their worthless nievefu' o' a soul

We realize what Archimedes had only in hypothesis, weighting a single grain against the globe of earth.

Children who have seen a small lake surrounded by a white sand beach have beginning ideas of what lakeness is.

[W]here therefore public diversions are tolerated, it behoves persons of distinction, with their power and example, to preside over them in such a manner as to check any thing that tends to the corruption of manners, or which is too mean or trivial for the entertainment of reasonable creatures.