Word: raters
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...four days Floridans waited thus. Finally a 60-mile gale, offshoot of the loitering hurricane, whooshed down on Miami. Telephone and electric lines were blown down, otherwise there was little damage. Floridans began to call the hurricane a second-rater, when from Nassau, capital of the Bahamas, came delayed reports : Most destructive hurricane in Bahamian history. . . . Wracked Nassau for two days. . . . Velocity of gusts 180 miles. . . . Eight known dead. . . . Enormous destruction of property and shipping. . . . Only a few ships afloat. . . . No building escaped injury. . . . Sea wall broken, city flooded...
Yachts. U. S. Secretary of the Navy-Charles Francis Adams last week sailed his class Q 25 rater Bat against eleven other boats, won the third Eastern Yacht Club championship, at Marblehead, Mass. Charles Francis Adams Jr. sailed the famed sloop Vamtie, now owned by Gerald 13. Lambert ("Listerine"), in her 100th race against E. W. Clark's Resolute, her oldtime rival as defender of America's cup. Charles Francis Adams Jr., able son of an able father, won. Score of the 100 races: Vanitie, 55; Resolute, 45. Last week's Vanitie-Resolute course: 41 miles from...
Said Ubiquitous Critic Mencken: "Very few of the immortal creators have escaped periods of neglect and contumely. Shakespeare, as everyone knows, was regarded as a second-rater during part of the 18th Century, and various imbeciles set themselves to the job of editing and improving him. Even Bach had his twilight, and it took a Mendelssohn to rescue him. But only fools have ever questioned the mightiness of Beethoven-and not many fools...
Whether Robert Louis Stevenson's place is among the great ones of literature or whether his writings are merely those of an exceedingly clever second-rater must be decided by time and the critics, but the question is not one which concerns his biographer. The facts about Stevenson have all come from persons who were more interested in preserving his character than in portraying the man himself. The result has been the creation of a myth, a paragon of virtues, but nowhere a hint of his limitations, his lapses from the accepted path, which undoubtedly influenced his writings...
...other virtuosos of the instrument of keys and hammers were sorry fellows. He likewise essayed the unusual thing of giving his critical rating of his fellow artists-Paderewski a good pianist but not a great one; likewise Busoni and Rosenthal; Godowsky a good technician; Rachmaninoff a third rater; Josef Hofmann not a great pianist, although he plays well at times. These divertissements were laid to the man's natural peculiarities, those peculiarities which lead him to make apostrophic speeches while he plays a sonata in concert. Actually, however, they were largely the product of an enthusiasm, perhaps a monomania...