"Mercurial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gulls were troubled in their minds, and wailed piercingly, for they seem to be mercurial in temperament, and no better weather ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... another change from snow to rain, the wind shifted to the southeast, and the cold became, suddenly, very severe. According to the engineer's calculation, the mercurial column of a Fahrenheit thermometer would not have marked less than eight degrees below zero, and this intense cold, rendered still more painful by a sharp gale, lasted for several days. The colonists were again shut up in Granite House, and as it was necessary to hermetically seal all the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... first few days of her residence on her land, Agnes experienced all the changes of mercurial rising and falling of spirits, plans, dreams. Some days she saddled her horse, which she had bought under the doctor's guidance at Meander, and rode, singing, over the hills, exalted by the wild beauty of nature entirely unadorned. There was not yet a house in the whole of ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... and mercurial spirits of the young, something of marvellous and preternatural in that life within life, which the strong passion of science and genius forms and feeds,—that passion so much stronger than love, and so much more self-dependent; which asks no sympathy, leans on ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tormenting. Even a lecture-room was not exempt from these irrepressible sallies; and our tutor, who was formal and wished to be grave, but had not the gift of gravity, never felt safe in the presence of his mercurial pupil. Lockhart with great readiness comprehended the habits and tone of the new society in which he was placed, and was not for a moment wanting in any of its requirements; but this adaptive power never interfered with the marked individuality of his own character and bearing. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... not be so sure," Julien interposed, setting down his glass. "The politics of Paris are the politics of France, and the spirit of the Parisian is essentially mercurial. Besides, the days of the great alliance draw nearer—the next step forward after the arbitration treaty. Who can doubt that when that is completed, France will embrace the chance ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... who shared these hearty laughs with her aunts—James's eldest daughter, Anna—differed widely from her cousin, Edward's daughter, Fanny. She was more brilliant both in looks and in intelligence, but also more mercurial and excitable. Both occupied a good deal of Jane's thoughts and affections; but Anna must have been the one who caused her the most amusement and also the most anxiety. The interest in her was heightened when she became engaged to ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... her own occupations to attend to; and besides, she is too old to run after a child, and he is too mercurial to be ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Mrs. Capes, in whose house she was, and talk civilly to them of their improvements(!). She had to emulate the submission of Dora, who had seen the transfer coming and taken part in it. She had to copy the mercurial spirits of Rose and May. They were so pleased to be with their father and mother again, and to take possession of Phyllis Carey's every free moment, that they declared the Robarts's apartments were the very nicest the girls had ever seen. They, the apartments, were delightfully cosy (which meant ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... remained closed for five weeks, no sooner was it re-opened than the fire burst forth more furiously than at first. The howling of the flames ascending from the lowest depths of the pit awed the spectators, and the mercurial and sulphureous fumes arising from it threatened instant destruction to all who might approach. The director of the mine, as a last resource, came to the decision of flooding the works, and a river turned ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... very fine aneroid barometer were securely bolted to the bulkhead, side by side, in such a position that they could be seen from outside by merely glancing through the window. And near them, hung in gimbals from a long bracket, was a very fine Fitzroy mercurial barometer. ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... guessed, quite as much disconcerted by the reported contretemps in town; but he dissembled well, with a show of whimsical exasperation because of this emergency that tore him so soon away from both Gosnold House and his other neighbour at table, a Mrs. Artemas—a spirited, mercurial creature, not over-handsome of face, but wonderfully smart in dress and gesture, superbly stayed and well aware of it; a dark, fine woman who recognised the rivalry latent in Sally's dark looks without dismay—as Sally conceded she ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of trouble. Alas for him, it was far otherwise with his companions. The impressionable young Gourgaud, the thought-wrinkled Las Cases, the bright pleasure-loving Montholons, the gloomy Grand Marshal, Bertrand, and his mercurial consort, over whose face there often passed "a gleam of distraction"—these were not fashioned for a life of adversity. Thence came the long spells of ennui, broken by flashes of temper, that marked the voyage and the sojourn ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... cinnabar and five of rhubarb taken every night, but not to be cured by this process. As these worms are found only in the rectum, variety of clysters have been recommended. I was informed of a case, where solutions of mercurial ointment were used as a clyster every night for a month without success. Clysters of Harrowgate water are recomended, either of the natural, or of the factitious, as described below, which might have a greater proportion of liver of sulphur in it. As the cold ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... on. Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... abrupt termination by the angry "Now, then, sir!" of the guard, and the reckless thrusting of the little gentleman into his second-class carriage, to the endangerment of his life and limbs, and the exaggerated display of authority on the part of the railway official. Mr. Bouncer's mercurial temperament had enabled him to get over the little misfortune that had followed upon his examination for his degree; but he still preserved a memento of that hapless period in the shape of a wig of curly black hair. For he found, during the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... idea!" The mercurial Percy's face shone again. "Splendid idea! Fill it full of old tins and china—what? And when we hear the second fellah hit the floor and start breakin' up the home we can pull the string and let down the trap-door. Splendid idea! Doocid clever of you, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... irritation produced about the tail the horse continually rubs and it is well to apply Mercurial Ointment to both tail ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... docility, expressing no wish for greater or more frequent relaxation than consisted with his father's anxious and severe restrictions. When he did indulge in any juvenile frolics, his father had the candour to lay the whole blame upon his more mercurial ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... no man of lofty genius or character has ever condescended to remain an actor. His lot pressed heavily even on so mercurial a trifler as David Garrick, who has given utterance to the feeling in lines as good perhaps as any ever written by ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... master-politician of his age. During the first weeks of the Conference, Wilson seems to have fallen under the spell of Lloyd George to some extent, who showed himself quite as liberal as the President in many instances. But Wilson was clearly troubled by the Welshman's mercurial policy, and before he finally left for America, found relief in the solid consistency of Clemenceau. He always knew where the French Premier stood, no matter how much he might differ from him in ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... disorder, have, in several instances, fallen victims to it's fury. Within this few days, a Dr. Rush has discovered this disorder is not the yellow fever of the West Indies and has applied an opposite mode of cure by copious bleedings, mercurial medicines, &c. with some success. What is truly extraordinary, the infection does not affect people ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... that Swedenborg in his youth studied astrology, for in his visions the Mercurial folk have this desire of knowledge as their ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... old-world method and application. Mentally and physically they were splendid men. The whole race of Flemings and Dutch was found by our young recruits to be a grave and powerful people, although exceptional cases of mercurial temperament were not rare. Some curious individuals were to be found among them, as is more the case in European nationalities in general than in our own. Both Americans were much liked and respected by all their new-found ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... springs from an habitual elevation of thought, bearing witness to the purity of its source, as a clear eye and ruddy cheek bear witness to the purity of the air you daily breathe. In some respects he was the mercurial Frenchman to the last day of his life; yet his general bearing, that in which he comes oftenest to my memory, was of calm earnestness, tempered and mellowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... and traders; what literary culture found expression was formed on English models, dignified and plentifully garnished with Latin and Greek allusions; the commercial spirit ruled, and the relaxations and amusements partook of its hurry and excitement. In their gay, hospitable, and mercurial character, the inhabitants were true progenitors of the present metropolis. A newspaper had been established in 1732, and a theatre had existed since 1750. Although the town had a rural aspect, with its quaint dormer-window ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... kept my grasp on Enriquez' arm, and succeeded in restraining his mercurial impulses for the moment. He halted, and puffed vigorously at his cigarette; but the next instant he started forward again. "Let us, however, follow with discretion in the rear; we shall pass her house; we shall gaze at it; it ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... affection. In the old days she had not been moved by any great feeling of affection for her; she pitied her along with the rest and enjoyed her society after a fashion, but she stood not a little in awe of her mercurial temperament and her aristocratic ways, and much preferred the friendship of the simple, dispassionate Winnebagos. But now that she and Veronica had met after a year's separation, Sahwah suddenly realized that the dark-eyed, temperamental little Hungarian girl had an irresistible ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... ran down the steps and pursued him, panting and almost weeping. He turned at the sound of her hurrying steps, puzzled by the pursuit and on his guard against her influence. He was suspicious of her intentions now, and waited for her to explain the meaning of this mercurial change. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the permanent never is writ In blood of the passions: mercurial they, Shifty their issue: stir not that pit To the game our ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... She did her best to help him throw off his misgivings; she defended him from himself; she promised him her help, not with the old effusion, but still with a cousinly kindness. And his mercurial nature soon passed into another mood—a mood of hopefulness that the doctor would set everything right, that Alice would consent to place herself under proper care, that the crisis would end ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sturdy independence in the Spanish character, and an impatience of dictation that harmonises more nearly with the English character than with that of her Latin neighbours.... There is a gravity and reticence also in the Spaniard that is absent from his mercurial neighbour, and which is, indeed, much more akin ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... lamented that antiquarian zeal is so often diverted from subjects of real to those of merely fanciful interest. The mercurial young gentlemen who addict themselves to that exciting department of letters are open to censure as being too fitful, too prone to flit, bee-like, from flower to flower, now lighting momentarily upon an indecipherable tombstone, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... and that the after-results are most undesirable. But when you have prescribed the hemp for nervous, overstrung, imaginative people, I have observed that they can stand large amounts of the tincture without evil results, and that the after-effects pass off rapidly. I who am mercurial in temperament, for example, can take any amount of Indian hemp without being made ill by it; while ten drops will send some slow and torpid rustics mad drunk with excitement—drive them into ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... confined to the Oriental peoples of Babylon and Syria, of Phrygia and Egypt; they were not a product peculiar to the religious mysticism of the dreamy East, but were shared by the races of livelier fancy and more mercurial temperament who inhabited the shores and islands of the Aegean. We need not, with some enquirers in ancient and modern times, suppose that these Western peoples borrowed from the older civilisation of the Orient the conception of the Dying and Reviving ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... I met the mercurial Gosling at the club a few days ago. As I hadn't seen him for some time I asked if he had been on a holiday. "Yes," he said, "down at Shinglestrand. Golfing? No—yes. I did play one game, the first since the War, and rather a remarkable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... the doctrine of Bourbon authority must also be questioned. Even if French thought and literature did for a moment pay tribute at the throne of Louis XIV the closing years of the century were marked by the names of Leibnitz, Bayle and Newton; the mercurial intelligence of France could not long remain stagnant with such forces as these casting their influence over European civilization. {16} The new century was not long in, the Regent Philip of Orleans had not long been in ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... requires a careful memory and quick powers of combination and calculation. No caffe in Rome or Marseilles would be complete without its little black and white counters; and as it interests at once the most mercurial and fidgety of people and the laziest and languidest, it must have some hidden charm as yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... undergone no other alteration than that produced by lassitude, he is already prepared, therefore, to renew his communications with its different members, all of whom were well disposed to show off in their respective characters, the moment they were favored with an opportunity. The mercurial Pippo, as he had been the most difficult to restrain during the day, was the first to steal from his lair, now that the Argus-like eyes of Baptiste permitted the freedom, and the exhilarating, coolness of the sunset invited action. His success ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... visits to the sick stranger remained unobstructed. He had no notion of teaching him; but the foreign boy in his languor and helplessness curiously fascinated him, perhaps from the very contrast of the passive, indolent, tropical nature with his own mercurial temperament. The Spaniard, or perhaps the old Mexican, seemed to predominate in Fernando, as far as could be guessed in one so weak and helpless. He seemed very quiet and inanimate, seldom wanting or seeking ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... appointed for this purpose, reported in 1876 that sixty of the most reliable of Joule's experiments gave the mean value 774.1. The experiments were made with water at a temperature of about 60 deg. F., according to the mercurial thermometer, and reduced to its value at the temperature of melting ice, according to the formula given by Regnault for the variation of the specific heat of water at varying temperature under the constant pressure of one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... I bore the discomforts of the situation as philosophically as we could. We smoked always, and we read and played bezique alternately, but our mercurial French friends were less happy, and on the third day of this detestable weather, on entering the little smoking-room on deck, I discovered them both sitting in tears, and bewailing the fact that they were not at home with their mothers. