Word: absurdity
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...reflects discredit upon the three upper classes that their football teams should receive such wretched support as has been given to them this year. That out of a class of four hundred men there should be any difficulty in getting at least first and second elevens, seems absurd; yet this is the case, and has in past years been the case, until by dint of hard personal persuasion barely enough men have finally been got together to make a fair showing in the class championship games...
...mass meetings suggested by the joint committee from Exeter and Andover should surely result in the renewal of athletic contests between the two schools. It is absurd that such leading preparatory schools in the country should any longer be kept at variance merely for lack of general will to come to some agreement. In any league which may be now formed, it should not prove difficult to guard against a repetition of the conditions which led to the present separation. Out of experience, the schools should have learned sufficient wisdom to direct with success their mutual efforts toward maintaining friendly...
...less than brutal. An ideal is such a persistently determined affair that one shrinks from encountering it. When a man knows he is honorable, why expose himself to the unpleasant suggestion that he is not? The hint that his estimate of himself has been too high is of course absurd, but it is extremely disagreeable, and no man in his senses would force himself to listen to it. It would doubtless be unbecoming in us to urge any such lack of self-consideration, but surely it is not going too far to call attention to one of the disguises...
...matter of course, to find the foremost college in the country offering instruction in such an elementary field as is covered by English A. That part of the course which deals with the history of English literature is, indeed, not out of place; but it is little less than absurd that freshmen at Harvard should have to be instructed in the first principles of composition, or, to put it with painful simplicity, should have to be taught to write even fairly well. And to write what? The absurdity is enhanced by the fact that it is their own native language...
When the very moderate grade of the Harvard College admission examinations is considered, it seems absurd that the average age of the entering classes should be close to nineteen years; yet such is still the case. Comparison with foreign countries in this respect is mortifying. In England, France, of Germany, boys of sixteen, or at the most seventeen, are as far advanced in their education as are college freshmen here. More than this, what they have learned they are familiar with in a way unknown to the boy who has here squeezed through college examinations which are often the sole...