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793fd5e
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[Enoch Root] hadn't really known what to expect of America. But people here seem to do things--hangings included--with a blunt, blank efficiency that's admirable and disappointing at the same time. Like jumping fish, they go about difficult matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must absorb, along with faery-tales and superstitions, from their families and villages. Maybe it is because most of them came over on ships. (Boston Common, October 12, 1713, 10:33:52 a.m.)
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capabilities
colonial-america
resourcefulness
boston
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Neal Stephenson |
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d20ac3f
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"The mysterious Enoch Root meets 8-year-old Benjamin Franklin, Boston, 1713: "Do I look like a schoolmaster to you?" "No, but you talk like one." "You know something of schoolmasters, do you?" "Yes, sir," the boy says, faltering a bit as he sees the jaws of the trap swinging toward his leg. "Yet here it is the middle of Monday--" "The place was empty 'cause of the Hanging. I didn't want to stay and--" "And what?" "Get more ahead of the others than I was already." "If you are ahead, the correct thing is to get used to it--not to make yourself into an imbecile. Come, you belong in school."
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intelligence
colonial-america
educataion
massachusetts-bay-colony
gifted
school
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Neal Stephenson |