Word: gloom
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February, once a word of ill-omen, should be an adjective of gloom, just as Shakespeare once used it, in Much Ado About Nothing: "Why, what's the matter that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm, of cloudiness...
...volatile Pentagon, which had been cheerful a few weeks ago, suffered its deepest gloom since December. The black mood had nothing to do with MacArthur's dismissal; there was no lack of confidence in Ridgway or in the morale and fighting caliber of the Eighth Army. Before he was boosted into MacArthur's jobs, Ridgway had expressed confidence that the Communist offensive could be contained and beaten back. But in the light of the Red buildup which the Air Force seemed unable to smash, military Washington was beginning to wonder...
...first (outside New York itself) to embalm 6,000 remains in a year. In 50 peppy years of growth, it has dedicated a main mortuary with 20 "reposing rooms" (all named for famous authors) and 13 cheerful branch plants to the uplifting or happy funeral. But last week, gloom, finally came to Pierce Brothers, and moved to Forest Lawn...
Ever since Jean-Jacques Rousseau set the style with his gloom-drenched Confessions, it has been widely taken for granted that no autobiography is really honest unless it is unremittingly conscience-stricken. When a poet such as Britain's Stephen Spender prefaces the story of his life with the statement: "I have tried to be as truthful as I can," readers can be pretty sure that the author is going to whip himself naked through the streets at the tail...
Here & there the gloom is pierced by a lively sense of humor that bursts out like a prisoner escaping from a dungeon; occasionally there is evidence of Spender's acute eyes & ears, e.g., his description of antiaircraft fire as "like immense sheets of lead falling slowly through the sky, rattling and uncreasing as they fell." Then the pea-soup fog of shame descends again, and Poet Spender plods sadly on, carrying his backbone like a broken reed...