"Fluctuation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fact remains that no marked change has been seen in the desertion rate, that successive desertions have not been prevented in individual cases. Hardly any statistical figure in the work of family social agencies shows so little fluctuation from year to year and between different cities, as the percentage of deserted families. It generally forms from ten to fifteen per cent of the work of any ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... environment cause it to fluctuate. Each of these strains is termed a PURE LINE. If we imagine that there are three such pure lines in our imaginary case, with average weights 10, 12, 14 grains respectively, and if the range of fluctuation of each of these pure lines is 12 grains, then our curve must be represented as made up of ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... this day what particular question he asked, but he vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or fluctuation of her ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint's Pond, a mile ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... any of the public money deposited under its provisions. Whilst it has proved to be safe and useful to the Government, its effects have been most beneficial upon the business of the country. It has tended powerfully to secure an exemption from that inflation and fluctuation of the paper currency so injurious to domestic industry and rendering so uncertain the rewards of labor, and, it is believed, has largely contributed to preserve the whole country from a serious commercial revulsion, such as often occurred under the bank deposit system. In the year 1847 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... poet rose, the farmer sank. It was not the cold clayey bottom of his ground, nor the purchase of unsound seed-corn, not the fluctuation in the markets alone, which injured him; neither was it the taste for freemason socialities, nor a desire to join the mirth of comrades, either of the sea or the shore: neither could it be wholly imputed to his passionate following of the softer sex—indulgence in the "illicit ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... absolute divinity of the Logos, if their rapid ascent towards the throne of heaven had not been imperceptibly checked by the apprehension of violating the unity and sole supremacy of the great Father of Christ and of the Universe. The suspense and fluctuation produced in the minds of the Christians by these opposite tendencies, may be observed in the writings of the theologians who flourished after the end of the apostolic age, and before the origin of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... uneasy at the inquisitive gaze of the bystanders; and his companion observing the fluctuation of his countenance, added, as the door was ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... pull upon it, this way and that, as it was agitated by the fluctuation of the water, it soon drew it down, and the boat, being now entirely at liberty, began to move slowly off from the shore. It soon drifted out where it was more fully exposed to the action of the wind, when ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... the Spirit of God to write that the unstable and unbelieving man is like the "wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed." There are two motions of the waves—one up and down, which we call undulation, the other to and fro, which we call fluctuation. How appropriately both are referred to—"tossed" up and down, "driven" to and fro! The double-minded man lacks steadiness in both respects: his faith has no uniformity of experience, for he is now at the crest ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... baseness can prevent us from imitating. A change of administration there, Mr. Eaton adds, only affects a few scores of persons occupying the highest positions: the great mass of the officials live and die in their places, indifferent to the fluctuation of parliamentary majorities or the rise and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... or an unwashed shirt. But the Yankee millionaire can find no comfort with five telephones at his bed-head and ten minutes for his lunch. The round coins in the miser's stocking were safe in some sense. The round noughts in the millionaire's ledger are safe in no sense; the same fluctuation which excites him with their increase depresses him with their diminution. The miser at least collects coins; his hobby is numismatics. The man who collects ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Beginnings: the Conservative Ascendancy, 1861-1876.*—In Italy, as in France, political parties are numerous and their constituencies and programmes are subject to rapid and bewildering fluctuation. In the earliest days of the kingdom party lines were not sharply drawn. In the parliament elected in January, 1861, the supporters of Cavour numbered 407, while the strength of the opposition was but 36. After the death of Cavour, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... shown why the force of Marion was so liable to fluctuation. The necessity of providing for, and protecting destitute families, starving wives and naked children, was more imperative than that of a remote and fancied liberty. These cases attended to, the militia came ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... there has been less fibrous contraction than usual for a certain time, the sensorial power or spirit of animation becomes accumulated in the inactive part of the system. Hence vigour succeeds rest, and hence the propensity to action of all our organs of sense and muscles is in a state of perpetual fluctuation. The irritability for instance of the retina, that is, its quantity of sensorial power, varies every moment according to the brightness or obscurity of the object last beheld compared with the present one. The same occurs to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sharp and thin with illness, with eagerness and suspense, his complexion browned and paled out of its healthful English tints. But this was not because he was weak any longer, or in diminished health. He was worn by incessant travelling, by anxiety and the fluctuation of hope and fear; but the great tension had strung his nerves and strengthened his vitality, though it had worn off every superfluous particle of flesh. A keen anxiety mingled with indignation was in his eyes as he looked across the gate which the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the road to the south and cut off Canler's return. A little fluctuation of the wind now carried the path of the forest fire to the north, then blew back and the flames nearly stood still as though held in leash by some ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... foreign revenue, the very pretence to accuracy would be the most inaccurate thing in the world. Neither the author nor I can with certainty authenticate the information we communicate to the public, nor in an affair of eternal fluctuation arrive at perfect exactness. All we can do, and this we may be expected to do, is to avoid gross errors and blunders of a capital nature. We cannot order the proper officer to lay the accounts before the House. But the reader must judge on the probability of the accounts we lay before him. The ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not a question of charm, but of health, dear, and Laurent is a very sage old gentleman indeed, and you may follow his counsel with perfect certainty. I can't help owning,' he went on, 'that I've been a little nervous lately about the fluctuation of your spirits, and I'm glad he happened to drop in and have ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... experience, shut up almost to idleness; a woman of large benevolence, who had entered on work of peculiar excellence and attractiveness, cut off from all such activities. This, with frequent pain, with fluctuation of hope and discouragement as to the future; and yet there is about her an atmosphere as serene as the Alpine heights that look down upon her, as cheerful as the sunny Alpine pastures with their ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... barter prices now established throughout a considerable extent of the Windward Coast; but it is to be observed, they are subject to fluctuation from locality ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... implement that requires sweat in the forging Authority may go unarmed. The task of contriving such weapons is early abandoned. In three months George's hot resolve was cooled; in six it was forgotten; at the end of three years, after considerable fluctuation, his allowance stood at minus two pounds for ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the scion and it does not attract the destructive heat ray. This is perhaps the most important single point of value and due to the transparency of the paraffin. Third, the paraffin coating, impervious to air, maintains the sap tension equally in the course of fluctuation