Word: commonness
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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After dinner I sit down by a mast and study Herbert Spencer on Style. (N. B. I was conditioned in Rhetoric.) Presently a very common-looking man shouts out, "Stand by to hoist that Spencer." Thinking he refers to my book, I secrete it in my coat-pocket. Several sailors pull at a rope and a sail goes up. The men utter such discordant cries during the process that I go to the captain and complain. He tells me to telegraph to New York and have them dismissed. I ask him in what part of the ship the telegraph-office...
...other schools have not the desire nor ability to present such finished candidates. Many country towns - we say it with no disparagement - have to devote themselves to common-school education, and neglect, to a great extent, the preparation of students, if they have any, for college. It is a remarkable fact, however, that when a country school sends one man, say in a decade, to college, he almost invariably obtains and maintains a high place in his class, even if entering under a full card of conditions. Exceptions occur, and yet perhaps the larger part of the leading fifth...
...spirit should be frowned down; and every one should seek to contribute, in the way most suited to his abilities, to the honor and eminence of Harvard. Let those who are blessed with a good biceps grasp the bat or the oar; let those who have not that too common holy reverence for a pen seek to relieve the prevailing dearth of contributions for the College papers, - nor does he do the least who leaves College with a general average of ninety-plus per cent, - but let us have no drones among...
...nature something which calls for higher springs of action and exerts a more powerful influence than mere pleasure or pain; and to account for these as Mr. Bain does is to annihilate all sense of obligation, and to appeal to the sensualistic feelings which we have in common with the brute. All the world unite in praising one who sacrifices his self-interest in support of what he believes to be the truth; but our author charges him with acting to gain pleasure simply, either for himself or others...
...guides or canoemen ready to take us ashore. The mouth of the river is perhaps a hundred feet wide, and the shallow water shows us a shingle bottom. On the bank a small French Canadian settlement manages to support itself and a few ponies. Little carts are the common vehicles for these rough roads, although we sometimes meet the luxurious bumping-board to remind us of New England. The natives seem to rank among the lowest types of humanity, their chief object in living being the eating of pork or fat of any kind, the drinking of vile whiskey...