Word: ordeal
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...During that long period she becomes aware of her internal throbbing only when she is quick with child. The sensation becomes uncomfortable only as the woman's term nears its end. The end of pregnancy is, for the average woman with her first child, 18 hours of painful ordeal-16 hours during which her child struggles from its nest, 1 hour 45 minutes while it wriggles into independent existence, and 15 minutes while the new mother rids herself of fetal accessories. By this time the woman is very tired, often unconscious. The muscular interactions of the parturient woman...
...written I should be tempted to say to Mr. Agee what Emerson, in an unguarded moment of enthusiasm, said to Whitman. Since, however, Byron has written, I can only say that Mr. Agee has deliberately invited comparison, and that he does not come off at all badly from the ordeal. And in case I haven't made my point clear, I hasten to add that this is intended to be very high praise. Certain it is, the poem blows through the pages of "The Advocate" with so authentic and Rabelaisian a gusto as nearly crinkles its decorous pages...
Superficially, his action was the easiest way out of a difficult situation. The Massie defendants were no longer a menace to society; by now they must have realized the seriousness of their crime, and their long ordeal, with the attendant uncertainty of its outcome, must have been a terrible punishment in itself. From a humans point of view clemency appeared justified. An whatever hesitancy a wavering official must have felt when he considered the effects of such an act on native opinion was apparently swept aside by the storm of appeal from across the Pacific. The nature of that storm...
...surprises which makes even the smartest criminal lawyer thank his lucky stars. Mrs. Massie, her blonde pallor set off by a black dress, was put on the stand to corroborate her husband's story of her ravishment and its effect upon him. For her it was a harrowing ordeal. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her low drawling voice frequently broke off into choking sobs. From her Counsel Darrow drew forth many a detail of her husband's affection before turning her over to Prosecutor Kelley. Then the following occurred...
Like the cart before the horse, U. S. civilization seems to trundle awkwardly ahead of civilized Americans. Critic Brooks, who hopes and works for a different mode of progress, has shown in The Ordeal of Mark Twain and The Pilgrimage of Henry James, what happened to two horses who got in front of the cart. In his biography of Emerson he shows how a most inspirational civilizer hitched his own wagon, tried to hitch the U. S. juggernaut, to a transcendental star...