Word: benjamin
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...curious compound of commercial Americanism, Hebrew blue-blood, and Latin aristocracy, and the name of his native place, Saug Centre, was so picturesque, while, moreover, I had thought so much about that line of words in the catalogue, that I so breathed into them an individuality, a soul, that Benjamin Emilius became one of my daily companions during those last autumn days when the leaves fall and the bursar rejoices in a fresh opportunity to answer numerous and voluminous questions with that laconic brevity so characteristic of that functionary...
Saug Centre had a school, I was sure, and Benjamin Emilius was a graduate. I pictured to myself the graduating exercises, where Benjamin Emilius had delivered a paper on "The Liability of Meteors to Influence Civilization," a subject that would do credit to the choice of a Professor in "Themes" in this vicinity. "Miss Jennie Smith delivered the class prophecy, in which the town peculiarities were handled with discriminating wit and severity" (vid. the report in the next morning's edition of the Saug Centre Phoenix), and the exercises were closed by a performance of the "Hussar's Charge...
...Benjamin's father kept a store in Saug Centre - I was fully persuaded of that, and I almost knew what he kept. I could almost see the signs pasted in the window on large sheets of coarse, brown paper, "Our Five-Cent Cigar can't be beat. Try it." "A large supply of Dupee's Sugar-Cured Hams just in." "Try our new Self-Adjusting Mouse Inducer; every housekeeper should have...
...suppose the psychological explanation of all this is in the name Benjamin Emilius Butterfield. Butterfield had an unmistakable tang of "store" about it which I could not eliminate. "Emilius" bespoke an acquaintance, limited perhaps, with classic literature, and also carried with it, to my mind, a pair of spectacles...
...Benjamin, i. e., son of the right hand, son of good fortune, was a whole tableau in itself; it meant a chapter every night, sermons an hour long, and Sunday school every Sabbath; it meant a long and tearful discussion between Mr. and Mrs. Buttefield, senior, and Mrs. Butterfield's mother, at Benjamin Emilius' birth; it meant a narrow escape from such biblical prefixes as Arphaxad, Peleg, Uz, Mash, Hazarmaveth, and the like...