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More "Errant" Quotes from Famous Books



... Richard had determined to go as a Crusader to the rescue of the Holy Land. From his mother, who had herself taken part in the Second Crusade, he had heard many stories of the East,—that land of wonders and marvelous adventures. Richard was by nature a rover, a warrior, a knight-errant. So it seemed to him a most delightful prospect to travel, to see strange lands and peoples, to fight in a holy war; and thus to indulge his own love of adventure and of battle while advancing the glory of God. Nay, to do him justice, Richard was religious too, in the strange fierce fashion ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... side, is an ever-present source of trouble and unhappiness among the Natives. The length to which a jealous Native wife will go in winning back the affections of an errant husband is often extraordinary, though the ways and means she adopts differ but little from those practised by the superstitious and credulous peasantry in Europe less than a hundred ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... glory, what hast thou to yield? How long, deluding phantom, wilt thou blind, Mislead, debase, unhumanize mankind? Bid the bold youth, his headlong sword who draws, Heed not the object, nor inquire the cause; But seek adventuring, like an errant knight, Wars not his own, gratuitous in fight, Greet the gored field, then plunging thro the fire, Mow down his men, with stupid pride expire, Shed from his closing eyes the finish'd flame, And ask, for all his crimes, a deathless name? And when ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... again ride knee to knee in the pomp of squadron line, With head-ropes white as a mountain drift and curb chains all a-shine? Will they dawn no more, those glorious days when the world seemed all our own, Who rode as scouts on an errant quest, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various

... lagged far in the rear, steps in the way, cajoles Shark into listening to his advice, and, with a big stick and a few of the most gorgeous expletives of which he is eminently the master, persuades the errant hound of his mistake. Deep and dire are the maledictions heaved at the unhappy Shark, and in which his companions, Rimu and Toto, Wolf and Katipo, have unjustly to share. For the row occasioned by the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... went abroad for her health—that is, her husband was obliged to place her under restraint. Her malady was pronounced incurable, though her life might be prolonged. The second son, Laurence, had distinguished himself at Oxford, and had become a knight-errant of the Society of Antiquaries. His father said he would traverse a continent to look at one old stone. He was hardly persuaded to relinquish his liberty and choose a wife, when the failure of heirs to Frederick disconcerted the squire's expectations, and, with the proverbial ill-luck ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... They have their own affairs and interests, and if these touch ours it is generally through the desire to inherit what we have. So Elsa went her way alone. From her father she had inherited a remarkable and seldom errant judgment. To her, faces were generally book-covers, they repelled or attracted; and she found large and undiminishing interest in the faculty of pressing back the covers and reading the text. Often battered covers ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... hereditary transmission to explain these things. We know this, however, that, side by side with that law which decrees the transmission of defects as well as excellences, there exists another law which restrains deviations from the normal type, which extinguishes the errant traits, and reestablishes the primitive characters of the organism. The combined and alternate action of these two laws may produce some of the inscrutable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... sense the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who go to France are modern crusaders. Like the valiant men of the Middle Ages who traveled far to fight in strange lands for the ideal that possessed their souls, these twentieth-century knights-errant go to defend the ideals of liberty and right and honor which are the issues of this war and which our Allies have successfully upheld ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... forth as a knight-errant, with few followers, but a great name. Tears came into his eyes as he looked back upon his home, its doors open, its hall deserted, no hawks upon the perches, no horses in the stalls. "My enemies have done this," he said. "God be praised for all ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... valour his profession; and who, if you deprived him of his honour, was like to be deprived of his bread at the same time.—Ha, ha, ha! it reminds one of Don Quixote, who took his neighbour, Samson Carrasco, for a knight-errant." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... chief of the Importants. Amongst the earliest to swell the ranks of that faction were two other personages who had played a very conspicuous part during the reign of Louis XIII. The first of these, Madame de Montbazon's step-daughter, was the witty, beautiful, and errant Duchess de Chevreuse, whom Louis had judged so dangerous that he had expressly forbidden by his will, when on the point of death, that she should ever be recalled from exile to Court. By the same prohibition ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... deposed, the errant one, seen sliding out of the swinging door, and summoned in a loud, clear voice to come back, had flatly disobeyed and had gone upon his ways 'Grinning at me,' said the aggrieved Mr Gregory, 'like a dashed ape.' A most unjust description of the sad, sweet smile ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... these are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth, like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, however, there be no such encounter in store for us; for I utterly forgot ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... Patrick's down went, Like two arrand Deans, two Deans errant I meant; So that Christmas appears at Bellcampe like a Lent, Gives the gamesters of both houses great discontent. Our parsons agree here, as those did at Trent, Dan's forehead has got a most damnable ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... out in the hall telephoning Henrietta. We could hear his cheerful voice: 'No, Pettikins, no! It doesn't ache a bit. What's that? Of course I still do! You are the only woman that ever meant anything to me. What? What's that? Oh, I may have errant fancies now and again, like the best of men—you know yourself how sensitive I am to a certain type of flowerlike beauty—but it never touches my deeper nature. Yes, certainly, I shall be right up the very minute good old Ben ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the King-maker been the statesman-soldier that he has had the credit of being, he never would have fought Edward until he had been joined by Margaret; and he must have known that her non-arrival was owing to contrary winds, he having been himself a naval commander. But he acted like a knight-errant, not like a general, gave battle, and was defeated and slain, "The Last of the Barons." Having triumphed at Barnet, Edward marched to meet Margaret's army, which was led by Somerset, and defeated it on the 4th ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... improved upon knights errant of old," she said slowly. "You seize your guerdon before paying your devoir." She pointed to the chasm, which was about eight feet across at the spot where they were standing. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... Michelet have made the history of France both highly suggestive as regards the development of civilization, and picturesque and dramatic as a narrative, the greatest allowance for brilliant theorizing, political sympathies, and an errant fancy are indispensable in order to attain to a clear view of genuine facts and absolute principles. It has been said that "leading ideas" are fatal to accuracy of statement; and these dominate in the minds of French philosophical annalists; while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... dear, and have brought my heart safe thro' such a continued fire as never poor knight errant was exposed to; waited on at every stage by blooming country girls, full of spirit and coquetry, without any of the village bashfulness of England, and dressed like the shepherdesses of romance. A man of adventure might make a ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... fragrance of a flower will sometimes turn the tide of a day for me and make me square my shoulders and go at my task with renewed vigor; or a casual glimpse of a face in the street turn my attention away from my errand and settle my mind into a brown study. Usually I am alert enough to control these errant reactions, but I am keenly aware of their demands upon my mind, and frequently it is only with conscious effort that I am kept upon my way unswerved by them, though ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... the favorite folk songs sung to the children of a half century ago was "Run Nigger Run, or the Patty Roll Will Get You." Few of the children of today have ever heard this humorous ditty, and would, perhaps, be ignorant of its meaning. To the errant negro youths of slave times, however, this tune had a significant, and sometimes tragic, meaning. The "patty rolls" were guards hired by the plantations to keep the slaves from running away. The following story is told by ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... princes cheered their leisure. Or he was traversing the country in quest of adventure, professedly bent on redressing wrongs and enforcing rights, sometimes in fulfilment of some vow of religion or of love. These wandering knights were called knights-errant; they were welcome guests in the castles of the nobility, for their presence enlivened the dulness of those secluded abodes, and they were received with honor at the abbeys, which often owed the best part of their revenues ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... wolfskin bunda, and with a large astrachan cap on his head drawn down over his eyes. Inside it one could make out nothing but the face. It was a peculiar face, with eyes that looked strangely at you. An errant spirit seemed to dwell in them; they spoke of a mind that had been destined for great, for amazing things. But fate, environment, and neglect had here been too much for destiny, and the man had grown content to be extraordinary in mere trifles, and seemed quite ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... winter quarters on Salmon River. This partisan appeared at the rendezvous without his party, and a sorrowful tale of disasters had he to relate. In hunting the Crow country, he fell in with a village of that tribe; notorious rogues, jockeys, and horse stealers, and errant scamperers of the mountains. These decoyed most of his men to desert, and carry off horses, traps, and accoutrements. When he attempted to retake the deserters, the Crow warriors ruffled up to him and declared the deserters ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess—a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling, penurious officer, would never have dreamed ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... host became tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on his axe he said, "Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the lives of the domestic staff intolerable by insisting upon search for the missing key being made in the most unlikely and inaccessible places, although in his own mind he was convinced that it had been stolen by the errant Japanese. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... his understanding and his heart: his devotion stooped to admire and imitate the begging friars of Francis and Dominic: he pursued with blind and cruel zeal the enemies of the faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his throne to seek the adventures of a spiritual knight-errant. A monkish historian would have been content to applaud the most despicable part of his character; but the noble and gallant Joinville, [94] who shared the friendship and captivity of Louis, has traced with the pencil of nature the free portrait of his virtues as well ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... of a compound noun, whether it precedes or follows the descriptive part, is in most cases the noun that changes in forming the plural; as, mothers-in-law, knights-errant, mouse-traps. In a few compound words, both parts take a plural form; as, man-servant, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... period of strain. She assumed an attitude of very haughty contempt toward the errant pair, devoted herself to Wiggins, and let them coldly alone. From this attitude Wiggins was the chief sufferer: the Terror had the princess and the princess had the Terror; Erebus enjoyed her display of haughty contempt, but Wiggins ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker,—not the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... I in my tale? And if this present errant discourse be forgiven, surely I will not transgress again, but drive my team straight to the furrow's end and then back again, like an honest ploughman that has his eye ever upon the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... comes floating with the errant breeze, with the rustle and glimmer abroad in the April sky. It sings of the first ache of youth in the world, when the first flower broke from the bud, and love went forth seeking that which it knew not, leaving ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... You accept Maurice and Jean as your knights-errant? I am delighted with the arrangement, and I hope that Mlle. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... pictures. All the women lose their heads over him. He always spends something like a hundred thousand francs a year, and no creature can discover that he has an acre of land or a single dividend warrant. The typical knight errant of our salons, our boudoirs, our boulevards, an amphibian half-way between a man and a woman—Maxime de Trailles is a singular being, fit for anything, and good for nothing, quite as capable of perpetrating a benefit as of planning a crime; sometimes base, sometimes noble, ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... That's well; You improve apace;—two changes in an instant, 490 And you are old in the World's ways already. But bear with me: indeed you'll find me useful Upon your pilgrimage. But come, pronounce Where shall we now be errant? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... from which my future life was to be reckoned. I was dressed and sent out to conquer, with a heart beating like that of an old knight-errant at his first sally. Scholars have told me of a Spartan matron, who, when she armed her son for battle, bade him bring back his shield, or be brought upon it. My venerable parent dismissed me to a field, in her opinion of equal glory, with a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... sloping fields of green painted with daisies, through which, unshackled, the buoyant breeze swept so peacefully. It was an invariable rule, in those days, to troop through the meadows at early morn and, like a young knight-errant, bear home in triumph "Marguerite," the peerless daisy, rescued from the clutches of unmentionable dragons, and now to beam brightly on us for the rest of the day from a neighboring mantel-piece. And it was with great reluctance that we refrained from decapitating the whole ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... Elect, as they are called, made miserable, and the Non-elect, happy. I think we may challenge the whole World, to shew on this mad Principle the contrary; and why, as well as any thing else, such an Economy may not be resolved into Sovereign Pleasure. If God to Isaac conveyed such errant Falshoods, by the Instrumentality of Jacob's Mouth, Why not make the same deceitful Use of the Bible, or even of his own immediate Word, in regard to the Elect? If God, as Mr. Gill (I think) observes, has two Wills, "One ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... roof. 'It is an ill wind,' says the proverb, 'that blows nobody good;' and it is a clear case, my very kind hostess, that at this moment we are mutually ignorant of each other. I assure you, then, madam, that I am not a knight-errant travelling in disguise and in quest of adventure, but a plain gentleman, by name Woodward, step-son to a neighbor of yours, Mr. Lindsay, of Rathfillan House. I need scarcely say that I am Mrs. Lindsay's ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems Apples of Hesperides Azure and Gold Petals Venetian Glass Fatigue A Japanese Wood-Carving A Little Song Behind a Wall A Winter Ride A Coloured Print by Shokei Song The Fool Errant The Green Bowl Hora Stellatrix Fragment Loon Point Summer "To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New" The Way Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} Roads Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H. The Road to Avignon New York at ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... be called unworthy, no matter how it manifested itself—nothing less than the reinstatement before the world of the family her mother had disgraced, the once-proud Kildares of Storm. She was going forth to do battle alone for the tarnished honor of her name, a gallant little knight-errant, tight-lipped and heavy-hearted, and far more afraid than she ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... knight errant ye wit not of. But the tournament's not over yet, and this time I've got the rabbit: he ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young

