Word: bier
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...morning last week, when the sun caught the Last Supper window just right, a trailer bus deposited 18 red-robed council regents outside the court. They formed up behind the boys' choir. Carrying burning tapers, the procession marched into the jammed court and up toward the velvet-draped bier. After a short scripture reading, the choir began to sing Mrs. Bond's The Hand of You. Then white-maned Rufus B. von KleinSmid, Chancellor of the University of Southern California, began the "narration:" "No vote of critics, no surge of publicity can elect a composer to the shrine...
...came forward one by one to kiss the Pope's foot and be embraced, came forward again to receive their cardinals' hats (which rested only a few seconds on their heads and will never again be worn or used until they lie on their owner's bier). Then the cardinals, men of 16 nations from six continents, embraced each other in a gesture of man's brotherhood. As the Pope left St. Peter's and the Sistine Choir sang the Te Deum, the new cardinals, in a gesture of humility, prostrated themselves, their red capes...
...March 12, 1932. In Paris, diplomats and common men moved in solemn lines past the bier of a fallen world figure, Aristide Briand. Across the Seine, in a room on the Avenue Victor Emmanuel III, another world, figure wrote three short notes. One of them ended: "Goodbye now and thanks. I.K." The big, round-faced man rose from his desk, smoothed out the unmade bedclothes, lay down, shot himself with a pistol just below the heart...
Twelve thousand sightseers milled across the cemetery, trampling one another and toppling tombstones as they fought for a glimpse of the bier and the handsome pallbearers...
Till Death. Every Broeder is an Afrikaner of some standing in business, education or politics who has been watched secretly for years before being offered membership in the Bond. He is sworn in at a spine-chilling ceremony. In sepulchral gloom a light plays fitfully on a blood-spattered bier, on which lies a lifelike "corpse" wrapped in a black shroud. Into the "corpse" a dagger has been plunged to the hilt. Letters of blood spell the word Verraad (treachery). A predikant (pastor) intones: "He who betrays the Bond will be destroyed by the Bond. The Bond never forgets." Membership...