Word: uncommoner
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When Tyler A. Whit more bought the Pratt homestead in 1939, he faced a situation-not uncommon to historians-of several different families claiming direct descent from the original "Village Blacksmith." Most convincing of these were some people bearing the respected Boston name of Hancock. Interested in authenticating the legend once and for all, Whit more supervised a minute scouring of the Cambridge archives and concluded that Dexter Pratt was the most logical hero of Longfellow's poem. One Torrey Hancock, whit more found, did build the house and operate the smithy; but he sold out to Pratt...
...story is superlatively well-told, and, as a chronicle of the damned, written with a suppleness and accuracy uncommon in the modern novel. The propertions are right, the prevailing irony is held implicit, and no phrases are wasted in commentary. As a study of futile people--people sinister in their futility--it is memorable. Even the death of John Graves was accomplished by a few inches of muddy water from which he could easily have arisen, instead of the quicksand he so grandly imagined it to be. The book holds one's interest throughout...
...life in the San Joaquin (which can be pretty dull at times), she would have had a more successful time of it. There is a long list of excellent characterizations headed by that of the Italian truck-grower, Alan Reed. Despite its deficiencies in depth--by no means an uncommon failing of play writing in this confused age when most authors seem either unable or afraid to go to the heart of the questions they ask--"Hope for a Harvest" is certainly not an unpleasant evening. With the assistance of a good share of varied talent it should go Marching...
...House of Representatives on living conditions in the District of Columbia, Mrs. Helen Duey Hoffman of the Washington Housing Association said: "One bath for 15 or 20 persons is a common grievance. Three to six unrelated roomers in the parlor of a once fine private residence is not uncommon. Renting a vacant bed was once shocking but is now all too frequent. " Washington rents are the highest in the U. S. And there is no relief in sight, for another 100,000 migrants are expected in 1941, and new housing lags far behind demand...
...these as in all her elegant, strange writings Elizabeth Madox Roberts combines the qualities of a dancer, a painter, an anthropologist and a woman. As a dancer she handles space and motion with uncommon delicateness: the void of a deserted mansion, the soft shiftings-together of barn beasts, the motions of two small sisters who, with entwined arms, "pulled and twisted each other about as one creature." As a painter she delivers some of the most firmly structural, curiously cleansed landscapes in U. S. writing. As an anthropologist she is almost too sharply aware of the symbolic undertones of rural...