... responsible for the unusual mental ability of certain Delcasars. Dona Ameliana, a beautiful but somewhat unruly girl, went into a convent in Durango, Mexico, at the age of fifteen. At the age of eighteen she eloped with a French priest named Raubien, who was a man of unusual intellect and a poet. The errant couple came to New Mexico and took up lands. They were excommunicated, of course, and both of them were buried in unconsecrated ground; but despite their spiritual handicaps they raised a family of eleven comely daughters, all of whom married well, several of them into ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... in payment for it, yearly ye shall receive of Sir Ontzlake a palfrey; for that will befit you better to ride than the knightly war-horse. And look ye well to it, on pain of death, that ye lie no more in wait for errant knights, but amend your life and live peaceably ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... few besides Americans can say; and when it can be said truly, in parts of the country where the arts of life have spread, and amid the blessings of civilization, it becomes the foundation of a sentiment so profound, that I do not wonder those adventurers-errant who are flying about the face of the country, thrusting their hands into every man's mess, have not been able to find it among their other superficial discoveries. Nothing can be less like the ordinary cravings of avarice than the feeling that is thus engendered; and I am certain ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... man manliest;—not puny resolve, not crude determination, not errant purpose, but that strong and indefatigable will which treads down difficulties and danger as a boy treads down the heaving frost-lands of winter,—which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the unattainable. Will makes men giants. It made Napoleon an emperor ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... you know what you're doing, you're starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I felt that I was with her in ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... a dream-dazzled youth, striving like a knight-errant for the love of a lady and the glory of conquest, but he was also a born fighter, and in every emergency he had shown himself as able as his ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... am like the bold knight-errant, From his castle who would roam, Trusting her, my faithful steward, For a strict account of home; And each day I toil, and hazard All that any man may dare, For a resting-place at even, And the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... thought— Into an emptiness you know not of— A night profounder that it late has held Marsh-lights of promise. My last altar lies Smoking in ruins; and I stand alone Of all the universe. But my Will be done! My errant tortured Will, my bitter Will, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... of energy, bravery and aptitude for his profession, had fought his way to military rank and honour. After seeing much service on the continent, and passing through as many adventures as a knight-errant of old, he was transferred to British North America. His gallant services in this country are imperfectly recorded in various accounts of the War of 1812, and in Tupper's "Life of Brock." Every Canadian ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... stopped at Mrs. Morpher's to inquire after his errant pupil that night, he found Aristides in bed, smelling strongly of soap and water, and sinking into a feverish sleep. As he muttered from time to time some incoherent sentence, tossing restlessly in his cot, the master ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man of German build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car. They gazed with wide, horrified eyes, and turned without a word to meet Patty as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit-case. A glance told her that they had seen, and dropping on the top step, she leaned her head against the ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... and pressing his horse close beside the opposite fence, he passed them with gravely uplifted hat and a serious, preoccupied air. But in that single, seemingly conventional glance, Mr. Hamlin had seen that they were both pretty, and that one had the short upper lip of his errant little guide. A hundred yards farther on he halted, as if irresolutely, gazed doubtfully ahead of him, and then turned back. An expression of innocent—almost childlike—concern was clouding the rascal's face. It was well, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... bargain, leap in the dark, leap of faith, fool's paradise; too many eggs in one basket. desperado, rashling[obs3], madcap, daredevil, Hotspur, fire eater, bully, bravo, Hector, scapegrace, enfant perdu[Fr]; Don Quixote, knight- errant, Icarus; adventurer; gambler, gamester; dynamitard[obs3]; boomer [obs3][U. S.]. V. be rash &c. adj.; stick at nothing, play a desperate game; run into danger &c. 665; play with fire, play with edge tools. carry too much sail, sail too near the wind, ride at single anchor, go out of one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... reading it that, in Mr. Froude's words, the rough simplicity is gone, and has been replaced by a tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish. "Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious fairyland where the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair ladies and love-matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the soul and sin." With the acknowledged shortcomings of ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... done for an honorary member of the club of fat people recorded in the Spectator; and we looked, with disdain on the level territory on the banks of the Usk, and longed for hills to climb, and walls to get over, and rocks to overcome, like knights-errant in search of adventures. No walk was too great for us. We thought of challenging Captain Barclay to a match against time, or of travelling through England as the Pedestrian Wonders. Walker, the twopenny ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... arrival in Boston, our errant knight, before setting out upon his quest for the Fame and Fortune to whose service he was sworn, spent some hours in wandering about the old town, with mind open to the quickening influences of historic association and eye to the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... sleepy, shady street he had never been down before. Halfway along it was an open-air eating place of some kind, with tables placed about under the trees. There seemed to be no customers at the moment but he stopped, anyway, to take a closer look for errant guards. ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin

... you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... glorious in the crimson and amber sky. Below, a point of silver light quivered, reflected in the crimson and amber waters of the "lick." The fire-flies were flickering among the ferns; he saw about him their errant gleam. The shadowy herds trooped down ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... blockheads in the common road. Do but survey this crowded house to-night:— Here's still encouragement for those that write. 30 Our author, to divert his friends to-day, Stocks with variety of fools his play; And that there may be something gay and new, Two ladies-errant has exposed to view: The first a damsel, travelled in romance; The t'other more refined; she comes from France: Rescue, like courteous knights, the nymph from danger; And kindly treat, like well-bred ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... Francisco Pizarro, and the small remains of the colony left by Ojeda at St. Sebastian. He heard the story of their misfortunes and the departure of their commander, but nothing daunted, the worthy gentleman of the robe assumed the courageous bearing of a knight errant, and determined to pursue the adventures on which he had embarked. Having heard of a great sepulchre not far in the interior, where the natives were said to be buried with all their ornaments of gold, he determined at once ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... come an errant knight On a barbed charger clothed in mail: His archers scatter iron hail. At brow and breast his mace he aims; Who therefore hath not arms of proof, Let him live locked by door and roof; Until Dame Summer on a day That ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... nations of the world, and that precisely the fear of losing their trade and markets has been, as they constantly assert, a chief cause that has driven them to war, they speak as though Germany were a kind of knight-errant, innocent of all material ambitions, wandering through the world in the pure, disinterested service of God and man. On the other hand, because England is a great commercial Power, they suppose that ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... smiled:—'Since to your home A destined errant-knight I come, Announced by prophet sooth and old, Doomed, doubtless, for achievement bold, I 'll lightly front each high emprise For one kind glance of those bright eyes. Permit me first the task to guide Your fairy frigate o'er the tide.' The maid, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Mr Tapley; a hasty interchange of farewells, and of something else which the proverb says must not be told of afterwards; a white hand held out to Mr Tapley himself, which he kissed with the devotion of a knight-errant; more farewells, more something else's; a parting word from Martin that he would write from London and would do great things there yet (Heaven knows what, but he quite believed it); and Mark and he stood on the outside of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... very errant rogue, sir, and a cheater, Employ'd here by another conjurer That does not love the doctor, and would cross him, If ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed—that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of Harvard in his day and the rather pedantic spirit with which classical studies were there pursued. Moreover, he had brought from Europe a new manner, full of the affections of ardent youth, and this he wore without ease in a society highly satisfied with itself; the young knight-errant was therefore subjected to considerable ridicule. A little volume of poetry, translations and original pieces, published in 1823 gave its author no fame. As time passed, and custom created familiarity, his style, personal and literary, was seen to be the outward symbol of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... we almost held it, The love we so desired; But our shut eyes saw not, and fate dispelled it Before our pulses fired To flame, and errant fortune bade us stand Hand almost ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... are detected to practice it are held most vile and infamous, as being plainly the most pernicious and perilous instruments of injustice, the most desperate enemies of all men's right and safety that can be. But also out of the court there are many knights-errant of the poet, whose business it is to run about scattering false reports; sometimes loudly proclaiming them in open companies, sometimes closely whispering them in dark corners; thus infecting conversation with their poisonous breath: these ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... bound for the leave boat, just before Christmas, the Knight-Errant, who also was returning to the front, re-wrote the well-known hymn of Phillips Brooks for me, to make the time pass. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... principal word, rather than in the adjunct; but where the terms differ little in importance, the genius of the language obviously inclines to a variation of the last only. Thus we write fathers-in-law, sons-in-law, knights-errant, courts-martial, cousins-german, hangers-on, comings-in, goings-out, goings-forth, varying the first; and manhaters, manstealers, manslayers, maneaters, mandrills, handfuls, spoonfuls, mouthfuls, pailfuls, outpourings, ingatherings, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... their cards with fleurs de lis, their royal emblem. The Spanish kings, in conformity to the martial spirit of the times when cards were introduced, were all mounted on horseback, as befitted generals and commanders-in-chief; but their next in command (among the cards) was el caballo, the knight-errant on horseback—for the old Spanish cards had no queens; and the third in order was the soto, or attendant, that is, the esquire, or armour-bearer of the knight—all which was exactly conformable to those ideas of chivalry which ruled the age. It ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... Scudery, or any other Writer of Romance, had introduced a Necromancer, who is generally in the Train of a Knight-Errant, making a Present to two Lovers of a Couple of those above-mentioned Needles, the Reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them corresponding with one another when they were guarded by Spies and Watches, or separated ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... a heap of dried leaves, laid his cloak upon them, and picked up Isoult to lay her upon the cloak. His arms about her woke her up. Scarce knowing what she did, dreaming possibly of her mother, she put up her face towards his; but if Prosper noticed it, no errant mercy from him sent her to bed comforted. He put her down, covered her about with the cloak, and patted her shoulder with an easy—"Good-night, my lass." This was cold cheer to the poor girl, who had to be content with his ministry of the cloak. It was too ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... a loss what to think, when, Hippolito coming into the Room to give the Lady an Account of his Errant, was no less astonished to find she was departed, and had left Two Old Signiors in her stead. He knew Don Fabio's Face, for Aurelian had shewn him his Father at the Tilting; but being confident he was not known to him, he ventur'd to ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve

... the child's heart, fresh from God, see and feel more clearly and more justly than we do. For this much is sure—Jeanette was right in keeping to the end the image of Colonel Martin Culpepper as a knight-errant, who needed only a bespangled steed, a little less avoirdupois, and a foolish cause to set him battling in the tourney. As it was, in this humdrum world, the colonel could do nothing more heroic than come rattling down Main Street into the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... transactions of life. Thus in the Golden Age, there was something very comical in human creatures eating acorns, like pigs. The Augustan Age was comical enough, if we may trust some of Horace's satires. Much comicality was displayed in the Middle Ages, in the proceedings of the knights errant, the doings in Palestine, and the mode adopted by the priests of inculcating religion on the minds of the people. In the Elizabethan Age several comic incidents occurred at court; particularly when any of the courtiers were guilty of personal impertinence to their virgin ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... reproach. It expressed the pain Mademoiselle Pictet had felt at his unceremonious departure, and his own affliction at the ingratitude of one to whom he had never refused a request. Finally, as the trustee of his estate till his majority, the guardian assures the errant youth that he will aid him with pecuniary resources as far as possible, without infringing upon the capital, and within the sworn obligation of his trust. Letters of recommendation to distinguished Americans were also forwarded, and in these it is found, to ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... invention." Scoffers will not be slow to find in Volapk and the White Knight's inventions a common characteristic—their fantasticness. Perhaps there really is some analogy in the fact that both inventors had to mount their hobby-horses and ride errant through sundry lands, thrusting their creations on an unwilling world. But the particular kind of white night of which Volapk was born is the nuit blanche, literally "white night," but ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... I would have you make is against forty cowards and scoundrels who are sucking the very life out of the country—the forty who represent the high council of the magnates. Let it be a personal fight, a tourney; you the Knights Errant ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... organism man builds for his own habitation? The idea of knighthood still stirs us and the deeds of chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social Knights of the Round Table, Crusaders and knights errant, the quest of the Holy Grail, rescue and adventure, the fighting with paynims and powers of evil, still stir our blood and arouse in our minds strange contrasts and antinomies. Princes and fair chatelaines in their wide domains with castle and chase and delicate pleasaunce, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... helps many people under similar circumstances. It did not occur to him to toss up, nor was he aware of the value of turning round three times with his eyes closed and then marching straight before him. Had he been an errant knight, of course his horse would have settled the question; but as it was, he was not a knight and had not a horse. He had a dog, though. He had found Julius in possession of the caretaker at his guardian's house, and had begged her to let him ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... red head lovingly as it leant against the motherly bosom upon which had so often rested errant ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... checks the fiery soul of James? Why sits that champion of the dames Inactive on his steed, And sees between him and his land, Between him and Tweed's southern strand, His host Lord Surrey lead? What 'vails the vain knight-errant's brand? O, Douglas, for thy leading wand! Fierce Randolph, for thy speed! O for one hour of Wallace wight, Or well-skilled Bruce, to rule the fight, And cry 'Saint Andrew and our right!' Another sight had seen that morn, From Fate's ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... you Americans are a wonderful people. You seek adventures with as much gusto as a knight-errant of the olden times. If I had a dozen such as you two under my charge, I'd soon free this neighborhood ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... listened, meditated, and replied, in general terms, that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his attention fixed on them. [224] Whatever his purpose had been, it is not likely that he would have chosen a rash and vainglorious knight errant for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common except personal courage, which rose in both to the height of fabulous heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the excitement of conflict, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant; the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. The possibilities of attack added to the keenness of the experience. We started at one o'clock. A company of the Dublin Fusiliers formed the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... thankfully. All the surgeon's serene confidence in himself returned in these emergencies, and he was doing invaluable work. People were grateful, but the man's ways and looks were so strange, his restlessness so tragic, that they dubbed him "le Juif Errant." ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... touch of cynicism. Conjecture as to its meaning was not difficult, but, in the utter absence of information, certainty there could be none. Under any circumstances, it was to be expected that Rhoda would think and speak of Mrs. Widdowson no less severely than of the errant Bella Royston. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... he was wrong, though six years were to pass before they met: the mystic, Israel Kensky, Cherry Bim the modern knight-errant, ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... morning dresses. After seeing for a long time little but rusticity, their lively manner, and gay inviting appearance, pleased me so much, that I thought, for the moment, I could have been a knight-errant for them. [Footnote: On reflection, at the distance of several years, I wonder that my venerable fellow-traveller should have read this ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... when the Spaniards organized a cavalcade of the Quixote, he undertook to represent the knight Pentapolin—"him of the rolled-up sleeves,"—and in the Corso there were applause and cries of admiration for the huge biceps that the knight-errant, erect on his horse, revealed. When the spring nights came, the artists marched in a procession across the city to the Jewish quarter to buy the first artichokes—the popular dish in Rome, in the preparation of which an old ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... bride, the lovely Princess Sabra, in his castle near Coventry, soon levied a powerful army; and, setting sail, no longer as a knight-errant, but as a renowned general, he arrived with his forces on the coast of Portugal, where he was joined by the other six Champions, who each brought troops in proportion to the size of his country. So enchanted were the Portuguese with ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... knights-errant slept, they never set out on their journey on the morrow without first hearing Mass; and if they had been riding all night and came to a chapel in the morning they "avoided their horses and heard Mass." There are many allusions to devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and on one occasion a tournament ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... plight, whistles and shouts for his people, and imprecations on their tardiness, until Stephen was near enough to show that the hawk had been recovered, and then he joyfully called out, "Ha! hast thou got her? Why, flat-caps as ye are, ye put all my fellows to shame! How now, thou errant bird, dost know thy master, or take him for a mud wall? Kite that thou art, to have led me such a dance! And what's your name, my brave lads? Ye must have been bred ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... have you go forth as a knight-errant, Micah,' said Reuben, laughing. 'You might chance to get your own skin beaten and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... smiled: "Since to your home A destined errant-knight I come, 475 Announced by prophet sooth and old, Doomed, doubtless, for achievement bold, I'll lightly front each high emprise, For one kind glance of those bright eyes. Permit me, first, the task to guide 480 Your fairy frigate o'er the tide." The maid with ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... happily, not loud enough to interfere with the easy flow of conversation all over the room. The second flutist, while looking over his shoulder angrily at the garrulous audience, executed a false note, which almost threw the first (and only) violinist into fits. In turning round to rebuke the errant performer, the violinist struck his elbow against a similar projection of the other flutist, and knocked a false note out of that gentleman too, besides momentarily ruffling his temper. This little episode diffused unhappiness over the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... a raw wound in his ear. A piece of tile, splintered by an errant bullet, had pierced it, he said, as the Germans drove him before them. Another man told us his father—and the father must have been an old man, for the speaker himself was in his fifties—had been shot through the thigh. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... dear Octavio, you left me pursuing, like a knight-errant, a beauty enchanted within some invisible tree, or castle, or lake, or any thing inaccessible, or rather wandering in a dream after some glorious disappearing phantom: and for some time indeed I knew not whether I slept or waked. I saw daily the good old Count ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... a woman of strong character and, after the shock of hearing the report of her husband's death, took up her duties with composure, though the lines in her face seemed deeper, and Rodney saw that an errant lock of her hair, which he had always thought a part of the attractiveness of her fair face, was now quite gray, and, as she pushed it aside, a familiar way she had, he noticed how thin and white her hand was and saw that ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... spirits that forces to rapid and continuous expression, has ever been suspect of the English mind. He was "highly caressed in France." To Evelyn Sir Kenelm was a "teller of strange things," and again the Diarist called him "an errant mountebank"—though Evelyn sought his society, and was grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met him at Calais, at the Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred.... That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... they came whooping and dancing round the corner with such rejoicing cruelty as only boys or uncivilised men can feel. The little girl was sobbing, half in distress, and half because of the haste she had made, and Master Richard's juvenile soul burnt within him at the sight like that of a knight-errant. He had read a great deal about knights-errant for the time which had been as yet allowed him for the pursuit of literature, and he was by nature a boy of much fire and gentleness, and a very sympathetic imagination. So the big heart in the small body swelled with pity ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... crest of the hill, a solitary, lonely figure outlined darkly against the clear blue background of sky and distance. He gazed unseeingly into space; thought and movement alike were suspended. He was only conscious of pain. He knew all was ended. Thus his errant forbear from the north may have stood five hundred years ago, leaning upon his lance, a sword in his ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... will I cause thee to wit who be all my friends. This on my left hand is Master Hugh Calverley, Mistress Maude (for thou art now of good degree, and must be spoken unto belike); he is mine especial friend, and a very knight-errant in succour of all unceli [distressed, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... never before held a command or seen much service, when he set out on that series of extraordinary campaigns which came so near replacing the Austrian house in possession of Spain and the Indies. Peterborough has been called the last of the knights-errant; but, in fact, no book on knight-errantry contains anything half so wonderful as his deeds in the country of Don Quixote. Sir Eyre Coote, who had so boldly supported that bold policy which led to the victory of Plassey, nearly a quarter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... to prevent Warwick's invasion, and rated King Edward sharply for his supineness in not preparing suitably against so formidable a foe. The gay and reckless presumption of Edward, worthier of a knight-errant than a monarch, laughed at the word invasion. "Pest on Burgundy's ships! I only wish that the earl would land!" [Com, iii. c. 5] he said to his council. None echoed the wish! But later in the day came a third ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... you doing with my father? Where you going to take him to? Let him alone, I say. Let him alone!" Her voice rang out shrilly, as she came forward, trembling with anger, and her knight-errant looked up at her in a daze of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The Chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau

... energy, but the heart plays often a bigger part than the head in an estimate of a fellow-creature, and Darsie's heart had a way of making excuses for the handsome truant, who smiled with such beguiling eyes, had such a pretty knack of compliment, and was—generally!—ready to play knight-errant in her service. She felt herself lucky in possessing so charming a friend to act the part of gallant, and to be at her service when she chose to call. And then quite suddenly she drew a sharp breath and said aloud in a trembling ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... of which not a stick or a stone that one looks at is one's own, and whence one may be evicted or evade, with a week's notice or a week's rent, any day—this sort of life is natural and even delightful to some people. There are those who, like strawberry plants, are of such an errant disposition, that grow them where you will, they will soon absorb all the pleasantness of their habitat, and begin casting out runners elsewhere; may, if not frequently transplanted, would actually wither and die. Of such are the pioneers of society—the emigrants, the tourists, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... Orion (Or, it may be, Charles his Wain) Tempts the tiny elves to try on All their little tricks again; When the earth is calmly breathing Draughts of slumber undefiled, And the sire, unused to teething, Seeks for errant pins his child; ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... instant the errant antonym evidently flashed upon her mental vision and her pencil hastened to record it and then flew on at ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... poor candle, it was touching and beautiful to see these boys—the tender patience of the elder lending itself to every whim of the younger—now building houses with cards—now telling stories of fairy and knight-errant—the sprightliest he could remember or invent. At length, as all was over, and Sidney was undressing for the night, Philip, standing apart, said to him, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... alarm and uncertainty is their knack of submerging earlier and less dramatic passages in the lives of those whom Fate drags into their sweeping currents. Lest, therefore, the strangely contrived meeting between Sylvia and her knight errant should be neglected by the chronicler, it is well to return to those two young people at the moment when Sylvia was declaring her unimpaired power of standing ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... for the leave boat, just before Christmas, the Knight-Errant, who also was returning to the front, re-wrote the well-known hymn of Phillips Brooks for me, to make the time pass. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... Salmon House he enlisted the stalworth Paddy Moran, with the information conveyed to that surprised reveller, that he was to sleep at 'Mrs. Nutter's house' that night; and so, at a brisk pace, the clerical knight, his squire, and demoiselle-errant, proceeded to the Mills. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... manifesto." He strongly condemned the agreement made in 1859 between Napoleon III and Piedmont, because he foresaw its inevitable consequences. Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour were a trio who largely influenced their country's destiny. Garibaldi has been called the knight-errant; Mazzini, the prophet of Italian unity; and Cavour was the hub which formed the centre of the wheel ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Kingbirds are the knights-errant of the feathered tribes. They never attack another bird unless it is three times their own size; but when a few years older, the boy Hawthorne would probably have noticed that the kingbirds' powers of flight are so superior that all other birds ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... very ordinary creature, and is only remembered as the instrument chosen by chance to inspire 'Epipsychidion'. Finally there appeared, in January 1822, the truest-hearted and the most lovable of all Shelley's friends. Edward John Trelawny, a cadet of a Cornish family, "with his knight-errant aspect, dark, handsome, and moustachioed," was the true buccaneer of romance, but of honest English grain, and without a trace of pose. The devotion with which, though he only knew Shelley for a few months, he fed in memory on their friendship ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... lacrymas arcere paratae. Ergo non Lycidam jam lamentantur agrestes. Divus eris ripae, puer, hoc ex tempore nobis, Grande, nec immerito, veniens in munus; opemque Poscent usque tuam, dubiis quot in aestubus errant. Haec incultus aquis puer ilicibusque canebat; Processit dum mane silens talaribus albis. Multa manu teneris discrimina tentat avenis, Dorica non studio modulatus carmina segni: Et jam sol abiens ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... dimness of early morning when errant bats flitted home to cling to the ridge-pole, squeaking and fussy flutterings denoted unwonted disturbance. Daylight revealed a half concealed, sleeping snake, which seemed to be afflicted with twin tumours. A long stick dislodged the intruder, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... infirm understanding, he is stated, by his veracious historian, Cid Hamet Benengeli, to have exchanged fields and farms for folios and quartos of chivalry. In this species of exploit, the good knight-errant has been imitated by lords, knights, and squires of our own day, though we have not yet heard of any that has mistaken an inn for a castle, or laid his lance in rest against a windmill. Mr. Oldbuck did not follow these ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... with a little satisfied sigh as she selected an ortolan, "is a very satisfactory place to be carried off to. And you," she added, leaning across the table and touching his fingers for a moment tenderly, "are a very delightful knight-errant." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the owner of the name, turning his rather errant steps in the direction of the summons; "are you people still there? Must have heard everything cows got to say by this time. If you haven't, no use waiting. After all, it's a Russian legend, and Russian Chrismush Eve not due for 'nother fortnight. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... in some inexplicable manner, Goldsmith, the pilgrim of improvidence and knight errant from the Order of Chivalrous Carelessness, still pursued his medical studies, and carried this training for the vocation of a doctor to some kind of completion. Italy is supposed to have conferred his diploma as a physician upon Goldsmith, and either ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland

