Word: totemism
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Evening World's theory that this is to be explained by Yale's formidable reputation, acquired in the eighties, when Walter Camp had a monopoly on knowledge of the game, or else by the magic of the figure on the Yale totem pole, which is a bulldog. Either of these explanations is plausible and worth thinking about. Our own belief, however, is that the real explanation is to be found in the atmosphere of gentility which is thought to hang over the Harvard campus. Gentility, to the average American, suggests a lot of sissies: it is quite incompatible with physical...
Gourmands saw further possibilities in the impending war with an upland tribe whose three offences were loudly proclaimed as cannibalism, bodily filth, disgusting stupidity in keeping totem bullfrogs as mystic rulers. But before their war was well under weigh-the generals persisted in time-honored-and-outworn methods-Blettsworthy had rescued a beautiful damsel from suicide, loved her, and carried her to his secret cave...
...zigzag lightning flashes. To the uninitiated it looks like rash on a hairless dog. La Revue Moderne of June 30, 1927, grew ecstatic over this one, wrote about "this strange artist's inspirational paintings," recounted his troubled biography. Another of his inspirations was a woman kneeling before a totem pole in the Polar regions, its title "Adoration...
...whether or not chiropody is charming, Gaspar Barboas was surely its most potent exponent. He rose from it to such might that he earned the curse of the entire Bhingi race in Australia and became the object, in his electrically guarded mansion, of their attacks by totem pole, octopus and many another insidious device. His tragedy was that Safra Ferguson, the Bhingi maiden cultivated to perfection by an eccentric U. S. dowager, could not love him, though she frequently saved his life. From the bold wind that he sowed against the Bhingis and their Catholic teachers, Barboas reaped a whirlwind...
Just such is the danger which menaces the American college, hidden in the warmth, the flame, the color and the laughter of its Class Day and Commencement celebrations. It is an offering by each individual to his own loyalty, to a totem, a kindred in this case with legions and generations of Harvard men. But such a sacrifice must not come unaccompanied by clear understanding and appreciation. The mass form assumed by the celebration tends constantly to render this appreciation more difficult and it is only the strict avoidance of set formulae and taboos which may keep it from becoming...