Word: harmless
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Thomas H. Adams, a venerable, harmless-looking newspaperman living in Vincennes, Indiana, had known certain things for a long time. He has gone about getting documents and putting them into a black brief case. One David Curtis Stephenson was tried in Indianapolis for murdering a girl. While the trial went on, Mr. Adams's brief case grew fatter. He asked Governor Jackson to investigate some charges in support of which he, Mr. Adams, would be very glad to bring forward documents. The Governor did not seem to think an investigation was necessary. Mr. Adams then got himself appointed head...
...more cheerful souls who had forgotten their Greek translated, "Bad News." The publishers were S. Baldwin & Co. of Cambridge, a non-luminous fact. "Abbott Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard," read the first sentence, "will be 70 years old on December 13 of this year." What axiom could be more harmless? "He has occupied his high office for 17 years, has accomplished many striking and notable changes in the life of the University, has donated ... a considerable part of his personal fortune. . . ." True, true. But then, ah, then came the sting. "The time is certainly not far distant," wrote the unmentionable...
...whirling motion is caused by the expansion of moist air over tropical waters. They then generally pursue a northern course gradually increasing in intensity so long as they remain over water. Curiously, due to lower barometric pressure on the southernmost side, the southern semicircle of these hurricanes is comparatively harmless. Mariners refer to the northern half as "the dangerous semi-circle," and the southern half as the "navigable semi-circle." They can usually rely upon "riding out" the "navigable semicircle" at anchor. Due to the rotating movement of the earth, all these hurricanes revolve (counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere...
...more than the unofficial laureate of the Army he could never have been. At Laureate Tennyson's death in 1892, Mr. Kipling was a crusty young gazetteer from Lahore, just beginning to capture a world-wide audience of greater enthusiasm than discrimination. And when a successor to harmless old Alfred Austin was needed in 1913, Poet Kipling was already an anachronism. Moreover, the one sorry "bloomer" that Laureate Austin had committed-a headlong paean to celebrate the Jameson Raid in South Africa (1896)-was directly traceable to the Kipling virus...
...contracted the habit of repairing to a cave in the hills nearby, sometimes alone, sometimes with his elderly wife or a slave, to perform secret things for days at a time. Perhaps, it was thought, he was counterfeiting. But this Mohammed, a shambling wight of 40, was a standing, harmless joke. Epileptic as a boy, he had later acquitted himself with notable lack of distinction in the trading caravans. He was no fighter. A rich widow, years his senior, enamored of his stature and features, had taken him unto her, a slothful, pampered husband. If he were counterfeiting...