Word: customs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Done by Reaching. As the community expanded, Bert moved along with the rest of Westwood's small businessmen. He added a few more chairs, expanded again to 14 after a customer pointed out one day that six millionaires were at that moment sitting in his chairs. When his son came back from service and took over the operation of the shop, Bert began building his $162,000 dream castle across the street. He thought up most of its fancy gadgets himself, had them custom-made...
Parliament's horrified Committee of Privileges promptly launched an inquiry. It was on delicate ground, for there are 46 journalists in the House. Practically all London papers employ paid M.P. contributors, some of whom sign their stuff. (Unlike the U.S. Congress, Parliament by custom permits barrister members to represent clients with political interests; every major union has M.P. officials on its payroll, and Tories and Laborites alike are on well-paying company directorates.) But Allighan's charges about bought-&-paid-for leaks were something different, and highly explosive...
Throughout them Forster contrasts the simple instincts of people with the taboos and sophistries of social custom. In The Machine Stops-written as "a counterblast to one of the heavens of H. G. Wells"-he describes a world of push-button perfection in which men have lost their souls. Says one inhabitant of this Utopia under the surface of the earth: "Those funny old days, when men went for a change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!" But when another character gets a brief look at the earth's surface, with all its imperfections...
Moore, as a philosophic and rotund bum, has evolved a unique solution for his personal housing problem. He has a luxurious summer home and an equally luxurious winter home--both belonging to an ulcerated millionaire. Moore, however, reversing the usual custom, resides in the tycoon's town house in New York during the winter, and moves to the Virginia estate of Mr. Moneybags when the latter gentleman comes north for the summer. Except for his kind heart, which causes him to take in an un-manageaable number of guests, and the loneliness of the millionaire's daughter, which takes...
...full public view. Later, a Swedish hostess was dumfounded when the adaptable middies, invited to take a dip in her private pool, promptly stripped to the buff and dove in. When she complained to a senior officer, he told her that the boys thought they were following the local custom. In Edinburgh, like their elder brothers in wartime, they had been greeted by street urchins calling "Any gum, chum?" Then came London...