Word: uncommonness
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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Oratory is the other field of usefulness, in training for which our places of education are wanting. The mere faculty of expressing one's thoughts with facility and grace is not uncommon among us; but behind and above all this there are certain conditions, indispensable to the making of the real orator, consisting, as the treatment of this subject by Cicero has admirably shown, in a general and detailed acquaintance with all departments of knowledge. To satisfy these conditions, by commencing the training here and marking out a distinct practical road for the student to follow afterward, should...
...keeps down this element in the majority of men. Of course there are exceptions, but excessive modesty is not a common failing of the age. The boy who dragged his new trousers around in the dust before wearing them, so that their freshness might not be suspected, was an uncommon child. Boys don't do so now. Even the persons who are seemingly most free from the common weakness, if you but change their circumstances a little, are as subject...
...present. The works of the grand old thinkers of Greece and Rome were read, not as etymological and grammatical puzzles, but for their beauties of idea and of expression. The student was not asked to rack his brains and search the grammar for the peculiar technical reason for an uncommon use of a subjunctive, or to give a long dissertation on the ground of a Grecian author's choice of the infinitive with av instead of the optative. It was supposed that the average student had sufficient general knowledge of grammatical principles, after four or five years of careful preparation...
...very fair one, and the other work toward the end of the volume is good. "The Hermit's Vigil," by Margaret J. Preston, is superior to the ordinary magazine poem, but we cannot help suggesting that the lady gains nothing by the introduction of an obsolete and uncommon vocabulary: we would cite, in illustration of our meaning, the following lines...
...made him a reputation; "My Novel," "The Caxtons," "What will he do with it?" and "The Last of the Barons." "Eugene Aram," a book severely censured at the time of its publication because the characters were "taken from Newgate," is well worth the perusal, and, though it represents an uncommon phase of character, it has nothing peculiarly extravagant or unnatural about it, as has been alleged...