... the female side, is an ever-present source of trouble and unhappiness among the Natives. The length to which a jealous Native wife will go in winning back the affections of an errant husband is often extraordinary, though the ways and means she adopts differ but little from those practised by the superstitious and credulous peasantry in Europe less than ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... seem to wonder and ask yourselves who is this modern Quixote. What mean this costume of by-gone centuries—this golden chariot—these richly caparisoned steeds? What is the name and purpose of this curious knight-errant? Gentlemen, I will condescend to answer your queries. I am Monsieur Mangin, the great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan—a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. You, gentlemen, created that necessity! ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... quite surprised that Winn had been so nice to her, particularly as he hadn't appeared at all a friendly kind of person; but she became more and more convinced that Winn was a knight errant in disguise and had been sent by heaven to ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... friend—Brynhild Ingmar. That problem must be met before I could take my way. I thought much of what might be said at parting. True, she had the deepest attraction for me, but true also that I now beheld a quest stretching out into the unknown which I must accept in the spirit of the knight errant. Dare I then bind my heart to any allegiance which would pledge me to a future inconsistent with what lay before me? How could I tell what she might think of the things which to me were now real and external—the revelation of the only reality that underlies ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... Prince Zerbino all the arms unites, And hangs like a fair trophy, on a pine. And, to preserve them safe from errant knights, Natives or foreigners, in one short line Upon the sapling's verdant surface writes, ORLANDO'S ARMS, KING CHARLES'S PALADINE. As he would say, "Let none this harness move, Who cannot with its lord ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... Charles Dickens The Angel's Story Echoes A False Genius My Picture Judge Not Friend Sorrow One by One True Honours A Woman's Question The Three Rulers A Dead Past A Doubting Heart A Student A Knight Errant Linger, oh, gentle Time Homeward Bound Life and Death Now Cleansing Fires The Voice of the Wind Treasures Shining Stars Waiting The Cradle Song of the Poor Be strong God's Gifts A Tomb in Ghent The Angel of Death A Dream The Present Changes Strive, Wait, and Pray ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... a sharp angle over the water, and the branches were so far up that it was necessary to climb out a short distance in order to reach them. Mr. Opp's soul was undoubtedly that of a knight-errant, but his body, alas! was not. When he found himself astride the slender, swaying trunk, with the bank dropping sharply to the river flowing dizzily beneath him, he went suddenly and unexpectedly blind. Between admiration for himself for ever having gotten there, and ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... people think of our antiknights-errant, who are ever in pursuit of adventures to reduce innocent virgins to distress, and to rob virtuous women of their honour; who regard beauty, youth, rank, nay virtue itself, as so many incentives, which inflame their desires, and render their efforts more eager; and who, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... De Valette to himself, when a full examination had satisfied him,—"an errant fool; 'tis strange, that one image must be forever in my mind; that I should tremble at the very sound of a bridal, lest, perchance, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... I mistake the clustered curls Upon his hated hyacinthine head? Have they not wiled from me the fickle heart Of perjured BANDOLINA! There, he stands Before my window, where a winsome form, Rotating slow with measured self-display, Has caught his errant eye. Now, demi-siren, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various

... under your roof. 'It is an ill wind,' says the proverb, 'that blows nobody good;' and it is a clear case, my very kind hostess, that at this moment we are mutually ignorant of each other. I assure you, then, madam, that I am not a knight-errant travelling in disguise and in quest of adventure, but a plain gentleman, by name Woodward, step-son to a neighbor of yours, Mr. Lindsay, of Rathfillan House. I need scarcely say that I am Mrs. Lindsay's son by her first husband. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... permanent question in the politics of the times. But the expenditure of enormous energies upon things of secondary and of even tertiary importance, to the neglect of others of prime and lasting interest, is supremely human. He was errant where all men go astray. But the schoolmaster of the nation was abroad, and was training this young man for the work he was born to do. These six months were, therefore, not wasted, for in the university of experience he did ever prove himself an apt scholar. One lesson he had ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... pleasant humor was always kept under the sway of a sweet spirit of candor and benevolence, and who has presented faithfully all the good points and services of his subject—Sparks's American Biography, Vol. VI. But the knight errant who has just centered the lists, brandishing his spear against all who have uttered a lisp against Cotton Mather, goes out of his way to strike at Doctor Peabody. He inserts, at the foot of one of his pages, this sneering Note: ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... slender, errant figure in the garden. Yes, she had taken it calmly,—more calmly than he could have hoped. How beautiful was the poise, even at this distance, of the delicate throat, and the head, with its wide crown of inky hair! Each motion of the slow-strolling ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... parve puer, cornu nunc suscipe cantum. Per segetes errant pecudes, per pascua vacc. Ah, ubi nunc ovium custos tam parvulus absit? En, gregis ...
— Chenodia - The Classic Mother Goose • Jacob Bigelow

... occasion had paraded her intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess—a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling, penurious officer, would never have dreamed of such ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Indian; it was hard for her to make admissions about her husband. But then—we were like two errant school-girls, who had been caught m an escapade! "I don't know what I'm going to do about him," she said, with a wry smile. "He really won't listen—I can't make any ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... solve readily with the sweet milk of the breasts of the mother of many children? Has it too the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? Does it look with the same love on the last-born and on those hardening toward stature, and on the errant, and on those who disdain all strength of assault outside ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... first I must explain that I am no knight-errant. I am an almost penniless adventurer, and for urgent reasons of my own I seek to win fortune. Therefore, when the woman yonder," and he pointed to Soa, who was sitting watching them just out of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... door, George Patterson must claim a line Among the men of auld lang syne; A man of very ancient fame, Who in old '27 came. One of the first firm doth remain, He is our worthy Chamberlain, Who ne'er in life's farce cut a dash On other people's errant cash; Who guards, as it is right well known, Better than e'er he did his own, The people's money, firm and sure, To the last cent, safe and secure. And opposite across the street, A friend or foe could always meet A man deserving hero's title, ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... dreadful antagonist. Like the Sleeping Beauty, this strange Problem lay in the midst of an enchanted land guarded by the wizard Aridity and those wonderful water-gods Erosion and Corrasion, waiting for the knight-errant brave, who should break the spell and vanquish the demon in his lair. No ordinary man was equal to this difficult task, which demanded not alone courage of the highest order, but combined with this courage a master-mind and the strategic ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... fed physically now by ear and eye, by large matter-of-fact experience, as he journeys from university to university; yet still, less as a teacher than a courtier, a citizen of the world, a knight-errant of intellectual light. The philosophic need to try all things had given reasonable justification to the stirring desire for travel common to youth, in which, if in nothing else, that whole age of the [242] later Renaissance was invincibly young. The theoretic recognition of that mobile spirit of ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater

... no more brush or chopping I set Pop to laying stone wall and said I would employ him steadily for a year. But that was a mistake. Old Pop was a free lance, a knight errant. Anything that savored of permanency smelled to him of vassalage. He laid a rod of stone wall—solid wall that will be there for Gabriel to stand on when he plays his last trump—blows it, I mean—in that neighborhood. But then he collected, one evening, and vanished, and I did not ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... of his school which attracted most attention, perhaps, was his scheme for the teacher's receiving punishment, in certain circumstances, at the hands of an offending pupil, whereby the sense of shame might be quickened in the mind of the errant child. The school was denounced in the press, was not pecuniarily successful, and in 1839 was given up, although Alcott had won the affection of his pupils, and his educational experiments had challenged the attention of students of pedagogy. The school is perhaps best described in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... while Molly suddenly whirled down the street and pounced on the errant collie. Seeing this, Constable McSherry turned to continue ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... barn was larger than the house, but at the present time Judith's little blue car and an old red cow were its sole inhabitants. The hay loft, which was designed to hold many tons of hay, was empty. Sometimes an errant hen would find her way up there and start a nest in vain hopes of being allowed to lay her quota and begin the business of hatching her own offspring in her own way, but Judith would rout her out and force her to comply to community housekeeping ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... page of the paper the names in a brief item arrested his errant glance. It disclosed that Mr. Percival Bines had left New York the day before with a party of guests on his special car, to shoot quail in North Carolina. Mr. Milbrey glanced at the two shells of the orange which ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... into such blasphemous imaginations. Fool as I have been, and fool as I have declared myself upon the forefront of this very book, I have never said in my heart, THERE IS NO GOD; but much and loudly have maintained the affirmative. And although I have been sadly, wickedly, detestably errant from His way, there is one divine precept which I have never failed to keep, and that is, LOVE ONE ANOTHER. All other affections, additions, accidents, accessories of men, however, from the lowest, which is Money, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... a moment on this matter. I do not believe that Raymond had ever thought, in seriousness, of any such gift. It must have been at best an errant fancy, and if concerned with commemorating anybody concerned with commemorating himself. But I will say this for him: he never was disposed to try getting things out of people, for he hated attempts at trickery almost as much ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... strain. She assumed an attitude of very haughty contempt toward the errant pair, devoted herself to Wiggins, and let them coldly alone. From this attitude Wiggins was the chief sufferer: the Terror had the princess and the princess had the Terror; Erebus enjoyed her display of haughty contempt, but Wiggins missed ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... of Emile a knight-errant, a redresser of wrongs, a paladin? Shall he thrust himself into public life, play the sage and the defender of the laws before the great, before the magistrates, before the king? Shall he lay petitions before the judges ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... terribly conventional, so cut and dried, and matter of fact, and safe, I might fall really and truly in love with you. But—Oh, I don't know! Here I am, twenty-three. And I suppose I'm a little fool and have never grown up. I like to read stories about knights errant, and burglars, and fair ladies, and pirates, and mysterious dark oriental-looking men. And I like to go to places where everybody don't go—only Dad won't let me and—— Why just think!" she exclaimed in sudden wrath, "I've been in California for three months and I've ridden over ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... redresser of grievances; there only wanted a lady in the way to be a knight-errant in form. This defect was soon supplied; I presently had two. I frequently went to see my father at Nion, a small city in the Vaudois country, where he was now settled. Being universally respected, the affection entertained for him extended ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... have in winter are cards, tables and dice, shovelboard, chess-play, the philosopher's game, small trunks, billiards, music, masks, singing, dancing, ule games, catches, purposes, questions; merry tales of errant knights, kings, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, fairies, goblins, friars, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... prettily with the white fence in front: the sloping fields of green painted with daisies, through which, unshackled, the buoyant breeze swept so peacefully. It was an invariable rule, in those days, to troop through the meadows at early morn and, like a young knight-errant, bear home in triumph "Marguerite," the peerless daisy, rescued from the clutches of unmentionable dragons, and now to beam brightly on us for the rest of the day from a neighboring mantel-piece. And it was with great reluctance ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... parted from his fellows at the Castle of Vagon, he rode many days through the forest without adventure, till he chanced upon a knight close by a little hermitage in the wood. Immediately, as was the wont of errant knights, they prepared to joust, and Launcelot, whom none before had overthrown, was borne down, man and horse, by the stranger knight. Thereupon a nun, who dwelt in the hermitage, cried: "God be with thee, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... words against the code of honour; it was the constant object of vituperation on his part, even from the pulpit. His notions on this point, however, never gained ground with his hearers, who could not be brought to believe that their master (himself as true a knight errant as ever drew sword or pen,) was serious when he told them that the spirit of chivalry ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant; the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. The possibilities of attack added to the keenness of the experience. We started at one o'clock. A company of the Dublin Fusiliers formed the garrison. Half were ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... power and protect him in the possession of it—may well be doubted." Brandeis had come to Apia in the firm's livery. Even while he promised neutrality in commerce, the clerks were prating a different story in the bar-rooms; and the late high feat of the knight-errant, Becker, had killed all confidence in Germans at the root. By these three impolicies, the German adventure in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... excitements of the journey. He would not have been willing to confess this interest, but it prompted him secretly so that he was often reminding himself of the old days when Lois had been his daily companion and their mutual confidences had been their mutual pleasure. Just as a knight-errant of the old time might set out to seek his mistress, so did Alban go to Warsaw determined to succeed. He would find Lois in this whirling wonderland of delight, and, finding her, would return ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... eternal lamp and hid the eternal hill, A world's destruction loading, the word went onward still— The blaze of creeds passed into it, the hiss of horrid fires, The headlong spear, the scarlet cross, the hair-shirt and the briars, The cloistered brethren's thunderous chaunt, the errant champion's song, The shifting of the crowns and thrones, the tangle ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... and north of the Great Lakes, but left French America, west of that river and south of the lakes, intact, which shows how the common consent of nations accorded to French valor in exploration the bulk of the North American continent. Essentially chivalrous, the French explorer proved the knight-errant among American discoverers. By the treaty of 1803, Napoleon ceded 1,171,931 square miles to the United States, a tract eight times as large as France itself. France, by rights acquired by discoveries, owned about two-thirds ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... his understanding, he unluckily stumbled upon the oddest fancy that ever entered into a madman's brain; for now he thought it convenient and necessary, as well for the increase of his own honor as the service of the public, to turn knight-errant, and roam through the whole world, armed cap-a-pie, and mounted on his steed, in quest of adventures; that thus imitating those knights-errant of whom he had read, and following their course of life, redressing all manner of grievances, and exposing himself to danger on all ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... Beheld her first in field, awaiting him, He felt, were she the prize of bodily force, Himself beyond the rest pushing could move The chair of Idris. Yniol's rusted arms Were on his princely person, but thro' these Princelike his bearing shone; and errant knights And ladies came, and by and by the town Flow'd in, and settling circled all the lists. And there they fixt the forks into the ground, And over these they placed the silver wand, And over that the golden sparrow-hawk Then Yniol's nephew, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind of knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes; no "operation" is thought worthy of attention that does not double or treble the investment. No ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... you can be, Fanny, when you think it necessary to dub yourself any one's champion. Don Quixote was not a better knight-errant than you are. But is it not a pity to take up your lance and shield before an enemy is within sight or hearing? But that was ever the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... said I in perfunctory acknowledgment, but with errant thoughts. "I trust, sir, that I shall always bear myself ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... visitors, it was with a report favorable to their tranquillity. The riot in the court of the palace, and the movement of the Dalmatians, had drawn all eyes in another direction; and although some errant gaze might have witnessed their entrance into the gate of the prison, it was so natural a circumstance, that no one would suspect females of their appearance of remaining there an instant longer than was necessary. The momentary absence of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... dear fellow," said Roger, "on being once more a free man, with no one to suspect, except your own immediate relatives, the errant Captain Bates." ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... the Bellevue when they got back there; but they neither of them felt the want of other company. They had a very merry little dinner-party all to themselves, and Angus was able to look at the damsel errant he had rescued. Her beauty came upon him with a shock of surprise. He had seen many beautiful women in his time, but never anything so enchanting as the droop of her mouth, or the lovely curves of her throat, or the transparent candour of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... office-boy-in-charge, who had quietly suppressed it. No one is a hero to one's own office-boy, and he evidently considered that a quarter of a million was an unwarrantable outlay for such a doubtfully advantageous object as the repatriation of an errant newspaper staff. So he drew the editorial and other salaries, forged what signatures were necessary, engaged new reporters, did what sub-editing he could, and made as much use as possible of the large accumulation of special articles that was held in reserve for emergencies. The articles ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... him thankfully. All the surgeon's serene confidence in himself returned in these emergencies, and he was doing invaluable work. People were grateful, but the man's ways and looks were so strange, his restlessness so tragic, that they dubbed him "le Juif Errant." ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... exertion Kellup Cobb come into our house of a errant, and I asked him if he was goin' to the exertion; and he said he would like to ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... friend. Claire unhesitatingly declared that the new inspector was a very good fellow. When he passed in front of her, pursued by the coarse abuse of the others, she gave him a pleasant smile, sitting nonchalantly behind her stall, with unruly errant locks of pale hair straying over her neck and her brow, and the bodice of her dress pinned all askew. He also often saw her dipping her hands into her tanks, transferring the fish from one compartment to another, and amusing herself by turning on the brass ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... his Love of Mankind, would have animated him to have attack'd the Comick Poets with the same Spirit, with which he assaulted the prevailing Folly of his Age, the Romantick Atchievements of Knights Errant; his Wit and good Sense would have made those merry Authors as odious for poisoning the People with their loose and immoral Writings, as he made the others ridiculous for their extravagant and ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore

... things actually degenerate. Our politeness loses all manliness because we forget that politeness is only the Greek for patriotism. Our policemen lose all delicacy because we forget that a policeman is only the Greek for something civilised. A policeman should often have the functions of a knight-errant. A policeman should always have the elegance of a knight-errant. But I am not sure that he would succeed any the better n remembering this obligation of romantic grace if his name were spelt phonetically, supposing that it could be spelt phonetically. Some spelling-reformers, I am told, in the poorer ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... of teeth. Why they snapped and closed and clinched is uncertain. To follow their operations is impossible for an outsider, but Mr Lawson always succeeds in convincing you that on the pretence of money-making he is attacking some lofty enterprise. He would persuade you that he is a knight-errant of purity. "Tremendous issues" are always at stake. The heroes of Wall Street are engaged in never-ending "battles." They are "fighting" for causes, the splendour of which is not dimmed in Mr Lawson's lurid prose. They have Americanised the language ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... blame no one. Pass over? I hope he will not pass over it, I only want an excuse like that for turning kempery-man—knight-errant, as those Norman puppies call it,—like Regnar Lodbrog, or Frithiof, or Harold Hardraade; and try what man can do for himself in the world with nothing to help him in heaven and earth, with neither saint nor angel, friend or counsellor, to see ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... of a Shoeing-Horn for several Years, and finding him unsuccessful in that Function, convert him at length into a Shoe. I am mistaken if your Friend Mr. WILLIAM HONEYCOMB, was not a cast Shoeing-Horn before his late Marriage. As for my self, I must frankly declare to you, that I have been an errant Shoeing-Horn for above these twenty Years. I served my first Mistress in that Capacity above five of the Number, before she was shod. I confess, though she had many who made their Applications to her, I always thought ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... gradually dying away in the distance. These strange, sudden, unaccountable sounds, caused in all probability by a boa-constrictor, a buck, or some other creature startled into quick movement by the scent of a human being, wafted to their nostrils by an errant draught of air, were even more startling to the nerves than the distant roar of the jaguar, or the call of the bell bird which irresistibly suggested the incongruous idea that at no great distance in those gloomy forest depths ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... opening doors, like the second Calender wanting an eye, in the castle of the hundred obliging damsels, until, like the said prince errant, she came to a stable. The Highland Pegasus, Rory Bean, to which belonged the single entire stall, was her old acquaintance, whom she had seen grazing on the baulk, as she failed not to recognise by the well-known ancient riding furniture and demi-pique saddle, which ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... sane than in their acceptance of names and emblems from outside their most beloved limits. The monastery would often not only take in the stranger but almost canonize him. A mere adventurer like Bruce was enthroned and thanked as if he had really come as a knight errant. And a passionately patriotic community more often than not had a foreigner for a patron saint. Thus crowds of saints were Irishmen, but St. Patrick was not an Irishman. Thus as the English gradually became a nation, ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... moments almost weird, genius-gifted eye, as that of Stevenson.' Sir George could fire imagination in the most ordinary mortal, carrying him off into enchanted realms. He sailed to strange skies, a knight-errant of a star, and he could tow the masses with him. He lifted them out of themselves, and put a label on their vague yearnings. They had imagination, the instinct upward, and were ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... the people fell down on their knees and cried King Arthur mercy. Mercy shall ye have, said Arthur: here may ye see what adventures befall ofttime of errant knights, how that I have fought with a knight of mine own unto my great damage and his both. But, sirs, because I am sore hurt, and he both, and I had great need of a little rest, ye shall understand the opinion betwixt you two brethren: As to thee, Sir Damas, for whom ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... exultation he broke into a run. So did Hillard. He was no longer bored. This promised to be interesting. People turned and stared, but none sought to intercept any of the runners. In Monte Carlo there are many strange scenes, and the knight-errant often finds that his bump of caution has suddenly developed. In other words, it is none of his affair. To look was one thing, to follow, to precipitate one's head into the unknown, was another. And there were no police about; they were on the Casino terraces, or strolling through ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... French a skin they desired to possess, retreated to the woods: her friends were distressed at her ill-nature. She, at last, complied. A pair of trousers were given in exchange; she stood between two Frenchmen, leaning on the shoulder of each, while they guided her errant legs into these novelties ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... statesman-soldier that he has had the credit of being, he never would have fought Edward until he had been joined by Margaret; and he must have known that her non-arrival was owing to contrary winds, he having been himself a naval commander. But he acted like a knight-errant, not like a general, gave battle, and was defeated and slain, "The Last of the Barons." Having triumphed at Barnet, Edward marched to meet Margaret's army, which was led by Somerset, and defeated it on the 4th of May, after a hardly-contested action at Tewkesbury. It was on that field that Prince ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... not commendable in an Embassadour. And I haue knowen in my time such of them, as studied more vpon what apparel they should weare, and what countenaunces they should keepe at the times of their audience, then they did vpon th'effect of their errant or commission. ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... breathing in the cool freshness of the dewy lawns, he felt himself assailed by all the passionate expectancy that transforms the soul of youth into the incoherent canvas of an unfinished romance of love. Long ago he had known such evenings, those evenings of errant fancy, when he had allowed his caprice to roam through imaginary adventures, and he was astonished to feel a return of sensations that did not ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant

... that party. Never could a man have stepped into the parlor a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wickedness anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in the hands of ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... human understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable verity, there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed—that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... dwelling, And out he rode a-colonelling, A wight he was, whose very sight wou'd Intitle him, Mirrour of Knighthood; That never bow'd his stubborn knee To any thing but chivalry; Nor put up blow, but that which laid Right Worshipful on shoulder-blade: Chief of domestic knights and errant, Either for chartel or for warrant: Great in the bench, great in the saddle, That could as well bind o'er as swaddle: Mighty he was at both of these, And styl'd of war, as well as peace, (So some ...
— English Satires • Various

