Word: decrepit
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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While snotty-nosed Arab children stopped scuffling in the dust to gape and wonder, a disguised Egyptian policeman recently offered to buy a mangy and decrepit old camel for $40, about 20 times its apparent value. The astonished moppets' beady eyes grew even wider as the camel's Arab owner not only turned down this princely offer but refused to sell at any price-and was promptly arrested. Disemboweling the old camel, police found it had been forced to swallow zinc cylinders containing narcotics by Arab smugglers who recently have been driving a surprising number of decrepit camels...
...barge strides the King of the Zulus, right royal in black underwear, a hula skirt of sea grass, a tin crown. His sceptre is a broomstick, topped by a snow-white rooster. Preceding him is his Queen, behind are his capering dukes. The King mounts his throne-a decrepit easy chair on a mule-drawn wagon. Up darktown's Rampart Street whoop King and courtiers, laughing at the whites on the royal way. At 7 p. m. their parade ends, and the drinking and the loving begin. It is carnival for the merriest of people. It is also dark...
...course it was bitterly disappointing to Vag's visions of international intrigue when he saw the little man turn off and head for Harvard Hall, but still hopeful, Vag followed him into the lecture room and procured a seat directly behind him. Instantly the little man produced a decrepit volume of Shakespeare's works and began to fondle the pages with fanatic tenderness. In his infrequent moments of coherence, Vag could distinguish such things as "Take you me for a sponge, my lord?" and "O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay." All during the lecture...
...door and to his amazement it was unlocked. Warily he pushed it open, and there was an eerie creak of rusty hinges. The room was almost empty except for a case of ancient folios thick with dust. In the middle of the floor lay a strangely familiar volume--a decrepit volume. It lay open, and to Vag it said...
...north. Since early in 1938 the latter has been head of the North China Provisional Government in Peking. The perfect puppet, he was educated and served as a diplomat in Japan, had a long but never spectacular career as politician and financial manipulator under successive North China regimes. Decrepit at 60, he looks as if he had been made of cheap Japanese materials. For some time he has wanted desperately to resign. For several weeks he has refused even to pretend to work. But puppets do not resign; a string is pulled and they disappear. Last week the Northern Wang...