between negative and positive pressures occurring between night and day, and under varying conditions of light and temperature. This maintenance of equalised sap tension, I believe to be important. The paraffin is waterproof and prevents evaporation from the scion, which otherwise ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... scanty, firewood only to be obtained from some distance, the open undulating surface of Jongri was particularly exposed to heavy snow-drifts, and the path was, at the best, a scarcely perceptible track. I followed every change of the wind, every fluctuation of the barometer and thermometer, each accession of humidity, and the courses of the clouds aloft. At 7 p.m., the wind suddenly shifted to the west, and the thermometer instantly rose from 20 degrees to 30 degrees. After 8 p.m., the temperature fell again, and the wind drew round ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... price stability; - the sustainability of the government financial position; this will be apparent from having achieved a government budgetary position without a deficit that is excessive as determined in accordance with Article 104c(6); - the observance of the normal fluctuation margins provided for by the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System, for at least two years, without devaluing against the currency of any other Member State; - the durability of convergence achieved by the Member State and of ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... seem to have believed that the troops would not dare to come out to meet them, and that when their leaders should give the word they would advance on Montreal and take it without difficulty. Their numbers during this period showed a good deal of {97} fluctuation. Ultimately Girod succeeded in gathering about him nearly a thousand men. Not all these, however, were armed; according to Deseves a great many of them had no ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... was back again at thirteen to one taken and offered; she went back even as far as eighteen to one, and then returned for a while to twelve to one. This fluctuation meant that something was wrong, and William began to lose hope. But on the following day the mare was backed to win a good deal of money at Tattersall's, and once more she stood at ten to one. Seeing her back at the old price made ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... write to Mrs Delvile, but what now, to her, was either her defence or accusation? She had solemnly renounced all further intercourse with her, she had declared against writing again, and prohibited her letters: and, therefore, after much fluctuation of opinion, her delicacy concurred with her judgment, to conclude it would be most proper, in a situation so intricate, to leave the matter to chance, and commit her character ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... my dearest Matilda, with abatement in friendship or fluctuation in affection? Is it possible for me to forget that you are the chosen of my heart, in whose faithful bosom I have deposited every feeling which your poor Julia dares to acknowledge to herself? And you do me equal injustice in upbraiding me with exchanging ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... family of seven for 10 days; five of the family to consume 0.8 as much as an adult. Calculate the cost of the food; then calculate on the same basis the probable cost of food for one year, adding 20 per cent for fluctuation in market price and additional foods not included ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... without any detriment or cost to anybody (sans qu'il n'en coute rien a personne), and to build the harbour without any expense to the Island, was by the issue of a paper currency, from the circulation of which the public were to derive much benefit, and which, besides, would not be liable to fluctuation in value. They seemed not to be aware that a paper currency must be based on a metallic one; that it must represent, and be exchangeable for, a metallic currency, and therefore must follow the fluctuations of the latter in value; since, if not exchangeable, ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... them that they had her within doors to keep things, as she called it, "right and tight;" for abroad the only system in vogue was one of fluctuation and uncertainty. Mr. Rossitur's Irishman, Donohan, staid his year out, doing as little good, and as much, at least, negative harm, as he well could; and then went, leaving them a good deal poorer than he found them. Dr. Gregory's generosity had added to Mr. Rossitur's own ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... market, which frequently, for want of ready money, remains long unsold. They take nothing but cash in payment; for, notwithstanding the endeavours of our Government, the notes of the Bank of France have never been in circulation among them. They have also been subject to losses by the fluctuation of paper money, by extortions, requisitions, and by the maximum. In this class of my countrymen remains still some little national spirit and some independence of character; but these are far from ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... some of the prisoners would have been in confinement seventeen years, while others were set at liberty after only one or two. It may be said, Yes, but then they might always hope. But hope, like other things, wants something to feed upon. It cannot bring much consolation, when it lives upon fluctuation and uncertainty. And so a criminal, who knows how long exactly his term will last, is in this respect better off than a prisoner of war, for he escapes the agitation of uncertainty; just as it has been known that a person threatened with blindness, has become much less ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... allow that any words change their nature in this manner, so as to belong sometimes to one part of speech, and sometimes to another, from the different ways of using them. I never could perceive any such fluctuation in any word whatever."—Diversions of Purley, Vol. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... rum-fraught breath of 'the Brotherhood.' As that turns, it turns; when that stops, it stops; and in calmish weather looks as steadfast and firm as though it was riveted to the centre. The wind blows, and the little popularity-hunting head dodges this way and that, in endless fluctuation. Such is Congress, or a great portion of it. It will point to the northwest heavens of Liberty, whenever the breezes bear down irresistibly upon it, from the regions of political fair weather. It will abolish ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Kew he saw Willis, who told him that he did not think the difference in the King's state within these last two days, of the smallest importance. That this sort of fluctuation was naturally to be expected, and did not in any degree diminish his hopes, which are as sanguine ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the punishment of hearing these reproaches from men of honor, was the victim of a rapid and violent fluctuation of feeling. Hope, fear, triumph, doubt, remorse, alternately swayed him. As he saw the fugitives leaping from the walls, he shouted exultingly, without accurately discerning what manner of men they were, that the city was his, that four thousand of his brave soldiers were there, and were hurling ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the water extends a wide, smooth beach of mixed pebbles and fragments of coral. This forms the thoroughfare of the village; the handsomest houses all facing it—the fluctuation of the tides being so inconsiderable that they ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... many foreign aristocracies. County business stimulates his activity, mitigates his class prejudices, and forms his judgment: and his standard of honour will keep him substantially right amid much fluctuation ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in the rate of exchange has developed among the masses of the people, who turn to the financial column of the morning paper as Westerners do to football news or baseball results. There is considerable fluctuation in the values, and it is no doubt possible to make a living by speculation alone, and many people do so. In the banks are, therefore, crowds, both of speculators and of people who have just crossed the frontier and ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... pronounce that the one has no Relation to the other. Yet the same People will readily own that the fluttering of the Flame of a Candle is a certain token of Wind, which however is not discernible by their Feeling; because it lies within the Compass of their Understanding to discern that this Fluctuation of the Flame is caused by the Wind acting upon it, and therefore they are inclined to believe this, though it does not fall actually under the Cognizance of their Senses. But a Man of a larger Compass of Knowledge, who is acquainted with the Nature and ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... accompanied with this perpetual fluctuation and change, both in the form of the Government and in the persons of the rulers, what is the security which has hitherto existed, and what new security is now offered? Before an answer is given to this question, let me sum up the history of all the revolutionary ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... nature of the case, giving five minutes to one and twenty to another. When he could he gave half-hours to Miss Quincey. He was absorbed, excited; he battled by her bedside; his spirits went up and down with every fluctuation of her pulse; you would have thought that Miss Quincey's case was one of exquisite interest, rarity and charm, and that Cautley had staked his reputation on her recovery. When he said to her in his emphatic way, "We must get you well, Miss Quincey," his manner implied ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... reference to the 1890-1910 period that "on examining the figures for separate industries, one finds there is less variety of fluctuation than in commodity markets. But still considerable differences appear between, say, cotton mills and foundries, or building trades and shoe factories. However, no industry escaped a reduction of wages ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... change, fluctuation at the heart of sameness, such is the estate of language. According as they endeavour to reduce letters to some large haven and abiding-place of civility, or prefer to throw in their lot with the centrifugal tendency and ride on the flying ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... glow of this stormy light Jaime contemplated the fluctuation of the waters at his feet, hurling their boisterous swirls into the hollows of the rock, roaring and writhing, frothing with anger in the winding passages between the reefs. In the depths of this greenish mass, illuminated by the setting sun with transparencies of opal, he ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... China. No country within 700 miles of Singapore is abundant in corn, and none is grown in the island: yet from the first establishment of the settlement to the present time, corn has been both cheap and abundant, there has been wonderfully little fluctuation, there are always stocks, and for many years a considerable exportation. A variety of pulses, vegetable oil, and culinary salt, will be derived from the same countries, as is now done ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the knowledge of his motives which I believed myself to possess, I was at a loss to understand his indifference to self and the immobility of manner he maintained under all circumstances and during every fluctuation which took place in the presentation of his case, or in the temper of the people surrounding him. I felt that beyond the one fact that he could be relied upon to protect Carmel's name and Carmel's character, even to the ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... things, even at the price of considerable vexation, boredom or indignity to Mr. and Mrs. A. And here it is that there arises the rational case against free and frequent divorce and the general unsettlement and fluctuation of homes ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... it to the chances of promotion, or to the characters of lawyers, what the law of the land, what the rights of juries, or what the liberty of the press should be. My law should not depend upon the fluctuation of the closet, or the complexion of men. Whether a black-haired man or a fair- haired man presided in the Court of King's Bench, I would have the law the same: the same whether he was born in domo regnatrice, and sucked from his infancy the milk of courts, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... cretinoid state supervening in the adult life of woman, has an insufficient amount of thyroxin in her blood and tissues. She is clumsy and awkward and will stumble when endeavoring to walk upstairs. Any effort is almost paralyzed because the range of fluctuation of energy, the ability to mobilize energy, in turn dependent upon an ability to increase the metabolic rate, is limited. In slang phrase, she cannot step on it. Her existence is set to go at a rate in ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... they are to be had of the duplex type, that is, two wheels on one shaft. These are arranged so that either wheel may be run separately, or both together, thus permitting one to take advantage of the seasonal fluctuation in water supply. A convenient form of these wheels includes draft tubes, by which the wheel may be set several feet above the tailrace, and the advantage of this additional fall still be preserved. In this case the draft tube must be airtight so as to ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... attracted to each other. But when the points were altogether outside the threshold, they seemed strangely to have repelled each other. As this problem lay somewhat away from my main interest here, I did not undertake to investigate this peculiar fluctuation exhaustively. My chief purpose was satisfied when I found that the lighter point is displaced toward the heavier, in short distances. A further explanation of these figures will be given in connection with similar figures in the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... he had found no difficulty in getting his people to work after they had received their freedom. Some estates had suffered for a short time; there was a pretty general fluctuation for a month or two, the people leaving one estate and going to another. But this, said Mr. B., was chargeable to the folly of the planters, who overbid each other in order to secure the best hands and enough of them. The negroes ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of the transitions and fluctuation, which our language experienced in the intermediate space comprised between Chaucer and Sir Thomas More; and still greater between Robert of Gloucester, 1278, and John Trevisa, or his contemporary Wickliffe, who died 1384, know, to a certainty, that ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... sympathy and little respect; and is it not possible they should appeal to the commercial classes of the North—and the rich commercial classes in all countries, who, from the uncertainty of their possessions and the fluctuation of their interests, are rendered always timid and very often corrupt—is it not possible, I say, that they might prefer the union of their whole country upon the basis of the South, rather than ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... them on the market as you may agree, slowly, thus preventing any material fluctuation in value," he went on. "How to hold this tremendous reserve secretly and still permit the operation of the other diamond mines of the world is the great problem you will have ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... maritime city of Almeria. He retained little more than the name of king, and was supported in even this shadow of royalty by the countenance and treasures of the Castilian sovereigns. Still he trusted that in the fluctuation of events the inconstant nation might once more return to his standard and replace him on the throne of ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... sense of distance and direction, men have another complaint against enthusiasm. They think it insincere on account of its capacity for frequent and violent fluctuation in temperature. In his "Creative Evolution," Bergson shows how "our most ardent enthusiasm, as soon as it is externalized into action, is so naturally congealed into the cold calculation of interest ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... other troublous times, prices are subject to complicated causes of fluctuation, not always separable. Two great staples, flour and sugar, however, may be taken to indicate with some certainty the effects of impeded water transport. From a table of prices current, of August, 1813, it appears that at Baltimore, in the centre ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... discourse With the Musician, on the source Of all the legendary lore Among the nations, scattered wide Like silt and seaweed by the force And fluctuation of the tide; The tale repeated o'er and o'er, With change of place and change of name, Disguised, transformed, and yet the same We've ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 2: Duplicity also is something resulting from lust, just as inconstancy is, if by duplicity we understand fluctuation of the mind from one thing to another. Hence Terence says (Eunuch. act 1, sc. 1) that "love leads to war, and likewise to peace ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... general, it is not right to turn our duties into doubts. They are imposed to govern our conduct, not to exercise our ingenuity; and therefore our opinions about them ought not to be in a state of fluctuation, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... intimated, reality