Word: ritualism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Lilian Guest, 50-year-old charwoman in Godalming, Surrey, for years has performed a weekly ritual. Every Thursday she laboriously fills out long and complicated forms with her choices of winners in Britain's football (i.e., soccer) matches. Then she mails them off with a postal order for a few shillings to cover her previous week's bet. Last week Lilian's patient efforts were rewarded. She got word that she had won $210,000. "And to think," said Mrs. Guest, "that I was out charring only this morning." To Lilian Guest, the money was no more...
...which they live. Poor men's sons, they have only words to squander, but the words are never counterfeit. They buy belief in the small beauties that rouse Ches and Finn, e.g., the quicksilver grace of a hare giving a pair of pelting hounds the slip, the brotherly ritual of turf-cutting in the broil of a summer sun, the benedictions of the parish priest at the church of Mary Without Stain...
...Adams Wine Tasters follow the established tradition very closely. A set ritual is held too, which according to one member of the the society, is sometimes carried out "with as much precision as the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace...
Along about 1940, North Carolina's Robert Lee ("Muley") Doughton, Congress' oldest member, inaugurated a biennial ritual that Washington hands learned to take as a sign of spring. First comes a spate of rumors that Muley will not run again. Then comes a statement to the press: in response to his friends' demands, he will run after all. The ceremony came off right on schedule a fortnight ago; it was almost time to look for the first forsythia. Then, last week, Muley sadly broke the tradition. He announced that his doctors had ordered him not to risk...
...adjourned. Ten minutes later, the lawyer resumed the floor as Queen's Counselor. Painters at another London court set to work painting out the sign "King's Bench" and replacing it with "Queen's Bench." "Who goes there?" sang out the sentries in a traditional nightly ritual at the Tower of London. "The Queen's Keys," came the new answer. There were a multitude of adjustments to be made in a nation where everything is run in the name of the sovereign. Six months hence, for instance, a new coinage would appear bearing a likeness...