Word: abyss
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...members of 1939 are opposed to tumbling into an abyss of mediocrity where they receive nothing for nothing, this is the year when they should take careful stock of what they want to do and learn how they can do it. There are chances open along academic, athletic, extracurricular, and social lines. The only requisite for success is the demarcation of a suitable field and the desire...
...this abyss, Dr. Swann had recourse to modern laboratory experiments which show radiation transformed back into matter. Every physicist under 35, he declared, would agree with him that such demonstrations are valid. What apparently happens is that the quantum of radiation, scoring a hit on an atomic nucleus, vanishes and gives birth to an electron and a positron-i.e., particles of matter. The quantum of radiation is "mathematically irritated" by the atomic nucleus into giving up its existence. Here Dr. Swann ran into the difficulty that in his sea of radiation there would be no atomic nuclei to provide...
...readers now over 50, the name of Leopold II of Belgium on the cover of a book will connote one thing-the Congo atrocities. They will remember appalling stories of hacked-off hands, of burned women, of forced labor. They will recall, perhaps dimly across the abyss of the World War, that the Belgian king who preceded Albert made millions out of "red rubber" and they may recollect that of a population of some 20,000,000 blacks living along the Congo when Henry M. Stanley first traced the river from source to sea only 10,000,000 were left...
...sufficient breadth, serve as an antidote to intolerance. Most valuable, however, is the work of the few professors who, being scientists, have a background of wide culture or who, as humanists, realize the value of precision. Such men, by their lectures and writings, not only bridge the abyss but narrow it. The University would be fulfilling its duties well by encouraging them at every opportunity...
...oppressive, so dully deafening become the throbbing pulsations that he feels as though he must collapse into himself and plunge down the abyss in which burns that unattainable, dazzling blue light. But then, in a tone of limitless melancholy, like the meaning of the wind on a rainy autumn night around the eaves of a high garret, a far-off church clock resounds. Again the throbbing abruptly falters, again the imaginary pressure is relieved, and then once more the night resumes its monotonous chant...