Word: ledger
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Turning from the financial to the psychological ledger, the book suggests one conclusion: the funeral ethic of 20th century America makes the most serious attempt in history to blink the ultimate fact. With its primped remains and imitation-grass-carpeted graves, it sets out to pull death's sting and all too often removes its significance, too. In "modern mortuary method," the funeral sermon is frequently nothing more than God's commercial, grooved in, as the authors explain, to "expedite the mourning process," and grief is classified as a "problem of bereavement." Instead of eternal life, the customer...
...Ridiculous. Editor Neider's eye-racking job was complicated by the fact that many passages scattered throughout the fading ledger had been deleted-crossed out by a modern pen using blue ink, probably after Fanny's death in 1914. Under the probing rays, the suppressed passages turned out, in the main, to be hasty bursts of irritation over petty matters, which Fanny would no doubt have scratched out herself, had it occurred to her that anyone might ever want to print her diary. Despite such outbursts, this is a happy-souled and sometimes uproarious book. It belongs...
...though suicide "is not thought the ticket in the best circles." In December 1894, at 44, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. His mother was present, and it is her account of the death that Editor Neider presents. There is nothing more from Fanny. The spell was broken, the ledger book was closed, and there was nothing left but to sell Vailima and eventually return to the States. Twenty years later she died, and her ashes were carried back to Samoa...
...millions of U.S. families learned to rule their lives by the household budget, religiously parceling out set amounts for all needs, from mortgage payments to shoe-shines. Many families divided their income into envelopes firmly labeled Rent, Food, Electricity, etc.; others made ends meet by keeping a strict household ledger of every penny earned, every penny spent. But as the U.S. economy burgeoned, the rigid family budget began to die out. In the midst of prosperous 1955, a manager of Home Life Insurance Co. estimates that only one of 200 families keeps a detailed day-by-day ledger. Says...
...Ledger's maiden speech, with his picture alongside, got big play in London newspapers. Before the week was out, Mrs. Iris Diplock, wife of an electrician near the Old Kent Road, had stepped forward to claim Ron as a brother, as had William Ledger, a baker of Tadworth, and Joan, a sister he had never known. "It's been astounding," said M.P. Ledger at week's end. "I have already discovered eight new nephews and nieces, not to mention a brother and two sisters...