Word: ascendant
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...talent and get only his company. Charles Dickens is good company, but this collection of short stories, articles, sketches and short novels displays few of his virtues and almost all of his melodramatic devices. It is chockablock with phantoms, haunts, ominous coincidences, infants lowered into tiny graves to ascend as tiny angels, would-be suicides snatched back at the dark river's edge, pregnant maidens abandoned by heartless cads. This is the Dickens who wrung out Victorian soap opera's dampest hour, and posted "cry now" signs at every chapter break...
...none could see the irony that lay ready to bud-namely, that having achieved all they could desire in the way of puritanical austerity, the British would endure it only for a few years before inviting the sacrificed King's unsaintly son to ascend the throne as Charles II and enjoy his own again...
...tour of Rome. Everest-conquering Nepalese Guide Tenzing Norgay squeezed in a Vatican visit and a papal audience. "So this is Tenzing, the famous Sherpa," said Pope John XXIII, beaming. "Bravo, bravo, we all need to ascend more and more." Later, Buddhist Norgay summed up, imprecisely, the brief encounter: "The Pope is very likable, a very holy person, but it's hard to explain what a man feels in his presence...
Winning every swimming event but the 100-yard free style, the Crimson did not ascend to great heights, but was strong and consistent enough to have literally no difficulty defeating the usually weak Engineers. Tech's Dave Cahlander, however, managed to break the existing M.I.T. three-meter board record, winning the diving with a total of 74.55 points...
...graduate school, do especially well in the sciences. Equalitarian Oberlin bans automobiles, and although almost every student pedals a bicycle, the hot spots of Cleveland-and Elyria-are out of effective range. But high spirits burst out, sometimes beerily. Night climbing expeditions have been known to ascend the lumpish fagades of classroom buildings, and a recent visitor saw two happy collegians reeling along on a motorcycle, one sitting backwards and whanging a guitar...