Word: gruffness
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...aquiver, Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, 48, late of the Union Army and-in 1886-editor of the Los Angeles Times (circ. 2,500), fired his editorial cannon ball into the boom-frantic town by the Pacific. To the pueblo settlement seething with rainbow chasers, this shot barked out a gruff prophecy: thenceforward, the Times and her guardians would man the lanyard of Los Angeles' destiny...
Forbidden Fruit. Assuming the slightly gruff air of an indulgent uncle, he began by asking: "Can you hear me at the back? I don't want to waste my time." The audience laughed, and Philip went on. "Even if you were in a jet," said he. "I don't think you could get around the world in less than 48 hours. But this morning you are going to do it in 60 minutes, so you can imagine that it is going to be a bit of a rush." Then, after a glance at the mound of slides...
...film conveys a strong impression that Schweitzer is a forceful personality in whom will and energy are more apparent than saintliness. He is gruff but grandfatherly with his native patients, appears relieved when he can spend a couple of hours at his manuscripts or, best of all, in the company of his prize possession: a heat-resistant, termite-repellent piano. Schweitzer has said that he did not go to Africa to civilize but to atone...
...most ardent admirers often prefer to remember gruff, octogenarian Colonel Ewart Scott Grogan as he was in the old days, when rugged individualism and a respect for white-skinned authority were the stuff of which empires were made. While still an undergraduate at Cambridge, "Grogs" Grogan earned the envy of Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes by walking the 4,500-mile length of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo "just for the hell of it." "You have done what has been the ambition of every explorer," Rhodes wrote, "and it makes me the more certain that we shall complete the [Cape...
...cruder than its sequel, Doctor in the House, Doctor at Sea is somewhat less successful. Its minor characters are much less realistic and hence less intrinsically amusing than their counterparts in the earlier movie. James Robertson Justice, who practically carried Doctor in the House as a gruff but good-hearted surgeon, now becomes an apopleptic ship-captain, and loses some of his charm. Similarly, devil-may-care medical school comrades are supplanted by an equally devil-may-care but less interesting ship's crew. They provide a slightly flimsy background for the doctor, Dirk Bogarde, who is essentially an innocuous...