Word: rite
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Gimo" and the Prime Minister enacted their historical roles, that sturdy character, the American taxpayer, was performing an annual spring rite. All over the U.S., men and women of varying degrees of substance were taking pen and fate into their own hands and calculating how much or how little of that substance must pass to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Tax Time (NATIONAL AFFAIRS) has some faintly promising news for 60 million Americans...
...consent. It has become more and more unfashionable to criticize the income-tax level. A psychology professor, Richard J. Dowling of Holy Cross College, has gone farther than Miss Lombard or Justice Holmes; they had merely expressed a personal pleasure in paying taxes. Dowling raised it to a maturity rite by pronouncing as follows: "Repugnance to tax collectors is a persistent infantilism...
...land battleship of Chitor, the Rajputs held out against the invading Moguls. The Rajputs wore armor and fought with spears; the Moguls used cannon. In the last decisive engagement, a lucky Mogul shot killed the Rajput chieftain Jaimal, and the garrison, losing hope, performed the dreaded rite of jauhar...
Ballet of One. "It was our good fortune," the writer recalls, "to witness the most unpredictable of ballets, a dance of dedicated ferocity, the grave elaboration of a magic rite. In the hodgepodge of paint tubes by the hundreds, of brushes as long as halberds, of spilt oil cans, Mathieu, demiurge of destiny, summoned onto his canvas in a few hours (exactly the time taken by the fighting) first the army of the King of France . . . then the armies of the coalition; above there spurted onto the canvas splashes of larger characters and many colors, used for their own sake...
While relentlessly pursuing international drug traffickers, however, Louis Métra confessed a romantic sympathy for the addicts - especially artists, writers and wealthy thrill-seekers - who bought their goods. "My curiosity is renewed each time I watch an opium smoker going through the rite," he once said. "It is like a priest venerating a divinity. The bluish smoke goes up like incense dedicated to some ethereal goddess. Opium smokers are delicate, delicious people...