Word: memsahib
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...service-right down to fine English china, antique silver, iced martinis and nine-course meals (lobster remoulade, filet mignon. etc., etc.). Cordon Rouge '49, and a snifter of brandy. As in all East Africa, travelers can quickly pick up enough Swahili to get along on the hunt, e.g., Memsahib nakwisha piga nyati; tia chini ya kitanda ("My wife has shot a buffalo; put it under the bed"), or Hapana taka piga simba leo. Tengeneza chandarua ya mbu na tafadhali ngoja kidogo nge ("I do not want to shoot a lion today. Fix the mosquito net and please leave...
...gleaming open automobile awaited the famous visitor. But when she climbed in, she did not sit down. She faced the applauding crowd, bowed her head and folded her hands before her in the Hindu posture of namqskar. It was a gesture which would have horrified and infuriated a proper memsahib of the old school; and few Western women could have attempted it without seeming fantastically silly or fantastically melodramatic. But Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, standing motionless under the Indian sky in her grandmotherly, garden-club dress, just seemed a little awkward and very earnest...
Last week, 1,200 Manhattan clubwomen rallied in honor of the Bill of Rights. To them moody Memsahib Dorothy Thompson raised her armor-piercing alto: "Free speech, free assemblage and a free press did not save the German people from the Nazis. They were the very instruments by which the Nazis came to power...
...Sing them silent, dance them still and laugh them into an open shame!'' cries The Dreamer. And the Old Woman scorns the impotent Bishop's sister in words that might have come from James Joyce : "Salaam, mem pukka memsahib. en' pardon her, en' pardon me, en' pardon us all for getting in the way of thy greatness; en' grant us grace to have faith in thy dignity en' importance, per benedicte pax hugger muggery ora pro puggery rigmarolum...
...temper of the world has changed and left behind it the Victorian sensibilities which Kipling pleased, life as he painted it remains, and with it the appeal and pertinence of his wisdom. The compassion with which he tells how Gadsby Memsahib walked through the Valley of the Shadow, and the open-minded acceptance of the metem-psychosis of Charlie Mears, are good in a modern day of sceptical worldliness. Even the Prime Minister might get a better glimpse of the soul of Mother India through the enlightenment of Pagett, M.P. But that is another story...