other causes of their ruin are obvious and are decisive. They ought to have been supported by the Bretons, and the Bretons were not ready. They ought to have been united, and they were bitterly divided and insubordinate. They ought ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... them and she turned to go into the house; her head gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest door ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... morality of an act by the consequences it produces. If the results are good, then the action is good; if evil, then the action is adjudged bad. This is, in substance, the Benthamite or utilitarian ethic, Bentham roundly maintaining that crime is nothing but a miscalculation, an error in arithmetic. It is the failure of a man to count the cost, to weigh the results of what he is about to do. That being the case, the scientist being persuaded that utility and pleasure make an action good, and uselessness and pain make it bad, he was able to conclude ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... stars. The moon as a factor by night. The fixed stars in the moon's path. Determine to recover the wrecked boat. The boys inaugurate the trip. A jolly lark. Through the forest. The alarm in the night. The attack of an animal. Missed. Sighting the West River. Miscalculation. Discovering their former tracks. In the savages' country. The chatter of Angel in the trees. The alarm. Savages. Eluding them. Escaping to the north. Discovered by ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... intensified when, as is frequently the case, he witnesses the dying struggles, and hears the heart-rending groans; we must not forget that the best contrivances sometimes fail to do good work, and that a certain percentage of victims have to suffer a prolonged death-agony owing to the miscalculation of a bad workman. Most people go through life without thinking of these things: they do not stop and consider from whence and by what means has come to their table the flesh-food that is served there. They drift along through ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... our favourite must lose? Are they the kind of persons who risk thousands in hard cash unless they know particularly well what they are doing? They bet with an air of certainty, though some of them must be almost ruined if they have made a miscalculation; they defy even the owner of the animal, and they cheerfully give him the opportunity of putting down thousands if he wishes to do so. There must be some reason for this assurance which at first sight looks so very ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... upon important anecdotes of the King, the Queen, and several members of the first assembly; her mistakes concerning the Princesse de Lamballe's relations with the Duchesse de Polignac, Comte de Fersan, Mirabeau, the Cardinal de Rohan, and others; her great miscalculation of the time when the Queen's confidence in Barnave began, and when that of the Empress-mother in Rohan ended; her misrepresentation of particulars relating to Joseph II.; and her blunders concerning the affair of the necklace, and regarding the libel ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... made a miscalculation. She knew that presently Robin would seek Marian, even in the lion's mouth. Then would come the day ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... for the record that should a Rapid Dominance force actually be fielded with the requisite operational capabilities, this force would be neither a silver bullet nor a panacea and certainly not an antidote or preventative for a major policy blunder, miscalculation, or mistake. It should also be fully appreciated that situations will exist in which Rapid Dominance (or any other doctrine) may not work or apply because of political, strategic, or other ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... that Meldon said it was; but his satisfaction with it turned out to be ill-founded. It was based on a miscalculation. What seemed to him a desirable sailing breeze was a cause of grave discomfort ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... horn-rimmed glasses but bewilder him the more, and we have had several of them walk into our arms without intention, though they soon found that thereby they had bettered themselves. There was one young Bavarian officer who made this miscalculation. I saw him moving near our wire in the early dawn. I called to some men to draw a bead on him but he came toward us and at the last with a run jumped down into our trench. "Good morning!" I said to him, looking ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... was quite sure that her mother, in her shallow way, had cared for Basil, and not at all sure that she had relinquished her hope at the first symptom of his change of heart. But, though one couldn't but feel stern at the thought, one couldn't, also, repress something of pity for the miscalculation of the defeated love. To feel pity, moreover, was to show herself anybody's equal ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... years and the colour of the hair; and it was not this gentleman's habit, as he informed me, to squabble about trifles, or to let a man's neck out of the halter for a pretended flaw of a few inches in his stature. "If a man were too short," he said, "there was no remedy like a little stretching." The miscalculation in my case happened to be the opposite way, but his reverence did not think proper to lose his jest. Upon the whole, he was somewhat at a loss ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Here, however, as elsewhere, the core of interest was with the serious population, the lovers and the players in earnest, who stood round the furnace and pitched themselves into it, not always under a miscalculation of their chances of emerging transfigured instead of serving for fuel. These, the tragical children of folly, were astute: they played with lightning, and they knew the conditions of the game; victories ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY.