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And of this there was visible testimony in four dyspeptic young ones that walked sleepily around two old ones, kept up a very ill-natured whimpering, and in addition to being featherless were quite as much bedowned as the face of a freshman.
In our known hemisphere there are about fifty thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents."
It is blessed, and is called childhood. All babies are round, yielding, weak, timid, and soft to the touch as a handful of wadding. Protected by cushions of good rosy flesh or by a coating of soft down, they go rolling, staggering, dragging along their little unaccustomed feet, shaking in the air their plump hands or featherless wing.
Is it rational to be patriotic, even when one's state is not much of a state? We have seen that the Rational Social Will incorporates itself in societies very gradually, and that it draws into its service lesser groups of many descriptions. He who detaches himself from these lesser groups is not a man. He is the mere outline of a man the "featherless biped" of the philosopher.
The wind blew constantly with the sound of a great cathedral organ at a distance, but playing profane, despairing dirges; at other times the noise came close to the door, like the howling of wild beasts. She had grown pale, aye, blanched, and bent more than ever, as if old age had already touched her with its featherless wing.
Those poor, featherless creatures can't come here, neither can he get away, without wings. He is all our own now!" This was not quite true, for they forgot that though men cannot fly they make boats with wings, and so can cross the sea. Cuthbert often went ashore to do errands of mercy, in peasants' huts and in the Queen's palace.
A pair nested every year in the hollow top of an oak stump about fifteen feet high that stood on the side of the meadow, and we used to wonder how they got the fluffy young ones down from the nest and across the meadow to the lake when they were only helpless, featherless midgets; whether the mother carried them to the water on her back or in her mouth.
What rascal was it who said that man was a featherless biped? And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her!
Similarly "featherless bipeds" will have a complex meaning, containing as constituents the presence of two feet and the absence of feathers, while its denotation will be the class of men. Thus when we say "Scott is the author of Waverley" or "men are the same as featherless bipeds," we are asserting an identity of denotation, and this assertion is worth making because of the diversity of meaning.
And so we come to the final question: is the afternoon tea a place where one featherless, plantigrade, biped mammal of the genus Homo may meet another whom he might hope some time to call a friend? I do not mean 'my friend What's-his-name? but rather such another biped as Tennyson had in mind when he wrote,
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