Word: absurdity
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Granted that the most uncomfortable and absurd costume in the world is evening dress, the men can still afford to retort: "Isn't that just like a woman?" This misguided Englishwoman proceeds on the absurd premise that people want to dress comfortably. If comfort were the prime object of top hats and stiff shirts, they would give place at once to loin cloths and beads. Ever since garments have risen to the dignity of clothes, they have been ornaments first, and conveniences second; and if they fail in their first function, modern men can console themselves with the reflection that...
This incident, absurd as it must seem to an unprejudiced observer, throws light upon one of the most serious problems of education. Many men who have no special aptitude for understanding and stimulating young minds, enter upon careers as teachers, presumably because they seem to fit nowhere else, and teaching looks easy. As educators they are a follow mockery, and one such pseudo-teacher can do more harm by disgusting young minds with academic pursuits, than ten real scholar-teachers can undo. To judge by the evidence, Trinity College has a dean of this type...
...Absurd as it may seem, this controversy is a very real one at Yale, and, though it may take a Thirty Years War to end it, there is scarcely any doubt as to the ultimate result. It may appear unholy rash to say it, but we venture to predict that Yale--even Yale--will abandon its attempt to effect virtue by compulsion...
Although many a youth now enters college in search of pleasure and finds it, it is absurd to assert that as the sole motive the going to college--even in this pleasure-loving age. Neither the older nor the younger generation could be so unanimous in a single motive. Both, it seems fair to say, were prepared to absorb as much academic and worldly wisdom as came their way. Neither was averse to a good time. The greatest difference is in the tense of the verb with which you describe fathers and sons: one got it, the other is getting...
...until their voices begin to get impressive and they go away to enter the second or third form at one of the big preparatory schools. But small as they are, some of them have surprising names-the names of well-known capitalists, famed lawyers, architects, actors, brokers. It is absurd to hear such names applied to inky insolence in corduroy. Mr. Tabor was aware of this; he showed it by setting rows of black-marks against some of the sleekest platinum-and-roseleaf names; he would stand 60-pound celebrities in the corner with their hands over their heads...