United States or Caribbean Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The usual meaning of the word to the Greek, as to the modern, seems to be little more than an aping or mimicking. Aristotle himself uses imitate in this sense when he speaks of the delight children take in imitation. But in establishing imitation as the criterion of poetic, Aristotle seems to have injected something of a private, or at least a special scientific meaning into the word.
Bullfrog, instead of being considered as a respectable old bore, got himself universally laughed at for aping fashionable manners. Every bird and beast in the forest had a gibe at him; and even old Parson Too-Whit thought it worth his while to make him a pastoral call, and admonish him about courses unbefitting his age and standing.
The proletarian Socialists do not believe what they say, and therefore they are so violent in saying it. They are not themselves of pure and exalted character; they cannot ennoble others. If the movement continue we shall see miserable examples of weakness led astray by popularity, of despicable qualities aping greatness.
The spectacle of the "Rath" distinction in its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is crawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also in some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which, aping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as one's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's friends.
"Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping me!" interposed the princess in the pink shoes. "They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a Trauerkrug of Regensburg in black-and-white. "And my own dots they put on plain English china creatures!" sighed the little white maid of Nymphenburg.
'It was nothing, I said carelessly; 'the fellow was wantonly heedless. 'It was a very pretty and scientific turn of the wrist, he insisted, 'and yes, those fellows at first were obsequious enough; now, some of them, having found out how ill-mannered the Americans dare be without being beaten, are aping our manners. I I trust the young lady was not hurt?
Shirley laughed outright and regretted that she did not have her kodak to take back to America some idea of their grotesque appearance, and she listened with amused interest as Jefferson explained that these men were notorious poseurs, aping the dress and manners of the old-time student as he flourished in the days of Randolph and Mimi and the other immortal characters of Murger's Bohemia.
Her tale is to show what a woman likes best, which, according to her, is to bear rule over her husband and household. The prioress is conventional and weak, aping courtly manners. The wife of the host of the Tabard inn is a vixen and shrew, who calls her husband a milksop, and is so formidable with both her tongue and her hands that he is glad to make his escape from her whenever he can.
Here was a daughter whose child even according to the ordinary aping of aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic than retired grocers, and who have no more land to "keep together" than a lawn and a paddock would have a prior claim. Was inheritance a question of liking or of responsibility?
Parents should demand that the teachers in these colleges and schools should be free from the practice of the vices of drinking intoxicating liquors and the use of tobacco. I hope we will have some generous hearted man who will donate to build a college in Kansas with the capacity of Yale. What a shame to have professors in our schools aping the vices of foreigners.
Word Of The Day