1) I enjoy reading
2) When it comes to buying books, I'm very cheap.
2018 will be, unfortunately, a year in which the number of books I've read through out the year will be far less than usual. As I've mentioned often enough, most of the books I've read over the past few years have been e-books, downloaded from either fadedpage.com, project gutenberg australia or the much larger project gutenberg, where books out of copyright and in the public domain are available free of charge.
Getting most of my reading material this way has lead me to read quite a few books written during the late 19th century or early 20th century.
Two particular novels I want to mention here were written in 1917; one written by Ethel M. Dell, The Hundredth Chance and the other, The Road to Understanding, by Eleanor H. Porter.
In both novels, a word is used to describe men, who are, as Merriam Webster might put it, as " dependable and exemplary persons".
That word is "trump".
In Chapter X (The Head of the Family) of The Hundredth Chance, after the character Jake helps his friend Bunny, we have this:
"You're no end of a trump!" said Bunny with tears in his eyes.
In Chapter IX (A Bottle of Ink) of The Road to Understanding we find this:
"What a trump dad had been to offer it! What a trump he had been in the way he offered it, too! What a trump he had been all through about it, for that matter. Not a word of reproach, not a hint of patronage. Not even a look that could be construed into that hated 'I told you so.' Just a straight-forward offer of this check for Helen, and the trip for himself, and actually in a casual, matter-of-fact tone of voice as if ten-thousand-dollar checks and Alaskan trips were everyday occurrences".
I note all this because I'm amazed at how the word has changed these past 100 plus years. Once, it was considered a high compliment to be called a "trump", while now, some still might look at it as a compliment, many people in the U.S. might consider being called a trump fightin' words.
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