... from the first the movement had been in the hands of turbulent feudatories, inspired by chivalry rather than religion. Their leader, Boniface of Montferrat, the patron of all the troubadours and knights-errant of the South, was a sworn friend of the Pope's worst enemy, Philip of Suabia, the brother and successor of the Emperor Henry VI. Boniface had been elected to the command without the sanction of the Pope; and from an early date was in league with Philip to turn the Crusade against Constantinople. ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... the errant breeze, with the rustle and glimmer abroad in the April sky. It sings of the first ache of youth in the world, when the first flower broke from the bud, and love went forth seeking that which it knew not, leaving all ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... this errant knight would not be stayed; and his loud musical voice swept over the waters, evidently attracting her notice, and for the first time. She drew back her dark hair, gazing on them for a moment, when she suddenly ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... this arrangement? You accept Maurice and Jean as your knights-errant? I am delighted with the arrangement, and I hope that Mlle. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... an interesting fellow, young lady," the doctor said, with a rather slight twinkle of his eye. "A very knight-errant! But there is the house now; we shall soon see all ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... it matter what we think? We drift along, knowing nothing of one another, like the errant winds or the stars in the skies. We pass by hundreds, without so much as a glance, until fate as in a lightning flash brings us face to face with the one appointed. And then—in a moment we know that we belong to each other, we are drawn together by magnetic ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... in the Louisville Courier-Journal, early in 1901, said: "A remarkable transformation, or rather a development, has taken place in Mark Twain. The genial humorist of the earlier day is now a reformer of the vigorous kind, a sort of knight errant who does not hesitate to break a lance with either Church or State if he thinks them interposing on that broad highway over which he believes not a part but the whole of mankind has the privilege of passing in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... dream-dazzled youth, striving like a knight-errant for the love of a lady and the glory of conquest, but he was also a born fighter, and in every emergency he had shown himself as able as ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... heap of dried leaves, laid his cloak upon them, and picked up Isoult to lay her upon the cloak. His arms about her woke her up. Scarce knowing what she did, dreaming possibly of her mother, she put up her face towards his; but if Prosper noticed it, no errant mercy from him sent her to bed comforted. He put her down, covered her about with the cloak, and patted her shoulder with an easy—"Good-night, my lass." This was cold cheer to the poor girl, who had to be content with his ministry of the cloak. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... occasion the saint was more successful. Laurentia, a maiden of youthful years, placed by her father within the sheltering walls of a cloister, to assume ultimately monastic vows, was quickly captured by an errant demon. As an irrefutable demonstration of the impure origin of her infirmity, an annalist asserts, this spirit promptly answered in elegant Latinity all questions propounded; but the strongest confirmation ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... introductions goes on duly, a small staff of energetic professional gentlemen, styled M.C.'s (which in London, you know, stands for Master of the Ceremonies), flit ever hither and thither amongst the throng, now catching a wildly errant waltzing couple in politely resolute arms and sending them back into the regular ring, now getting up sets for Lancers and quadrilles, and at all points doing their best to keep the ball a-rolling. Useful members of society, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... his imagination was much occupied with two women, to neither of whom would he have held it possible that he should ever make love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something of the knight-errant in his disposition; and he would have found his proof if he had known what was just now going on in Deronda's mind about ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... puncturing. The master of the place was a tall Italian, lank and lean, all bone and muscle, with a Don Quixote visage, barring a certain villainous expression of the eyes, irreconcilable with the chivalrous knight-errant of distressed Dulcineas. But every man with a bad eye is not necessarily a rascallion, and Spedella, perhaps, was better than he looked. With a most melancholy glance he was now watching two combatants, novices in feats of arms. Dejection sat upon his brow; he yawned over a clumsy ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... send me her box key, and I was to secrete her letters for her. Important indeed, those letters must be, that she should go to such lengths to get them. Well, I had constituted myself her knight errant in that particular, and I would ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... many as he could muster, the burgesses from the towns, the clergy from all the great centres of the Church, on mules and soft-pacing palfreys, would gather for the meetings of Parliament. It scarcely wanted a knight-errant like the fourth James, with his chivalrous tastes and devices, to fill the noble town with brightness, for all these fine sights were familiar to Edinburgh. But the brightest day was ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... her idol. His first impression of nature was the silent solitude and vastness of the Hungarian plains, which probably helped to accentuate an inherent strain of melancholy. Led astray by a youthful errant passion, he is haunted by a feeling of guilt, of lost innocence, and Dame Melancholy becomes his faithful life companion. When later happiness in the guise of human love crosses his pathway, he does ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... man of letters, born at Bourg, in the department of Ain; was educated at Bourg and Lyons, went to Paris in 1820, and in 1823 produced a satire called "Les Tablettes du Juif-Errant," at which time he came under the influence of HERDER (q. v.) and executed in French a translation of his "Philosophy of Humanity," prefaced with an introduction which procured him the friendship of Michelet, a friendship which lasted with life; appointed to a post in Greece, he collected ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... only with the arrival of Penrod's mother, who had been having a painful conversation by telephone with Mrs. Jones, the mother of Marjorie, and came forth to seek an errant son. It is a mystery how she was able to pick out her own, for by the time she got there his voice was too hoarse to be recognizable. Mr. Schofield's version of things was that Penrod was insane. "He's a stark, raving lunatic!" declared the father, descending to the library ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... was a woman of strong character and, after the shock of hearing the report of her husband's death, took up her duties with composure, though the lines in her face seemed deeper, and Rodney saw that an errant lock of her hair, which he had always thought a part of the attractiveness of her fair face, was now quite gray, and, as she pushed it aside, a familiar way she had, he noticed how thin and white her hand was and saw that ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of herself; but never ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... long lean bar of silver spans The ebon-rippled water-way, And like a lost moon's errant ray Strikes on ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... the Saint, who has lagged far in the rear, steps in the way, cajoles Shark into listening to his advice, and, with a big stick and a few of the most gorgeous expletives of which he is eminently the master, persuades the errant hound of his mistake. Deep and dire are the maledictions heaved at the unhappy Shark, and in which his companions, Rimu and Toto, Wolf and Katipo, have unjustly to share. For the row occasioned by the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... horse belonging to Don Quixote who was the romantic and absurdly chivalric hero of a satirical Spanish novel entitled The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... faintly crooning sabbath bells At evening in the golden fells I heard; the tinkle of the rills In haunts where childish fancy fed; I saw the orchard daffodils About the calm homestead; Ah, saddest thought that ever fills An errant heart that memory thrills, The heath-smell of his homeland hills To one whose loves are ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... Roseville, turning to a bending and blushing countenance beside her, which I then first perceived—"See what it is to be a knight errant; even his language, is worthy of Amadis of Gaul—but—(again addressing me) your adventures are really too shocking a subject to treat lightly. We lay our serious orders on you to come to our castle this ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... faith, our hatred of war and oppression. His great genius seemed to me to be always held firmly in hand by a sense of duty, and by the practical common sense of a shrewd man of business. He fought through life like an old knight-errant, but without enthusiasm. He had no personal ideals. I remember once how he remonstrated with me for my admiration for General Gordon. He looked upon that wonderful personality as a wild fighter, a rash adventurer, doing evil that good might come. He could not see him as I saw him, giving his life ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... invisible to our eyes, but very clear to the bright little minds for whom it was intended. Politics were evidently their grand interest; the Duke of Wellington their demi-god. All that related to him belonged to the heroic age. Did Charlotte want a knight-errant, or a devoted lover, the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles Wellesley, came ready to her hand. There is hardly one of her prose-writings at this time in which they are not the principal personages, and in which their "august father" does not appear as a sort of Jupiter ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... after her sudden flight, M. Fould received a letter from the errant diva, in which she demanded permission to return and fill her contract. M. Fould consented, and accepted her plea of "a misunderstanding," but the public were not so easily placated, and when she appeared on the stage as Valentine the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... genial climes of the south, and under the blaze of romantic chivalry. Hence, during the dark ages, the invisible world was modelled after the material; and the saints, to the protection of whom the knights-errant were accustomed to recommend themselves, were accoutered like preux chevaliers, by the ardent imaginations of their votaries. With such ideas concerning the inhabitants of the celestial regions, we ought not to be surprised to find the inferior spirits, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... sitting in my room alone, so, putting on my hat, I strolled into the streets, and finally found myself at the house in the Rue Crillon. Madame Coutance was at home, and she received me with high good-humour, calling me one of her knights-errant, and declaring I had helped to save her life, which ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... wont be blockheads in the common road. Do but survey this crowded house to-night:— Here's still encouragement for those that write. 30 Our author, to divert his friends to-day, Stocks with variety of fools his play; And that there may be something gay and new, Two ladies-errant has exposed to view: The first a damsel, travelled in romance; The t'other more refined; she comes from France: Rescue, like courteous knights, the nymph from danger; And kindly treat, like ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... very clear to the bright little minds for whom it was intended. Politics were evidently their grand interest; the Duke of Wellington their demi-god. All that related to him belonged to the heroic age. Did Charlotte want a knight-errant, or a devoted lover, the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles Wellesley, came ready to her hand. There is hardly one of her prose-writings at this time in which they are not the principal personages, and in which their "august ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... paused to consider, while Molly suddenly whirled down the street and pounced on the errant collie. Seeing this, Constable McSherry turned to continue his leisurely ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... being a knight-errant in armor in the Middle Ages. Have the notions and habits, though, of the present day mixed with the necessities of that. No pockets in the armor. No way to manage certain requirements of nature. Can't scratch. Cold in the head and can't blow. Can't ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Who was this eager errant knight? All London by this time knew, and it is time that we should learn. Indeed, while the youthful wayfarers were speeding away on their mad and merry ride, the privy councillors of England were on their knees before ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Andres) their Boccaccio in Martorell; whose fiction of "Tirante el Blanco" is honored by the commendation of the curate in Don Quixote, as "the best book in the world of the kind, since the knights- errant in it eat, drink, sleep, and die quietly in their beds, like other folk, and very unlike most heroes of romance." The productions of these, and some other of their distinguished contemporaries, obtained a general ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... unparalleled in the world, he sought, I might almost say, he advertised for enemies, and provoked means to increase taxation. Aiming at something, he knew not what, he ransacked Europe and India for adventures, and abandoning the fair pretensions he began with, he became the knight-errant ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... one variation to form the plural, and that must be made in the principal word, rather than in the adjunct; but where the terms differ little in importance, the genius of the language obviously inclines to a variation of the last only. Thus we write fathers-in-law, sons-in-law, knights-errant, courts-martial, cousins-german, hangers-on, comings-in, goings-out, goings-forth, varying the first; and manhaters, manstealers, manslayers, maneaters, mandrills, handfuls, spoonfuls, mouthfuls, pailfuls, outpourings, ingatherings, downsittings, overflowings, varying the last. So, in many ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... friend; it seemed to Sybil that he could be her only friend. The disposition of Lord Marney was not opposed to the habits of his wife. Men, when they are married, often shrink from the glare and bustle of those social multitudes which are entered by bachelors with the excitement of knights-errant in a fairy wilderness, because they are supposed to be rife with adventures, and, perhaps, fruitful of a heroine. The adventure sometimes turns out to be a catastrophe, and the heroine a copy instead of an ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... people, and imprecations on their tardiness, until Stephen was near enough to show that the hawk had been recovered, and then he joyfully called out, "Ha! hast thou got her? Why, flat-caps as ye are, ye put all my fellows to shame! How now, thou errant bird, dost know thy master, or take him for a mud wall? Kite that thou art, to have led me such a dance! And what's your name, my brave lads? Ye must have been ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Happily, the musicians errant still strum their mandoline as you dine. The old trattoria in the Toledo is as good as ever, as bright, as comfortable. I have found my old corner in one of the little rooms, and something of the old gusto for zuppa di vongole. The homely wine of Posillipo smacks as in days gone by, and is ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... sure that you're glad to see me, Mr. Lawson," (Mr. Spriggins having dropped the appellation of 'Squire) "for I've come on a kinder disagreeable errant." ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... at hand found me in sore need of this teaching. It was then that errant impulse counselled rebellion against the decrees of calendar and looking-glass. If vatted wine in dark cellars turns in its bed and mutters seethingly at this time, in a mysterious, intuitive sympathy with the blossoming grape, a man free and above ground, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... the hill, a solitary, lonely figure outlined darkly against the clear blue background of sky and distance. He gazed unseeingly into space; thought and movement alike were suspended. He was only conscious of pain. He knew all was ended. Thus his errant forbear from the north may have stood five hundred years ago, leaning upon his lance, a sword ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... still retained some affection for his old favourite, Bess Lion, who being taken up for some of her tricks, was committed to St. Giles's Round-house. Shepherd going to see her there, broke the doors open, beat the keeper, and like a true knight-errant, set his distressed paramour at liberty. This heroic act got him so much reputation amongst the fair ladies in Drury Lane that there was nobody of his profession so much esteemed by them as John Shepherd, with his brother Thomas, who had taken to the same trade. Observing and being in himself ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... up in a roar fit to split the air as the hero of the day was recognized. And the Dalesmen gave a pace forward spontaneously as the gray knight-errant stole across the green. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knights-errant of ancient times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... sabbath bells At evening in the golden fells I heard; the tinkle of the rills In haunts where childish fancy fed; I saw the orchard daffodils About the calm homestead; Ah, saddest thought that ever fills An errant heart that memory thrills, The heath-smell of his homeland hills To one whose ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... also he became of the daughter's merits. It was very hard. The whole thing was cruelly hard. It was cruelly hard upon him that he should be brought into this trouble, and be forced to take upon himself the armour of a knight-errant for the redress of the wrong on the part of the young lady. But when alone in his house, or with his child, he declared to himself that he would do so. It might well be that he could not live in Barsetshire after he had married Mr Crawley's daughter. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... with such rejoicing cruelty as only boys or uncivilised men can feel. The little girl was sobbing, half in distress, and half because of the haste she had made, and Master Richard's juvenile soul burnt within him at the sight like that of a knight-errant. He had read a great deal about knights-errant for the time which had been as yet allowed him for the pursuit of literature, and he was by nature a boy of much fire and gentleness, and a very sympathetic imagination. So the big heart in the small body ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... mightily amiss of anybody that pretends to affirm it. I am sorry that the Russian troops are not now in Poland, for otherwise I believe it would have been an easy matter to prevail upon this Court to catch this young knight errant and to send him to Siberia, where he would not have been any more heard of; and if the Court of Dresden will enter heartily into such a scheme, it will not be impossible yet to apprehend him, and as it is very probable that the King of Prussia ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... possibilities of the human race. The golden visions of youth now vanish along with the bonnet rouge and the jargon of the Terror. His bent had ever been for the material and practical: and now that faith in the Jacobinical creed was vanishing, it was more than ever desirable to grapple that errant balloon to substantial facts. Evidently, the Revolution must now trust to the clinging of the peasant proprietors to the recently confiscated lands of the Church and of the emigrant nobles. If all else was vain and transitory, here surely was a solid basis of material interests to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... manner he proceeded, a literary knight errant, filled with a chivalrous love of letters, which would have done honor to the most learned peripatetic of them all; enlarging his own powers, and making fresh acquisitions of knowledge as he went along. ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... frogs made merry, the frogs being about the only wild animals left in the Stromovka. Things were very different in this park when it was known as the Thiergarten, Hortus Ferarum, as long ago as the days of King John, the knight-errant ruler of Bohemia. It appears that bison, "aurochs," were kept here, and it is recorded that the sole surviving specimen died in 1566, which fact Archduke Ferdinand, the Kaiser's lieutenant, reported to Emperor Maximilian; he was thereupon ordered to ask the Duke of Prussia ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... in some old dress and faded, Fearless of the showery shifting wind; Kilted are her skirts to clear the mosses, And her bright braids in a 'kerchief pinned, Younger sister Of the damsel-errant Rosalind. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... the whole coast of the enemy, as well as any of Homer's heroes ever did, or as Don Quixote or any knight-errant in the world could have done, he returned to Molly, whom he found in a condition which must give both me and my reader pain, was it to be described here. Tom raved like a madman, beat his breast, tore his hair, stamped on the ground, and vowed the utmost vengeance on all who had been concerned. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... her intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess—a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling, penurious officer, would never have ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "saints,"—exultations over the destruction of the "sinners,"—mingle with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets. There are indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope set ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Room, the tears streaming from her mild eyes, calling me by Endearing names, and ever and anon taking my hand in hers, and sinking on her knees to the sodden floor (with no thought of soiling her kirtle), while with profound Fervour she prayed for the conversion of errant Me. Sure there are Hearts of Gold among those Broadbrims and their fair strait-laced Daughters. Many a Merchant's Money-bags I have spared for the sake of Mr. Barzillai Shapcott (late of Aylesbury). Many a Fair Woman have I intermitted from my Furious Will in remembrance of the good that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... establishing them. To give it its most favorable interpretation, it is a sort of crazy counsel of perfection, incompatible with the healthy tenor and contents of human nature, and sure in the end to involve in its errant tentacles not only those who are the avowed objects of its pursuit, but likewise the lawmakers and enforcers themselves. Like all abuses, in its own entrails are the seeds of its destruction. Laws now on our ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire With mortal robes ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... Rubens and Lebrun to find a scheme both rich and subdued, to bring back the taste errant. Here let me note a peculiarity of colour, noticeable in work of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century borders. The colour tone varies in different pieces of the same set, and this is not the result of fading, but was done by deliberate intent, one side border ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... will meet and not be foes, E'en as the rue may stand beside the rose And not affront it,—as a lonely tree May guard a shrine and not upon the lea Be deem'd obtrusive,—as an errant knight May serve the sovereign of his soul's delight And not, thereby, be deem'd of less account Than he who keeps ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay

... on certain days. In the Isle of Man the wren-hunt took place on Christmas Eve and St Stephen's Day, and is accounted for by a legend concerning an evil fairy who lured many men to destruction, but had to assume the form of a wren to escape punishment at the hands of an ingenious knight-errant. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... fondly When both had recovered calmness, they went on speaking of their work, which might be considered past the stage when the projector is racked by misgivings. They went into the breakfast-room together, prepared to bear the singular meeting with the errant wife whose return was so unexpected. But she preferred not to take the step so soon, and, as Rebecca also kept away, warned by Hedwig, who might appear at the board, the three ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation. Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil eyes. "I have been a fool," he said smiling, "but ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... tax-payers of a small community when the father of several small children deserted his wife and the expenses of supporting his family devolved upon them. It would call for little imagination to picture these respectable members of society scrambling to pass laws for the punishment of the errant one and to force him back to his wife and support-producing labor. But, basically, the legal favoritism which has arisen in the past thirty years in America, is probably due to a desire on the part of the employing class to protect and make secure the mothers of children ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias

... be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed—that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the rest was fact. Now after making this allowance, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... evening when I came onto a fine large plain. Behind me was the canyon, gloomy like the lair of some evil beast, while before me the sun was setting, and made the valley like a sea of golden glaze. I stood, knight-errant-wise, on the verge of one of those enchanted lands of precious memory, seeking the princess of my dreams; but all I saw was a man coming up the trail. He was reeling homeward, with under one arm a live turkey, and swinging from the other a demijohn ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... all classes of readers. Every school-boy thumbs to pieces the most wretched translations of his romance, and knows the lantern jaws of the Knight Errant, and the broad cheeks of the Squire, as well as the faces of his own playfellows. The most experienced and fastidious judges are amazed at the perfection of that art which extracts inextinguishable laughter from the greatest of human calamities ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... too evident disguise in liquor I knew the voice of my errant Pat. Would it be wise to accost him at such a moment, in such company? The streets of the Lower Town were none too peaceful after dark. And yet, if he were not altogether out of his head, it would be a good thing to stop him from going ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... by Master Simon; but it was difficult to be enforced in such a motley assemblage. There was a continued snarling and yelping of dogs, and, as fast as it was quelled in one corner, it broke out in another. The poor gipsy curs, who, like errant thieves, could not hold up their heads in an honest house, were worried and insulted by the gentleman dogs of the establishment, without offering to make resistance; the very curs of my Lady Lillycraft bullied ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... "Some of them are out for glory and some of them play a deeper game, sometimes it's a girl," came back to him. If it was for her, to win her commendation and respect, that Gibson was fighting, then, John thought, Gibson was a modern knight-errant riding into battle against the forces of evil, a twentieth century Sir Galahad. And what a "lady fair" to ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... of his journey from Paris and of his dealings with Tressan and his subsequent adventures at Condillac. He dwelt passingly upon the manner in which they had treated him, and found it difficult to choose words to express the reason for his returning in disguise to play the knight-errant to Valerie. He passed on to speak of last night's happenings and of his escape. Throughout, the Marquis heard him with a grave countenance and a sober, attentive glance, yet, when he had finished a smile ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... of hell, as in the case of Faustus. He forgot, in his pride, the motives of his alliance with the Devil, and his thirst for pleasure and enjoyment; and while he sat upon his horse, his imagination dubbed him the knight-errant of virtue and the champion of innocence. The Devil rode by his side without once disturbing his meditations; for he only saw in each of these would-be noble feelings the sources of future torment and despair. His ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... own happiness, and should sway men's lives with a lonely mirth. It was a bold and moving conception to show us these mature and tragic human groups all at the supreme moment eavesdropping upon the solitude of a child. And it was an even more precise instinct which made Browning make the errant benefactor a woman. A man's good work is effected by doing what he does, a woman's by being ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... hard-earned wages to support them in idleness and vice. It was not the doctrine, but the practice which they condemned. With the accession of the house of Plantagenet, the people were made to feel that the Norman monarchy was a curse, without alloy. Richard I. was a knight-errant and a crusader, who cared little for the realm; John was an adulterer, traitor, and coward, who roused the people's anger by first quarrelling with the Pope, and then basely giving him the kingdom to receive it again as a papal fief. The nation, headed by the warlike ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... can be, Fanny, when you think it necessary to dub yourself any one's champion. Don Quixote was not a better knight-errant than you are. But is it not a pity to take up your lance and shield before an enemy is within sight or hearing? But that was ever the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... exploiting her new dominions, during the next century hundreds of ships carried tens thousands of adventurers to seek their fortune in the west. For it was not as colonists that most of them went, but in a spirit compounded of that of the crusader, the knight-errant, and the pirate. If there is anything in the paradox that artists have created natural beauty, it is a truer one to say that the Spanish romances created the Spanish colonial empire. The men who sailed on the great adventure had feasted {436} on tales ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... stripped you of your manhood. And yet—yours is no murderer's face even when you scowl and clench your fist! 'Twas so you looked when you fought that rough boy on my behalf so many years ago when you were Sir Martin the Knight-errant and I was Princess Damaris. And now, Martin, you that were my playmate and had forgot—you that were so ready to fight on my behalf—in this desolation there is none you may do battle with for my ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... cavo Polyphemus in antro Lanigeras claudit pecudes, atque ubera pressat, Centum alii curva hæc habitant ad littora vulgo Infandi Cyclopes, et altis montibus errant.” Æn. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... whirl of cowardice. Their hands flew apart rather self-consciously. Bean felt himself a scoundrel—"leading on" a young thing like that who was engaged to another. It was flirting of the most reprehensible sort. But there was his dual nature; a strain of the errant Corsican had survived to ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... and end, from the half-crazed preaching of Peter down to the Fall of Jerusalem. Those leaders! It would take a second Homer to do them justice. Godfrey the perfect soldier and leader, Bohemund the unscrupulous and formidable, Tancred the ideal knight errant, Robert of Normandy the half-mad hero! Here is material so rich that one feels one is not worthy to handle it. What richest imagination could ever evolve anything more marvellous and thrilling than the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... had and must hereafter upon the merchant marine to man whatever additional vessels we should require, and upon the bold and hardy Yankee sailor, when he could no longer get freight for his craft, to receive a proper armament, and go forth like a knight errant of the sea in quest of adventure against the enemies of ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... my young life as it had been unfolded hitherto. I reviewed its beginnings in the greyness of Mondolfo, under the tutelage of my poor, dolorous mother who had striven so fiercely to set my feet upon the ways of sanctity. But my ways had been errant ways, even though, myself, I had sought to walk as she directed. I had strayed and blundered, veered and veered again, a very mockery of what she strove to make me—a strolling saint, indeed, as Cosimo had dubbed me, a wandering mummer when I ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... belonging to Don Quixote who was the romantic and absurdly chivalric hero of a satirical Spanish novel entitled The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant, Don Quixote of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... differences of more or less imaginative individual minds—with one, here or there, eminent, though but by a little, above a merely receptive majority, the spokesman of a universal, though faintly-felt prepossession, attaching the errant fancies of the people around him to definite names and images. The myth grew up gradually, and at many distant places, in many minds, independent of each other, but dealing in a common temper with certain elements and aspects of the natural world, as one here, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... And when at the outskirts of the wood the King's bewildering hunting-horn—sounding as it were now here, now there, now low, now high—called every attendant to hasten to its summons, leaving the young squire and damsel errant with a long winding high-banked lane before them, they reckoned the dispersion to be all for their sakes, and did not note, as did Sidney's clear eye, that when the entire company had come straggling him, it was the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... brief lines, my reverend friend, By a safe, private hand I send (Fearing lest some low Catholic wag Should pry into the Letter-bag), To tell you, far as pen can dare How we, poor errant martyrs, fare;— Martyrs, not quite to fire and rack, As Saints were, some few ages back. But—scarce less trying in its way— To laughter, wheresoe'er we stray; To jokes, which Providence mysterious Permits on men and things so serious, Lowering the Church still ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... committee, announced that qualified black specialists would be assigned to some white units.[14-106] At the same time Gray was not prepared to admit that the incident demonstrated how open his plan was to evasion, just as he refused to admit that his rescinding of the errant message represented a change in policy. He would continue, in effect, the plan approved by the Secretary of Defense on 30 September, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: no "operation" is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the investment. No business is worth following, that does not promise an ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... To recall What bond-servants of Chance We are all. I but found her in that, going On my errant path unknowing, I did not out-skirt the spot That no spot on earth excels, —Where ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... we consequently made our bows as they passed. We were also amused with a Chinese puppet-shew which differs but little from an English one. There are a distressed princess confined in a castle, and a knight-errant, who, after fighting wild beasts and dragons, sets her at liberty and marries her; wedding-feasts, jousts, and tournaments. Besides these, there was also a comic drama, in which some personages not ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... Dominican convent, but the old- world scholasticism had no charms for him. The narrow groove of the cloister was irksome to his freedom-loving soul. He cast off his monkish garb, and wandered through Europe as a knight-errant of philosophy, multum ille et terris jactatus et alto, teaching letters. In 1580 we find him at Geneva conferring with Calvin and Beza, but Calvinism did not commend itself to his philosophic mind. Thence he journeyed to Paris, where in 1582 he produced ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery. But I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put on my ...
— Options • O. Henry

