Word: tactfulness
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...captain's commission in the Army Quartermaster Corps, distinguished himself only by transporting 557 horses and mules from Portland, Ore. to Manila without the loss of an animal. He was recalled from Cuba by President Roosevelt in 1908 to begin his White House service. A bachelor with gayety, tact, discretion, he gave himself up entirely to his President for work or play...
Taken to the Adolphus Hotel (owned by Adolphus Busch, grandson of the famed brewer) Capt. Coste mingled tact with candor in writing of his cross-country flight for the New York Times: "It was not hard-pouf, pouf, it was nothing at all! . . . I do not think anyone ever made $25,000 more easily. . . . The reception we received here was marvelous! Never has anyone so generously . . . greeted us, not even in New York. . . . I wish to give thanks to these Dallas people-'tres gentil...
...With less tact if not more candor Capt. Coste had said the preceding day in Manhattan: "Dallas? To me it is $25,000. . . . No! No! I don't mean that. I wish very much to fly to Dallas...
Playwright Shaw's memoir of Wilde is sparkling. Shaw reports the "maudlin pathos and inconceivable want of tact" of Wilde's brother Willie. Slily he says: "Oscar was not a man of bad character: you could have trusted him with a woman anywhere." Shaw did not like Wilde personally, considered him a "Dublin snob"; but when Shaw was trying to get signatures of London literary men to a petition for the reprieve of the Chicago anarchists (1885), Wilde was the only one who would sign. Says Shaw: "It secured my distinguished consideration for him for the rest...
...schools of business or elsewhere. . . . In almost every case of alleged improper activity the individual in question was either a subordinate instructor or connected with the extension department or with some technical day or night school. . . . Certain instructors, while beyond doubt absolutely honest themselves, were lacking in the tact that was necessary or perhaps in an appreciation of the gravity of the situation. Other instructors were obviously naïve enough not fully to comprehend what it was their employers desired...