Word: somberness
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...good copy. She was a round-faced Georgia girl with bangs, who worked at her writing between 4 and 8 a.m., before going off to a daytime clerical job (she had lost one job when caught reading Proust). On top of that, the critics decided that her book, a somber, wide-eyed look at small-town Southern life, was really first-rate...
There's that stereotype that Harvard regularly turns out a batch of parlor pinks and eager Red recruits. It seems to have replaced the older stereotype that Harvard breeds snobs. It is laughable, but not to the somber ones who compile Reducator lists, sit on un-American activities committees, or write columns in the Hearst press...
Parliament reconvened in somber mood last week after a five-week recess. A dark, lowering sky turned afternoon into night, and a damp mist crept into the House of Commons. M.P.s had plenty to worry about-a coal shortage, a meat shortage, the shock of rearmament on Britain's bareboned economy. But one urgent question overshadowed the others...
...uninitiated, a lighthearted essay on such a topic might seem out of place amid the somber rumblings of the London Times's editorial page. But generations of Britons have learned to expect just such things in the Thunderer's "fourth leader," i.e., the item usually fourth in sequence on its editorial page, an unfailing source of quiet, literate, gentle humor. Last week, for the second year in a row, the Times published a collection (Fourth Leaders from the Times; the Times Publishing Co., London; 8/6) of the year's best work of its anonymous editorial writers. Covering...
...Black Watch (so called from its somber Scottish tartan and original duties as a Highland guard) was first organized as a regiment in 1739. Families of three counties (Perth, Angus, Fife) supplied most of the first recruits, have continued to do so ever since, making the Black Watch "in truth a family, with ... ancestors and descendants." For 200 years the infantrymen of the Watch marched to war in kilts; with the coming of World War II they were ordered-to prevent identification-into common khaki uniforms. "But damn it!" roared an enraged Jock on hearing this shocking news, "We want...