Word: old
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...this old mat had a peculiar value in my eyes, for it not only served the usual purpose of mats, but it was a transmittendum, and a very venerable one, too. Long years ago one of those New England boys of the bean-pole structure, who entered college at the age of thirteen, brought the mat with him from his farm-home on Narragansett Bay. It was new then, and had been woven in bright colors by an old Indian squaw, a veritable descendant of King Philip. For a year it lay before the front door of the old farm...
...five decades the mat was passed from one occupant of the room to the succeeding one, until the written record began to read like a chapter in the Old Testament, "And So-and-so bequeaths it unto What's-his-name,' and "What's-his-name bequeaths it unto Thing-a-my," and so they go on bequeathing, until the legacy comes to an end with me. At first this transmittendum had a price. In '32 a Divinity student, who had purchased the mat for a dollar and a half, parted with it, "at a great sacrifice, and because...
...have owned the old mat will lament its loss, not because of itself, - for, what with its rags and its dust, it had become something of an old fossil, - but because, like other old fossils, it called up memories of a past both near and remote. What trains of thought will be roused by the news of its disappearance! Old men will recall the days, far away, when they crossed it, and will wonder at its endurance. Recent graduates will remember its signs of undoubted antiquity, and will laugh when they think of the disasters that it has caused passers...
BOATING-MEN now make their trip to the Union on skates instead of in the old fashion...
...have known some ordinarily stupid men to be witty in evening dress. Pick up all the information that comes in your way. Reading, I know, is often a bore; but it is not difficult to supply its place with the aid of the American one-sidedness of some talkative old specialist. If you want to know something about a legal point, you had better ask a question or two, and start off an amiable lawyer on his profession. If you want some information about art, do the same with an artist. And in general, it will...