Word: sip
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Dates: during 1875-1875
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...that enthusiasm - always more or less narrow-minded - for any subject, which is the result of exclusive attention and concentrated desire to excel. Our elective and lecture systems, our evening readings, present so many branches of study in such varied and attractive forms, that we are tempted to sip the sweets of various flowers, and leave any of them the moment when the taste becomes less pleasant or the appetite is cloyed. Hence this prevailing superficialness; the vast majority of students will choose "soft" or entertaining courses, which have little or no connection one with the other; while the readings...
...more numerous than the males, - they see the wide field of literature spread invitingly before them. Guided by the whim of the moment, as their humbler namesakes are, they float aimlessly among the rich flowers; alighting here on one of Thackeray's bright novels; pausing there a moment to sip the sweetness of Wordsworth's poems; attracted yonder by the flashing pages of Charles Reade. They seek only the pleasures of literature, and slight observation will convince us that they delight in these only when easily obtained. Where grow the more sober plants of history and biography their fancy seldom...