Word: vain
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...this University is the growing use of the Library. It may be well enough to show that we have more students than any other college, that we have the ablest professors, the finest museums, and the largest library; but if we do not employ these advantages, our boast is vain. We have all heard time and time again of the slight mental strength gained, by passively taking our facts and ideas through the handy medium of a lecture. As far as real drill goes, listening to lectures affects our minds about as watching other men pull chest weights affects...
...Charles F. Adams on railroading. That the capabilities of Sever 11 will be taxed to the utmost is not to be doubted. So would the capabilities of Sanders for that matter. We have given up asking why these lectures are given in Sever, for our asking has been in vain. But we expect to see demonstrated next Tuesday evening why they ought not to be held there...
...utter disregard of other people's pleasure which is exhibited when one half of an audience persists in standing up and shutting off the view of the other half. Neither were the tug-of-war teams suffocated by a dense mass of sympathic humanity crowding about them in a vain effort to bring them victory. The officers of the association may well feel gratified at the result of this, the first meeting of the year...
...closing, "Now it looks at present very much as if the Yale alumni are going finally to carry the day. And if, moreover, it be not wholly unreasonable to suppose that the Harvard alumni will ultimately win their alma mater to their principles, can it be an altogether vain speculation for us to hope that in the race of American colleges, Yale will continue to head for Harvard after Harvard has headed for Princeton and, that, Princeton's educational principles acknowledged supreme, Princeton will naturally take its place as the most advanced college in America? Time will show...
...logic in the above is quite invincible. The "speculation" is not "vain." To set aside the other suppositions and propositions, the supposition that all the alumni of Harvard are in hearty sympathy with a portion of the alumni in the New York Harvard Club is really no supposition at all, but a veritable axiom, to doubt which would be like saying that two and two are not four, but five or six. And as commendable as the Princetonian's logic, is its faith in time. Concerning this, however, it should be remembered that time by general belief, is endless...