Good music just makes me happy and keeps me from getting distracted.
America, when it became known to Europeans, was, as it had long been, a scene of wide-spread revolution.
The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony-unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil--was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith.
Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie; the clouds were like light piles of cotton; and where the blue sky was visible, it wore a hazy and languid aspect.
When America was first made known to Europe, the part assumed by France on the borders of that new world was peculiar, and is little recognized. While the Spaniard roamed sea and land, burning for achievement, red-hot with bigotry and avarice, and while England, with soberer steps and a less dazzling result, followed in the path of discovery and gold-hunting, it was from France that those barbarous shores first learned to serve the ends of peaceful commercial industry.
Here society is reduced to its original elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources of their original natures.
Spanish civilization crushed the Indian. English civilization scorned and neglected him. French civilization embraced and cherished him.
In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T. H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.
I think this is what college is all about: self-examination and dealing with those questions of "Who am I?"
If compassion and mercy are not compatible with politics then something is the matter with politics.
It's not that he was going nowhere, it's that he'd already arrived.