In Chapter 20, Scout sees Dolphus Raymond hand Dill a bottle in a sack. Scout has always thought of Mr. Raymond as a drunk, and she knows that he prefers to live with African-American people and has an African-American mistress and biracial children. She thinks he is handing Dill some kind of alcoholic drink, but it turns out that it's just Coca-Cola. When the children ask him why he pretends to be drunk, Mr. Raymond responds, "I try to give ‘em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason." In other words, the people of Maycomb would consider it strange for him to keep company with African-American people if he weren't a drunk. By drinking, he prevents them from actually thinking about his open-mindedness and true motivations. His reasoning expands Scout's perspective because she hadn't before considered that a white person could prefer to be around African-American people. She realizes that people's motivations are also different at times from what they first appear to be.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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