Word: gentleman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...bemused modern reader, John Ruskin is yet another long-gone marvel, a species of featherless biped now extinct. This rare bird, born in 1819, was a gentleman of means and an amateur of genius, whose leisurely travels to Italy and Switzerland resulted in a vast outpouring of noblesse oblige: Sesame and Lilies and Seven Lamps of Architecture and some 30 other volumes instructing his countrymen on how to think about art, man and socialism. His writing now seems overabundant; but in an age when color photography and its reproduction in books were lacking, there was a reason for his word...
...boredom. Was this bigger than last week's ball? What about the decorations? Where did that dress come from? What do you think this cost? And where in God's name did Mimi get those rubies? "I think they went through the telephone directory," complains one older gentleman, unhappy at the size of the ball. "I could invite anyone I wanted, and I did," a radiant Mimi says. "It's wonderful, beautiful." That is what her mother thinks too. "I'm having a ball at my ball," she booms again and again...
...cutoff bib overalls that bring back both the sharecropper's son and the slaughterhouse boy, and he picks up the tape player. Out on the gym floor, he throws his first punch at the wall, knocking down a framed quotation by former Heavyweight Champion of the World Gentleman Jim Corbett. Joe does not bend to pick it up or to read the first line...
Santa Claus: The prototype of this jolly old gift-giving gentleman was a stern but kindly bishop who lived in Asia Minor in the fourth century. St. Nicholas, so legend goes, learned that the impoverished father of three young women planned to allow them to solicit in order to provide dowries. Filling three bags with gold, Nicholas threw them into the maidens' rooms. All were soon happily married, and St. Nicholas was forever associated with unexpected gifts...
...finally reached the door of Santa's house, knocked and heard a faint, "I'll get it. Ho, ho, ho." Soon a portly gentleman dressed in a typical red Santa suit opened the door...