"Mercurial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the earnest entreaties of his young wife, the said Tam Grant, who was the most mercurial fellow in the world, would insist upon going on shore to see all the lions of the place. "Ah, Tam! Tam! ye will die o' the cholera," cried the weeping Maggie. "My heart will brak if ye dinna bide wi' me an' the bairnie." Tam was deaf as Ailsa Craig. Regardless of tears ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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 ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Oh, active, mercurial, wonderful boy, The world is a top and you spin it with joy, Regardless of all the wiles you employ To gain the pleasure of seeing; No tree is so tall, but you reach its top limb, No water so deep, but in it you swim, No ice is so smooth, but o'er it you skim Like a phantom, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... and he Who, like Don Juan, takes an active share, Must steer with care through all that glittering sea Of gems and plumes and pearls and silks, to where He deems it is his proper place to be; Dissolving in the waltz to some soft air, Or proudlier prancing with mercurial skill, Where Science marshals forth her ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... an agony. He was menaced with the very thing he was in the hope of staving off, or a discussion on the subject of the sick man's previous life. The doctor was so mercurial and quick of apprehension, that, once fairly on the scent, he was nearly certain he would extract every thing from the patient. This was the principal reason why the deacon did not wish to send for him; the expense, though a serious objection to one so niggardly, being ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Dick Percival, Harry Dickson, and even mercurial Billy Manners were quite different, however, and young Jesse W. Smith acted like a man, and although he was frightened, as any one might be, and no shame to him, did not give way to his fright, but ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... most of Browning's are, just so many dramatis personae. "Enter a Song singing" is the stage-direction in a seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... scene, he is apt to commence with a scream; and if he is not at his best, then the scream may degenerate into a whimper before the moment for the climax has arrived. Like Spohr, with whom he had much in common, despite the difference between his mercurial temperament and the pedagogic gravity of the composer of "The Last Judgment," he set great store upon his learning, and was fond of trivial themes that admitted of obvious contrapuntal treatment. Even when he avoided that failing, his music is often ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... use, said her evening prayers, looked under the bed—a precaution taken ever since the night upon which she had discovered the burglars—and, finding all right, she blew out her candle and lay down. She could not sleep—many persons of nervous or mercurial temperaments cannot do so the first night in a strange bed. Cap was very mercurial, and the bed and room in which she lay were very strange; for the first time since she had had a home to call her own ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... every year since he came of age he had read "Blackstone's Commentaries" through. He had that old-fashioned, lawyer-like morality which was keenly intolerant of any laxity or slovenliness of mind or character. His former partner had been Edward D. Baker, but this brilliant and mercurial spirit was not congenial to Logan; Baker's carelessness in money matters was Intolerable to him, and he was glad to escape from an associate so gifted and so exasperating. [Footnote: Logan's office was, in fact, a nursery of statesmen. Three of his partners, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... What the temper of the army may be towards its 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 ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... so long as it is birth in another country? A foreign damsel, and a Spanish girl, too, above all others! 'Sdeath, man, as if there was not quicksilver enough in the English women for you, you must make a mercurial exportation from Spain, must you! Why, Morton, Morton, the ladies in that country are proverbial. I tremble at the very thought of it. But as for my consent, I never will give it,—never; and though ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... advantage of his mother's absorption in her fish he threw me a kiss. I knew that I had pleased him wonderfully by tacitly agreeing to go to Marvin, and that our quarrel was to him as if it had never been. I wish I had his mercurial temperament. Long after I have forgiven a wrong done to me, or an unpleasant experience, the bitter memory of it comes back to ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... for very gladness. Her mercurial temperament was born of the sun and wind, the dancing waters ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... transient as harebells. She had dropped into a different world, and the old one would fade like a receding star. She would soon find her that her only choice must be to make new associations and friendships and find new pleasures; and this her mercurial, frank, and fearless nature would incline her to ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... at all duped by the sudden conversion of his enemies, which was indeed more indicative of a mercurial and capricious temperament than of a sincere desire to make amends for their conduct: the real reason of these sudden demonstrations must be sought in the fears that were aroused in the minds of the better citizens, of the punishment sure to fall upon them, when the news of their ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... differed. "It is true he does not show any inclination for the company of young ladies, but he is very much a lady's man all the same. There isn't a young lady in this hall but would be proud to have the honour of Jim Langford's company and companionship at any time. He is of that deep, mercurial disposition that attracts women. It is good for Jim Langford that he does not know his own power," she said, nodding ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... 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 ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... out an inaudible response. He was in a smouldering condition of wrath and impatience. Reserved and limited of words as he himself always was, and now rendered savage by anxiety, he found it impossible to understand the other man's mercurial temperament. By this time he was without hope, and certainly without faith in either Michael or ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... because he lived in Arequipa or because they thought he looked like a good 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
