But in a hundred high schools and colleges, this warfare against common-sense still goes on. Four, or six, or ten years, the pupil... is parsing Greek and Latin, and as soon as he leaves the University, as it is ludicrously called, he shuts those books for the last time. Some thousands of young men are graduated at our colleges in this country every year, and the persons who, at forty years, still read Greek, can all be counted on your hand. I never met with ten. Four or five persons I have seen who read Plato. But is not this absurd, that the whole liberal talent of this country should be directed in its best years on studies which lead to nothing?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Punishment followed on a grand scale. For ten days, an unconscionable length of time, my father blessed the palms of his child's o...utstretched, four-year-old hands with a sharp switch. Seven strokes a day on each hand; that makes one hundred forty strokes and then some. This put an end to the child's innocence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, the army. Well I planted twenty-four gardens the first ten years of our marriage. Never stayed long enough to see a single blo...om.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
. . . the ship struck at ten minutes after four A.M., and all hands, being mostly in their nightclothes, made haste to the forecas...tle, the water coming in at once. There they remained; the passengers in the forecastle, the crew above it, doing what they could. Every wave lifed the forecastle roof and washed over those within. The first man got ashore at nine; many from nine to noon. At flood-tide, about half past three o'clock, when the ship broke up entirely, they came out of the forecastle, and Margaret sat with her back to the foremast, with her hands on her knees, her husband and child already drowned. A great wave came and washed her aft. The steward (?) had just before taken her child and started for shore. Both were drowned.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And now in one hour's time I'll be out there again. I'll raise my eyes and look down that corridor four feet wide with ten lonely ...seconds to justify my whole existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this f...oreigner?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The art of cursing people seems to have lost its tang since the old days when a good malediction took four deep breaths to deliver... and sent the outfielders scurrying toward the fence to field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One who has not only the four S's, which are required in every good lover, but even the whole alphabet; as for example ... Agreeab...le, Bountiful, Constant, Dutiful, Easy, Faithful, Gallant, Honourable, Ingenious, Kind, Loyal, Mild, Noble, Officious, Prudent, Quiet, Rich, Secret, True, Valiant, Wise; the X indeed, is too harsh a letter to agree with him, but he is Young and Zealous.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can ...write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »