Word: swishness
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Under his orders the Prefect of Seine-et-Oise called out troops. Some 200 gendarmes, backed by blue-clad Injanterie de-Marine, piled into fire boats and sailed up stream. At dawn they met the bargemen, brandishing boathooks. With a swish high pressure hoses were turned on, washed the boatmen off their decks and into the river while wives and children screamed imprecations through the portholes. The Seine was cleared. Twoscore of the ringleaders, most of them Belgian subjects, were arrested, charged with the extremely serious offense of Rebellion...
...Giovanni Boldini ("Zanin" to intimates) was a society portraitist as artificial as any who ever stretched a lady's fingers to tickle her vanity. Modernists excuse Zanin Boldini for a virtue denied most Academicians, an exuberance, vivacity and frank sensuousness that won him the title of "Master of Swish" and made his huge canvases on view last week a series of gay explosions, brilliantly painted...
...down the nearly perpendicular face of a mountain near St. Moritz in Switzerland. For weeks men have curried and patted, dragged toboggans up & down, to make a flawless surface. Last week 16 ski racers stood at the top. At intervals along the course were men with bamboo poles to swish over the light snow between runs. The racers wore goggles, had no ski sticks because they knew they could not stand up against the terrific wind resistance. Their skis were 9 ft. long and heavy (45 lb.), with handholds in front of the foot-straps and canvas streamers behind...
Meanest of tricks is to tell a wealthy woman that the best way to clean her Oriental pearls is to swish them through boiling water. As the pearls heat they will lose their moonbeam lustre, may crack and the wealthy lady will grow frantic. Yet last week all Japan honored a short, stocky, crinkly-faced old man who had rolled up his kimono sleeves, seized a blunt spade and vigorously shoveled into a fiery furnace 720,000 of his best pearls. Within three minutes they turned to flaky ashes (crystallized lime...
...swish, rustle and ornate embroidery even the robes of Chinese courtiers to Her Majesty the late, ferocious Dowager Empress (died 1908) were scarcely superior to the gorgeous, brand new robes donned last week in Changchun, capital of the new state of Manchukuo, by splendor-loving Foreign Minister Hsieh Chieh-shih and his swishing, rustling entourage...