Word: decorum
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Atlantic City is not what she used to be. The annual Miss America contest last week was conducted so genteelly, with such oppressive decorum, dignity and délicatesse that many a customer, innocently seeking foofaraw and the stimulating sight of rows of good-looking legs, finally wandered off to drown his disappointment...
Eckstein first saw Japan on the day the American Exclusion Act went into effect. He spent his first night with a Japanese family in the home of a surgeon. The surgeon's Western education had not altered the decorum, the grace, the rigid loveliness of his family life, which adorned that evening like a page out of Lafcadio Hearn. It had not altered anything else, either. Late in the evening, after a good deal of pleasant enough talk, and apropos nothing, the surgeon "said quietly that he wished his country would wipe off the insult, declare war on mine...
...been dull, stereotyped affairs with a peek at quarterly earnings; its reams of trade publicity have never given a hint of production, sales or industry position; its prim officers never discuss anything not already in print. The company's practical downtown Manhattan offices are pervaded by a churchlike decorum-everyone looks solemn, all men politely remove their hats when a girl gets into an elevator. Even at the annual Christmas parties no wine, liquor or horseplay is tolerated...
Instead, a city magistrate reported clinically on its bumps and grinds.* Then some of the cast took the stand. Said famed Strip-Teaser Margie Hart, wearing woolen underwear beneath a purple ensemble: 'T hold the curtain around me, sort of tease-like." Some of her further guarantees of decorum: a G-string, rubberized stockings, three safety pins, a "victory garden" of two strategically placed flowers...
...Army, though it cusses them freely, usually does right by its mules. In 1938 President Roosevelt signed a bill prohibiting the sale of old Army mules to private citizens. Since then veterans have been retired with elaborate ceremonies, and shot when necessary with due decorum...