in its very depths is fixity and permanence. This is the completely static conception which sees in being exactly the opposite of becoming: we cannot become, it seems to say, except in so far as we are not. It does not, however, mean to deny movement. But it represents it as fluctuation round invariable types, as a whirling but captive eddy. Every phenomenon appears to it as a transformation which ends where it began, and the result is that the world takes the form of an eternal equilibrium in which "nothing is created, nothing ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... was amazed at the desperate immovability of everything. The world was made up of revolting rigidity and solidity. He felt almost nauseated at seeing all his possessions remain just where he left them, without the slightest fluctuation, or the least bit ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... this purpose he employed old Tom Bish, the Stockbroker, to purchase stock for the amount; but owing to a sudden fluctuation in the market, a considerable depreciation took place between the time of purchase and that of payment; a circumstance which made the Chevalier grin and show his teeth: Determining however, not to become ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the succeeding year the war was continued with unbroken perseverance and a constant fluctuation in its results. In the various battles which were fought, and the sieges which took place, the English army was, as usual, in the foremost ranks, under the Duke of York, second son of George III. The Prince of Orange, at the head of the Dutch troops, proved his inheritance ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... first refreshment and encouragement; and Holdsworth declares that no one can guess the benefit that he was to him even when he was most ridiculous. Since that, he says, the change has been striking, though so gradual. Louis has all the same freshness and energy, but without the fluctuation and impetuosity. And his example of humility and sincerity has worked, not only in reclaiming the wild outlying people, but even awakening the comfortable dependents from their self-satisfaction. Even Frampton is far from the impenetrable person he ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the plan above proposed, I will consider in this chapter, first, the laws which regulate the denudation of strata and the deposition of sediment; secondly, those which govern the fluctuation in the animate world; and thirdly, the mode in which subterranean movements affect ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... protested against this remark. If it were repeated to-day there would be a shout of disapprobation. On the other hand we shall not have another proposal to guarantee a colonial railway. This temporary fluctuation in opinion is not the first instance of men cherishing the shadow after they have rid themselves of the substance, and clinging with remarkable ardour to a sentiment after they have made quite sure that it shall not inconvenience them ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... Further difficulty has been caused by the fact that the epistles of Ignatius appear in three forms or recensions, a longer Greek recension forming a group of thirteen epistles, a short Greek of seven epistles, and a still shorter Syriac version of only three. After much fluctuation of opinion, due to the general reconstruction of the history of the whole period, which has gone through various marked changes, the opinion of scholars has been steadily settling upon the short Greek recension of seven epistles as authentic, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... This fluctuation was obvious in a narrative I have lately seen, the story of the life of Countess Emily Plater, the heroine of the last revolution in Poland. The dignity, the purity, the concentrated resolve, the calm, deep enthusiasm, which yet could, when occasion called, sparkle up a holy, an ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... upbraid me, my dearest Matilda, with abatement in friendship, or fluctuation in affection? Is it possible for me to forget that you are the chosen of my heart, in whose faithful bosom I have deposited every feeling which your poor Julia dares to acknowledge to herself? And you do me equal injustice in upbraiding me with exchanging your friendship for that of Lucy ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... always tending to a level.[301] A permanent elevation at one point is impossible. The agency by which this levelling or equilibrating process is carried out is competition, involving what Smith called the 'higgling of the market.' The momentary fluctuation, again, supposes the action of 'supply and demand,' which, as they vary, raise and depress prices. To illustrate the working of this machinery, to show how previous writers had been content to notice a particular change without ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... bought with his own wealth. Slavery was not a hard condition in the house of Ulysses; it was domestic in the best sense probably. Indeed the slaves were often of as high birth as their masters, who in turn might be slaves in the next fluctuation of war. Eumaeus himself was of kingly blood, and he retains his regal character in ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... items of food are consumed on the farm that have to be purchased each year, and as there is not much fluctuation in the price paid, we may as well settle the per capita rate for the milch cows and hogs for once and all. At each year's end we can then easily find the cash outlay for the herds by multiplying the number of stock by the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... whom the belief in the reality of strange proportions has modified itself through long experience, only those of the thinking habit realise that at any moment the testing—the marking with deep scores may begin or has perhaps begun already. At eighteen or twenty a fluctuation of flower-petal tint which may mean an imperfect night can signify no really important cause. What could eighteen or twenty have found to think about in night watches? But in its centre of the world as it stands on the stage with the curtain rolling up, those who have lived longer—so ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the American camp, and the discontent of the troops, gradually increasing, was matured into a dangerous spirit of insubordination. The men, indeed, bore incredible hardships and privations with unexampled fortitude and patience, but the army was in a state of constant fluctuation; it was composed, in a great measure, of militia harassed by perpetual service and obliged to neglect the cultivation of their farms and their private interests in order to obey the calls of public duty, and of soldiers on short enlistments, who never acquired the military spirit ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... considerably exceeded the normal proportion; but, thanks to the constant increase in all the profits of production, this was borne without the slightest inconvenience. Later, the reserves in the hands of the commonwealth sufficed to remove even this element of fluctuation from the relations between the demand for capital and ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... increased by the fact that his patient had in her constitution a taint of scrofula. There was no apparent congestion of the veins nor discoloration of the skin around the hard protuberance, no pulsation, elasticity, fluctuation or soreness, only a solid lump which the doctor's sensitive touch recognized as the small section or lobule of a deeply-seated tumor already beginning to press upon and obstruct the blood vessels in its immediate vicinity. Whether it were fibrous or albuminous, "benignant" or "malignant," ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... The great fluctuation of the streams makes fishing an uncertain occupation; yet at least a dozen varieties of fish are known, and enough are taken to add materially to the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... address before the California Academy of Sciences, announced recently that his researches on gravitation in 1917 and his latest researches on molecular forces confirmed Maiorana's claim that the screening of gravitation has been shown to exist. In 1917, says Professor See, 'I explained the fluctuation of the Moon's main motion by the circular refraction of the sun's gravitation waves, as they are propagated through the solid body of our earth at the time of ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... congratulated himself that his hopes were on the eve of fulfilment. But, unfortunately for him, the basis, on which they were built, was as unstable as water. The decision of his case still depended upon Clement, and Clement wavered with every fluctuation in the success or the failure of (p. 216) the Spanish arms in Italy. Campeggio had scarcely set out, when Doria, the famous Genoese admiral, deserted Francis for Charles;[604] on the 17th of August Lautrec ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... 