Word: almost
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...what we need at Harvard is a deeper appreciation of the fact that college is but a preparatory school, after all; that before very long we shall be placed in a position where earnestness is almost indispensable to success, and indifference a thing to be fought against, instead of cherished. This estimate of the value of earnestness is not exactly new; it certainly must have occurred to Noah when he set about building the ark, - to say nothing of Adam or the pre-Adamite, - and it has been handed down to us in a great many old adages, which...
...almost with regret that we take up a burlesque of that delight of our school-days, Sandford and Merton; but, since the author of the new history has already given us proof of his humor in Happy Thoughts and other books, we look for amusement, if not instruction, and are not disappointed. The book opens very funnily with a description of the "hilarious" son of the farmer, and of the young Jamaica nabob. Of course the omniscient Mr. Barlow falls an easy prey to the author's talent for ridicule, and becomes in farce what Mr. Pecksniff is in comedy...
...seems hardly fair to criticise the author's style of thinking, but we must do so in order to justly estimate the book. Almost everything that George Eliot says of men and women, or makes men and women say, is true, and for that reason interesting; but she is deficient in the crowning quality of the novelist, - ability to throw a dramatic interest over all the characters, and make the reader feel that he is learning the story of real men and women. We know that the characters of "Middlemarch" are natural, that they might exist, but we think...
...consequently the payment of fifty cents became worse than a bore. His passion, too, for Spanish literature was evidently on the decline. Well, one day he said to the knight-errant who formed the other party to the contract: "Now, my friend, I shall be obliged to study during almost the whole time in future, and my door will be often locked to keep out loafers; so whenever you come here, just cry out 'Sancho Panza,' and I shall know who is without." Why proceed? Of course the name of poor Sancho never proved the "open sesame" to our room...
...those parts where it differs from less pretentious periodicals. The same was true of similar magazines formerly published in Cambridge. Few read them, and they soon died. The reason is not hard to find. The thoughts of very young men are usually crude, and to every one but themselves almost worthless; besides, it is hard to find more than half a dozen interested in the same subject at once. It appears to us quite out of the question to speak to the half-dozen and neglect the hundreds. Let those who think differently consider well this line from Byron, that...