Word: girling
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Arrowsmith Adverse. Aaron's father was a deacon in the Congregational Church, and smuggled runaway slaves to Canada, but when Aaron befriended a runaway dog, the old man blew its head off with a shotgun. Aaron's girl was Nadine, a Catholic in the town of Adams, "a cotton-mill hand by day, but by evening a plump, wriggling, rolling, rejoicing, inviting, shoulder-shaking, cooing, laughing, black-eyed, black-haired, black-tempered young woman, who loved all that was bright and shoddy and loud, and loved all males...
Author Lewis doesn't let him have an easy time. Aaron falls half in love with a girl he meets at the Missionary Home, Selene Lanark, "all vigor, speed, tautness . . . She was on the tall side, slender, rather tanned: olive-brown of skin with a wonderful smoothness to it ... Her eyes had the tint of black glass . . ." Presently he discovers that Selene is a half-breed, that her father is a rich trader living near Aaron's Mission of Bois des Morts in Minnesota. When he gets there, Aaron finds how much there is to do before...
These are among the fresher things that Double Muscadine has to say. The rest of the 335 pages reveal (in the words of the jacket) how "Martha ... a mere slip of a girl. . . began to learn the things about her husband that so many Southern women in slavery days had to know and bear in silence." Mississippian Kirk McLean is not only "downright fond" of scuppernong wine, he is also the father of at least two quadroons. One day a disgruntled and sulking yellow girl flavors the family tea with a dash of king's yellow, or orpiment...
...Book-of-the-Month Club, which picked Mississippi-raised Frances Gaither's novel as its March selection, can reasonably expect that thousands of readers will plug right along until they find out whether the yellow girl gets off or not. Before they get through, however, a good many who order this one will understand the words of Kirk's plain-spoken sister-in-law: "There ain't a mite of use of dodging pain. [God will] hand you the cup, and then you got to dreen...
...Greek classic, folded in a dash of "middle class morality" and a measure of Cheapside Cockney, and turned out one of his most palatable and humorous plots. Professor Henry Higgins, a middle-aged bachelor and phonetics expert, takes it upon himself to teach cultured English to a poor flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, and then pass her off as English nobility. For months he drills, cudgels, and bullies her, until "'Enry 'Iggins" becomes "Henry Higgins," and the Bunsen flame in front of Eliza's mouth flickers visibly with every "h." Finally comes the great test, and sweeping a starchy Ambassador...