Word: doormen
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...truly an era's end. Penniless and wretched, they had come down from Siberia and Manchuria. In what was then the French Concession and International Settlement they had set up a bit of old Russia, full of hate for the new Russia. Blue-blooded officers became janitors and doormen, ex-millionaires turned waiters, titled ladies opened delicatessens, hairdressing salons and apparel shops like Avenue Joffre's "Madame Fanny Corsets...
First came the White Russians, who as taxi drivers, doormen or waiters could not forget that they had once been gentlefolk. Next came the people who had laughed loudest at the White Russians, the fugitives from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Then in a swamping human surf came the fugitives from Spain. Czechoslovakia, the Low Countries, France. All of them bore, like a leper's bell, the one ineffaceable possession left them by their ordeal-the mood of quiet desperation, quiet, because its very existence threatened the peace of mind of those who still felt secure; quiet, because...
...Increased the list of nondeferrable occupations (newsboys, doormen, whiskey makers, etc.) to shoo such workers into war plants...
Customers went after 8,500 yards of brand-new carpeting, 27,500 yards of used carpet and padding and four museum-piece Orientals (one, a 200-year-old Sarouk, originally cost $32,000). There was all the flotsam & jetsam of a huge hotel: used umbrellas, 750 pairs of doormen's gloves, 742 cuspidors, red ties for bellboys (and electric tie pressers), wheelchairs and cribs, the flags of all nations, an elephant tusk. And there was Lot #3835: the stuffed head of Lucky Boy II, 4-H champion steer of 1941, which a Wilmette woodworker snapped...
Then he let go: eloquence, blunt, polished and effective as an old knobkerrie, the growling, galling scorn for his enemies, the passages of noble purple for his friends. Between bursts of applause in which Supreme Court Justices and diplomats joined as lustily as doormen, the galleries wondered whether ever before had such a moving and eloquent speech been made on the Senate floor. Actually it was not so much the speech as the personality that put it over...