Mr. Otis is not very worried about the ghost, though he does come to believe it exists. At first, in practical American fashion, he pooh-poohs the idea that ghosts could be real. After he realizes the ghost is real, his chief worry is about how to remove the blood stain that it leaves on the library floor. Despite the family's repeated applications of Paragon detergent to scrub it out, the stain keeps reappearing. Another worry Mr. Otis has is that the ghost's chains make so much noise. For that reason, Mr. Otis gives the ghost a bottle of Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator. Mr. Otis, along with the rest of the Otis family, creates a problem for the ghost: Mr. Otis is not afraid of him at all and focuses on scrubbing out his stains and asking him to oil his chains rather than reacting to him with fear.
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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