Word: high-strung
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...time football official combines the judicial integrity of a Supreme Court Justice with the physical agility of a gymnast; he must be able to keep 22 high-strung and violent athletes from beating one another's brains out; he must be instantly ready to use any one of 24 signals to indicate any of 61 fouls and penalties; he must know the complex rule book of football by heart. As one of the top men in the trade, Referee Paul Swaffield sums it up with a craftsman's pride: "You can't very well be a dummy...
...high-strung Champion Larsen began to be visibly annoyed with the ball boys. Carried away by their private sentiments, the youngsters clapped for Schroeder (with the rest of the crowd) when he once broke Larsen's service. After that, the ball boys never seemed able to do the right thing, whether they chose to retrieve a netted ball for Larsen or let it lie. Meanwhile, Schroeder found his big serve, ran out the last three sets...
...soon came true. Smart found a job with a bookseller who waxed rich on the profits he made from concoctions such as "Dr. Hooper's Female Pills." Smart became his hack, churning out for him a flow of trite but salable verse and prose. Then Smart's high-strung system collapsed. He took to interpreting literally Christ's "injunction to pray without ceasing"-and pray Smart did, whenever he was moved to do so, whether in public places or in the small hours of the morning, summoning those near him to do likewise...
...tried his best to promote the same argument in his daughter's defense. "She's absolutely insane," he told newsmen. "She doesn't want to go on living." He brought an affidavit to the same effect from Yvette's mother in Brooklyn. "She was always high-strung when she was a girl," wrote Mrs. Noack. "She had a lot of crying spells. She had tantrums. She acted like a nut." At 15, the girl had run away from home, had lived with a middle-aged merchant on Manhattan's Park Avenue...
...years go by, Debby completely identifies herself with the family, listens to young Britt Merrill contemplating suicide because he has failed in school, puts up with the antics of Tomboy Betty, who likes to do anything provided it is mean enough, learns how to get along with high-strung Mrs. Merrill, and gladly forgoes her wages when Mr. Merrill is hit by the Depression. The high point of Debby's pathetic little life comes when she gets a chance to straighten Rebecca Merrill's veil just before her wedding, and happily follows the bride...