Word: astonishingly
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...blotted scraps of paper from their pockets with an infantile-Byronic air, to the delight of their mothers and to the horror of all reasonable people; others stave off the evil hour until they fall in love, when, inspired, I suppose, by the object of their sonnets, they often astonish every one but themselves by the excellence of their verses, just as madmen have been known to develop powers of which their hours of sanity showed no trace; others, again, are attacked by the passion for versification at an advanced, perhaps a senile age, when they make themselves happy...