Word: dervish
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Happy Chandler on the road is a sweating, laughing, singing, handshaking, baby-patting dervish. His speeches last only 45 to 60 minutes (as against 90 minutes for Mr. Barkley's). He calls first names and nicknames of people in the crowd, calls oldsters "Dad" and "Mom," old Negroes "Uncle." His sound truck plays him into the towns with Happy Days Are Here Again and he opens meetings by singing My Old Kentucky Home, is ever ready to oblige with Sonny Boy, Mother Machree or any other song the crowd calls for. Riding between towns he talks incessantly and watches...
Disguised in turn as an Indian healer, a Persian Dervish, a Pathan, Burton escaped five bandit raids, performed the complicated Moslem rituals letter-perfect (a slip-up meant being crucified), did not return to England to capitalize on his fame or to refute a new assortment of rumors that he had robbed a Cairo post office and murdered an Arab who saw through his disguise. Instead he headed an expedition into unmapped Somaliland. succeeded where five previous attempts had failed in reaching Harar, saved himself by a feat of flattery from being killed. On another expedition into Somaliland...
...first ridiculed as "the whirling dervish of the air," the autogiro gradually improved during a long tour of Europe punctuated by frequent crashes, which proved the giro's safety because Pilot de la Cierva was never hurt. In 1928, when he flew the English Channel, he won recognition. From then on, England was autogiro headquarters. English capital financed the Cierva Autogiro Co. Inventor de la Cierva, Royalist son of King Alfonso's Minister of War, was glad to stay away from Spain after King Alfonso was dethroned. Except for an occasional spree with his four children, he devoted...
Creep out of bed and Madame La Grippe holds fortified positions in my head and vitals, whirls in a derisive dervish-dance in my ears. Slowly to breakfast and slowly to class, shivering. Fever mounts to my face after I am seated and for minutes I struggle with an oppressive longing to leave and go back to my garret...
...college bicyclers. Today Harvard is reviving the Magna Carta of Cambridge pedestrians, the Lowell law against bicycling in the Yard, and henceforth the hateful two-wheeler is banished from the highways and byways. No longer need walkers and truckers, freshmen and presidents, stand petrified with fright while the whirling dervish streaks by streaming dust and dirt on all who watch it pass. Nightmares and dreams of sudden death are over, and all's quiet along the Charles...