... 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 to ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... her money. "Jerry," he thought, "was a mighty stingy fellow, and never spent a cent on himself—and could easily send Nell all she wanted." And yet Gerald Rodman, knowing his brother's weak and mercurial nature, and knowing that he took no care in the welfare of any living soul but himself, would have laid his life down for him, because happy, careless Ned had Nellie's eyes and Nellie's mouth, and in the tones of his voice he heard hers. So as he sat on the deck, with his brother's head upon ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... a touch of embarrassment. It occurred to him that he had been betrayed by his mercurial temperament into an attitude which, considering the circumstances, was perhaps a trifle too jubilant. He gave his mustache a pull, and reverted ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... supine. I hope the excursion will enable the former to keep pace with its out-stripping neighbor. Pray present our kindest wishes to her, and all. (That sentence should properly have come in the Post Script, but we airy Mercurial Spirits, there is no keeping us in). Time—as was said of one of us—toils after us in vain. I am afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end (or middle) of June, and then you will be frog-hopping ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... people the gymnasium offered all those attractions which boulevards, cafes, and jardins-chantants do now to the Gallic nation. There is more than one point of resemblance between the two countries; but while the Athenian had the same mercurial qualities, which fitted him for outdoor life, he had even a less comfortable domestic establishment to retain him at home than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... capered no more; he chuckled no more, he beckoned no more, nor tapped his chest, nor wreathed his idolatrous face in smiles. Gone, all gone, were his little artifices for attracting the general attention to himself; gone was every engaging mannerism which had endeared him to the mercurial public. He squatted against the wall and glowered at the new sensation. It was the old story—the old, old story of too much temperament: Verman was suffering from ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... intelligence from Lieutenant Cameron, dated Ujiji, 28th February, 1874, the mean of many observations for altitude of the Tanganyika Lake taken with mercurial barometer, aneroids, and boiling water thermometers, gives 2,573 feet above ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... This mercurial brigand, it would appear, has paid Turon another visit, but, with the exception of what may be considered the legalised robbery of the betting ring, has not levied contributions. Rather the other way, indeed. A hasty note for Mr. Dawson, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... once to a grace which he would be years in learning to understand, and which yet affected him subtilely, and with something of the same influence that it had upon Webb, who felt that a new element was entering into his life. Mercurial Burtis, however, found nothing peculiar in his own pleasant sensations. He had a score of young lady friends, and was merely delighted to find in Amy a very attractive young woman, instead of a child or a dull, plain-featured girl, toward whom brotherly ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... announcements would have received little attention but for the fact that the motion of Mercury has irregularities which have not been accounted for by known planets; and Le Verrier[3] has stated that an intra-Mercurial planet or ring of asteroids would account for the unexplained part of the motion of the line of apses of Mercury's orbit amounting to ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... point, the hydrogen-gas thermometer is the almost universal standard with which mercurial thermometers may be compared, while above this point the nitrogen-gas thermometer is used. In both of these standards the change in temperature is measured by the change in pressure of a constant ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... composed principally of Scandinavians—fair-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, Norwegians afflicted with the temperamental melancholy of their race, stolid Russian Finns, and a slight sprinkling of Americans and English. It was noted that there was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them. They seemed weighty men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity. A sober seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. They appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... total eclipse of the sun occurred in 1878, [Page 138] astronomers were determined that the question of the existence of an intra-mercurial planet should be settled. Maps of all the stars in the region of the sun were carefully studied, sections of the sky about the sun were assigned to different observers, who should attend to nothing but to look for a possible ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... perfect companionship, one on a higher intellectual level, or of more sustained mental activity, is nowhere recorded. Lewes's mercurial temperament contributed as much as the powerful mind of his consort to prevent their seclusion from degenerating into an owlish stagnation. To the very last (1878) he retained his extraordinary ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... The unstable breed, whose mercurial condition was influenced by every breath of wind, shook with apprehension, but Pepin came to the rescue. To be called "a thing" by an Indian was an insult that cut into the quick of his nature. He had taken off his slouch hat, and ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... and a great man; and in order to confute a friendly