Word: possessed
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...father-and the fathers before him, afflicted with czarist terrors and pogroms-endure? Not merely endure, but possess the heart and the will to make "something that extends further than time, that weighs more than fate"? Those fathers were better men than he, the narrator says. Divorced, he reflects that his own children "are left to find their own security and their own definitions of success, as my father did, out of the indecision and cripplings which fate has given them. Fair enough; they are back in history, true to their fathers...
...want is to possess...
...problem is that the routine is deceptive, to those inside it as well as those outside. Most guidance counsellors and alumni are well acquainted with Harvard's own summary of its admissions policy: roughly 15 per cent of every entering class are "really brilliant students who appear to possess sound character and personality"; the rest, given adequate academic ability, are accepted on the basis of an incredible variety of factors ranging from "rural or small-town background" to "concern for the public good...
...strong battering." One expression of this point of view is that the Volunteer tends to see the solution to his problems in technical terms: he feels he needs better training, more modern textbooks, abler support from the Peace Corps staff, or special skills he doesn't now possess...
...treasure Boston's City Fathers may imagine themselves to be doubling they are, in fact, destroying; for whatever force Mr. Johnson's building may possess, or the older one alongside it, will be utterly done away with by the presence of its neighbor...