Word: spider
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...wanted. In time, which we hestitate to define in its Widenerian concept, he was informed that there was no report of them. Then the Widener Beast sat up on its hind legs, smoothed its scales, and smilingly queried, "May we trace the books and send you a card?" The spider could no better entice the fly. "Please," our tutor answered. Every month now he returns to the lair with the same three cards and receives the same benign reply. But the Beast has never sent him a card. Some thirty times our tutor has baited it, but the prey eludes...
...owners of the place, whose first names are the basis of its name, are two exceedingly gentle, wellborn Philadelphians. White-haired Robert Restalrig Logan has for 25 years been president of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, is a vegetarian and dislikes to have his guests brush down a spider web or swat a mosquito. His wife, Sara Wetherill Logan, was exhorted by the late Theosophist Annie Besant a decade ago to "try an experiment in character-building" and discharge her servants...
...during the World War finally tried a preventive worthy of Jules Verne-a "balloon apron" of gas bags tethered on the outskirts of the city by 10,000-ft. cables. From them dangled a curtain of cables in which enemy planes were supposed to tangle like flies in a spider's web. Only one German plane hit the barrage, smashed through, escaped. Yet fear of the apron did force the attackers higher, thus impairing their marksmanship. This year, therefore, in its frenzy of rearmament, Great Britain is again preparing a balloon apron to be used for its psychological effect...
Most fantastic courtroom swigger is Coca-Cola's prize defense witness, Curator Perry Wilbur Fattig of Emory University's Museum. In a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled consumer who had found a drowned black widow spider in the bottom of his Coca-Cola bottle, Curator Fattig put a live, wriggling black widow spider into his mouth, crunched and swal- owed it, sat quietly in the courtroom the rest of the session. Since chemical action of carbonated water sterilizes insect matter, Curator Fattig thinks nothing at all of downing such sodaed morsels as grasshoppers, houseflies, small toads and frogs...
...week, the hoary hoax raised its head once more, in highly respectable surroundings, when readers of the June Atlantic Monthly spied the yarn as the leading article in the "Contributors' Club" department. The anonymous Atlantic contributor, borrowing many a phrase from the 40-year-old original, credited the spider farm to "my grandfather." Like all effective hoaxes, the spider story survived its creator. Ralph D. Paine died in 1925. His son and namesake is Business Editor of TIME...