Word: soberest
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...LOTTERIES. The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery . . . because the undertaker could make nothing by it. In the state lotteries the tickets are really not worth the price, [yet] the soberest people scarce look upon it as a folly to pay a small sum for the chance of gaining ten or twenty thousand pounds . . . In a lottery in which no prize exceeded twenty pounds . . . there would not be the same demand for tickets...
None of the five police departments could ignore the survey's soberest finding: most crimes are never reported. In more than half the New York crimes, the victims failed to notify the police. For every five crimes committed in Philadelphia, the survey found, only one was reported. The two most common reasons given for this silence were a belief that the case could not be solved for lack of proof, and a resigned feeling that the incident was not important enough to merit the attention of the police. The job before big-city police departments is plain enough...
...that when Wyeth's delicacy falters. But at his best, his images become hermetic, despite their apparent candor; a peavey or a hanging cornhusk seems to brim with undisclosed biography. When the elusiveness at the core of his imagination reacts with his virtuoso power of rendering the soberest nuance of light, texture and weight, Wyeth becomes a formidable artist...