Word: dour
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Since they disagree on almost everything else, many Frenchmen disagreed with M. Mauriac's dour outlook. What was more striking in France last week, however, was that more & more Frenchmen were beginning to agree on one of the major causes of their chronic parliamentary crises. The cause: the constitution of the Fourth Republic, which came into force in 1946 and since has spawned 15 consecutive governments ranging in health from sickly to stillborn. So long as the constitution remains unchanged, Frenchmen are beginning to realize, premiers and cabinets are bound to come & go with distressing frequency...
Another short poem by Ziegler--who does very well at this--and a well-written but tedious account of a fox hunt from the fox's eyes lead the reader to the last two stories, both of which are rather mis-begotten efforts. One is about a dour Maine lobsterman who waits patiently for his father's death to be willed his fishing boat only to have the will leave the boat's engine to his uncle. This is hardly an intrinsically amusing situation...
Much of the toughness was picked up from his Scottish immigrant father, James Clydesdale King, who was as dour and granitic as the foggy vale for which he was named. He drove hard bargains with his son, and forced him to keep them. Ever since, Ernest King has driven hard bargains and resolutely kept his promises. Because he made it a point of honor to be fair to subordinates, Sundowner King cannot understand why they seldom warmed to him. Neither can he understand why a taut ship is not automatically a happy ship...
...Britain's great houses is vast and dour Buchanan Castle, near Drymen (rhymes with women), Stirlingshire. Back in 1935 James Graham, Sixth Duke of Montrose, decided that Buchanan cost too much to live in. He had already sold the mountain-famed Ben Lomond-that stood in the castle's backyard. He built himself and his Duchess a cosy, eleven-room house on the castle grounds, leased 60,000 acres of shooting land to a Glasgow businessmen's association, and turned the castle itself into a hotel...
...other episodes. The Cop and the Anthem wisely casts Charles Laughton as a dapper old bum who unsuccessfully tries to get himself locked up in a warm jail for the winter. A burlesqued version of The Ransom of Red Chief presents Fred Allen and Oscar Levant as dour confidence men who, after making the mistake of kidnaping a little monster of a hillbilly boy, finally pay his parents a reward for taking him off their hands. Sample dialogue (strictly not O. Henry as the boy sicks a bear on his terrified captors: "He's a cinnamon bear," says Allen...