Word: comedownance
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Many small yards have turned to operating a "marina," a sort of marine filling station, repair shop and soft-drink stand. But this would be too much of a comedown for the Nevins yard. The 50 custom craftsmen that Nevins trained are now looking for jobs where standards are lower and materialism higher...
Betweentimes he must face two other judges: a mother as implacable as Madame Defarge who exchanges not a word with him, feeling that his comedown has smirched his father's name (a World War I naval hero), and a sister whose eyes still sting with grief at the death of her only son on Marius' lost ship. How strong the case against Marius really is becomes clear when, in a drunk and fitful sleep, he blurts out that he murdered his nephew for siding with the first mate just before his ship went to the bottom...
Cast a Cold Eye. English literature owes a debt to wounded snobbery. Dickens never forgot the humiliation of working in a blacking warehouse; Trollope, of going to school in tattered trousers; Shaw, the comedown of being shifted from a "rich" to a "poor" school. Much of the greatness of these men came from their ability to cast a cold eye of ridicule on their own snobbery. But none of them went so far as the wounded Meredith in hailing satire of self as the first essential of "true human progress...
...that, Crump's police retreated, told Moore: "As long as you conduct yourself properly, you will not be arrested." It was an awful comedown, but Crump grandly ignored it. "Please stay cool," he told his cops, "and keep up the good work with searching and steady eyes...
...rather steep comedown-in the end he jumps off a cliff. John, a much wiser young squire, gets home to England, where all ends with a nice, bucolic chirrup: "The kingcups and the wild daffodils were out in the water meadows; from the dovecot came the sudden passion and stir of wings." And Elfrida, the girl John left behind him, "had grown tall; under the sun she showed satin-fair...