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... also that in the first Creation, which was performed of nothing, three things arose; to wit, a Soulish, Spiritual, Invisible Essence, which represented a Mercurial Water, a Sulphurous Vapour, and a Terrene Salt; these three gave a compleat and perfect, a tangible and formal Body to all things wherein especially all the four Elements are contained, as I have already mentioned in my Writing where I treat ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... Mercurial ointment mixed with black cylinder oil and applied every quarter of an hour, or as often as expedient. The following is also recommended as a good cooling compound for heavy bearings:—Tallow 2 lb., plumbage 6 oz., sugar of lead 4 oz. Melt the tallow with ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... chief, is one question—whether either chief or army can be kept six months quiet,—another, and a totally different one. That they must either be fighting somebody or going somewhere, else, their life isn't worth living to them; the activity and mercurial flashing and flickering hither and thither, which in the soul of it is set neither on war nor rapine, but only on change of place, mood—tense, and tension;—which never needs to see its spurs in the dish, but has them always bright, and on, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... Pellets" are far more effective in arousing the liver to action than "blue pills," the old-fashioned compound cathartic pills, calomel or other mercurial preparations, and have the further merit of being purely vegetable in their composition and perfectly harmless in any condition of the system. Furthermore, no particular care ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... people stop there as a matter of course in their flight between Florida and Newport. They go up and down the coast like the mercury in a thermometer—up when it's warm, down when it's cold. There's the secret of our mercurial temperament." ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... remember a day in the summer of 1859 when Procter had a party of friends at dinner to meet Hawthorne, who was then on a brief visit to London. Among the guests were the Countess of ——, Kinglake, the author of "Eothen," Charles Sumner, then on his way to Paris, and Leigh Hunt, the mercurial qualities of whose blood were even ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... was closed by the Chinaman, and Kerry stood out in the darkness of the dismal, brick-walled street, feeling something as nearly akin to dejection as was possible in one of his mercurial spirit. Something trickled upon the brim of his hat, and, raising his head, Kerry detected rain upon his upturned face. He breathed a prayer of thankfulness. This would put an end ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... powerful Consul Casimir, the one man necessary to his comprehensive operation. When his unhappy wife tells him there is no bread in the house for the next day, he retorts: "Very well, then we shall dine at the Hotel Continental." Nothing depresses his mercurial spirits. He borrows from Peter to pay Paul, and an hour later borrows from Paul to pay himself. His boyhood friend he simply plunders. This Ernest, in reality the Graf von Trautenau, is an idealist of the type that Wedekind is fond of delineating. He would save the world ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... but our own); but it was a poor consolation. The fact remained that his herald Mercury, standing a tiptoe, could look down on mine. I seem to glimpse something of this familiar weakness in Mr. White. He, too, has shared in these mercurial triumphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt that he had a true country-gentleman's interest in the weather-cock; that his first question on coming down of a ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... mare both gallops and trots While whisking you off to Bumpville; She paces, she shies, and she stumbles, in spots, In the tortuous road to Bumpville; And sometimes this strangely mercurial steed Will suddenly stop and refuse to proceed, Which, all will admit, is vexatious indeed, When one is en ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... suppose we are more lenient with human nature than theologians generally are. We know that the spirits of men and their views of the present and the future go up and down with the barometer, and that a permanent depression of one inch in the mercurial column would affect the whole ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Enthusiasm Domino Book Fanatic Grotesque Cheat Auction Economy Illegible Quell Cheap Illegitimate Sheriff Excelsior Emasculate Danger Dunce Champion Shibboleth Calico Adieu Essay Pontiff Macadamize Wages Copy Stentorian Quarantine Puny Saturnine Buxom Caper Derrick Indifferent Boycott Mercurial Gaudy ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... encumber, or scatter In a thousand mercurial gleams, And those feet whose impetuous patter I hear and ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... long the fowls kept it alive with sound and movement; for of all mercurial and fussy things there is nothing on the face of the earth to equal cocks and hens. They have such an utterly exaggerated sense, too, of their own importance; they make such a clacking and clucking over every egg, such a scratching and trumpeting over ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... horseman, or for reasons best known to themselves, the Tejadas had given Mr. Hinckley a very spirited saddle-mule. The first thing I knew, her rider, carrying a heavy camera, a package of plate-holders, and a large mercurial barometer, borrowed from the Harvard Observatory, was pitched headlong into the sand. Fortunately no damage was done, and after a lively chase the runaway mule was brought back by Corporal Gamarra. After Mr. Hinckley was remounted on his dangerous ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... from the outskirts was soon taken up in the centre of the city, and now nothing was to be seen in any direction but a dashing and scampering of the mercurial and excitable citizens of the place, each to his lodge or burrow. Far as the eye could reach was spread the city, and in every direction the scene was the same. We rode leisurely along until we had reached the more thickly settled portion of the city, when ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... L200 a year, conferred upon him in consideration of his literary merits, and the little profits he derived from his lectures in Bath, to support with decency himself and his family. The prospects of Halhed were much more golden, but he was far too gay and mercurial to be prudent; and from the very scanty supplies which his father allowed him, had quite as little of "le superflu, chose si necessaire," as his friend. But whatever were his other desires and pursuits, a visit to Bath,—to that place which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... face, and crushing his hat down over his eyes, he set off at a quick pace in an opposite direction to that part of the street where I was standing. I confess I felt ashamed of the espionage in which I was occupied, and although I followed my mercurial fiend at a safe distance, for the distinct purpose of earthing him wherever he was going, I by no means liked the office which a sort of fatality had forced upon me. But I was somewhat reconciled to it by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... sentences of indifferent Dutch which I yet conserved from my education amongst the Vee boors, at the Cape, served as a passport to their civility. Without this accomplishment, all strangers are suspected of being Irishers; and, as such, partake of the dislike and dread in which their more mercurial neighbours are held by this sober-sided and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... own. Charles Lever himself complained that in the supper scene of his second number, Lorrequer bore so striking a resemblance to his contemporary, Nicholas Nickleby; while his biographer, Mr. Fitzpatrick, observes that the identity of Harry Lorrequer is never maintained throughout the novel, that mercurial hero being alternately represented old, young, good-looking, and ugly. So much indeed was Lever impressed with the fact, that he actually besought the artist to represent O'Malley the same person throughout ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... with mercurial rise of spirits. "I'm the luckiest dog in England today. Happy chance has beaten all the tricks of the studio. O ye goddesses, inspire me to heights worthy ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... 16th Rice had an attack of acute indigestion, which might have resulted seriously had it not been for the mercurial pills which promptly relieved him. The reader should observe that practically all of this testimony comes from Jones. There is no extraneous evidence that Patrick induced the giving of the mercury. Patrick, however, spread false rumors as to Rice's general health and also ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... du Syst. du Monde', p. 229 and 263; 'Mecanique Celeste', t. v., p. 18 and 72. It should be remarked that the fraction 1/306th of a degree of Fahrenheit of the mercurial thermometer, given in the text as the limit of the stability of the Earth's temperature since the days of Hipparchus, rests on the assumption that the dilation of the substances of which the Earth is composed is equal to that of glass, that is to say, 1/18,000th for 1 degree. ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... remarkable theory[147] as to surmise that the central episode of faithless love occurred about 1594. If so, here was enough to deepen and impassion the plastic personality of the rhymer of VENUS AND ADONIS; to add a new string to the heretofore Mercurial lyre. All the while, too, he was undergoing the kind of culture and of psychological training involved in his craft of acting—a culture involving a good deal of contact with the imaginative literature of the Renaissance, so far as then translated, and a psychological training of ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... tube; this is equal to 11/2 in. per 100 deg. Fahr., and from these data a scale is constructed, the correctness of which is easily verified by transferring the spiral heater into an air bath or oil of high boiling point, and then comparing the readings of the pyrometer scale with those of a mercurial thermometer placed alongside of the spiral heater. By this means it can be clearly demonstrated that, up to the highest point to which it is safe to use a mercurial thermometer, the readings of the pyrometer scale and that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... his chin on his hands and surveyed her quizzically. Felix, despite his protests, was not enamoured of Delgratz, and his mercurial temperament rejoiced in the near ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... ministry, headed by the Marquis of Rockingham, which included the Duke of Newcastle, Henry Conway, and the Duke of