objector decides to select from the workhouse a boy to experiment with. He chooses a boy with a bad reputation but with excellent instincts, and adopts him, the story narrating the adventures of the mercurial lad who thus finds himself suddenly lifted several degrees in the social scale. The idea is novel and handled with Mr. Manville Fenn's accustomed cleverness, the restless boyish nature, with its inevitable tendency to get into scrapes, being sympathetically ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... occupants—if of ordinary dimensions—from sitting 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, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... cousin Francis Thynne begged him to be more grave lest his enemies should report his levity. Raleigh answered, 'It is my last mirth in this world; do not grudge it to me.' Dr. Tounson, Dean of Westminster, to whom Raleigh was a stranger, then attended him; and was somewhat scandalised at this flow of mercurial spirits. 'When I began,' says the Dean, 'to encourage him against the fear of death, he seemed to make so light of it that I wondered at him. When I told him that the dear servants of God, in better causes than his, had shrunk back and trembled a little, he denied ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... active being, its habits conforming to the organisation with which it is endowed. Such an array of paddles prophesies of a mercurial temperament and an energetic character. It can, however, anchor itself and lie by when occasion offers. It is provided with two long cables, prettily set with spiral filaments or tendrils, by means of which it can make fast to any point. When not in use, it can retract ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... voice broke a little. John Doran had died under an operation when Max was ten, but he had adored his father, and still adored his memory. There had been great love between the big, quiet sportsman and the mercurial, hot-headed, enthusiastic little boy whom Jack Doran had spoiled and called "Frenchy" for a pet name. After more than fourteen years, he could hear the kind voice now, clearly as ever. "Hullo, Frenchy! how are things with you to-day?" used to be the ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... certain stage of their growth, we produce a blue which rivals, if it does not transcend, that of the deepest and purest Italian sky. Introducing into our tube a quantity of mixed air and nitrite of butyl vapour sufficient to depress the mercurial column of an air-pump one-twentieth of an inch, adding a quantity of air and hydrochloric acid sufficient to depress the mercury half an inch further, and sending through this compound and highly attenuated atmosphere the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Impatience, mercurial emotions and the expenditure of too much of his electricity in every little experience are the tendencies most to be ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... sun to be left for a short time above the horizon after sunset, it is by no means an easy object to observe on account of the mists which usually hang about low down near the earth. One opportunity, however, offers itself from time to time to solve the riddle of an "intra-Mercurial" planet, that is to say, of a planet which circulates within the path followed by Mercury. The opportunity in question is furnished by a total eclipse of the sun; for when, during an eclipse of that kind, the body of the moon for a few minutes ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... seated herself on a rock at a little distance, called to them. Her strength was restored by the fresh meat, and her childish spirits had risen with the hope of safety. The mercurial little creature had wreathed seaweed about her head, and holding in her hand a long twig decorated with a tuft of leaves to represent a wand, she personified one of the heroines of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... particle of ill-will to others. On the contrary, Mr. Jeffrey is profuse of his encomiums and admiration of others, but still with a certain reservation of a right to differ or to blame. He cannot rest on one side of a question: he is obliged by a mercurial habit and disposition to vary his point of view. If he is ever tedious, it is from an excess of liveliness: he oppresses from a sense of airy lightness. He is always setting out on a fresh scent: there ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... more substantial and far-seeing citizens, if they dared freely to express their opinions, would be found to favor the restoration of the city's ancient autonomy under the aegis of the League of Nations. The Italians of Flume are at bottom, beneath their excitable and mercurial temperaments, a shrewd business people who have the commercial future of their city at heart. And they are intelligent enough to realize that, unless there be established some stable form of government which will propitiate the Slav minority as well as the Italian ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... The mercurial creoles who listened to his speech passed rapidly from the depth of despair to the height of joy. Instead of bewailing their fate they now could not congratulate themselves enough on their good-fortune. The crowning touch to their happiness was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... went to bed early, intending to get a good night's rest so that they might be up and doing betimes the next morning, they soon found that sleep was well-nigh out of the question, by reason of the uproar that never ceased the whole night through. The mercurial Chilians were wrought up to a pitch of the highest excitement and enthusiasm, and bands of them persisted in marching through the streets, shouting vivas at the top of their voices and singing war-songs. It appeared that the inhabitants of Valparaiso had been dreading an attack ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... habitual reserve, his nature refined, critical, and yet imaginative, with its strong bias to pessimism, and its intolerance of all shams, and Cedric, with his facile, pleasure-loving temperament, at once indolent and mercurial—a creature of moods and tenses, as fiery as a Welshman, but full of lovable and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... know but this may be a very good way of accounting for what we frequently see, to wit, that dull Fellows prove very good