Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania: Within the Last Sixty Years

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W. Blackwood, 1822 - Pennsylvania - 431 pages
 

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Page 348 - Things vulgar and, well weighed, scarce worth the praise? They praise, and they admire they know not what. And know not whom, but as one leads the other...
Page 84 - Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit?
Page 96 - Yet, for the benefit of the succeeding age, I could wish that your retreat might be deferred until your morals shall happily be ripened to that maturity of corruption at which the worst examples cease to be contagious.
Page 381 - With a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, Though women all above: But to the girdle do the gods inherit, Beneath is all the fiends; there's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption; — Fie, fie, fie! pah; pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for the'e.
Page 146 - The only exception I recollect to have seen, to these miserably constituted bands from New England, was the regiment of Glover from Marblehead. There was an appearance of discipline in this corps ; the officers seemed to have mixed with the world, and to understand what belonged to their stations.
Page 416 - Why did I write? what sin to me unknown Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came. I left no calling for this idle trade, No duty broke, no father...
Page 348 - By that time, party spirit in Pennsylvania had taken a consistency, and the politicians were divided into constitutionalists and republicans. The first rallied round the constitution already formed, which was reprobated by the others, for its total deficiency in checks, and counterbalancing powers, thence tending, as it was alleged, to rash, precipitate, and oppressive proceedings : the term republicans was embraced, as recognizing the principles of the revolution, and as indicative, perhaps, of...
Page 383 - Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, • 'Tis folly to be wise.
Page 15 - ... in broad day-light, the bell all the while tingling, were they escorted through the streets to school. As Dove affected a strict regard to justice in his dispensations of punishment, and always professed a willingness to have an equal measure of it meted out to himself, in case of his transgressing, the boys took him at his word ; and one morning, when he had overstaid his time, either through laziness, inattention, or design, he found himself waited on in the usual form.
Page 123 - A few days after the carting of Mr. Kearsley, Mr. Isaac Hunt, the attorney, was treated in the same manner, but he managed' the matter much better than his precursor. Instead of braving his conductors like the doctor, Mr. Hunt was a pattern of meekness and humility; and at every halt that was made he rose and expressed his acknowledgments to the crowd for their forbearance and civility.

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