Word: vain
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first job brought him $4 a week from a Philadelphia chandelier factory. Not long after that he was doing sketches for the old New York World. Fifty-one times he dragged his heavy portfolio of pictures in vain to swank Harper's Weekly to get a job; on the 52nd visit he succeeded with a winter scene of opera crowds streaming out of the Metropolitan which he had painted over night...
...soon convinced onlookers that something far more important was in the wind. Evidently a crisis was at hand. The waitresses were seen to gesticulate, stare blankly into space, and undergo all the agonizing symptoms human beings display when they are attempting to exercise mental powers. The task was in vain, however. The lasses were not up to the situation. The menus had been stolen and the poor girls could not memorize the order list. A typewriter was employed and Freshmen were forced to order dinner from plebeian carbon copies...
...always muffled in a fog of meaningless political platitudes. Now as he was traveling home to California from his first New York Life Insurance directors' meeting, the Supreme Court rendered its decision on the gold cases (TIME, Feb. 25). For two days newshawks had trailed him, begging in vain for some comment. Sternly he put them aside with: "I am no longer in public life." At Tucson, however, the press clamor became so insistent that he put his private thoughts on public paper for the Citizen, personally distributed them collect to the Associated Press, the United Press...
...happened in that great course History 1, and Mr. Perkins, head tutor of the well-known and far-famed boll-boys was lecturing. He was lecturing well, in fact he was lecturing brilliantly. Bent over the desks were hundreds of unfortunates absorbing learning willynilly, their flying fingers striving in vain to keep pace with the gush of dates and of treaties that flowed forth with immense speed. Through Marlberough's campaigns sped Mr. Perkins with flying jaw, through the contemporary Continental complications, through the peace settlements, through the founding of the Whigs and of the Tories, until at last...
...telephoned the control car that a rib had snapped in the framework, that No.1 gas cell near the fin had ripped open. Steady as a stone, Commander Wiley ordered gas valved from the forward cells, all water ballast and emergency fuel aft dumped, the engines slowed down, in a vain attempt to level the ship off. The altimeter registered 4,600 ft. before the Macon faltered in its helpless ascent, began to fall tail first. Pike-plain to all aboard was the fact that the Navy's last dirigible was rapidly going to pieces in midair...