Men of Business. Business relieves them from their own natural Heaviness, by furnishing them with what to do; whereas Business to Mercurial Men, is an Interruption from their real Existence and Happiness. Tho' the dull Part of Mankind are harmless in their Amusements, it were to be wished they had no vacant Time, because they usually undertake something that makes their Wants conspicuous, by ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... consideration for her brother and his career. For while for her father she cherished an affectionate pride and for her mother an amused and protective pity, her great passion was for her brother—her handsome, vivacious, audacious and mercurial brother, Tony. With him she counted it only joy to share her all too meagre wages whenever he found himself in financial straits. And a not infrequent situation this was with Tony, who, while he seemed to have inherited from his mother the vivacity, ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... broad chamber, its groined roof supported by six squat stone pillars. Light came not only from mercurial lamps affixed to the ceiling, but from others suspended above the three rows of benches which ran the length ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... majesty, and showed himself a violent royalist in his "Mercurius Pragmaticus," and galled the Presbyterians with his wit and quips. Some time after, when the popular party prevailed, he was still further enlightened, and was got over by President Bradshaw, as easily as by Charles I. Our Mercurial writer became once more a virulent Presbyterian, and lashed the royalists outrageously in his "Mercurius Politicus;" at length on the return of Charles II. being now conscious, says our cynical friend Anthony, that he might be in danger of the halter, once more he is said to have fled into Holland, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... both. And yet!—in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great tracts of primaeval forest in the northern regions ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not long suit your mercurial spirit. You used to say that the fairies were all, in common belief, creatures feminine, hence deservedly called "good people,"—that they made the country merry, and kept clowns in awe, and were better for the people's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... is not desirable to take these at anything less than five-minute intervals. Under ordinary circumstances a three- to five-minute interval is sufficient in the case of all steam-pressure, vacuum—including mercurial columns ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... 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 diversion, but content to lie still, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Paton's form 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 ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... count!" exclaimed the mercurial Trenta, in a delighted tone. (He was ready to forgive all the count's transgressions, in the fervor of the moment.) "That is how I love to hear you talk. Now you do yourself justice. Gesu mio! how seldom it is given to a man to be so eloquent! ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... founded a republic. France, intent upon weakening her ancient foe, lent her countenance to the new republic, and numbers of her sons fought beneath her standard and bore the novel ideas of liberty back to their native land, where they speedily produced a fermentation among their mercurial countrymen. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... interested everybody. It was taken up seriously in the country regions. It absorbed New York gossip for two days, and then another topic took possession of the mercurial city; but it was the sort of event to take possession of the country mind. New York millionaires get more than their share of attention in the country press at all times, but this romance became the subject of household talk and church and sewing-circle gossip, and all the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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
... Calendars, Almanacks, and Chep-Books. The Leicestershire pronunciation to this day at markets is "Buy Chep" for Cheap, hence the Chep-side, or Cheape-or Cheapside; otherwise derivation of Chap Men, or Running, Flying, and other mercurial stationers, peripatetic booksellers, pedlers, packmen, and again chepmen, these visited the villages and small towns from the large printers of the supply towns, as London, Banbury, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc. The "History of John Cheap, the Chapman," "Parley the Porter," "Stephen ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... by Robert; and old Anthony was on the platform to welcome her; and Anthony seized her bag, and the troop of passengers moved away. It may be supposed that Algernon had angry sensations at sight of Robert; and to a certain extent this was the case; but he was a mercurial youth, and one who had satisfactorily proved superior strength enjoyed a portion of his respect. Besides, if Robert perchance should be courting Rhoda, he and Robert would enter into another field of controversy; and Robert might ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... singular to see how this mercurial French People plunges suddenly from Vive le Roi to Vive la Republique; and goes simmering and dancing; shaking off daily (so to speak), and trampling into the dust, its old social garnitures, ways of thinking, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... routine has been changed in the house. Jack will march away and never see a tear in my eye or feel my pulse tremble. It is not in our Northern blood to give much expression to sentiment, but we feel none the less deeply—much more deeply, I think, than you exuberant Southerners; you are impulsive, mercurial, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... back to York — sulky about the sheep being so bad. Why does he not send us more tobacco and turpentine? Says we smoke it all. The Doctor is an ——. Promises to send K. next week with mercurial ointment; it is therefore useless to waste any more tobacco on the sheep — the stock is low enough as ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... mercurial temperament of the Latin races from which he sprang. He speaks of himself as "warm, irascible, and ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... said, almost roughly. Then his tone changed in a way through which his mercurial disposition spoke. "Look here," he went on, "whatever happens in the future, I'd like you to understand that all you've done for me in ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... of another steamer in the offing. She 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 on this second steamer, ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... the poison into the system at a time to be neutralized. In cases of chemical poisoning do not follow the usual method of treating poisoning. Do not make the patient vomit, but give him something fat or albuminous such as raw eggs or milk. This forms mercurial albuminate. Ptomaine poisoning (symptoms are headache, cramps, nausea, high fever and chills, etc.). Drink salt water, vomit and repeat the procedure to clean out the stomach. A purgative should also be taken. ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... of conception and decision possible only to mercurial-minded persons, his thought darted back to Tandy's, that unkempt, morally malodorous back-of-beyond and No Man's Land. Its vacant whitewashed countenance and long-eared chimney-stacks had welcomed him, if roughly and grudgingly, to England and to peace. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 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, or a ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... downed. And now she seemed a moving figure of discouragement. The very waiters glanced at her apprehensively. It was not that she made a fuss, but her back was most extraordinarily vocal. One never needed to see her face to know what she was full of that day. Yet she was certainly not mercurial. Her flesh seemed to take a mood and to "set," like plaster. As he put her into the cab, Fred reflected once more that he "gave her up." He would attack her when ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... studies, the result of 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 ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... or three hundred years ago a new people was introduced into the north of Ireland. The north is essentially Scottish. Its inhabitants are Protestant and phlegmatic. In the south, the religion is Romanist, and the people are mercurial. They are of the same color. They have had the same history for centuries. For nearly five hundred years, the Turk has been a disturbing factor in Europe. The Turk is Asiatic. He is surrounded by European life. How rapidly has the antipathy between races disappeared where the Turk has power? ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... 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 half monkey ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... wall, his hands thrust into his pockets, and a quid in his cheek, and shook his head slowly from side to side, while he remarked that every one had to die once, an' when the time came no one couldn't escape and that was all about it! Poor Larry O'Hale could not thus calm his mercurial spirit. He twisted his hard features into every possible contortion, apostrophised his luck, and his grandmother, and ould Ireland in the most pathetic manner, bewailed his fate, and used improper language in reference to savages in general, and those of the South Seas in ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... a mercurial youth of two and twenty, was one of a group of young people assembled, some on horseback, some in yellow buckboards, in front of a stately ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... surrounding skin, obliging him to rest at different times, for several days together. These ulcers came without any apparent cause, have continued for many weeks, and have only been a little benefitted by rest, although he has applied many kinds of ointment, the last consisting of equal parts of mercurial and of the tar ointment. I applied the lunar caustic upon each ulcer, but not over the excoriation, and I enjoined the patient to leave the ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... three years four months, brought to me labouring under Hooping-cough, with Meningitis, which latter terminated in effusion. Calomel was then given every two hours, the stronger mercurial ointment rubbed upon the temples, and blisters applied to the head. The mercurial influence being established, a profuse discharge of urine occurred; the pupils which had previously been permanently ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton
... Wolfe Tone proceeded to Paris to arrange for the despatch of a French auxiliary corps. On 20th April General Clarke, head of the Topographical Bureau at the War Office, agreed to send 10,000 men and 20,000 stand of arms. The mercurial Irishman encountered endless delays, and was often a prey to melancholy; but the news of Bonaparte's victories in Italy led him to picture the triumph of the French Grenadiers ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Certainly, the extant works of art which represent him, gems or vase-paintings, conform truly enough to this ideal of a "nimble spirit," though he wears the broad country hat, which Hermes also wears, going swiftly, half on the airy, mercurial wheels of his farm instrument, harrow or plough—half on wings of serpents—the worm, symbolical of the soil, but winged, as sending up the dust committed to it, after subtle firing, in colours and odours of fruit and flowers. It is an altogether sacred character, again, that he assumes in another ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... that the eternities beget chaos, and that the immensities are at the mercy of the divine ananke. Infinitude crouches before a personality. The mercurial essence is the prime mover in spirituality, and the thinker is powerless before the pulsating inanity. The cosmical procession is terminated only ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... could not have been used for the purposes of health. Sister Marshman was seized with a disease of the liver, a disease which proves fatal in three cases out of four. Sister Ward was ill of the same disorder, and both of them underwent a long course of mercurial treatment, as is usual in that disease. Exercise was considered by the physicians as of the first importance, and we certainly thought no expense too great to save the valuable lives of our sisters. A single ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... I