Word: boye
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...story goes: Selina Peake, sprite of poverty, married Pervus De Jong, Illinois potato man. No amount of grubbing could deaden Selina. After years of it, she could still stick radishes behind her ear and dance for Dirk, her boy, only "so big." Dirk grew up and trailed off into a dull love-jam involving a nice girl and a naughtyish one. Also, Selina, old and bent, peddled her potatoes on Prairie Avenue, Chicago...
...Some 88 years ago, in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, there arrived a boy whose Welsh father and Irish-German mother caused him to be called William Dean Howells. The boy played a little, went to school a bit, then learned to sit long hours on a high stool in a printer's shop setting type. When he could, he went home and sat alone "in a windowed nook under the stairs," tirelessly schooling himself in literature, languages, composition. He loved his family with a deep reserve; he guarded his thoughts; he pursued youth's ideal of beauty...
...when the boy gets in, he receives something entirely different from what is known as a university education in Europe. He gets, not so much an insight into ways of thinking and methods of reasoning, not so much a background of culture, as a training in 'leadership,' 'citizenship' and 'character.' This may be a desirable thing at the present point of development of the United States, but it is something quite distinct from the European conception of a university...
...student not only gets something different, but he expects something different. In England you go to the university to develop yourself, while in America you go to the university to distinguish yourself. There you have a whole world of difference. In America a boy is always endeavoring to attain some outward sign of achievement?to make the college paper, to make one of the clubs or fraternities, to make the football team. The centre of gravity is in the world of action far more than in the world of thought...
...your issue of Dec. 29 you state that "Thomas Alva Edison started life as a newsboy." I was surprised to learn that Mr. Edison had been such a precocious infant. It would not have been so startling had you merely said he started life as a barefoot boy, but a newsboy?that is too much...