Word: dourness
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Bertie from the godless guardians and placed him in care of his grandmother, Lady Russell, who had been a lady in waiting to Queen Victoria and was a Scotch Presbyterian of dour principles. Bertie was judged too sickly for school (actually he was strong as a horse) and was sketchily educated at home by tutors or a slightly dotty aunt. He had no way of knowing until much later that he was one of the cleverest little boys who ever lived...
Iceland, a few generations ago, was hardly more than a storybook land ruled by the Danes-a seafarer's outpost cut adrift from the rest of civilization. Dandelions and buttercups grew on the turf roofs of cottages. Even hens' eggs tasted of fish. The people seemed dour, except when drunk on words or alcohol, and the only way that one could effectively insult a native was to call him a Dane...
...fact is that he is beginning to have some success. Last week, as East Germany prepared for this month's quadrennial Socialist Unity Party Congress-which will be graced by the presence of none other than Soviet Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev-banners from the Baltic isles to the dour villages of Saxony proclaimed that "nothing unites us with imperialist West Germany...
While somewhat moderating apartheid at home, Vorster is also busy trying to convince the rest of the world that it is a necessary course for South Africa. He is overhauling the government's dour propaganda organs, has ordered the foreign ministry to publish reasoned presentations of the South African viewpoint. South African diplomats have been instructed to stop snapping at their critics and to try to charm them with sweet reasonableness. South Africans going overseas are supplied with booklets instructing them how to answer delicate questions, and Vorster recently urged all whites staying at home to start a letter...
...Morgenthau, who died last week at 75 of a lifelong heart ailment and a kidney condition, the only appraisals that really mattered came from the man he revered, and occasionally preached at. And to F.D.R., the tall, dour gentleman-farmer who peered frostily at the world through pince-nez was sometimes "Henry the Morgue," but also "one of two of a kind"-the other being Roosevelt himself. Eleanor referred to him as "Franklin's conscience." In exchange, Morgenthau was the only Cabinet member to address the President regularly as "Franklin...