Word: gruffness
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...Great Dissenter" (well played, as on Broadway, by Louis Calhern-see THEATER) emerges a gruff but amiable gaffer, quietly and steadily outsmarted by a devoted wife (Ann Harding), whom he showers with courtly attentions. He loves his country, his profession, the smell of spring and (deep down) the Harvard Law School honor graduates who come each year to serve as his secretaries and "sons...
...short adventure lasted nearly two decades of U.S. peace, depression and total war, for the best years of Henry Stimson's life were still ahead of him. He was to become first Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State, then-at 72-Franklin Roosevelt's gruff, wise and trusted wartime Secretary of War. Only last week did the long voyage come to an end. At 83, Elder Statesman Henry Stimson died of a heart attack at Highhold, his rolling, 123-acre estate on Long Island...
...know, the main element of likeness in Thirkell novels is that practically all of them are about the gentry of Barsetshire-the English "county" created by Novelist Anthony Trollope for his own convenience and taken over by Novelist Thirkell. There is little further resemblance between them. Where Trollope was gruff, Thirkell is pert; where he peered keen-sightedly, she drops a whimsical, astigmatic glance. Trollope loved a knotty plot, but Thirkell prefers to meander undramatically through Barsetshire, finding husbands for her heroines and painting the local watercolors. When in doubt as to what to say next, she just says...
Action v. Words. John Foster Dulles said that Russians "know that everybody wants peace, and if they can pose as the lovers of peace, then perhaps they can risk war." But it was gently gruff George Marshall who sprinkled a dash of salty reserve on Benton's enthusiasm. "Something has to be done," he said, "and it has to be more dynamic . . . We have had a military conquest, but it is not lasting. There is a confusion of the mind. How you correct that I do not know unless it is by some such method as this...
When Governess Crawford first met gruff King George V, he stared at her a moment, then blurted: "For goodness sake, teach Margaret and Lilibet to write a decent hand, that's all I ask you." And stomped...