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 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 344 - Things vulgar, and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise ? They praise, and they admire, they know not what, And know not whom, but as one leads the other ; And what delight to be by such extoll'd, To live upon their tongues, and be their talk, Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise, His lot who dares be singularly good?
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 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 29 - ... matter, That oaks must come from Thrace to dance? Must stupid stocks be taught to flatter'? And is there no such wood in France ? Why must the winds all hold their tongue? If they a little breath should raise, Would that have spoil'd the poet's song, Or...
Page 123 - ... and amidst a multitude of boys and idlers, paraded through the streets to the tune of the Rogue's March.
Page 377 - 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 344 - 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 56 - Norris's alley, and was a singular, old fashioned •structure, laid out in the style of a fortification, with abundance of angles both salient and re-entering. Its two wings projected to the street in the manner of bastions, to which, the main building retreating ,from sixteen to eighteen feet, served for a curtain.
Page 379 - 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.

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