Grafton. Missing was the Old Whigs principal leader, William Pitt, who preferred to pursue his independent and mercurial ways. The Rockingham ministry, most of whose members had disliked the Stamp Act from the beginning, drew their greatest strength from the merchant communities. By the time parliament opened in December, Rockingham and his supporters were in agreement—the act must be repealed. But ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... time lived in a cottage at the wrong end of Taylor Street Hill, and, Mrs. Dwight having received a small legacy from a sister recently deceased which had convinced her, if not her less mercurial husband, that their luck had finally turned, had sent Gora, then a rangy girl of thirteen, fond of books and study, to a large private school in ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... by which he is, even to this day, supposed—by the faithful—to have discovered Neptune, he had already announced the probable existence of an Intra-Mercurial body, or group of bodies. He had five observations besides Lescarbault's upon something that had been seen to cross the sun. In accordance with the mathematical hypnoses of his era, he studied these six transits. Out of them he computed elements giving "Vulcan" a period of about 20 days, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... afterwards Separate them, but only Pulverize them; whereof an Instance is afforded us by the Common Preparation of Mercurius Dulcis, where the Saline Particles of the Vitriol, Sea Salt, and sometimes Nitre, Employ'd to make the Sublimate, do so unite themselves with the Mercurial Particles made use of, first to Make Sublimate, and then to Dulcifie it, that the Saline and Metalline Parts arise together in many successive Sublimations, as if they all made but one Body. And sometimes too the Fire does ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... quadruped was a beautiful little bay, whose tendency to bound over every little stick and stone, as if it were a five-barred gate, and to run away upon all and every occasion, admirably suited the tastes and inclinations of its mercurial rider. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... heresy, however, the Aydelots became one of the leading families in the development of the colonies. Their descendants fell heir to the traits of their French-English forbears: freedom of belief, courage to follow a cause, a touch of the wanderlust, the mercurial French mind, and the steady poise of the followers of the Inward Light. A trace of bitterness had come down the years, however, with the family history; a feud-like resentment against the family ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... boiling heat, is changed into an elastic aeriform fluid, susceptible, like all other gasses, of being received and contained in vessels, and preserving its gasseous form so long as it remains at the temperature of 80 deg. (212 deg.), and under a pressure not exceeding 28 inches of the mercurial barometer. As this phenomenon has not been generally observed, no language has used a particular term for expressing water in this state[10]; and the same thing occurs with all fluids, and all substances, which do not evaporate in the common temperature, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... attached to Tapton Everard, and such the story which the lively Caroline Ingoldsby detailed to her equally mercurial cousin, Charles Seaforth, lieutenant in the Hon. East India Company's second regiment of Bombay Fencibles, as arm-in-arm they promenaded a gallery decked with some dozen grim-looking ancestral portraits, and, among others, with that of the redoubted Sir Giles ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... of this year, which paved the way for better relations in the future between Britain and France, the King made a successful tour of a part of Ireland—July 21st to August 1st—and impressed himself upon the mercurial temperament of the sons of Erin. In September came the memorable retirement of Mr. Chamberlain from the Balfour Government; his declaration of devotion to the new-old ideal of limited protective tariffs for the United Kingdom plus preferential duties ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... a Roman bath. A late dinner brought us together again in a small dining room, the convalescents having eaten their simple meal and disappeared an hour before. During this time, another transformation had taken place in our mercurial hostess! It was the Calvé of Paris, Calvé the witch, Calvé the capiteuse, who presided at the dainty, flower-decked table and led the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... mercury one can learn the pressure of the atmosphere. If a glass tube and dish of mercury are attached to a board and the dish of mercury is inclosed in a case for protection from moisture and dirt, and further if a scale of inches or centimeters is made on the upper portion of the board, we have a mercurial barometer (Fig. 44). ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... purse is low my spirits sink, as the mercury does with the cold. You used to say my spirits were mercurial—I ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... has any theatrical novelty to offer, whether as a political mountebank, or a bogus hero, or a peculiarly atrocious crime, is sure of a large audience. For there is a wide range of appreciation in that mercurial nature which, according to Voltaire, is ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Fortunately, however, for the prevention of accidents, but unfortunately for the therapeutic value of the soap, a decomposition of the sublimate occurs as soon as it is incorporated in the soap mass, by which an insoluble mercurial soap is formed. This change takes place independently of the alkali used in the soap; in fact, as mentioned above, a well-made soap contains no appreciable amount of free alkali, but is due to the action of the fat acids. Corrosive sublimate is incompatible with any ordinary ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... mercurial and lustily cheering boys was my friend Andrew, and a little farther on, lo! the knight himself. A motor cap was jammed on his warm curls, and a football guernsey displayed the proportions of his broad chest as his Chesterfield fell ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... theory that any boy, if rightly trained, can be made into a gentleman. He chooses a boy from the workhouse, with a bad reputation but with excellent instincts, and adopts him, the story narrating the adventures of the mercurial lad. The restless boyish nature, with its inevitable tendency to get into scrapes, is sympathetically and ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... roseola appeared. The syphilis was very obstinate in this patient, compelling me to keep him under the influence of mercury for a long time. In October 1873, the patient presented himself with a very aggravated mercurial stomatitis. The customary remedies, internal as well as external, made little or no impression on the affection. On November 11th, I discontinued all other treatment, and ordered a course of galvanic baths. He took his first bath on the same day. ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... Miss Vosburgh," said Mr. Lanniere, in a choking voice, for he could not fail to note the merriment which the mercurial Strahan strove in vain to suppress; "I will leave you to more congenial society. I have paid you the highest compliment in my power, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... enjoyed greatly a meeting with Tennyson and Browning, and wrote with enthusiasm of the former to his father, as 'one who gave men an insight into the real Hero-world, as one from whom he could catch reflected something of the Divine'. But Morier's spirits were mercurial, and between moments of elation he was apt to fall into fits of melancholy, when he could find no outlet for his energies. Waiting for his true profession tried him sorely, and he was even resigning himself to the prospect of a visit to Australia as a professional journalist, when fortune ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... a deep breath, wanting to wind up the illimitable discussion of what might have been, though nothing could be legally proven, "it is a strange story. So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer genealogy! A high-spirited young lady and a musical Polish patriot made a likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should never have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker. However, there's no knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand. Some sorts of dirt ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... London; the hardy Gael from the Highlands of Scotland; the solemn Moravian from Herrnhut; the phlegmatic German from Salzburg in Bavaria; the reflecting Swiss from the mountainous and pastoral Grisons; the mercurial peasant from sunny Italy, and the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... make the same error, and this error can be readily corrected by frequent observations to determine latitude and longitude. A series of barometrical observations was kept going whether we were on the move or not. That is, a mercurial barometer was read three times a day, regularly, at seven, at one, and at nine. We had aneroid barometers for work away from the river and these were constantly compared with and adjusted to the mercurials. The tubes of mercury sometimes got broken, and ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... atmosphere, which lose their power of germination if subjected to heat. But one observer now made another experiment which seemed to go entirely the other way, and puzzled him altogether. He took some of this boiled infusion that I have been speaking of, and by the use of a mercurial bath—a kind of trough used in laboratories—he deftly inverted a vessel containing the infusion into the mercury, so that the latter reached a little beyond the level of the mouth of the 'inverted' vessel. You ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... effect of their shots was instantly apparent, from the excessive yelping that greeted their ears, and satisfied them that some, at least, of their annoyers had got something to remember; while they were gratified to listen to the fast receding sounds of these "mercurial inhabitants of the plain." The dogs quickly "made themselves scarce," nor did they afterwards attempt to reduce the distance they had placed between themselves and the travellers; who, upon the establishment ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... contributed very much to the quota of general noise. Although Henderson had chaffed Daubeny on his virtuous stillness, yet all the boys sat very nearly as quiet as Dubbs himself during school hours. Even Henderson and such mercurial spirits were awed into silence and sobriety. You would hardly have known that in that quarter of the room there was a form at all. Quicksilver itself would have lost its volatility under Mr ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... together without rubbing shoulders. It will also be observed, that the passage through the centre of the carriages enables any one to pass with ease throughout the whole length of the train. This is a privilege of which