Eric, or Little by Little

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Oh ay, Fanny, that’s just like you to say so; you’re always talking and prophesying; but never mind, I’m going to school, so, hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” and he again began his capering,—jumping over the chairs, trying to vault the tables, singing and dancing with an exuberance of delight, till, catching a sudden sight of his little spaniel Flo, he sprang through the open window into the garden, and disappeared behind the trees of the shrubbery; but Fanny still heard his clear, ringing, silvery laughter, as he continued his games in the summer air. Eric Thursley, a thirteen-year-old demonologist and the titular character of the Discworld novel Eric'×'

That day Eric was to have his first interview with Dr Rowlands. The school had already re-opened, and one of the boys passed by the window while they were breakfasting. He looked very happy and engaging, and was humming a tune as he strolled along. Eric started up and gazed after him with the most intense curiosity. At that moment the unconscious schoolboy was to him the most interesting person in the whole world, and he couldn’t realise the fact that, before the day was over, he would be a Roslyn boy himself. He very much wondered what sort of a fellow the boy was, and whether he should ever recognise him again, and make his acquaintance. Yes, Eric, the thread of that boy’s destiny is twined for many a day with yours; his name is Montagu, as you will know very soon. In Estonia and Finland (where Fenno-Swedish remains an official minority language), the standard Nordic name form Erik is found, but it may also be spelled phonetically as Eerik ( Finnish: [ˈeːrik]), in accordance with Finnic language orthography, along with a slew of other unique Balto-Finnic variant forms including Eerikki, Eero, Erki and Erkki. [12] [13] [14] [15]

And again, only a few weeks after this eventful night, the schoolboys persuade Eric to go to the town pub: In later years, it fell out of favour, in part because of its religious earnestness. For example, in Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co., published late in 1899, the protagonist Beetle and his friends frequently made fun of "Eric", e.g. Entries "Æiríkʀ", "Ríkʀ" and "-ríkʀ" in Nordiskt runnamnslexikon (2002) by Lena Peterson at the Swedish Institute for Linguistics and Heritage (Institutet för språk och folkminnen). Instantly there was a rush for caps, and the boys poured out in a confused and noisy stream, while at the same moment the other schoolrooms disgorged their inmates. Eric naturally went out among the last; but just as he was going to take his cap, Barker seized it, and flung it with a whoop to the end of the passage, where it was trampled on by a number of the boys as they ran out.

The book is credited with helping to increase the popularity of the first name " Eric" in English-speaking countries—although not with Eric Arthur Blair (the writer and journalist George Orwell) who disliked his given name because of its association with Farrar's book. [2] But it must be admitted that he made matters worse by his own bursts of passion. His was not the temper to turn the other cheek; but, brave and spirited as he was, he felt how utterly hopeless would be any attempt on his part to repel force by force. He would have tried some slight conciliation, but it was really impossible with such a boy as his enemy. Barker never gave him even so much as an indifferent look, much less a civil word. Eric loathed him, and the only good and happy part of the matter to his own mind was, that conscientiously his only desire was to get rid of him, and be left alone, while he never cherished a particle of revenge.Papa Wolf: Eric stays with his parents, who have hired a house near Roslyn, during his first two terms. During Eric's first term, his father happens to be walking by the playground while Barker beats Eric and Russell. Eric's father beats Barker with a riding-whip, threatens to beat him even worse if he ever hurts Eric again, and excoriates the other boys for not standing up to Barker. Eric could not, and would not, brook his bullying with silence. His resentment was loud and stinging, and, Ishmaelite as Barker was, even his phlegmatic temperament took fire when Eric shouted his fierce and uncompromising retorts in the hearing of the others.

Eric, gulping down his fury with a great effort, turned to his opponent, and said coolly, “Is that what you always do to new fellows?” The innocence of mere ignorance is a poor thing; it cannot, under any circumstances, be permanent, nor is it at all valuable as a foundation of character. The true preparation for life, the true basis of a manly character, is not to have been ignorant of evil, but to have known it and avoided it; not to have been sheltered from temptation, but to have passed through it and overcome it by God’s help. [1:15 ]Erik, a thief as well as one of the main companions of the protagonist in the video game, Dragon Quest XI Now this connects (in a slightly oblique way) with one of the strands of the course I’ve been teaching: that children’s literature consistently mediate appetite and desire via food, because for kids, and especially pre-pubescent kids, food is the main sensual pleasure available to them. And the ambiguity is an interesting textual function of the novel. What it means, I think, is that we can take the signifying structure of Eric, we can scoop out the specifics of the moral alarmism (masturbation, say) and interpretively-speaking replace it with whatever is at the top of the presentday list of ‘Oh Won’t Somebody Please Think Of The Children?’ collective anxiety. At last the afternoon wore away, and a soft summer evening filled the sky with its gorgeous calm. Far-off they caught the sound of wheels; a carriage dashed up to the door, and the next moment Eric sprang into his mother’s arms. I cannot venture to print the accounts patients have given me of what they have seen or even been drawn into at schools. I would fain hope that such abominations are things of the past, and cannot be now repeated under more perfect supervision, and wider knowledge of what is at least possible.Acton believed (erroneously, I should stress) that masturbation has terribly deleterious effects on health.