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It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme upon good Days, bad Days, were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy. He had stuck the Twenty First of June next to the Twenty Second of December, and the former looked like a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Lord! how he laid about him!
Erra, let us see 'em, maybe you would? He took the cash from Owney's hand, and after opening his eyes in great astonishment at the sight of so much money, he put them into his pocket. 'Well, Owney, I'll keep them safe for you, in my pocket within. But tell us, maybe you would, how come you to get such a mort o' money for an old cup o' painted chaney, that wasn't worth, maybe, a fi'penny bit?
What innate breeding and reticence! What punctilious loyalty to the little observances of literature, of wall-decoration, call it, in the most licentiously minded of them! Lorenzo Magnifico was a rake and could write lewdly enough, as we all know. Yet, when he chose, that is when Art bade him, how unerringly he chose the right momentum. His too was "la mente che non erra."
Matilda received intimation of this design by the usual friendly channel of a blunt arrow, which must either have been sent from some secret friend in the prince's camp, or from some vigorous archer beyond it: the latter will not appear improbable, when we consider that Robin Hood and Little John could shoot two English miles and an inch point-blank, Come scrive Turpino, che non erra.
And Butler, in his satirical description of Sir Hudibras, ascribes to his hero more practical philosophy than he appears to have intended, and more, certainly, than is found in some modern systems of education: "In mathematics he was greater Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater; For he, by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve by sines and tangents straight, If bread or butter wanted weight; And wisely tell what hour o' th' day The clock does strike, by algebra."
You may easily imagine that it created no small surprise in the place when they heard a great big fellow with a china saucer in his hand crying out: 'A raal chaney saucer going for a hundred pieces of goold! raal chaney who'll be buying? 'Erra, what's that you're saying, you great gomeril? says a man, coming up to him, and looking first at the saucer and then in his face.
"You needn't 'laws, you know you can, for you've often told them to me; now begin, right away; it will keep you awake if it doesn't do anything else." "Well," said Bubbles, smoothing down her apron, "oncet they was a bummelybee, and a snake, and a bird." "What kind of a bird?" interrupted Florence. "Erra erra bluebird," said Bubbles. "All right, go on."
If he hear but a raven croak from the next roof he makes his will, or if a bittern fly over his head by night; but if his troubled fancy shall second his thoughts with the dream of a fair garden, or green rushes, or the salutation of a dead friend, he takes leave of the world and says he cannot live. He will never set to sea but on a Sunday, neither ever goes without an Erra Pater in his pocket.
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