Word: meagerness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Edgar Burchell was 16, he got a job as porter at Manhattan's Eye and Ear Infirmary-7 a.m. to 7 p.m., $17 a month. To bolster his meager earnings, he began making anatomical specimens on the side; by way of continuing his education, which had stopped with primary school, he went to free lectures at Cooper Union and Washington Irving High School. Some nights after work, in the hospital's empty laboratory, he practiced experiments he had seen others do. Eventually, he became one of the laboratory assistants...
...York's state legislators get an annual salary of $2,500, second highest of any state.* But in New York, as in most legislatures, there are ways of eking out such a meager sum. For years, the men in Albany's hideous State Capitol have voted themselves and their friends odd petty sums "in lieu of detailed itemized expenditures." In time this custom came to be known to legislators and correspondents as "the wonderful lulu system...
Each man kept his musket, powder horn, wooden canteen, knapsack and uniform. In his pocket were four months' wages in promissory notes, marketable at only two shillings to the pound. Veterans who thought this a meager reward (as most did) had the option of staying in camp until their enlistments were up. But, as Washington had shrewdly guessed, what every one wanted most was to get home...
...meetings ground on, only meager press releases were issued, containing perfunctory information. For the conference itself was secret, and delegates were forbidden to grant interviews. But Cordell Hull promised a full account at the conference's end-probably in three or four weeks...
...streets are lined with palms, the Germans still held. Fréjus, where Julius Caesar planted supplies for Gaul, was taken the first day. Saint-Raphael, a modest fishing village gone garish with the trappings of a modern coast resort, was quickly captured, too. But Cannes, its luxury hotels, meager beach, its dreams of gambling and fish, yachts and flowers still belonged to the Germans...