Word: mirthlessly
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Soberer Sue. In Philadelphia, when her boy friend was charged with evading the draft, Susan Cole, once billed by carnivals as Sober Sue, the Mirthless Marvel ($100 if you can make her laugh), muttered: "The way I feel ... I could raise the ante...
...tongue and lung free rein in this fat (261 pp.) pamphlet-philippic. His accusation: For eight years (1924-32) the Stalin dictatorship exercised such a stifling censorship over Russian authors that no independent creative writer now dares raise his voice in Russia. Eastman sees Russian letters now as "a mirthless desert waste inhabited by a few sincere fanatics and a horde of unexampled experts in bootlick, blackmail and blatherskite." As victims of this Inquisition he cites the late Sergei Yessenin and Vladimir Maiakovsky (both suicides) ; the conversion of "the mirthful satirist, Valentine Kataev . . . into a faithful Sunday School moralist...
...novel Puritan's Progress (1931) Author Train credited U. S. Puritans with having a sense of mirthless humor that is a kind of coal-tar derivative from their "keen scent for the fumes of Hell." In contradistinction to this darkling humor he sets "gaiety, the most comprehensive of virtues, for it signifies faith, hope, charity and courage." In Princess Pro Tern he tosses all four ingredients generously into the potboiler, serves up a book that, whatever its faults...
...Moscow grim Nikolai Lenin's grimmer successor, Josef Stalin, showed last week that he too can coin mirthless epigrams, as hard as the nickname, "Steel," which Lenin gave him. Samples...
Solemnly at last the Parliament of the Union of South Africa voted on General Hertzog's bill while General Smuts watched, tense and grim. The official tally gave the measure a majority of five votes -but a two-thirds majority was required to make it law. A mirthless, triumphant smile twisted the lips of General Smuts. He had won this preliminary skirmish, but the real dogfight will be the General Election, now scheduled for next June...