Word: hoax
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...were placed in the fire to drive out the evil spirits. Mary Ellen of Nova Scotia kept sophisticated newspaper readers undecided between belief and scorn. And more recently a nurse caused gray bearded doctors to shake their puzzled heads at her steadily maintained temperature of 114 degrees until the hoax was discovered in the form of a hot water bottle...
...Iowa and his 100% American home prove too much for him-par-ticularly after an unsuccessful attempt has been made to condemn him to Yale and he flies to New York. There he encounters another rebellious but less illusionary young person from home-a girl who finds life a hoax and love nothing but filth...
...rumored that The Waste Land was written as a hoax. Several of its supporters explain that that is immaterial, literature being concerned not with intentions but results...
Since cock-crow and daylight have not been sufficient, the ghost must be dispersed, by the old device of hoax exposers; he must be confronted with self-comparisons, odious though they may be. First, in the Harvard scale, come the names of George Santayana, Percy McKaye, John Jay Chapman, Ed win Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost and Cale Young Rice. They, to be sure belong to the era before the ghost was raised; but they still manage to keep pace with the advancing generations. After the century mark stand such poets as Hermann Hagedorn. John Gould Fletcher, Arthur Davison Ficks...
Therein lies the difficulty. The field is exceedingly lucrative for a clever "faker". It is necessary only to find in some garret a respectable painting; sufficiently powdered with dust and old-looking, tell the world about it, and the hoax is sure to find a buyer. The work may not succeed in the distinction of being called a Titian or a Rembrandt for long, but if advertised properly is sure to fool someone who knows nothing about art and buys for the name alone. Under modern methods of publicity, "finds" can be staged which will outdo Mark Twain's story...