Word: vain
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...Yang a byword and a hissing in every corner of the empire. At last there was a revolution. The emperor's own guard put the tyrant to death, and demanded the life of Yang Kwei Fei as well. The emperor, desperate, begged them to spare her, but in vain. She was hanged with her own silk scarf from a young plum tree. "Oh God!" cried the emperor, his heart broken, when they brought her body to him. "Will this bring peace to my people...
Normal Vane, apparently a newcomer top the craft of playwriting, sets up his characters with contrived dialogue and them with their actions knocks them down again. The vain, colorful husband number one tells lies and most of the audience understands why; he is so pitiful that he should inspire our sympathy; but in the end he goes away unrewarded. The wife, frustrated in her quest for security, thrives on honesty so it is natural to assume that she once was in love with him; but there is never any hint of this. Husband number two, attentive and mild-mannered...
...years I had been looking in vain for a worthy Democrat. Now my quest is ended. The silver-tongued Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee, in his keynote speech opening the Democratic Convention, came up with the greatest political slogan ever conceived by the mind of man, to wit: "The Democratic Party-dedicated to the greater glory...
...natives gives The Nun's Story the warm glow of Albert Schweitzer's "reverence for life," and probably brought Gabrielle close to peace of mind. But once, when she learned that three men were caught in quicksand and rushed out of the convent in a vain at tempt at rescue, she was rewarded with a dressing-down that probed deep into the difference between religious vocation and mere doing good. "Not only did you leave the convent without permission," said Mother Mathilde, "but . . . you failed also in charity . . . I might have wished . . . to assign Sister Aurelie to that...
...finds his inflamed flock already there, armed with guns and ready to shoot it out with a lynch mob of whites that is cruising around the bottom land. The Preacher heads off an ugly racial skirmish with an impromptu sermon: "Whether old Abe Lincoln live and die in vain depend on you ... I know well's anybody, we got fight back now and then [but] everybody got find their own freedom. Everybody got lead their own selves outen the wilderness . . . Me-I'm goin home and get me some sleep...