—It will be observed that the Greek geographer regarded the Indian Ocean as a landlocked body of water, while he appears to have some knowledge of the so ces of the Nile. The general tendency of the map is to extend Asia very much to the east, which led to the miscalculation ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... new Turkish dynasty, however, was unable to withstand the internal Chinese resistance. Its founder died in 948, and his son, owing to his youth, was entirely in the hands of a court clique. In his effort to free himself from the tutelage of this group he made a miscalculation, for the men on whom he thought he could depend were largely supporters of the clique. So he lost his throne and his life, and a Chinese general, Kuo Wei, took his place, founding the "Later ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... given the seat of honour at table. He was placed between Mrs. Pollock and Miss Flora Grady, supplanting Doctor Simpson, who had held the honour ever since Charlie Webster's unfortunate miscalculation as to the durability of an unfamiliar brand of bourbon to which he had been introduced late one Sunday evening. It was a brand that wore extremely well,—so well, in fact, that when he appeared for dinner at noon on Monday he was still in a lachrymose condition ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... be an acre and a quarter of ground for each Saint that had ever lived from the morning of creation to the day of doom. And, lest some carping mathematician should dispute his figures, he had declared that if, by any miscalculation, the earth's surface should not suffice for the Saints and their Gentile slaves, the Lord "would build a gallery around the earth." Thus had confusion been brought to the last quibbler ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... sanction of a public that can often understand nothing in a controversy except personal sarcasm or slanderous ridicule, it is likely to continue. The sufferings of its victims are often as little regarded as those of the sacrificial pig offered in old time, with what we now regard as a sad miscalculation of effects. ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... not quite the babe that Blake had represented him, although he certainly looked nothing like his age. But to-night he had contrived to set the crown to all. He had good cause to blame himself and to curse the miscalculation that had emboldened him to launch himself upon a course of insult against this Wilding, whom he hated with all the currish and resentful hatred of the worthless for ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... that when the whole countryside put down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes, I cannot ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... major-generals in the regular army, whose case was not covered by the limitation of the statute. This seems to have been overlooked in the steps subsequently taken by members of Congress, and as the action was unwelcome to the President, he did not enlighten the legislators respecting their miscalculation. The business proceeded upon the supposition that the appointments in the highest rank were really thirteen in excess of the number fixed by ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... seventh-story suite of offices in the Rookery Building, was suffering from the heat, but much more from mental perturbation. Though not a stingy or penurious man, it was still true that of all earthly things he suffered most from a financial loss. How often had he seen chance or miscalculation sweep apparently strong and valiant men into the limbo of the useless and forgotten! Since the alienation of his wife's affections by Cowperwood, he had scarcely any interest in the world outside his large financial holdings, which included ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... had been nearly two hours awake; the race against a well-nigh impossible time limit which would brook neither mistake nor miscalculation had been picked up automatically at daybreak, where it had hesitated at nightfall the day before. While he stared down at this activity, a realization of the months of bitter toil which stood between them and ultimate, uncertain success, crept over ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... miscalculation,' said Lord Martindale. 'There is not the least occasion for her to be straitened. You thought yourself ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... army was assigned to a position between two French armies. By some miscalculation, the French army that was to have taken its position on the British left, never appeared. The French army on the right was attacked and defeated at Charleroi, falling back in some confusion. The German Army of the Moselle co-operating with the Army of the Meuse then attacked the British and French, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... replied Herbert. "I suppose you have studied my statement. I needn't say that I regret the way matters have turned out; but one can't foresee every turn of the market, or avoid a miscalculation now and then. It would hurt me if I thought this thing had anything to do with your going ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... spent forty years in exile. It was from Chambord that he dated his famous letter of the 5th of July of that year—the letter, directed to his so-called subjects, in which he waves aloft the white flag of the Bourbons. This rare miscalculation—virtually an invitation to the French people to repudiate, as their national ensign, that immortal tricolour, the flag of the Revolution and the Empire, under which they have won the glory which of all glories has hitherto been dearest to them and which is ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... managed to pull through all right, for Reddy knew the route; but disaster awaited that containing the two chums. Whether they struck a half-submerged rock, and were capsized, or made a miscalculation, and found themselves seized by the cross-current, ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen |
