Word: customs
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Leached out of a novel custom-written for the studio by Stuart Cloete, the story begins in 1837, when small parties of hardy Boers were setting out on the great trek from Cape Colony to the Transvaal, a thousand miles to the north. The hero (Stuart Whitman), an N.C.O. in the British cavalry and an s.o.b. in everybody's book, deserts with two buddies (Ken Scott, Rafer Johnson) and hitches a ride to the interior with a wagon train of Dutch Voortrekkers...
...would be preferable to Communist domination. Cried Canon Collins: "The Crown, on the advice of the Prime Minister, has nominated the Bishop of Peterborough as the new Bishop of London. The nomination has been announced in the press. Now we are called upon to elect a new bishop, and custom requires that we pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our task. But we know that if we fail to endorse the Crown's nomination, our verdict will not be heeded. To pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit on such an occasion is little short...
...laws that make suicide a crime, in Britain as in some parts of the U.S., go back to the early roots of English jurisprudence. In 967 A.D., King Edgar, with characteristic Christian zeal, decreed that suicides should be denied the rites of the church for violating the Sixth Commandment. Custom, later elevated to law, demanded desecration of the corpse. Until well into the 19th century. British suicides were buried at night, at crossroads, with a stake driven through their bodies. All property of suicides was forfeit to the Crown. By 1900 most of these medieval monstrosities had been repealed...
George Bernard Shaw's splendid custom of appending argumentative prefaces to his plays-and, in a few instances, of dangling a play from an especially grand preface-has been taken up by John O'Hara, who between novels and short stories has had a largely unrequited hankering for the theater. True, O'Hara has written only one preface for five plays, but that one rings with large-spirited ill will. Some of his plays, says the author, might have reached Broadway "if I had been willing to take writing lessons from directors, but I know...
More with Less. Russell's greatest here-and-now contribution to railroading is his ax-swinging intolerance of any custom that wastes money. "We don't take anything for granted," he says. "We have to go back over everything and ask why we did it in the first place...