Word: cobras
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Verminous Virtuosity. Though the females of his species-the famed belles of St. Trinian's-are perhaps more deadly, molesworth is more refined. It's the difference between the cobra and the roach. Rather than crush a master's skull, this little poobah prefers to nibble at his sanity, and at least in the case of "Sigismund arbuthnot, the mad maths master," nigel has brilliantly succeeded. In general, he has perfected the art of creeping antisocialism, which has been practiced by boys of every land and time but seldom with such verminous virtuosity...
Readers may also join the lively game that Translator White plays among the footnotes and try to puzzle out what animal, vegetable or mineral the Middle Ages mistook for unicorn, dragon, griffin, basilisk, etc. White guesses that the poison-breathing basilisk was very likely the cobra, but thinks the griffin was strictly mythological, in fact "something of a Hieroglyphin...
...Bernard Shaw of Burma, for he had "the talent and the inspiration." Instead, U Nu became Free Burma's first Prime Minister, and has remained so-despite four attempts to resign-for the past 6^ years. U Nu is a devout Buddhist who once hesitated to kill a cobra for fear of transgressing the Buddhist precept: "Thou shalt not kill ... All living creatures are subject to their destiny." U Nu, man of peace, has had to direct a pentagonal civil war. U Nu is a man of infinite modesty and quietness; he likes to drive out, on afternoons when...
...Marxist doctrine" (a plan he now very much regrets). The Communist answer was characteristic: they gathered their forces, and struck when they were ready. "Give us three years," cried Communist Than Tun in 1948, "and Burma will be ours!" Prime Minister Nu, the Buddhist who would not kill the cobra, had a battle on his hands...
Even so, Jukebox Favorite Eartha Kitt breaks through the film barrier at a disturbing velocity. This copper-colored daughter of a North Carolina cotton farmer, who quit the Katherine Dunham troupe to try for the big money, is neatly made, has a cobra-cold allure, sings well in both French and English, and dances with the unerring grace of a cat. More to the point, she makes the spectator feel like an iron filing when the magnet passes...