... his ancestors in a long line, extending back to the days of Richard the First, were among the most illustrious knights of Europe in those days, and their history abounds in the wonderful exploits, the narrow escapes, and the romantic adventures, for which the knights errant of the Middle Ages were so renowned. This volume takes up the story of English history at the death of Richard the First, and continues it to the time of the deposition and death of Richard the Second, with a view of presenting as complete a picture as is possible, within such ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... its contents and of its calligraphy. But learning accidentally that the scroll had been pawned to the merchant from whom he had obtained it, he instituted inquiries as to its owner, and ultimately restored the scroll to him with the addition of five gold ryo. The owner was a knight-errant (ronin) named Imagawa Motome, who thereafter entered Masamune's service and ultimately rose to be a general of infantry (ashigaru). The sympathy which taught Masamune to estimate the pain with which the owner of the scroll must have parted with it ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... before the exertion Kellup Cobb come into our house of a errant, and I asked him if he was goin' to the exertion; and he said he would like to go, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... legend said further that if any person could succeed in passing a night in these rooms and in resisting their deadly influence, the spell would for ever be broken, and no one would thenceforth be sacrificed. Hearing all this, and being somewhat of the knight-errant order, C. and I determined to face the danger, and, if possible, deliver the town from the enchantment. We were assured that the attempt would be vain, for that it had already been many times made, and the Devils of the place were always triumphant. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... we say little, though that also was great. He had to judge the people as Justice Errant, to decide in weighty arbitrations and public controversies; to equip his milites, send them duly in war-time to the King;—strive every way that the Commonweal, in his quarter of it, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... Ghost of Mindon is for ever brought in neck and shoulders to frighten him with. Willes (Wilkes) and Sawbridge have attacked him more than once with the British Cavalry; and thus, he must either turn absolute knight errant, or else put up quietly with ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... her sudden flight, M. Fould received a letter from the errant diva, in which she demanded permission to return and fill her contract. M. Fould consented, and accepted her plea of "a misunderstanding," but the public were not so easily placated, and when she appeared on the stage as Valentine the audience ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... bigger part than the head in an estimate of a fellow-creature, and Darsie's heart had a way of making excuses for the handsome truant, who smiled with such beguiling eyes, had such a pretty knack of compliment, and was—generally!—ready to play knight-errant in her service. She felt herself lucky in possessing so charming a friend to act the part of gallant, and to be at her service when she chose to call. And then quite suddenly she drew a sharp breath and said aloud in a trembling ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... we think? We drift along, knowing nothing of one another, like the errant winds or the stars in the skies. We pass by hundreds, without so much as a glance, until fate as in a lightning flash brings us face to face with the one appointed. And then—in a moment we know that ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... whence one may be evicted or evade, with a week's notice or a week's rent, any day—this sort of life is natural and even delightful to some people. There are those who, like strawberry plants, are of such an errant disposition, that grow them where you will, they will soon absorb all the pleasantness of their habitat, and begin casting out runners elsewhere; may, if not frequently transplanted, would actually wither and die. Of such are the pioneers of society—the emigrants, the tourists, the travelers round ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... courageous, he was a true knight-errant, the "last Crusader whom the annals of chivalry were to know; the man who had humbled the crescent as it had not been humbled since the days of the Tancreds, the Baldwins, the Plantagenets." Endowed with a brilliant ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... that heaven thought, the marsh thought too; for the blue of the marsh was as the blue of heaven, and the great cloud shapes in heaven became the shapes in the marsh, and through each ran momentary rivers of purple, errant between banks of gold. And the stalwart army of reeds appeared out of the gloom with all their pennons waving as far as the eye could see. And from another window she saw the vast cathedral gathering its ponderous strength together, and ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... two friars in the camp was not a matter of much note, for in these holy wars the Church militant continually mingled in the affray, and helmet and cowl were always seen together; but it was soon discovered that these worthy saints-errant were from a far country and on ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... winter evenings the country folk amused themselves around their winter's fireside by telling old romantic stories of errant knights and fairies, goblins, witches, and the rest; ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... Here the Isles of the Blessed, the Elysian Fields, and Tartarus were represented by means of costly mechanisms. Charles and his brothers figured as knights defending Paradise, which Navarre and others, dressed as knights-errant, endeavored to enter by force of arms, but were repulsed and thrust into Tartarus. After some time the defeated champions were rescued from their perilous situation by the compassion of their victors, and the performance terminated in a startling, but harmless display of fireworks.[933] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... star, glorious in the crimson and amber sky. Below, a point of silver light quivered, reflected in the crimson and amber waters of the "lick." The fire-flies were flickering among the ferns; he saw about him their errant gleam. The shadowy herds trooped down ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... Cobden. England had the most prudent aristocracy, but the most reckless democracy in the world. It was, and is, the English contradiction, which has so much misrepresented us, especially to the Irish. Our national captains were carpet knights; our knights errant were among the dismounted rabble. When an Austrian general who had flogged women in the conquered provinces appeared in the London streets, some common draymen off a cart behaved with the direct quixotry of Sir Lancelot or Sir ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... pause for a moment on this matter. I do not believe that Raymond had ever thought, in seriousness, of any such gift. It must have been at best an errant fancy, and if concerned with commemorating anybody concerned with commemorating himself. But I will say this for him: he never was disposed to try getting things out of people, for he hated attempts at trickery almost as ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... knowledge of those dark and distant times: a great deal of obscurity and conjecture, too, exist as to the actual character of the monarchy,—as to whether, for example, Clovis and his predecessors were real kings, or merely knights errant, and whether their successors were as absolute as the Emperors among the Romans, or more magistrates than sovereigns as among the Germans, all sorts of doubts having been raised and mistiness thrown over these ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... nervous courage to bear the brunt of the inevitable scene. Perry was at the bottom of it she knew—she had answered such summonses often enough before to pre-figure with unerring insight the nature of the event. He had shown his periodical inclination to a fresh affair, his errant fancy had wandered in a particular direction, and Gerty's epicurean philosophy had failed as usual to account for the concrete fact. To Laura the amazing part was not so much Perry's fickleness, which she had brought herself to accept with tolerant aversion, as the extraordinary value Gerty ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied whispers of American Rails, he answered but with babble of green fields. He is back in his wonted corner now: quite cured, apparently, and tractable. And yet — let the sun shine too wantonly in Throgmorton Street, let an errant zephyr, quick with the warm South, fan but his cheek too wooingly on his way to the station; and will he not once more snap his chain and away? Ay, truly: and next time he will ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... path, as there used to be in the path of knights-errant when they came near the castles of necromancers who held beautiful princesses captive—to say nothing of full-blown dragons and alluring syrens. These lions took in one case, the form of a butcher-boy, who said untruthfully:—"Now, young ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Launcelot had parted from his fellows at the Castle of Vagon, he rode many days through the forest without adventure, till he chanced upon a knight close by a little hermitage in the wood. Immediately, as was the wont of errant knights, they prepared to joust, and Launcelot, whom none before had overthrown, was borne down, man and horse, by the stranger knight. Thereupon a nun, who dwelt in the hermitage, cried: "God be with thee, best knight in all this world," for she knew the victor for Sir Galahad. But Galahad, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... possible, and then recognizing me as the person who picked up the contents of aunt Celia's bag, she said, dimpling in the most distracting manner (that's another thing there ought to be a law against), "Thank you again; you seem to be a sort of knight-errant!" ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... assure himself. It was not so much confidence or resolution as half deliberation which shone in his eye as he cast a glance upon the heap of money on the opposite side of the table. Yet no sordid thought, no avarice was in his gaze. It was the look of the fanatic, the knight errant, resolved upon deed of risk or sacrifice for sake of a woman's wish; but with it was the amusement of a man who foresaw that difficulties lay ahead of him who essayed the role of jailer to Josephine, Countess St. Auban. What now passed across his countenance, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... owner of the name, turning his rather errant steps in the direction of the summons; "are you people still there? Must have heard everything cows got to say by this time. If you haven't, no use waiting. After all, it's a Russian legend, and Russian Chrismush Eve not due for ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... there had been light to consult the relics of a finger-post which stood there, it would have been of little avail, as, according to the good custom of North Britain, the inscription had been defaced shortly after its erection. Our adventurer was therefore compelled, like a knight-errant of old, to trust to the sagacity of his horse, which, without any demur, chose the left-hand path, and seemed to proceed at a somewhat livelier pace than before, affording thereby a hope that he knew he was drawing near to his quarters for the evening. This hope, however, was not ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... grew at a sharp angle over the water, and the branches were so far up that it was necessary to climb out a short distance in order to reach them. Mr. Opp's soul was undoubtedly that of a knight-errant, but his body, alas! was not. When he found himself astride the slender, swaying trunk, with the bank dropping sharply to the river flowing dizzily beneath him, he went suddenly and unexpectedly blind. Between admiration for himself ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... him. "See here, you are not a knight-errant. The age of chivalry is over." The novelist paused and exclaimed: "What am I saying! The age of chivalry is not over. It can't be. Last night, Verelst dined ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... Dickens The Angel's Story Echoes A False Genius My Picture Judge Not Friend Sorrow One by One True Honours A Woman's Question The Three Rulers A Dead Past A Doubting Heart A Student A Knight Errant Linger, oh, gentle Time Homeward Bound Life and Death Now Cleansing Fires The Voice of the Wind Treasures Shining Stars Waiting The Cradle Song of the Poor Be strong God's Gifts A Tomb in Ghent The Angel ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... portentous gravity as he assigned the desserts for each table. What an ordeal it was for shy freshmen to rise and walk the length of the dining-room! How many tables were kept waiting for the next course while errant students surveyed the sunset through the kitchen windows! Some of us remember the tragic moments when, coming in hot and tired from crew practice, we found on the bulletin-board by the dining-room the fateful words, 'strawberries ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... upon the aristocracy. Those who municipalized themselves became more enlightened, more lettered, more refined, and, at the same time, less chivalrous and less martial than their ancestors. The characters of buccaneer, land-pirate, knight-errant could not be conveniently united with those of banker, exchange broker, dealer in dry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... He suggested sympathy without expressing it. He could convey to Ruth that he thought her a misunderstood and neglected wife while talking to her about the weather. He could make his own knight-errant attitude toward her perfectly plain without saying a word, merely by playing soft music to her on the piano; for he had the gift of saying more with his finger-tips than most men could have said in a ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... noticed: In the first place, I never was in actual pain; and in the second, I was never funny. I'll tell you the worst day that I remember. I had a hemorrhage, and was not allowed to speak; then, induced by the devil, or an errant doctor, I was led to partake of that bowl which neither cheers nor inebriates—the castor-oil bowl. Now, when castor-oil goes right, it is one thing; but when it goes wrong, it is another. And it went ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... worship, Sir Knight-errant," quoth Sancho to his master, "be sure you don't forget what you promised me about the island; for I dare say I shall make shift to govern it, let ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... a period of strain. She assumed an attitude of very haughty contempt toward the errant pair, devoted herself to Wiggins, and let them coldly alone. From this attitude Wiggins was the chief sufferer: the Terror had the princess and the princess had the Terror; Erebus enjoyed her display of haughty contempt, but Wiggins missed the strenuous life, the rushing games, ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... and the home are far too important to our happiness to be left at the mercy of such a fleeting crowd of errant damosels. Affection and obedience they may give—or may not—but competence does not come to ignorant youth. We need, to keep the world well fed and really clean, skilled, specialized, experienced, well-paid workers; and it is none of our business whether ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... a deputy-errant, naturally include an introduction to the female prisoners; and Tallien's presence afforded Mad. de Fontenay an occasion of pleading her cause with all the success which such a pleader might, in other times, be supposed to obtain from a judge of Tallien's age. The effect of the scenes Tallien ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... from the maternity of these States? Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the last-born? little and big? and for the errant? ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... all during that awful time she had been safe and sheltered in the convent, and her life guarded; and moreover, she understood why her father had always treated her mother as if she were higher than the angels and with the courtesy and gentleness of a knight errant. He had bowed to her slightest wish, and no wonder her mother thought that when he received her request to return to her, and give up his hope, he would ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... in whom genius has been rather shaped (perhaps cramped) than developed: but genius was present, without a doubt, under whatsoever artificial trappings; and Ben Jonson spoke but truth when he said, 'My son Cartwright writes all like a man.' It is impossible to open a page of 'The Lady Errant,' 'The Royal Slave,' 'The Ordinary,' or 'Love's Convert,' without feeling at once that we have to do with a man of a very different stamp from any (Massinger perhaps alone excepted) who was writing between 1630 ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley









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