United States or Dominica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Oh, shucks!" retorted Sadie, with an impatient shrug and a very red face, as she employed the Southern localism, "don't preach to me. I reckon my 'mental capacity' will hold out long enough to pull me through Hilton." And with this sharp and angry thrust she flounced out of the room, banging the door after her.
The gang shouted for a resumption of the "sport," thinking this was weakness of the competitor. They joined again, but Armstrong, having his doubts, resorted to foul play kicking or "legging," as the localism stands. Indignantly, Lincoln drew him up again and shook him in mid-air as a terrier does a rat.
But it was also, as we have seen, a very localized thing, especially in the Middle Ages. And that very lively localism the Christian faith and affections encouraged led at last to an excessive and exclusive parochialism. There were rival shrines of the same saint, and a sort of duel between two statues of the same divinity.
From one angle, localism seems selfishness and weakness; from another, it shows the vigorous life of separate communities, each self-centred and jealous of its authority because the local instinct is so vitally active. It only needed time to broaden the outlook and give the English colonies a sense of their common interest.
It thus created a nucleus for national feeling, which gradually cured the localism of early England and the sectionalism of feudal society; and it developed an esprit de corps which counteracted the influence of the court.
The localism did indeed produce that choice of territorial chieftains which came to be called Feudalism, and of which we shall speak later. But the direct possession of man by man the same localism tended to destroy; though this negative influence upon it bears no kind of proportion to the positive influence of the Catholic Church.
Why don't they now? Why don't they now? I saw enough of hating each other in the old Federal times; now let's love each other, I say, let's love each other, and not try to make it out that there is n't any place fit to live in except the one we happen to be born in. It dwarfs the mind, I think, said I, to feed it on any localism. The full stature of manhood is shrivelled
Planet-wide communication in the 1970's provides an example of the transformation from economic localism to economic worldism during recent times. By its very nature, communication tends to involve all four corners of the planet. In that sense, communication tends to become unique. It is not a real exception, however.
But I find nothing in the manly sentiment and true tenderness of Irving to warrant the sentimental gush of his followers, who missed his corrective humor as completely as they failed to catch his literary art. Whatever note of localism there was in the Knickerbocker School, however dilettante and unfruitful it was, it was not the legitimate heir of the broad and eclectic genius of Irving.
The obstinate localism of the colonies was such that not until a generation after the Revolution did a genuine American national sentiment appear. The colonies were driven to act together in 1774-1776, but not to fuse, by a danger not to national but to local independence. This fact indicates how sharply defined was the field which the Americans insisted on having free from parliamentary invasion.
Word Of The Day