Word: fruitless
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...mortifying this should be to those prophets of the press above mentioned! We would earnestly thank those journals who have wasted ink and paper in such fruitless speculations, for their kindly interest in Harvard's future. We thank them, inasmuch as we believe their intentions to have been good. But however deeply they may be distressed at the slight progress Harvard has made toward that foreign system, to themselves so attractive, they have at least had the opportunity of seeing the folly of utterly groundless speculation. For our own part, though changes in some particulars of our present system...
With these facts before him our writer sends out his thoughts in search of something funny : but witticisms are coy birds and fly high; few are able to capture them at will, or furnish them to order. In nine cases out of ten, wearied with his fruitless endeavors, he descends to a lower plane, makes use of vulgarity, and passes it off for wit. Some, as we have before hinted, seem unable to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious article; others there are who, from their moral status, seem incapable of appreciating anything genuine, who derive their intellectual nourishment...
...give even the most meagre description of the collection would be a fruitless task; every one who is interested in art ought to examine it for himself and pass judgment upon it; still, we may mention here two gems of the collection. One is an engraving by Baccio Baldini, one of the very earliest Italian engravers, born in 1437. It is a unique impression of a circular silver plate about four inches in diameter; one of a set of twenty-four, described in books as bought in Florence over a hundred years ago, and which were for many years...