have a mercurial temperament. My spirits rise and fall as if they were Consols. Monotonous Egypt depressed me, as it depressed the Israelites; but the passage of the Red Sea set me sounding my timbrel. I love fresh air; I love the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... sets once every eighty-eight days. There are, in reality, two of these lune-shaped regions, one at the east and the other at the west, each between 1,200 and 1,300 miles broad at the equator. At the sunward edge of these regions, once in eighty-eight days, or once in a Mercurial year, the sun rises to an elevation of forty-seven degrees, and then descends again straight to the horizon from which it rose; at the nightward edge, once in eighty-eight days, the sun peeps above the horizon and ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... her own occupations to attend to; and besides, she is too old to run after a child, and he is too mercurial to be tied to an ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... 25th, after 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 ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... sort overwhelmed Feller. His hand let go of the branch. The brim of the hat shot up, revealing a face that was not old, but in mercurial quickness of expressive, uncontrollable emotion was young, handsomely and attractively young in its frame of prematurely white hair. The stoop was wholly gone. He was tall now, his eyes sparkling with wild, happy lights and the soles of the heavy workman's shoes unconsciously drawn together in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... thing to rejoice in spite of the world; it is an infinitely better thing to rejoice in company with it. With solitude and freedom, the alarm, the disgust receded, and as he went forward the exultation grew, until once again his mercurial spirits lifted ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... has a 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, ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... climates suited; they were akin, yet had strong differences. Perhaps in the quickness of their mutual attraction Frenchman recognised Frenchman. But Ainger was the French Huguenot and du Maurier the French sceptic. Both had mercurial perceptions, and exercised them on much the same objects. Both were wits and humorists, but Ainger was more of a wit than a humorist, and du Maurier was more of a humorist than a wit. Both were men of fancy rather than of imagination, men of ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... of the patriotic but mercurial Senator Wilson that the terrible onslaught of the rebel columns is not the result of their having adopted European, continental tactics, but that the rebels are formidable because they have adopted the Indian mode ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... maid was indispensable." Isidore of Seville (A. D. 600-636) was the first to distinguish between the two branches, and they flourished side by side till Newton's day. Hence the many astrological terms in our tongue, e.g. consider, contemplate, disaster, jovial, mercurial, saturnine, etc. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the 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 of quiet, and after supplying fresh material to their fire, nestled themselves in their ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... spontaneity of his music, even in moments of exalted or passionate utterance, was continually surprising: it was music not unworthy of the golden ages of the world. Yet MacDowell was a Celt, and his music is deeply Celtic—mercurial, by turns dolorous and sportive, darkly tragical and exquisitely blithe, and overflowing with the unpredictable and inexplicable magic of the Celtic imagination. He is unfailingly noble—it is, in the end, the trait which most surely ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... mild, harmless one. Alkaline solutions are antidotes for the mineral acids; as soap in solution, a simple remedy, and always at hand. Lard, magnesia, and oil are antidotes for poisoning by arsenic; albumen,—in the form of the white of an egg,—milk, etc., for corrosive sublimate, and other mercurial preparations. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... his hands and surveyed her quizzically. Felix, despite his protests, was not enamoured of Delgratz, and his mercurial temperament rejoiced in the near approach ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... ambassador, incidentally ridiculing some of his own countrymen's war ideals, President Harding and Secretary Hughes, gravely and with rather obvious emphasis, tried to set the matter aright as best they could. But there was no hint of reprimand; only a fervent hope that the mercurial Harvey would remain quiescent until the memory of ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... is a convenient and reasonably accurate application of the method of mixtures to the determination of temperatures above the range of mercurial thermometers, say 500 F., up to any point not above the melting point of the most refractory metal available for the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... 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 ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... characteristics of their ancient stock, rather than imitate a people so alien to them in blood, in character, and in antecedents. Those meaningless social courtesies which sit well enough upon the gay, volatile, mercurial Frenchman, seem absurd affectations when practiced by the tall, grave, sedate Scandinavian. The intelligent Swedes feel this, but they are powerless to make headway against the influence of a court which was wholly ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... by a few spasmodic efforts, broke the threefold chain of Priest, King, and Noble, and began to lift up their head. But Saxon England is sober, and so went to work more solemnly than her mercurial neighbor. And besides, the British people had already a firm, broad basis of personal freedom to stand on. Much was thought, written, and spoken about reform in England, then most desperately needing it. The American Revolution had English admirers ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... so emphatically songs that, in reading them, we feel as if each must have a twin melody born in the same moment and by the same inspiration. Heine is too impressible and mercurial for any sustained production; even in his short lyrics his tears sometimes pass into laughter and his laughter into tears; and his longer poems, "Atta Troll" and "Deutschland," are full of Ariosto-like transitions. His song has a wide compass of notes; he can ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... 