the mercurial blood and inquisitive mind of the American take unlimited advantage, rendering the journey one continued slamming of doors, which, if the homoeopathic principle be correct, would prove an infallible cure for headache, could the sound only be triturated, and passed through the finest ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... inquired from an official what that steamer might be, and was told that it was the eight o'clock from Dover, which had broken down, put into Calais for some slight necessary repairs, and was arriving at its destination nearly four hours late. Her mercurial spirits rose again. A minute ago she was regarding herself as no better than a ninny engaged in a wild-goose chase. Now she felt that after all she had been very sagacious and cunning. She was morally sure that she would find the Zerlinski woman ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... foret, with its indescribable glamour, its affecting sincerity, its restraint, its exquisite and unflagging simplicity. The hesitant and melancholy personages who invest its scenes—Melisande, timid, naive, child-like, wistful, mercurial, infinitely pathetic; Pelleas, dream-filled, ardent, yet honorable in his passion; old Arkel, wise, gentle, and resigned; the tragic and brooding figure of Golaud; Little Yniold, artless and pitiful, a figure impossible anywhere save in Maeterlinck; ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... even now, to any one who is determined to maintain the possibility of it; but under the training of modern science scarcely any one retains such a belief. Of the influence formerly attributed to the planets, traces survive in such epithets as mercurial, jovial, saturnine. Comets appearing in the sky caused widespread alarm, and any disasters that followed close were confidently connected with them. The most learned scientists observed the stars and cast horoscopes: ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... quite saint-like, it was at least suggestive of a good man who was walking in the way which he pointed out to others. But these qualities were not those with which he was most highly endowed. Energy and sterling common-sense, which he had inherited from his father, an elastic, mercurial, and passionate nature, which had come to him from his Huguenot mother,—these were the strong points in his character, and it belongs to neither of them to take the lead in the Church. Sydney had scanned the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... was so contagious that many of the companies were assembled and ready to file out of the company streets before the order reached them. We marched by the moonlight into the space between the belligerent regiments; but Lytle had already got his own men under control, and the less mercurial Thirteenth were not disposed to be aggressive, so that we were soon dismissed with a compliment for our promptness. I ordered the colonels to march the regiments back to the camps separately, and with my staff rode through that of the Thirteenth, to see how matters were there. All ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... him for the Congress. Elected to the House, he was immediately greeted by connoisseurs of the best stamp— President Martin van Buren, "prince of good fellows;" Webster, another intellect, saturnine in repose and mercurial in activity; the convivial Senator Douglas, and the like. These formed the rapt ring around Lincoln in his own chair in the snug corner of the congressional chat-room. Here he perceived that his rusticity and shallow skimmings placed him under the trained politicians. It was here, too, that his stereotyped ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... recent instance was the overthrow of President Legitime and the instalment of Hyppolite. The peace and prosperity of Hayti would be promoted by reducing the term of the Presidential office to two years. The contests that are sure to arise among a mercurial people would thus be transferred from the battle-field to the ballot- box. Who could have answered for the peace of the United States in 1868 if President Johnson's term had been six years instead ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... fifth of the group, was the delight of them all. The carriage of a bantam rooster, the courage of a lion, more brain than he could stagger under; a disposition fiery, mercurial, sanguine, witty; he was made, according to Billy Fairfax's dictum, of "wire and brass tacks," and he possessed what Honey Smith (who himself had no mean gift in that direction) called "the gift of gab." He lived by writing magazine ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... had taken his usual lolling attitude in the most comfortable chair he could find, while his more mercurial friend kept pacing the room, now raised his head in surprise, following the quick motions of the other, with his eyes, as if he doubted whether he had rightly ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... during his life was no less noted as a philosopher and musician than as a physician. He continued the work of Honain, and advanced therapeutics by introducing more extensive use of chemical remedies, such as mercurial ointments, sulphuric acid, and aqua vitae. He is also credited with being the first physician to describe small-pox and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Jovial f. Natural f. Mercurial f. Celestial f. Lunatic f. Erratic f. Ducal f. Eccentric f. Common f. Aethereal and Junonian f. Lordly f. Arctic f. Palatine f. Heroic f. Principal f. Genial f. Pretorian f. Inconstant f. Elected f. Earthly ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais |
