Word: life
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...view of the present phase of Class Politics, it may not be amiss to pass a bit of friendly criticism on the value of the so-called "Class Lives." Class after class has maintained the custom of having (or trying to have) every member write his "life" on sheets of abnormally large paper, which are intended to be bound with a manuscript copy of Oration, Poem, etc. in a "Class-Book"; records of all Class-Meetings are to be made in this volume; the unfortunate Class Secretary is expected to know the whereabouts of Tom, Dick, and Harry, their occupation...
Speaking from experience, I can say that not sixty per cent of the class write anything at all, and the most part of what is written is not worth a picayune. Now and then a man has something worth mentioning, but the average life is a very cambric-tea affair, or about as amusing reading as the directory, here and there rising to the exciting pitch of Homer's Catalogue of Ships...
...Vault into the seething vortex of life's tumultuous sea, amid...
...life's vast ocean diversely we sail...
...that our countrymen of the present day have become far more ridiculous than our Revolutionary ancestors could have been sublime. And the impulse of every civilized person is to evince the fact of his civilization by making his mode of dress, his mode of thought, and his mode of life as different as possible from those of the absurd creatures by whom he finds himself surrounded...