Word: townsfolk
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Grecian Restoration. In 1687, Turkish Janizaries, conquerors of southeastern Europe, were besieged at Athens by the Venetians. During the battle a great store of powder blew up inside the Parthenon, scattering columns, frieze and architraves. Townsfolk used blocks of Parthenon marble for doorsteps and pigpens. A hundred years ago Lord Elgin stole great masses of the sculpture for the British Museum in London, to save them from "local vandalism." Byron berated him. The Greek Government, belatedly renascent, is now reconstructing the torn Parthenon in the semblance of its periclean perfection...
...children who are absolutely certain Santa Claus is coming tomorrow morning." The businessmen took up a collection and decided thereafter always to take care of their poor neighbors for two weeks at Christmastime. They called themselves the Joshers Club and now, instead of community chestmen, beaming Joshers buttonhole the townsfolk to help Butte's 600 needy families. Chief Josher is J. T. Finlen, proprietor of the Finlen Hotel...
Long lines of omnibuses with the flags of 71 nations bristling in the wind, moved slowly through Birkenhead, England, passed through streets packed with hand-waving townsfolk to Arrowe Park, where there were broad green fields, freshly-cleaned parade grounds, stately trees. There the great flag-decked omnibuses deposited boys in khaki-colored uniforms, each with bundles, and a pack upon his back. Soon tents, 40 acres of them, had sprung up in neat, army-like rows...
...Orchard, Me., when Roger Q. Williams and his navigator, Lewis A. Yancey, took off for Rome in the Bellanca monoplane Pathfinder, their third start in six weeks. Heavily loaded (450 gal. of fuel), the plane barely missed an amusement pier, reached an altitude of 500 feet, soon disappeared. Townsfolk, watching the takeoff, noticed strange bell-shaped "trousers" over the Pathfinder's wheels. A mechanic explained: streamline aluminum cowling, sharp at the front, breaks the wind...
Along a Maine island's rocky, windswept shore briskly stepped a young man, dark-eyed, keenly alert. When he arrived at a white, two-story, shingled house, surrounded by towering trees, thick shrubs, he turned in at its gate. North Haven townsfolk had told him this was the summer home of Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow; that the blue-shirted rustic hoeing in the garden was Caretaker Hubert O. Grant. Quietly the young man approached the caretaker, spoke: "Good morning, sir. I'm sick. The doctor has told me to stay outdoors. Can you give...