Word: highborn
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Every schoolboy knows that Socrates was an influential Greek educator who was condemned to drink hemlock for "corrupting" Athens' youth. For 2,300 years Socrates has been pictured, on the strength of Plato's description of him, as a highborn philosopher who lived ascetically, spent his time asking searching questions of Athenians in the market place, showed up the Greek Sophists, avoided politics and was eventually martyred by an ignorant mob for teaching his pupils idealistic notions of justice and authority...
...handsome horse was what Lord Clontarf (Leslie Banks) saw first in the gypsy camp, but Marie (Annabella) blushed because she thought his comment, ''What a beauty!" was inspired by her. Later the Lord's reaction was more nearly what she wanted: when some highborn ladies snubbed her at a dinner party, Clontarf married her. The ill fate that brought him his death in the hunting field five months later banished Marie from his land. Gypsy lore indicated that in four generations, when "the blood was cleansed" she might return. Back in Ireland after fleeing from the Spanish...
...midst of black despair, Chopin's fortune changed. Baroness de Rothschild invited him to play at a soiree. Instantly he was Society's pet, besieged by highborn ladies who begged him to give them lessons. Then, like a villain in a play, George Sand strode into his life, flaunting her male attire, puffing at a black cigar. According to Author Murdoch, that bestselling novelist was "an odd mixture of vulture and vampire." Once a lover was discarded, she used him cruelly for copy and the disguise was thin. In 1838 Chopin and Sand acknowledged their liaison by going...
...takes her across the Channel to Brighton. It is 1811; Brummell struts at Bath; in & out of prim Adam houses parades the world of fashion; Guardsmen wear tight breeches; George IV is Regent. Paul's plan is to marry off his Melanie (small, saucy Yvonne Printemps) to a highborn tripper, thereby assuring himself a pension. The Regent himself asks Melanie to a souper à deux. The choleric Earl of Harringford offers her protection and a house just off Belgrave Square. His son. the Marquis of Sheere, also falls under Melanie's spell. Both Earl and Regent want something...
...Kanto women. Physicians attached to the Imperial Household Ministry began a thoroughgoing medical examination of hundreds of applicants which will continue for at least a month. Conscientious internes cranked and cranked at whirring centrifugal milk-testing machines. Zealous investigators checked the social status of each applicant lest some highborn peeress or ambitious bourgeoise sneak in. For by immemorial custom the two wet nurses assigned to each newborn child of the Son of Heaven, the Sublime Emperor Hirohito, must be of peasant status. At these two symbolic points in Japanese life the lowest and the most exalted meet...