Word: grates
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Conceits & Quiddities. The strain left deep marks on the character and writings of poor Charles Lamb. He drowned his sorrows in drink, diluted his tragedy with splashes of nervous, tense humor, indulged in "conceits and quiddities" that might grate on some modern sensibilities. His letters make better reading than the essays he wrote under the name of "Elia" (anagram for "A Lie"). This selection by T. S. Matthews, onetime managing editor of TIME, is shrewdly contrived to show why Lamb was not merely pitied for his sufferings but loved as well for his goodness. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about...
...case it all gets too much, nigel offers the molesworth daydream service ("Are you fatigued? Bored, rundown . . .? Help yourself to a MOLESWORTH DAYDREAM. Simple, easy to operate. No gadgets . . ."). Best among the catalogue of daydreams offered is the one in which the whole school is swept away by the grate st custard's flood, but molesworth and prudence entwhistle, the beautiful under-matron, survive in a rowboat ("how peaceful it is upon the waters nigel...
...hundred and ninety fire-filled years ago, a burning grate pilled high with colas started one of the University's most disastrous blazes. In the middle of the winter of 1764 the fire place in Harvard Hall, where the Massachusetts General Assembly was meeting, set the famous building into an inferno. When the blaze subsided most of the books in John Harvard's original library were up in smoke and the hall lay in ashes...
...narrow escape from asphyxiation in his room in Hoollis Hall. According to Eliot his servant came into his room one with smoke. Eliot lay partially unconscious on his bed. Once aroused, he and the man traced the smoke to the downstairs room of a freshman who had left his grate fire going over the weekend...
...arson. Paul's reputation as the ace of all incorrigibles earned him a more or less permanent home on St. Joseph. He wrote frequent obscene letters to the prison governor, went out of his way to plague the warden, tried to give himself TB, practiced acrobatics on the grate of his solitary cell, and indulged in many other pranks. For each offense he got 30 extra days in solitary until at last he had piled up more than ten years in penalties. The authorities gave up, took him to the mainland, where he escaped. Where the jailers had failed...