Word: spinsterism
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...centuries, France's spinsters (technically all unmarried women over 25) have cut loose once a year on the day of their saint (who was a spinster herself). Last week, according to custom, the procession of "Catherinettes" (composed largely of midinettes in crazy headgear) stampeded to the saint's statue on the garish Boulevard St.-Denis. An old tradition permitted all men to kiss any spinster they encountered on St. Catherine's Day, but this was outlawed by some busybody reformers in 1933; last week, as usual, the 1933 prohibition was roundly ignored...
...last week, wrote Columnist Billy Rose, "a daffy story popped up on my desk" (the kidney-shaped one in the office Flo Ziegfeld used to use). It seemed, wrote Rose, that somebody's spinster Aunt Helen had died, and when the minister drew back the casket lid at the funeral, what should be inside but the uniformed corpse of a two-star general? The embarrassed undertaker said they might as well go ahead with the service. Aunt Helen had apparently been buried in Arlington Cemetery that morning, and only an act of Congress could...
...club, the tension unavoidably brought out personality. A somewhat thyroid spinster from Lahore passed around the manuscript of a sex novel she had been working on. One handlebar-mustached old colonel, who had spent 40 seasons in Kashmir, refused to leave. Said he: "Good God, no! I'll just pull my houseboat over another mile or so and forget the trouble." The Hindu pianist who played an Indian version of boogie woogie at the houseboat-cabaret Bluebird had a different solution. He bought a new, heavy, imported Scotch tweed suit with heavy overcoat and tweed cap. Asked...
Poetry was founded by a frail, abstracted but determined spinster named Harriet Monroe. She spent weeks in the Chicago Public Library, reading up on contemporary British and American poets. Then she wrote letters to the ones who passed her muster, inviting them to join in starting a magazine to "give the art of poetry a voice in the land. . . ." The replies were enthusiastic; Amy Lowell sent a check for $25, and Ezra Pound (then in London) agreed to become Poetry's first, unsalaried foreign editor. Harriet Monroe knocked on wealthy Chicago doors (Samuel Insull, Cyrus McCormick, Charles Dawes), soon...
...bigwigs to a tea party in Mukden. While his notable guests were sipping tea, Chen made them a little speech: "You gentlemen here can trust me when I say I have never squeezed. In this respect-to make a joke-I am 50 years old and like the spinster who has gone through many hard years struggling to keep her virtue spotless and knowing well that relations with a man even once would have ruined her reputation forever." Politely the 100 guests laughed...