Word: distaff
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...President Hoover received mighty support from the nation's women. But so much help had come to the Roosevelt cause this year from the distaff side of the Electorate that there was talk of putting a woman in the Roosevelt cabinet. Candidates...
Born at Wimbledon, England, in 1895, Graves had English, Irish and German blood in him. On the distaff side he was related to the Saxon von Rankes, several of whom fought in the German army during the War. One of his English ancestors and namesakes invented "Graves' disease." His father was a school inspector, and wrote poetry. When he told his children stories he never began, "Once upon a time,'' but ''And so the old gardener blew his nose on a red pocket handkerchief." At 14 Graves went to Charterhouse, famed English public school...
Nicholas Longworth, speaker of the House of Representatives, last week had another distaff knot embroidered into the cloth of his family's fame. He is husband of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, father of Paulina Longworth, brother of Countess Jacques de Chambrun (wife of a French general). Last week, in Paris, the French Academy awarded the Bordin prize to the Countess for her studies of Shakespeare...
...tearful with success. But who was Cleopatra's daughter? What heroine did Dido mother? Joan of Arc, Queen Bess, Florence Nightingale, Jane Addams are all ineligible by hypothesis; and it is not recorded that Sarah Bernhardt had a daughter. But what of Portia and other married celebrities? The distaff side seems never to have been illustrious twice running, possibly for the reason that most women acquire fame by being either too "good" or too "bad" to have a domestic side...
Gandhiji's present political views. . . . I have no messages from Mahatma Gandhiji, either private or public. . . . He swears by nonviolence, Charka, Hindu Moslem unity and the removal of untouchability. He spins [with a distaff] regularly every day for four hours, unless his eyes do not permit him. He reads largely religious books, chiefly the Gita and Upanishads. He has read the Koran and he is now re-reading the Bible...