Word: papa
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...Papa Levenson's career was the very opposite of the standard American success story at the beginning of the century. He used to start with money and end up broke. This made life pretty grim in the squalid East Harlem tenement in Manhattan where Papa, a Russian-Jewish immigrant tailor, had settled Mama and his eight kids. But somehow the Levensons never despaired about waging their own American Revolution in the fourth floor back. Particularly Mama. When things looked blackest, she would start a fire in the stove, put a pot of water on to boil...
...Mama Levenson had one surefire blunderbuss in her arsenal. She fought dirt because of its corrupting influence not only on floors and walls ("Her fight against dirt was based on the premise that circumstances make poor, but people make dirt") but on human moral fiber as well. Mama and Papa both believed, furthermore, that children should be disciplined with whatever was handy-shaving strops, wooden ladles, rolled-up newspapers-instead of psychology. Writes Levenson: "I didn't know that fathers were not supposed to hit kids if they were bad. Most fathers hit kids-anybody...
...Papa Hemingway, Hotchner...
Once upon a time there was a shy little girl and her name was Beatrix. She lived with her Papa and her Mama and her brother Bertram in a grand house at No. 2 Bolton Gardens, Kensington, London, England. Beatrix was not permitted to have any friends, but she did have a dog, a doll, a pet rabbit, a governess, and her own dear little nursery room with strong shiny bars over the windows...
Barrister-Papa Potter, who looked like a Jehovah chiseled in granite, had inherited so much money that he never bothered to practice law, spent his days at his club. Mama Potter, who looked like Queen Victoria, discouraged overnight visitors by keeping her spare rooms so dusty that they were uninhabitable. Beatrix' chief diversion lay in frequent trips to picture galleries, of which she candidly detailed her impressions: Sir Joshua Reynolds was "niminy-piminy," while "Raphael had never looked at a horse." She was occasionally malicious: "Miss Ellen Terry's complexion is made of such an expensive enamel that...