Word: dourness
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...point of the spinster joke is human cruelty-and that none sees the point more clearly than the spinster. There are many conspirators against the old maid. The first is Belfast, "drab facades of the buildings proclaiming the virtues of trade, hard dealing and Presbyterian righteousness," with "the dour Ulster burghers walking proudly among these monuments to their mediocrity...
...Paris. Jacques Monod is a conductor almost against his will. Born near Paris, he was propelled to the piano by his pianist mother; he gave his first concert at nine, and he has hated the piano ever since ("I don't even own one now"). Monod is a dour man. impatient with what he calls "musical politics." and with the mechanics of earning a living. His one steady job, at $150 a month, is as organist in a Roman Catholic church. But if the musical situation is bad in New York, Monod thinks it is even worse back home...
...began as a routine murder trial. Dour Mrs. Charlotte Black, 63, a big, thin-lipped woman with square-lensed spectacles, stood accused in Santa Rosa, Calif, of pumping three bullets into the head of her husband Martin, 67. But hardly had the jury been sworn in when the case became a cause. Counsel for the defense told the court that Mrs. Black waived her right to a public trial. Judge Donald Geary promptly ordered spectators out. A lone newsman, Don Engdahl...
Princely Guests. While Kelley and Costes trained near Boston, the dour Finns jogged doggedly through the hills near Plainfield, Conn., where a group of Finnish-Americans had set up training facilities for Eino Oksanen, a Helsinki detective, and Antti Viskari, Finnish army sergeant, whose trip to the U.S. for the race was financed by the U.S. Finnish-American colony...
...Greek-born Lady Fleming, 42, second wife of Bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming and a bacteriologist herself. Scientists are the 20th century's heroes, but nowhere has Fleming's death (TIME, March 21) been mourned as intensely as in Spain, where people have come close to canonizing the dour little Scottish Protestant. Main reason: long after infectious diseases were brought under control in more advanced countries, they persisted as wholesale killers in poverty-ridden Spain-until penicillin...