2. COMPLEX CHANGE % 149. Changeableness. — N. changeableness &c. adj.; mutability, inconstancy; versatility, mobility; instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and from the south, by the Russians, by most of the Turkish and Asiatic members, but also by all the Mexicans and South Americans. These figures may not be absolutely free from fallacy, due to temporary causes of fluctuation. But that they are fairly exact is shown by the results of the following Congress, held at Moscow. If I take up the programme for the department of psychiatry and nervous disease, in which I was myself chiefly interested, I find that of 131 ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... metamorphoses into a type of manhood "in its passionate desires and ideal aspirations"—the Faust of Goethe. All the magnificent energy of our ideal man is brought forward in the poet's conception, but it is an energy which is shattered in its fluctuation between sensual delights and ideal aspirations, respectively typified in the Venus and Elizabeth of the play. Here is the contradiction against which he was shattered as the heroes of Greek tragedy were shattered on the rock of implacable Fate. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the manager of a large department store in San Francisco was kind enough to show me his record of departmental profits for a number of months. The fluctuation in relative profits of different departments month by month was apparent, especially the fact that after a certain month several departments which had previously earned high profits became relatively much less profitable. I asked the ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... the coming of summer. Without any weary fluctuation from well to ill, and ill to well—which sickens the heart with a deferred hope—all my old-time strength came back with the glow of that year's ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to such fluctuation is, however, evident, from what that fanciful but deeply-read man says, immediately after: "We have seen some states which have spent their vigour at their commencement. Some have [end of page vii] blazed out in their glory a little before their extinction. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... cultivation one hundred and forty years later, at least in the richer and more important districts of the country. In a pamphlet printed in 1723, one hundred and thirty-seven years after the introduction of the potato, speaking of the fluctuation of the markets, the writer says: "We have always either a glut or a dearth; very often there are not ten days distance between the extremity of the one and the other; such a want of policy is there ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... in popular and even in scholarly favor or neglect. It happens to the princes of literature to encounter periods of varying duration when their names are revered and their books are not read. The growth, not to say the fluctuation, of Shakespeare's popularity is one of the curiosities of literary history. Worshiped by his contemporaries, apostrophized by Milton only fourteen years after his death as the "dear son of memory, great heir ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... He has often professed it to be so. The policy of that act is, I readily admit, in many respects well understood. But I do say, that, if the act be suffered to run the full length of its principle, and is not changed and modified according to the change of times and the fluctuation of circumstances, it must do great mischief, and frequently even ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... account of Bess, or form a rational conjecture with respect to the termination of her disorder. She has not had a violent fit of frenzy since I saw you, but her mind is in a most unsettled state, and attending to the constant fluctuation of it is far more harassing than the watching these raving fits that had not the least tincture of reason. Her ideas are all disjointed, and a number of wild whims float on her imagination, and fall from her unconnectedly something like strange ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... reverse, on the petition of Lord Spenser, earl of Glocester, the attainder pronounced against the two Spensers in the reign of Edward II.[*****] The ancient history of England is nothing but a catalogue of reversals: every thing is in fluctuation and movement: one faction is continually undoing what was established by another: and the multiplied oaths which each party exacted for the security of the present acts, betray a perpetual consciousness ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... influences, and the fluctuations reflect and accentuate the varying shades of market opinions of many individuals. But in the market for the actual commodity, the quotations are made by comparatively few men, which means that there will be less fluctuation. ...
— About sugar buying for Jobbers - How you can lessen business risks by trading in refined sugar futures • B. W. Dyer
... a misgiving about Himself. Only, I think, moments of a dreadful insight when he heard behind him the creeping of the tide of oblivion, and it frightened him. He was sensitive to every little fluctuation in his vogue. He had the fear of its vanishing before his eyes. And there he was, shut up among all his splendor with his fear; and it was his wife's work and Antigone's to keep it from him, to stand between him ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... England must have been very different. It was characterised by rapid conversions to Christianity on a large scale, and often, after the lapse of a few years, by sanguinary revolts against the Faith. The chief reason of such fluctuation seems to have been this, viz. because all that was profound, and of venerable antiquity in the Northern religion, was in sympathy with Christianity, as the religion of sanctity and self-sacrifice; while all that was savage in it opposed itself to a religion of humility and of charity. The Northern ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... Discussing the returns more minutely, Starbuck finds that only 6 per cent. are relapses from the religious faith which the conversion confirmed, and that the backsliding complained of is in most only a fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment. Only six of the hundred cases report a change of faith. Starbuck's conclusion is that the effect of conversion is to bring with it "a changed attitude towards life, which is fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings fluctuate.... ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... can decide whether the success or failure shall be enduring; for it is only posterity that can reveal whether the relation now existing between the work and the public mind is or is not liable to fluctuation. Yet no man really writes for posterity; no man ought ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... her curtly, as he would to another man; he made no answer; then with a slight flush his eye returned to her dress and figure; he lifted his hat and stood uncovered till she had passed and turned from him. His face, under the influence of this fluctuation of color, changed exceedingly, and improved in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... and that no prospectus could be issued except in the case of a concern which had already stood so severe a test that its earning capacity was placed beyond doubt? It would certainly be possible by legislative enactment to make any security that was offered as safe as Consols, and less subject to fluctuation in value. But when this had been done the effect would be very much like the effect upon rabbits of the recent fixing of their price. No ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... wild animals, in captivity; and particular individuals die when not suffered any longer to retain their memories, their bodies, or even their master passions. Thus human nature survives amid a continual fluctuation of its embodiments. At every step twigs and leaves are thrown out that last but one season; but the underlying stem may have meantime grown stronger and more luxuriant. Whole branches sometimes wither, but others may continue to bloom. Spiritual ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... example two railway lines doing business between the same points. We have fully pointed out the practical working of this sort of competition in the chapter devoted to railways. It is plain that the general effect is a fluctuation of rates between wide limits, an enormous waste of capital and labor, and ultimately, the permanent death of competition by the consolidation ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... spot;—whatever the cause, she had cherished for some years, as young maidens usually cherish the desire of the Altar—the dream of the Gravestone. But the hoard was amassed so slowly;—now old