Word: master
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...other years at Bread Loaf will long remember his puckish wit and astounding erudition on any subject. An afternoon talk with Frost in his tiny cabin set up the hillside from the Noble house, his shepherd dog Gillie lying by the fire and appearing to listen as his master talks of a variety of subjects including baseball, politics, education, 14th Century anonymous carols, farming, and the metaphysical Poets Donne and Marvell-this is an unforgettable experience...
Some 45 centuries ago an Egyptian gentleman with two proud titles, Master of the Largesses of the House of Life and Director of the Black Vase, died and was buried. Like other aristocrats of his time, the Master had been a forward-looking sort. It had struck him or his heirs that vandals might break into his tomb some day, and disturb his rest by injuring the head of his mummy. Just in case, a substitute head, a stone portrait of himself, was carved and placed in his tomb as a reserve resting place for his spirit...
...explained in the current Bulletin of Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum, such fears were more than justified. Robbers did make off with his mummy, and for good measure, or for fear of the Master's ghost, they smashed his reserve head as well. Dug up by archaeologists in 1936, the pieces were plastered together again, finally sold to the Metropolitan. On exhibition at the museum last week, the proudly tilted head was one of the earliest examples of portrait sculpture known. The nostrils (to Egyptians the seat of life) had been carved with special care, presumably so that...
Cancer & Consumption. The only good thing about a climbing-boy's life was that it was likely to be short. Most of them were sold, at five or six, to a master-sweeper, sometimes by their parents, sometimes by the overseer of an almshouse; many were kidnaped by unscrupulous masters...
Death in a Flue. Not all masters were so "humane." Phillips cites, among many others, the case of Master Joseph Rae who, after an eleven-year-old apprentice had tried for five hours to free himself from a narrow flue, "sent another apprentice up the flue to attach a cord to one of [his] legs. Despite the agonized shrieks of the tortured boy, Rae and another man hauled on their end of the rope with all their strength. Finally, when neither shrieks nor groans were heard, Rae, sensing that the boy was dead, drank a dram of whiskey and left...