Word: random
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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Emerson, it is said, keeps a huge note-book by him night and day, in which to record every brilliant thought, and whenever he has filled a dozen pages in this way he selects a title at random, and publishes them as a new essay. Smith was following, in a measure, this plan. Every incident in the barn-yard, every narrow escape from a mowing-machine, was booked for future use. Such is the devotion to art which every literary man feels...
...opened the door, and in I went, cane raised. The room was dark; I gave at random all the cuts of the sabre exercise, when, as the door opened wider, I saw that the room was empty, but the window open. I pointed...
...your courtesy in publishing my letter of the 9th ult., I wish to correct the impression under which you labor, that I compared the modern hydraulic machines with the old fashioned weights, which never, to my knowledge, were dignified with the epithet "rowing." I cited rowing weights at random, as affording an example by which I could illustrate a principle, namely, the mutual effects of mind and muscle...
...exempt from this condition of our mental and nervous constitution, to judge of a man's year's work by three hours' work of a brain which, acted on by many causes, favorable or unfavorable, may be either extremely active or extremely inactive at a time selected at random, so far as the individual student's health is concerned. Why should several per cent of a year's mark be allowed to depend on a cup of green tea or a dyspeptic turn on a February or June morning...
...unpleasantly near, when Putnam and his men, concluding that "discretion was the better part of valor," rode away. To the right of the meeting-house are the stone steps down which Putnam rode. To the left is the road along which the British dragged their cannon after firing a random shot at the retreating hero. This ball, I was informed, fell on the road, and with half-spent force was rolling along, when a farmer spied it, and, thinking it might be running away from somebody, put out his foot to arrest it; the mass X velocity was too much...