Word: books
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...lazy are at rest." Casting around for a place worthy to be graced by his unrivalled talent for a life of indolent luxury, he pitched upon Brazil as the country affording the maximum of physical enjoyment with the least mental strain; so, with no companion but a Portuguese conversation-book, he set out for the great city of South America, - Rio de Janeiro...
Long study of the conversation-book had rendered me confident of my ability to speak the language with native elegance and fluency. But my confidence was destined to meet with a rude shock. I had been wandering about the city, and on returning to the wharf asked a boatman to "take me to the ship," in what I fondly supposed was the choicest Portuguese. "Si, si, Mr. Merican man, me understand you," was the encouraging rejoinder. That was enough for me. I confined myself to pantomime afterwards, except in one instance, when my success was still more startling...
...Harvard Index" has at last made its appearance. The plan of the book is much improved, but we are sorry to find in it so many mistakes...
...social training, or, as the French call it, the savoir vivre, requisite of a gentleman, much less his delicacy of feeling. Wordsworth certainly was superior to bourgeois, but De Quincey might well be pardoned for denying the name of gentleman to a man who cut the leaves of a book, in the author's presence, with a table-knife covered with butter. This indeed is a trifle, and for the perfection of the English bourgeois-artiste character we must go to Dr. Johnson. There is a good deal, after all, to be said in excuse of the first gentleman...
...evening. About half the rooms we find locked; their inmates gone for amusement into Boston or elsewhere. We will take a look into some of the others. Here, in Matthews, is a man with one elbow resting on the table, the hand supporting his forehead, while a book is outspread before his half-closed eyes. He must be a deep thinker, he is so quiet. Across the hall we find a man stretched on his back on the lounge, reading Middlemarch. In Holworthy is a party engaged in a "square game of draw poker," following the example of our Minister...