When Melba can't go out on New Year's Eve, she sits at home compiling her New Year's resolutions. At the top of her list is to survive until May 29 (the last day of school). She also resolves to have the strength not to fight back against the students who are tormenting her at Central High School, where she is part of the Little Rock Nine who are desegregating the school. Her other resolutions include understanding how Gandhi behaved when his life presented him with difficulties. Gandhi, like the Little Rock Nine, was an adherent of non-violence, and she wants to study his reaction to violence to understand how to respond to violent students and other problems in her life in a non-violent way. Clearly, her resolutions are different than those of most people of her age.
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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