Word: parsonical
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Charles, younger son of a conservative English parson, fell in love with the German governess, Hedwig. When his father tried to break up the affair they eloped, were caught and brought back before the marriage was legalized. Hedwig, sent home to her mother in Germany, was married off to an army officer in time to give her baby a name. Innocent Charles never even suspected he was a father. Then the War came. John, the elder brother, was an officer in France. One of his jobs was catching and condemning a German spy, who turned out to be Hedwig...
Feeling more like a parson than a President, last week Mr. Roosevelt bundled up warmly and set off in his limousine to make a succession of sick calls. Through sleet and along roads as slick as glass, he first drove to the Naval Hospital. There he found Secretary Ickes propped up in bed attended by a skeleton staff from the Interior Department, trying his best to disregard a fractured rib sustained when he fell on an icy pavement. Oil Administrator, Public Works Administrator, a holder of five extra-cabinet jobs, Mr. Ickes knows that he and Secretary Wallace...
Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a Dutch parson's son. An unattractive, awkward, violent young man, he wanted to go into the Church, but was too modest. Instead he carried with him, first into the polite world of the art business, then into garrets, brothels and studios, the wild religious longings that never left him. His only friend was his younger brother Theo. Together, before they went out into the world, they swore "to strive all their lives only for good." Vincent's family was connected with the Dutch branch of Goupil et Cie., famous Paris...
...invited to its headship a famed Scottish lawyer, son of a Scottish parson, Hugh Pattison Macmillan, Baron Macmillan of Aberfeldy, co-author of the brilliant "Macmillan Report" of the British Treasury Committee on Finance & Industry. So sound and lucid was it that it became the only Blue Book ever published in Britain to net a profit. Second member of the Commission was another son of a Scottish parson, Sir Charles Addis, onetime director of the Bank of England. These two Scotsmen Premier Bennett balanced with two Canadian bankers, Sir William Thomas White and Beaudry Leman. To give Western Canada...
Tuberculous son of a wealthy English parson, Cecil Rhodes went to South Africa at 16 in search of health. Three years later he went home, to Oxford, but his lungs sent him back again. Later he used to say that he left England not so much for love of adventure or on account of his health, as "because he could no longer stand the eternal cold mutton." Diamonds had just been discovered at Kimberley (1870). Rhodes got in on the ground floor, was soon making ?100 a week. At 27 he founded de Beers Mining Co., soon had control...