Word: epitaphs
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...colleges can boast a prouder record or more eminent alumni than the old University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, a fact which he thought worthy to be chronicled, in writing his own epitaph, beside the immortal fact of his having been the author of the Declaration of Independence. The fact that he was twice President of the United States Jefferson thought less worthy of record. Although prostrated by the war, the university has since that time received over $700,000 in legacies and gifts, exclusive of its fixed endowments. It has no President but its affairs are administered...
...President of the University; his fame shall not, to use his own language, this day be left to 'a dogged dirge and a Latin epitaph': - we pronounce him while he lives, in our mother tongue, the ornament of the forum, the senate and the academy...
...coffin was then lowered into the grave, which the sextons filled, and at the head was placed the following epitaph in white letters on a black board...
...history we find few prominent characters; for the vast majority of men the law of life is oblivion. We belong to the unknown, the unrecorded masses and one epitaph would do for all. This is one great law of man. A second is that the human race, left alone, tends downward. An old proverb says, "The majority are evil." Indeed it is a sad spectacle - the world tending to degradation. The history of the world is a record of degradations and deliverances. The world has fallen and there have come great heroes, agents of the Creator, to raise it again...
...readers will think of them. The words "Benevolent Public," "Potent Dispenser of Fame," etc., recur very frequently. The graver pieces are those in which he displays most force; in humorous passages his pen does not run with the same lightness as Selwyn's, Shadwell's, or Doyle's. The epitaph which he composed for himself would have conveyed but a faulty idea of his talents and character...