Word: raff
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President Henry Noble MacCracken of Vassar College: "Some men amused themselves and my white puppy, Riff-Raff, by throwing sticks for the latter to fetch out on the thin ice of Sunset Lake [Vassar campus pond]. Once the stick skittered far from shore. Riff-Raff, scampering after it, saw too late a hole yawning in the ice. He set his feet, slid into eight feet of water. The men on shore idly discussed how best to save the floundering, choking puppy. Not so Celeste Corcoran, 20-year old Vassar senior. Treading lightly but swiftly, crawling the last few yards...
...floors, a scrubber of steps. She burned everything without opening an envelope. Half of them were begging letters, too; boasts from dressmakers, stores offering credit, lawyers offering advice. . . . Marie Drazdorf spent some of her savings for a new suit for her boy, but she told her man, Josef Raff, to keep on working like the steady man he was. They would wait for the fortune to come in July. Then she would give some money to Butcher Bachmann, who had been kind when she had her baby. Then they would see what they would do. ... Yes, Marie Drazdorf remembered...
...ashore, lured by the prospect of work because of the shipping strike which had just set in and which later became a serious boycott. Leys worked with coolies, attained the dignity of winch-driver, and later made out to the ships daily to cargo with his gang of riff-raff and strike-breakers, returning at night under a pelter of stones from the strikers. He worked on the beach, in the hospitals, and as a newspaper correspondent...
...This measure for the deportation of incorrigible political and social riff-raff, including loan sharks, cocain sellers, white slave traffickers and perverters of children, among them some women, will be a social purge ridding the country of many pernicious influences. In Naples alone over 60 usurers and 40 co cain sellers repeatedly guilty of the lowest offenses are on the deportation list. With these I have no pity...
...fact that in the early years of the eighteenth century the crowds attending Commencement became noisier and more disorderly. The riff-raff of the town, attracted by the crowd and showiness, attended in force. In the third decade of the century, the University made endeavors to keep secret the date of Commencement, with a view toward eliminating the unpleasant congestion. It is doubtful if this measure was successful. One might as well try to hide the date of the Yale football game in this...