1. The result of this system is, that lecture-courses upon
specialties of an unusual nature are often delivered to very
slim audiences, while those upon more practical and every-day
matters of education are delivered to very large ones. I heard of
one case where, day after day, the lecturer's audience consisted
of three students -- and always the same three. But one day two of 
them remained away. The lecturer began as usual --
 "Gentlemen," -- 
            -- then without a smile, he corrected himself, saying --
  "Sir," --
          -- and went on with his discourse.

[The following was provided as a further hint:]

I entered an empty lecture-room one day just before the clock
struck. The place had simple, unpainted pine desks and benches
for about two hundred persons.

About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty
students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread
open their note-books and dipped their pens in the ink. When the
clock began to strike, a burly professor entered, was received
with a round of applause, moved swiftly down the center aisle,
said "Gentlemen," and began to talk as he climbed the pulpit
steps; and by the time he had arrived in his box and faced his audience,
his lecture was well under way and all the pens were going.
He had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and
energy for an hour -- then the students began to remind him
in certain well-understood ways that his time was up; he seized
his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down his pulpit steps,
got out the last word of his discourse as he struck the floor;
everybody rose respectfully, and he swept rapidly down the aisle
and disappeared. An instant rush for some other lecture-room
followed, and in a minute I was alone with the empty benches once
more.

Mark Twain (A Tramp Abroad)

2. Those which were left began crying to Tom, in half a dozen
different languages at once, and all of them badly spoken,
'I can't learn my lesson; do come and help me!' And one cried,
'Can you show me how to extract this square root?'

Charles Kingsley (The water-babies)

3. Next bidding all draw near on bended knees,
   The Queen confers her titles and degrees.
   Her children first of more distinguished sort,
   Who study Shakespeare at the Inns of Court,
   Impale a glow-worm, or vertu` profess,
   Shine in the dignity of F.R.S.

Pope (The Dunciad)

4. The town of Leeds is very large, and, as above, there are
abundance of wealthy merchants in it. Here are two churches,
and two large meeting-houses of Dissenters, and six or seven chapels of
ease, beside Dissenters' chapels, in the adjacent, depending villages; so
that Leeds may not be much inferior to Hallifax in numbers of people.

Daniel Defoe (A tour through the whole island of Great Britain)

5. For mother is dancing up forty-eight floors,
   For love of the Leeds International Stores,
   And the flame of that faith might perhaps have grown cold,
   With the care of a baby of seven weeks old.

Chesterton (Songs of Education: III. For the creche)

6. 'The minister, I believe, has written learnedly on the differential
calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet.'
   'You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet
_and_ mathematician, he would reason well; as mere
mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus
would have been at the mercy of the prefect.'

Edgar Allan Poe (The purloined letter)

7. Nobody knows this yet, but my agent in New York received
a letter yesterday from Sweden telling me that if I keep
my hands clean there is a chance I might be in the running for a certain
Peace Prize which I shall not name. So any violence must be
done by other people, if you see what I mean.

Auberon Waugh (Who are the violets now?)

8. Our leave of our hostess was taken by silent gestures; and we
resumed our journey, with an additional proof on my part,
that I was beloved by Diana, and was separated from her for ever.

Walter Scott (Rob Roy)

9. "Haven't you got anything humorous that stays away from
waters and valleys and God? I'd like to keep away from the
subject of religion altogether if we can."
 The chaplain was apologetic. "I'm sorry, sir, but just
about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone
and make at least some passing reference to God."

Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

10. To Margaret -- I hope it will not set the reader against her --
the station of King's Cross had always suggested Infinity.
Its very situation -- withdrawn a little behind the
facile splendours of St Pancras -- implied a comment on
the materialism of life. Those two great arches, colourless,
indifferent, shouldering between them an unlovely clock,
were fit portals for some eternal adventure, whose issue 
might be prosperous, but would certainly not be expressed
in the ordinary language of prosperity.

E.M. Forster (Howard's End)