Word: basketfuls
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...attention had been turned to an educational problem as old as Robin Hood-the schooling of England's 100,000 or more gypsy children. The Surrey County Council opened a peripatetic school, with a master and mistress, to teach them, besides the three R's, crafts like basket-weaving, rug-making, woodworking, gardening. The "school house" was pitched in open country near a large gypsy encampment and though attendance was distinctly voluntary, 40 pupils enrolled the first...
Although several theories about the cause of this phenomenon have been formulated none are entirely satisfactory, and the turning basket still remains a mystery in the minds of most of those who have observed...
Another more ingenius and plausible theory is that the movement of the basket is due to vibration. The vibrations in this case are supposed to come from the Cambridge power paint, and the basket is assumed to be exactly at the vibration point. Its balance is so nice, moreover, that the slightest disturbance might conceivably keep it in motion. But even this theory, exemplifying as it does the most intricate reaches of modern science, strains the credulity of the ignorant layman...
...third suggestion, which is valuable chiefly for its connotative possibilities, was put forth by the man who installed the mysterious basket, when he suggested that "Margery" be paged. Although Harvard students know that "Margery" is a fake, this idea may bring a host of patential explanations to their minds...
...great stone gods torn from their native jungles in the Yucatan and Mexico, or the weird spirits stolen from their haunts in the South Sea Isles suggest an explanation far more in keeping with the slow uncanny revolution of the basket, than the most learned expositions of science...