Teachers used to boast about their ability to tame children, when their ability really meant the power to destroy the tendency to put forth effort, to substitute negativeness for positiveness.
"Dickens As an Educator"
James L. (James Laughlin) Hughes
Is not our college training responsible for some of this melancholy negativeness of life?
"The Young Man and the World"
Albert J. Beveridge
"You've forgotten to turn out the light," whispered Anna-Felicitas, her eyelashes still wet from her late attack; and stretching her neck still further down till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood rushing into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious negativeness of its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at all and was really stowaways.
"Christopher and Columbus"
Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim