Word: bullfrog
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...tried to get away from the fact of life. An escapologist, the author tells us, is "a person who by looks the facts of life in the back of the neck or by sheer force of the imagination conjures them out of existence or urns away from them". Bullfrog, a young English journalist, made his hold attempt to escape these facts of life, and because he failed, because he soon forgot exactly what it was that he was trying to get away from, he wrote his book. With its structure as a sort of travel diary, the book soon becomes...
...which a male quartet sang a moon-song medley with grunts substituted for the word moon; how to avoid suicide, in which simulated voices of persons about to kill themselves were broadcasted. Tonic effects included a symphony drowned out by coughers and miscued clappers; an outdoor opera eclipsed by bullfrog croakings, yowls of cats, dogs...
Best character sketch is that of Shorty Harris, grouchy, restless, simple-minded prospector who tramped Death Valley for 50 years, found five rich mines, got almost nothing for them. When he found The Bullfrog in 1904 a saloon keeper kept him drunk for three weeks, got him to sell his claim for $1,000 and three barrels of whiskey. When he found The Harrisburg soon after he became a partner in the company formed to work it, taking stock which he did not know was assessable. Author Coolidge hired Shorty Harris to guide him across the Valley to Death Valley...
...paddle for $15, a nearly complete ichthyosaurus skeleton for $300. A 300,000,000-year-old trilobite may cost as little as 50?, a collection of small Silurian fossils 65?. Princeton University recently ordered a cat skeleton, Columbia University 25 Ib. of lead ore, the University of Illinois 18 bullfrog skeletons. A man in Jamaica who had failed in business four times and felt the need of a magic talisman wrote for "the head of a white weasel." A medicine show proprietor asked for something that he could exhibit as human tapeworms, explaining that the egg noodles he had been...
That portrait of an irresponsible critic remained accurate throughout the Coolidge and Hoover regimes. Even as late as 1932 Senator Harrison was still being spurred to flights of irony by such items as a Government pamphlet which he called "The Love Life of a Bullfrog." But the portrait bears no recognizable likeness to the Pat Harrison...