Gawtrey was attacked by illness;—now there was some little difficulty in the rent; now some fluctuation in the price of work; and now, and more often than all, some demand on her charity, which interfered with, and drew from, the pious savings. This was a sentiment in which her new friend sympathised ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a tumor of the scrotum, which is without pain, gradually produced, with fluctuation, and a degree of pellucidity, when a candle is held behind it; it is the most simple incysted dropsy, as it is not in general complicated with other diseases, as ascites with schirrous liver, and hydrocephalus internus, with general debility. The cure of this disease is effected by different ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... many sessions with him; she was interested, but she confessed herself helpless in this compilation and diagnosis of so many facts and figures. Dick was prompt enough to report his stock transactions, and he was eager enough to discuss the probable fluctuation of this or that stock; but when asked to go over what Larry had done, he refused flatly and good-humoredly to "sit in any such slow, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... consultation with his father, and the real trouble that had been fretting him, it seemed, was that now he repented and wanted to follow Cardinal to Cambridge, and—a year lost—go on with science again. He felt it was a discreditable fluctuation; he knew it would be a considerable expense; and so he took two weeks before he could screw himself ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... given that bear a sufficiently close relation to exactitude to form the basis from which certain valid deductions can be drawn. Now first as to the intrinsic value, in amounts of gold and silver in the several coins. The vast fluctuation in the value of the English shilling, due to the successive debasements and final restitution of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of a joint leads to heat of the parts, pain, distension of the capsule, and, where the joint may be easily felt, fluctuation. In the articulation with which we are dealing, however, these last two symptoms are not easily detected, for the surrounding structures—namely, the lateral and other ligaments of the joint, the extensor pedis tendon in front, and the perforans behind, together with the dense and comparatively ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... sociology, which send men into the world skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity, with no hold on the past, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the "fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and the very ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me, and so save my soul. I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to 'live among lions' as you once said—but I should best do this if I lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... giving the history of chairs, in his "Cabinet Makers from 1750 to 1840": "Extravagance of taste and fluctuation of fashion had reached high water mark due to increase of wealth in England and her colonies. From the plain, stately pieces of Queen Anne the public turned to the rococo French designs of early Chippendale, then tiring of that, veered back to classic lines, as done by the Adam brothers, ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... world. The majority of the unions have a membership between 1000 and 10,000, the average for the entire number being 5000; but the membership fluctuates from year to year, according to the conditions of labor, and is usually larger in seasons of contest. Fluctuation in membership is most evident in the newer unions and in the unskilled trades. The various unions differ also in resources. In some, especially those composed largely of foreigners, the treasury is chronically empty; yet at the other extreme the mine ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... that, having carefully read every word of the letter, he chose this way of letting Gwen know of a fluctuation in Adrian's eye-symptoms; which, he had inferred, would not reach her otherwise. But he did not wish false hopes to be built on it. The deciphering of the illegibilities by Gwen, under correctives from himself, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... as these Swellings of the parotid Glands appeared, we endeavoured to bring them forward to Suppuration, by the Application of emollient Cataplasms, or of gummous Plaisters; and had them opened as soon as a Fluctuation of Matter was to be felt, and afterwards treated them as common Abscesses. Riverius[19] very justly observes, that when such Tumours encrease in such a Manner as to endanger Suffocation, they ought ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... But, what was worst of all, the parties did not find mutual happiness in the engagement they had formed. It is difficult for a woman of a violent temper and weak intellects, and such the lady seems to have been, to endure the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits incident to one doomed to labour incessantly in the feverish exercise of the imagination. Unintentional neglect, and the inevitable relaxation, or rather sinking of spirit, which follows violent mental ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Silas, feeling bound to accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly office, felt no resentment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts concerning him; and to this was soon added some anxiety at the perception that Sarah's manner towards him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking and dislike. He asked her if she wished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: their engagement was known to the church, and had been recognized in the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... were during the course of the treatment. In the middle of the process, while the patient was conversing with the doctor, she was suddenly "obsessed." Coincidental with this obsession, the galvanometer showed a tremendous and permanent fluctuation, indicating that the resistance of the body to the current had ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... all your letters consecutively, and I do not feel that I have thanked you half enough for the extreme pleasure which they have given me, and for their utility. I see in them evidence of fluctuation in the degree of credence you give to the theory; nor am I at all surprised at this, for many and many fluctuations I ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... fluctuating labor, as the poor King struggles to his final rest, this morning. He was at the window again, when the WACHT-PARADE (Grenadiers on Guard) turned out; he saw them make their evolutions for the last time. [Pauli, viii. 280.] After which, new relapse, new fluctuation. It was about eleven o'clock, when Cochius was again sent for. The King lay speechless, seemingly still conscious, in bed; Cochius prays with fervor, in a loud tone, that the dying King may hear and join. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... of a farewell we fluctuate sharply between the very distant and the close and homely: and even in memory the fluctuation occurs, the grander scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and that, when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination to embrace the splendour and wonder. But the wrench of an immediate division from what we love makes the things within us reach ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters—a berceuse of the sea—and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer is anon broken by a shift of new tone. There is a fluctuation of pleasant and strange sounds; a dulcet air on rapturous harmony is hushed by unfriendly plash ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... reason of the liability to fluctuation in the purchasing power of the sovereign is plain: When gold rises in value a larger quantity of any other commodity, say of corn, of meat, of butter, or of cloth, will have to be given in exchange for any given quantity of gold, such, for example, as the quantity contained in a sovereign. ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... than was wanted—rushed back to Mr. Gilfil's face; he set his teeth and clenched his hands in the effort to repress a burst of indignation. Sir Christopher noticed the flush, but thought it indicated the fluctuation of hope and fear about Caterina. He went on:—'You're too modest by half, Maynard. A fellow who can take a five-barred gate as you can, ought not to be so faint-hearted. If you can't speak to her yourself, leave me to talk ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... gone since Edmund might be supposed in town, and Fanny had heard nothing of him. There were three different conclusions to be drawn from his silence, between which her mind was in fluctuation; each of them at times being held the most probable. Either his going had been again delayed, or he had yet procured no opportunity of seeing Miss Crawford alone, or he was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... impropriety and offence of a Gothic revenge. But it is necessary upon a subject so important as that which now employs my pen, to be honest and explicit. It is not a time for compliment, it is not a moment for disguise and fluctuation. Whatever were the merits of the contest, I cannot forget that your hand is deformed with the blood of my husband. My lord, you have my sincerest good wishes. I bear you none of that ill will and covert revenge, that are equally the disgrace of reason ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... variations as inperium, imperium; atque, adque; exspecto, expecto; and the like (cases like haud, haut; saxum, saxsum; are different). The best writers could not decide between these conflicting forms. A still greater fluctuation existed in English spelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, [8] but it has since been overcome. Great writers sometimes introduced spellings of their own. Caesar wrote Pompeiii (gen. sing.) for Pompeii, after ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... School of Abuse. Scott's statement in the Advertisement as to why he did not omit any of the original collection shows his unpedantic attitude toward the kind of studies which he was encouraging by the republication of this series. He says: "When the variety of literary pursuits, and the fluctuation of fashionable study is considered, it may seem rash to pass a hasty sentence of exclusion, even upon the dullest and most despised of the essays which this ample collection offers to the public. There may be among ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... than to be right. Of course, if you take the bucket shop's advice you surely are likely to be wrong. Bucket shops get their clients into the very speculative stocks, where there is likely to be a great deal of fluctuation in the price of the stocks, which gives them frequent opportunities ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... stranger throughout than the fluctuation of the guests. At times they have dwindled to so small a number that one must reckon chiefly upon their quality for consolation; at other times they swelled to such a tide as to overflow the table, long or short, at dinner, and eddy round a second ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... inevitably a cultural boundary, often, too, a linguistic and religionary, occasionally a political boundary. The last three are subject to wide fluctuation, frequently overstepping all barriers of race and contrasted civilizations. Though one often accompanies another, it is necessary to distinguish the different kinds of boundaries and to estimate their relative importance in the history of a people or state. We may lay down the rule that the greater, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... others had to purchase maize at increased prices or use other crops, such as oats, which they might otherwise have sold. Still others would be compelled to sell, at reduced prices, their partially fattened animals. There is a constant fluctuation in the price of animals and animal products, due to variation in yield and hence in price of food supplies. It requires continual vigilance on the part of the stockman to secure food supplies at such cost as will enable him to secure a profitable ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... after a fashion. Change there must be, and fluctuation of feeling. But there is such a thing as 'peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.' You may remember the attempt that was made some years ago to build a steamer in which the central saloon was to hang perfectly still while the outer hull of the ship pitched and rolled with the moving ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the purchase of an annuity the best thing to be aimed at. To buy a house or some furniture; to start a small business; to expend his savings in tiding over periods of slack or failing work; to avail himself of the advantage which some fluctuation in the market gives to the man who can transport himself promptly to a new locality or a new business is often far more to his advantage. Above all, money expended in settling his family is often his best policy as well as the course ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... necessarily varied, averaged in the middle of the fourteenth century tenpence the bushel;[15] barley averaging at the same time three shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuation was excessive; a table of its possible variations describes it as ranging from eighteenpence the quarter to twenty shillings; the average, however, being six and eightpence.[16] When the price was above this sum, the merchants ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... two nations, confining on each other, between whom a war may not always be kindled with plausible pretences on either part, as there is always passing between them a reciprocation of injuries, and fluctuation of encroachments. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... force against every other system, as against that of sympathy. But to consider the matter a-right, it has no force at all; and it is the easiest matter in the world to account for it. Our situation, with regard both to persons and things, is in continual fluctuation; and a man, that lies at a distance from us, may, in a little time, become a familiar acquaintance. Besides, every particular man has a peculiar position with regard to others; and it is impossible we coued ever converse together on any reasonable ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... say that throughout the valley there was most undue fluctuation of prices. Moreover, the Manbo sold a part of his rice in harvest time at 50 centavos a sack, and in time of scarcity repurchased it at as much as ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... inspection of the bankers' balances as a whole lead to any certain and sure conclusions. Something might be inferred from them, but not anything certain. Those balances are no doubt in a state of constant fluctuation; and very possibly during the time that the German money was coming in some other might be going out. Any sudden increase in the bankers' balances would be a probable indication of new foreign money, but new foreign money might come in without ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... immediate and terrible as a volcano. The dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, afford examples of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest in Chaucer is quite different; it is like the course of a river, strong, and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed by furious storms; while in the still pauses of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... support the French armies. The war was one of those in which the loss, falling apparently on future generations, first stimulates, in a sad way, trade and production. The main cause of these evils was tampering with the circulating medium of an entire nation; keeping all values in fluctuation; discouraging enterprise; paralyzing energy; undermining sobriety; obliterating thrift; promoting extravagance and exciting riot by the issue of an irredeemable currency. The true business way of meeting the enormous demands ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... be elaborated, but the essential data for those interested in food economics can be obtained from the table itself. Wholesale prices are used for the reason that retail prices are subject to great variation. The fluctuation of retail prices does not make it feasible to give their equivalents for the wholesale list, but the relationship can be judged by noting the equivalents for the extremes. In this table, for example, the retail price of 2500 calories of rice would ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... conditions calling for reevaluation of the existing sources of income; and in this process there will always be a tendency to rhythmic swing like that of a river, which carries the stream of prices now on this side of the valley, now on that. But this fluctuation of general prices surely can be so greatly moderated in magnitude and in evil results as to make the word "crisis" almost a misnomer. It is toward the attainment of this irreducible minimum of uncertainty and disaster in business that efforts ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... set the atmosphere motors idling. The dome slid open, showing the flicker of the auroras, where areas of intense heat and cold set up atmospheric tension by rapid fluctuation of adjoining air masses. ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... characterizes most of our early songs. The task which you propose to me of adapting words to these airs, is by no means easy. The poet who would follow the various sentiments which they express, must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity which composes the character of my countrymen, and has deeply tinged their music. Even in their liveliest strains we find some melancholy note ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... prefer, or such as a man of delicacy would like to hear from his sister or his wife. They were nevertheless highly applauded by all the audience, except by Godfrey, who remained silent behind the young lady. In the fluctuation of the crowd he was pressed nearer and nearer to her chair. As she finished singing a fashionable air, she heard a sigh ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... snows of the amphitheater of mountain-slopes are melting most rapidly, the level of the Lake rises, and a maximum amount of water escapes through its outlet. According to the observations of Capt. John McKinney, made at his residence on the western shore of this Lake, the average seasonal fluctuation of level is about 0.61 of a meter; but in extreme seasons it sometimes amounts to 1.37 meters. The Lake of Geneva, in like manner, is liable to fluctuations of level amounting to from 1.95 to 2.60 meters, from the melting ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... sink his shares to one half of the price they had once reached, but, even at that depreciation, to leave him richer on selling out than he had been at first. But the half of 25,000 would be a far larger sum than Pope could have ventured to risk upon a fund confessedly liable to daily fluctuation. 3000 English pounds would be the utmost he could risk; in which case the half of 25,000 pounds would have left him so very much richer, that he would have proclaimed his good fortune as an evidence of his skill and prudence. Yet, on the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... One fears to walk without him—Why, that I, With unencumber'd step as any there, Go stumbling through my glory—feeling for That iron leading-string—ay, for myself— For that fast-anchor'd self of yesterday, Of yesterday, and all my life before, Ere drifted clean from self-identity Upon the fluctuation of to-day's Mad whirling circumstance!—And, fool, why not? If reason, sense, and self-identity Obliterated from a worn-out brain, Art thou not maddest striving to be sane, And catching at that Self of yesterday That, like a leper's rags, best flung away! Or if not mad, then ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... when the many were frantic to buy and invest, no matter at what loss, his millions were in part safely deposited in national bonds, and in part as securely invested in solid and profitable buildings of which the rents are little liable to fluctuation. Brought up to know what money means, he is not easily carried away by enthusiastic reports. He knows that when the hour of fortune is at hand no price is too great to pay for ready capital, but he understands ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... uninfluenced by external magnetic forces. Mr. Boys showed on the screen an image of an electric arc, and by its side was a spot of light, whose position indicated the energy, and showed every flicker of the light and fluctuation of current in the arc. He showed on the screen that if the poles are brought too near the energy expended is less, though the current is stronger, and that if the poles are too far apart, though the electromotive force is greater the energy is less; so that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... which was precisely the ideal life we had yearned for. The same objects every day in our walks—the same objects every moment to look out upon from our windows—the same faces, few or none, on the desolate sands—the very same sky, with hardly any variation, although the slightest fluctuation in the points of the wind, or the current of the clouds, produced a sensation! It suited us at first, for we had no space in our thoughts for external objects, and the total absence of all excitement threw us more in upon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... wonderful if so simple a series {285} had but one kind of occurrence. As it is, our trigonometry being founded on the circle, [pi] first appears as the ratio stated. If, for instance, a deep study of probable fluctuation from average had preceded, [pi] might have emerged as a number perfectly indispensable in such problems as: What is the chance of the number of aces lying between a million x and a million - x, when six million of throws are ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... precautionary measures; he raises the price of grains. The manufacturer does the same with his products. The reaction comes, and, after some fluctuation, the farm-rent—which the tenant thought to put upon the manufacturer's shoulders—becomes nearly balanced. So that, while he is congratulating himself upon his success, he finds himself again impoverished, but to an extent somewhat ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Colonies. I was not less under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the British Empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order, amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it safe or manly to ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... question, intimately connected, as it is, with this topic, I may be permitted to repeat here the statement made in my letter of acceptance, that in my judgment the feeling of uncertainty inseparable from an irredeemable paper currency, with its fluctuation of values, is one of the greatest obstacles to a return to prosperous times. The only safe paper currency is one which rests upon a coin basis and is at all times and promptly ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... menacing; and the two had gone out of the office and lunched together. And the confidential clerk thus chattering his news, declared that his employer was now evidently uneasy; and that from that uneasiness he augured a sudden fluctuation or fall in what had lately seemed the most ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... French colony, was a plot of which Hamilton, Rufus King, then minister to England, and other astute statesmen more than suspected her. But although Hamilton abhorred France and was outraged at her attitude, the spirit of moderation which had regulated all his acts in public life suffered no fluctuation, and he immediately counselled the sending of a commission to make a final attempt before recourse to arms. War, if inevitable, but peace with honour if possible; it was not fair to disturb the prosperity of the young country ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... intelligence of the contemporary inventor that we now have engines capable of turning their shafts three hundred rotations a minute and without a perceptible variation of velocity, whatever the change of load or the suddenness with which it is varied. In the days of Watt a fluctuation of five per cent. in speed was thought wonderfully small; in those of Corliss, the variation was restricted to two per cent. and we wondered at this unanticipated success. To-day, thanks to Porter and Allen, to Hartnell, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... a creature so bereft of all dignity, all steadfastness. The slave of every impulse; blown about by the predominant gale; a scene of eternal fluctuation. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Analysis of Concrete Attentive State. Cross-section of Mental Stream. Focal Object, Clear; Marginal Objects, Dim. Fluctuation. Ease of Concentration Requires (1) Removal of All Marginal Distractions Possible, (2) Ignoring Others. Conditions Favorable for Concentration. Relation ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... were naturally agitating to King Olaf and, in the fluctuation of events there, his purposes and prospects varied much. He sometimes thought of pilgriming to Jerusalem, and a henceforth exclusively religious life; but for most part his pious thoughts themselves gravitated towards Norway, and a stroke for his old place and task there, which he steadily ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... become dissipated and broken." The master pressed both the ladies' hands severely, as if to remind them of their promise, and of the danger which they incurred. The exclamation died away on Lady Forester's tongue without attaining perfect utterance, and the scene in the glass, after the fluctuation of a minute, again resumed to the eye its former appearance of a real scene, existing within the mirror, as if represented in a picture, save that the figures were moveable instead of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the legitimate trader in futures protects himself from price fluctuation is easily understood. While a deal in cash wheat would refer to a definite shipment as shown by warehouse receipts, a deal for future delivery is merely an obligation involving a given quantity of grain at a given time at a given price. Being merely a contract and not an actual shipment, ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse |
