Word: merest
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...Major General Wilton B. ("Jerry") Persons, a genial, Scotch-sipping and thoroughly efficient Alabaman who succeeded flinty Sherman Adams as chief of the White House staff. Where Sherman Adams had long been a congressional cuss word, Jerry Persons was a longtime congressional favorite. Where Adams had let the merest handful of visitors get past him to see the President, Persons began opening the door. "This place is becoming a madhouse,'' said one White House staffer-but the result was to let the warm personality of Dwight Eisenhower take wider and greater effect on his influential visitors. Persons also...
There is precious little laughter in this text. Even the clown is the merest shadow of his traditional former self. The showing up of Parolles for what he is, though richly deserved, is not really funny. Nor is it comical to see a count try to weasel out of his King's command; or to see him coldly desert his wife on their wedding day; or to see a woman arrange for her husband to commit (as he thinks) adultery...
...production--not a hair is out of place. Mr. Neville plays not passion and fury, but sweet, mild melancholy. Hamlet's brilliant sarcasm, which should flash like lightning to relieve his overcharged soul, pales into insignificance; the clouds that hang on the soul of this Hamlet are the merest, most forgettable wisps...
Permit me to contradict the statement that I "flunked" my Cambridge entrance in Latin the first time and "barely squeaked" in on the second [Dec. 22]. The truth is that I managed it the first time, as anyone with the merest suggestion of intelligence could. At the level required, the subject matter is necessarily restricted to archaic absurdities that can no longer inspire the young mind, if they ever could: "The sailors sacrifice the bull on the altar of the immortal gods!" This is the sort of bull we have got to be prepared to sacrifice...
...that money is very important to people, and that they talk about it a lot. Because the play's themes are announced so carefully, it is hard not to feel short-changed at the realization that The Folding Green makes no more meaningful a statement than the merest commercial laff-riot--especially since a laff-riot...