Word: popularity
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...polities which were rife at the time of the Senior Class elections, it was frequently urged that certain measures were objectionable because they were not democratic. This appeared to be considered by many as a final argument. The moment that any plan was suspected of a character not thoroughly popular, that plan was ipso facto condemned. Good or bad, it was at once abandoned by the majority...
Whether this popular hatred of anything which savors of oligarchy is or is not desirable depends upon the object of the class elections. If this object is to elect the men who may at the moment chance to be most popular or most widely known among their classmates, the purely democratic elections which we have this season witnessed attain it with comparative certainty. If, on the other hand, the object is to elect to each office the person best calculated to fill it with credit, it is by no means so certain that democracy should be the leading characteristic...
...theory of government at present popular can be reduced to the following simple proposition. The best government is that by which the greatest happiness is secured for the greatest number of people. The greatest number of people are happiest when they have their own way. And, consequently, the best government is that which permits the greatest number of people to have their...
...elected to the St. Paul's, the Chess Club, the Institute, or the Athenaeum, etc., ad infinitum, and have encircled their shingles with gray passe-partouts; when they have carelessly slung any medals that they may possess over the shingles aforesaid, and when they have put photographs of a popular actress or two - probably Rosina Vokes, and some loose character in tights - on their mantelpieces, they have paid attention enough to aesthetics. They appear to regard pictures, and decorations in general, as convenient inventions to fill bare walls; they appear to decorate their rooms, if they take the trouble...
...your walls or your mantel-piece in the condition in which they at present are, and you are reminded of nothing but this same slow sort of thing. Last year's crew and last year's burlesque actress; certificates of admission to half a dozen more or less popular societies; a French print of a grinning grisette; at best a third-rate Landseer or two, in which the dogs and the wilder beasts unconsciously lead your mind back to sporting matters, - that is all that you will probably discover, and your thoughts will not wander a dozen miles from your...