Word: devil
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...tended to be hidden in one way or another. Romantic German poets sang the love of their women to the point of distraction, but their heroines usually sounded remote and untouchable. Faust's demure Gretchen was touchable, all right-but he left her to go cavorting in the Devil's company with Helen of Troy...
...acquiring land by other means than inheritance. Henry IV reminds his son that the crown that "in me was purchas'd, falls upon thee in a more fairer sort" (Shakespeare's way of saying that the king usurped the crown). In The Merry Wives of Windsor, the devil holds Sir John Falstaff in "fee-simple" (complete ownership). In Troilus and Cressida, even Greeks and Trojans talk in terms of "fee-form" (tenure without limit). "Lease" is used to express transience: life is a "lease of nature" (Macbeth); "summer's lease hath all too short a date" (Sonnet...
Offered a choice of Derby mounts (Shoemaker also had an option on The Scoundrel), more than one top jockey has made the mistake of picking a loser. In 1942, Eddie Arcaro chose Devil Diver over Shut Out; Shut Out won at Churchill Downs and Devil Diver finished way up the track. Like every other jockey, Shoemaker has heard that story at least a dozen times, and to test his own judgment, he flew into Lexington last week to ride Hill Rise for the first time in the Forerunner Purse, a Derby tune-up. It was not much of a race...
...kingdom of God." The stern-minded theologians of early Christianity, Father Dyer says, interpreted these words strictly, and consigned unbaptized babes to hell. "They are vessels of contumely and the wrath of God is upon them," wrote St. Augustine. "If no one frees them from the grasp of the devil, what wonder is it that they must suffer in flames with...
Flawed Memories. The first Cheever in America was a Puritan schoolmaster who was eulogized by Cotton Mather for "his untiring abjuration of the devil" and who believed that "man is full of misery and all earthly beauty is lustful and corrupt." Cheever's mother and her parents emigrated from England, and, he says, "there was a certain air of shabby gentility about the whole thing. I hate to speak about the twilight of Athenian Boston and all that, but Cousin Randall would play two Beethoven sonatas after dinner, and everyone would sit around and belch...