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. Regarding this hypothesis, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... little of that staid, opulent, intensely respectable city—not even if the imputation of dullness, cast upon her by the more mercurial South, be a slander; for the few hours of my stay there were spent almost entirely with my Asiatic friend, whose invitations and inducements to a longer sojourn were very hard to resist. But I was impatient to get on (as men will be who cannot see their arm's-length into the future), ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... was named Terro; he thought, by some peculiar train of reasoning, that he could cure him by applying a mercurial ointment to the chest, to which no one raised any objection. The rapid effect of the remedy delighted the two friends, but it frightened me, for in less than twenty-four hours the patient was labouring under great excitement of the brain. The physician said that he had expected that effect, but ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Gascon neighbour, who is, however, resolved to die decently, if die he must. The former has happily commenced his preparations for the combat in good season, or the enemy might defeat us before he would be in readiness. Did it rest between these two worthies to decide this quarrel, the mercurial Frenchman would defeat his neighbour of Holland, before the latter believed the battle had commenced; but, should he let the happy moment pass, rely on it, the Dutchman would give him trouble. Forget you, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... relatives have been often associated. "We have a good deal in common," says the Barometer. "Of the same blood, as we may say; quicksilver is thicker than water." "Yes," says the little Fahrenheit, "and we are both of the same mercurial temperament." While their columns are dancing up and down with laughter at this somewhat tepid and low-pressure pleasantry, there come in a New York Reaumur and a Centigrade from Chicago. The Fahrenheit, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... that splendid lake!" cried the mercurial stripling; "and what is there in all the lordship of Stramen to vie ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... the 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
... election for the Party, no doubt took the same line. Mrs. Shaw by habit and Mrs. Reeves by instinct belonged to the government rather than to the opposition: and Mr. Colegate, a judicious person, then quite young, doubtless inclined to the same side. Last but not least, Mr. Wells himself, then as always mercurial in his opinions, but none the less intensely opinionated, and unable to believe that anybody could honestly differ from him, was by himself sufficient to disturb the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... the path of caution, avoiding any expenditure for colonies which could be made a drain upon the treasury, and leaving individual pioneers to bear the cost of planting his flag in new lands. In friendship likewise his good impulses were subject to the vagaries of a mercurial temperament and a marked willingness to follow the line of least resistance. In the circumstances it is not strange that Champlain ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... sent either to study for the bar, or to a writer's office as an apprentice. The Scottish seem to conceive Themis the most powerful of goddesses. Is a lad stupid, the law will sharpen him;—is he too mercurial, the law will make him sedate;—has he an estate, he may get a sheriffdom;—is he poor, the richest lawyers have emerged from poverty;—is he a Tory, he may become a depute-advocate;—is he a Whig, he may with far better hope expect to become, in reputation at least, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... (b.) I distilled mercurial nitre in the foregoing manner until the acid of nitre had separated from the residual red precipitate. In this case also I obtained our fire-air.... Whence comes the boiling of nitre, fused in a crucible and obscurely ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... 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
... inoppressive; active, nimble, deft, fleet, swift, spry; spongy, porous, well-leavened; incompact, loose, porous; gossamery, sleazy, flimsy, thin, unsubstantial; volatile, unsteady, mercurial, fickle, frivolous. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... weedy now, and crossed and recrossed by vividly-green ribbons of vine, with stretches of pale-green lucerne, orchards, and the white village of Monpont near the railway, all embowered, the Isle drawing its mercurial streams through the village-meadow, which is dark with shades of oaks: and to have played there a boy, and used it familiarly from birth as one's own hand or foot, must have been very sweet and homely; after this, the river divides, and takes the shape ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... for example. How plainly it tells of religiousness and perhaps of fanaticism! The Sun finger is not long. Nay, it is not long enough. There is too little love of glory here. And the Saturnian finger is too long. The life is too much under the dominion of Fate or Destiny. The Mercurial finger is short. He will be firm in his friendships. The moons all correspond. They, also, are too large. The Mount of Venus, here at the base of the thumb, is excessively developed, and indicates capacity ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... inflammation which appeared on the inoculated arms. It seemed to arise from the state of the pustule, which spread out, accompanied with some degree of pain, to about half the diameter of a sixpence. One of these patients was an infant of half a year old. By the application of mercurial ointment to the inflamed parts (a treatment recommended under similar circumstances in the inoculated smallpox) the complaint ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... best pantomimic farces ever seen' on the English boards at any rate, was produced with great success