Word: humbug
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...marking system is a humbug; the college papers say so. It is a mistake to study. I am an epicurean College happiness is the summum bonum. There is nothing more delightful than smoking a cigarette in a Holworthy window-seat, or drifting lazily upon the beautiful bosom of the Charles while the wavelets wash and wander about your shell...
...WONDER whether I am the only reader of the Crimson who has fallen easy prey to the specious eloquence of old Izaak Walton, that arch-humbug who "babbles of green fields" in such a naive and charming way. Last spring I picked up "The Complete Angler," and at once devoting to Hades the august historians and orators of antiquity, I wanted to be a fisher of trout, I longed for brooks to conquer, I wished to commune with Nature. I have communed now, and some of the greenness has departed from those fields and from...
...that little girl humbug you, to be sure," said I. "I'll warrant that you asked her pardon for suspecting her of flirting...
...Bless me! how green you are!" exclaimed Humbug. "Why, my dear fellow, you'd kill yourself, - it is n't the thing at all, you know. You have much to learn. I saw you talking today to a man with long hair. That was a mistake. You must know that this college is not your native town; it is a world by itself, and does not recognize the world around it. Here you must do as the rest do; here 'come-outers' are not tolerated; here a man must hide his heart, and make friends who will be useful...
...gaudy thing, like one of those strange works of Turner, hideous and unreal. When will the Freshman be himself again? Perhaps in four years, - perhaps to-morrow. Until then we shall know him by his feigned face and mock-heroic air: for we, too, have all seen Humbug; and many of us, like the Freshman, have taken his advice. A few there are who realize that they have heard only Humbug's side of the question...