vern
fron[TN-167] Averne "the kinges dohter."
=Sevier= (_Dr._), New Orleans physician. "His inner heart was all of
flesh, but his demands for the rectitude of mankind pointed out like the
muzzles of cannon through the embrasures of his virtues." He befriends
the struggling Richlings, setting John upon his feet time and again, and
in his last illness, never leaving him until he goes out and closes the
door upon the dying man, reunited to his wife and child. Dr. Sevier
finds work for the widow, and educates little Alice, named for his own
dead wife.
"And oh! when they two, who have never joined hands on this earth,
go to meet John and Alice,--which GOD grant may be at one and the
same time,--what weeping there will be among GOD'S poor!"--George
W. Cable, _Dr. Sevier_ (1883).
=Sewall= (_Judge_) Colonial judge in Massachusetts. He has left in his
diary a circumstantial account of his courtship of Madam Winthrop, also
a curious "confession" made by him in church of the "Guilt contracted
upon the opening of the late Commission of Oyer and Terminer, at
Salem."--_Sewall Papers_ (1697).
_Sewall_ (_Rev. Mr._). Boston clergyman, liberal in opinion, and large
of heart. He counsels the Lapham parents in their family perplexities,
and becomes the not-too-willing sponsor of Lemuel Barker, a rustic
aspirant after literary honors.--W. L. Howells, _The Rise of Silas
Lapham_ and _The Minister's Charge_.
=Sex.= Milton says that spirits can assume either sex at pleasure, and
Michael Psellus asserts that demons can take what sex, shape, and color
they please, and can also contract or dilate their forms at pleasure.
For spirits when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure;
Not tied or manacled with joint and limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh.
_Paradise Lost_, i. 423, etc. (1665).
_Sex._ Caeneus and Tire'sias were at one part of their lives of the male
sex, and at another part of their lives of the female sex. (See these
names.)
Iphis was first a woman, and then a man.--Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, ix. 12;
xiv 699.
=Sextus [Tarquinius].= There are several points of resemblance in the
story of Sextus and that of Paris, son of Priam. (1) Paris was the guest
of Menel[=a]os, when he eloped with his wife, Helen; and Sextus was the
guest of Lucretia when he defiled her. (2) The e
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