at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in 1687. The character of Scaramouch was admirably suited to Tony Leigh, a low comedian 'of the mercurial kind', who 'in humour ... loved to take a full career', whilst Tom Jevon, young, slim and most graceful of dancers, proved the King of all Harlequins, past, present and to come. Lee and Jevon also acted the parts of Scaramouch and Harlequin in Mountford's three act ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... company stated that he had no knowledge of such an injury. The same officer, in a letter dated February 25, 1887, expresses the belief that the disability of the applicant, if any existed, was caused by the injudicious use of mercurial medicine self-administered for venereal disease contracted at Augusta, Me., in January, 1864, and that such was the rumor among his comrades when he was ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... troth," exclaimed the mercurial Jimsy, "ye shall not be disappointed in me fair damsels. Hullo! ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... twelve beds in this tent, and many regiments are represented among the patients; there is an Imperial Light Horse man, who has been in most of the big fights, a mercurial Argyll and Sutherland Highlander, with a witty and voluble tongue; men of the Wilts, Berks, and Yorks regiments, and in the next bed a trooper of the 18th Hussars, who was captured at Talana Hill in the first fight of the war, had spent seven months at Waterval ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... of men and women who sup are mercurial things, and it was a gay leave-taking half an hour or so later in the little Moorish room at the head of the staircase. But Ernestine left her host without even appearing to see his outstretched hand, and he let her go without a word. Only when ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... SPAVIN AND RINGBONE.—Cantharides one ounce, Mercurial Ointment half ounce, Corrosive Sublimate a half drachm, Turpentine one and a half ounces, Tincture Iodine one ounce, Gum Euphorbium four ounces. Mix well with one pound of Lard. For spavin or ringbone, cut the hair away and grease the part well ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... Purcell. At the moment Daddy was in a new and unaccustomed phase of piety. After a period of revolutionary spouting, in which Byron, Tom Paine, and the various publications of Richard Carlile had formed his chief scriptures, a certain Baptist preacher laid hold of the Irishman's mercurial sense. Daddy was awakened and converted, burnt his Byron and his Tom Paine in his three-pair back with every circumstance of insult and contumely, and looked about for an employer worthy of one of the elect. Purcell at the time ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... post of Secretary. Spenser had found time and place, during a similar service in the same country, to complete the 'Faery Queene'; although the fair land in which the loveliest of English poems has its action was not unvexed by the chronic turbulence of a mercurial and badly used race. Irish residence was coincident in Addison's case, not only with prosperous fortunes and with important friendships, but also with the beginning of the work on which his fame securely rests. In Ireland the acquaintance he had already made in London with Swift ripened ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a shipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, and friends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some so cheerful that they carry an ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... and superiority which enveloped her. Yet she almost constantly accompanied her husband to rehearsal and play, where, for a time, her presence was grateful both to the pride and a more amiable passion of her mercurial lord. But the sight of that shy, shadowy figure haunting the wings, of those keen, critical eyes ever following the business of the stage, at last grew irksome to him, and he would fain have persuaded her to remain quietly at their lodgings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... through the tedious torture long remembered as the "hot Sunday," the science-predicted period of returning glaciers and polar snows where palms and lemons now hold sway, seemed even more distant than the epoch suggested by the speculative. In proportion to the elevation of the mercurial vein which mounted to and poisoned itself at 100 degrees, the religious, the devotional, pulse sank lower, almost to zero; consequently, although circumstances of unusual interest attracted the congregation to the church, where Mr. Lindsay intended to preach his farewell sermon, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Frenchman, but it is well to remember that the typical Frenchman, like the typical Irishman and his brother the Jew, exists only in the comic papers, and on the vaudeville stage. The frivolous and the mercurial were not in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... hands? He, who for an ordinary cause resigns the fate of his patient to mercury is a vile enemy to the sick; and if he is tolerably popular, will, in one successful season, have paved the way for the business of life, for he has enough to do ever afterwards to stop the mercurial breach of the constitutions ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... before each guest, an egg that had been proudly heralded by the clucking hen but a few hours before—truly a bountiful breakfast, discrediting the latest guest's anticipations! The manager, in high spirits, mercurial as the weather, came down from his room, a bundle of posters under his arm, boisterously greeting Saint-Prosper, whom he encountered in ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... 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 houses, its straggling lanes and roads, and the water-pumps in the middle ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... sublimate, and one pint alcohol. 8. Distilled vinegar, or diluted good vinegar, a pint; camphor one-half ounce; dissolve. 9. White arsenic, two ounces; lard, thirteen ounces; corrosive sublimate, one-fourth ounce; venetian red, one-fourth ounce. (deadly poison.) 10. Strong mercurial ointment one ounce; soft soap one ounce; oil of turpentine, a pint 11. Gasoline and coaloil are both excellent adjuncts, with cleanliness, in ridding a bed or house of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs |
