Word: bleakness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Devonshire there stands the grey walls of the most hated building in England. Sprawled along a bleak headland Dartmoor rises out of the wildest and most desolate stretch of land in all the British Isles. The original buildings were erected in 1809 to confine the French prisoners from the Emperor's army. Later some of the Americans in the war of 1812 found there way to its barren courtyard. At that time Dartmoor established a reputation for cruelty and discomfort which is now almost legendary in its fame. In 1850 the building assumed its present status of a convict prison...
...hill to school. A tall pine stands out in the pasture with the blackness of a widow in her weeds. There is the delicate, syncopated tinkle as a Morgan in a red cutter swerves through town. The mountains stare down upon the valleys grown old, and spare, and bleak over night. Young boughs trail their white burden on the road way. In the woods, where the sun falls, snow slides off the needles and drops with a soft thud. A tiny rabbit scurries off on hastily remembered business and a grouse whirrs up into the blue. The world is quiet...
...regretted that stories about spies in the World War must inevitably arrive at a harsh and gloomy finish. Always there seems to be that roll of drums; the bleak yard where executions take place. Even the glamorous and passionate spoken Greta Garbo is unable to lend the happy tinge of romance and action to the story of "Mata Hari" now showing at Loew's State Theatre. Few of us will deny the remarkable charm of this great Swedish actress, but the producers of her films are strangely inept...
Maamme! Maamme! Our Fatherland! Oh, sacred word sound high! As on our fathers' soil we stand, No hill nor vale, nor sunny strand, Nor fertile plain 'neath southern sky Can with our bleak North...
...Russia. Regent Svinhufvud offered the Crown of Finland to Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, brother-in-law of Wilhelm II (who did not abdicate until November 1918). During the interval Prince Frederick Charles accepted Finland's Crown but delayed and dillydallied about going so far into the "bleak North" until too late. Temporarily, Finland went Red in spots. Several Finnish landowners were murdered in their beds, and Regent Svinhufvud...