Word: joking
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...like Pond Hill, and the eminent old white families keep to themselves-except when they are busy running the colony's commerce, government and society. Among the oldest and most eminent are the Outerbridges, who date from 1620. They are so distinguished and numerous that a somewhat tired joke describes Bermuda as "a series of islands connected by Outerbridges.'' Not lightly is an Outerbridge expelled from such venerable institutions as the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, the Mid-Ocean Golf Club, the St. George's Dinghy and Sports Club. But last week an Outerbridge...
Bicycle Rider. Mencken's day faded fast. First the Depression and then the repeal of Prohibition outdated both him and his straw men. He tried to laugh off the Depression. But the college men, now unemployed, who had always laughed with Mencken, failed to get the joke. The old Mercury lost its following, and less than five years later many a bright college boy did not know who Mencken was. At a political convention, when a photographer asked him his name and occupation, Mencken solemnly wrote: "Retired six-day bicycle rider." But in his sundown. Mencken found new activities...
Kitchen-Table Autocrat. He is innocent of humor. His only joke that associates can recall was a remark made when he arrived at a Labor Party meeting from a diplomatic reception wearing striped trousers and a morning coat. He began his address to the meeting: "Comrades, please forgive my working clothes...
...horror, turned out to be liberally spiked with liquor. Ted Adams (who has never taken a drink) merely laughed, and everyone managed to get it down. When the dessert appeared, it turned out to be fruit floating in rum. Says Esther Adams now: "We thought it was a wonderful joke." When they got home to Toledo, neither of them was yet convinced that they should move south. Three or four nights later Ted Adams was in his study when "suddenly I knew I just had to go." He went upstairs at once and told his wife...
...everything the Opies have dug up is nursery gold. But, on the whole, they successfully recreate the nursery-rhyme universe in which the laws of logic, nature and rhyming are suspended. Cruelty can sound carelessly gay, love may be a mere whim, and justice a joke. And yet violence never seems to hurt, love in the child's world is really everywhere, and justice has its own triumphs, as when kings are reduced to thumb-size and beasts are great with wisdom. These verses have, in the words of Poet Walter de la Mare, "their own private and complete...