Word: vain
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...Joseph Stalin, professional revolutionist, was exiled to Kureika, Siberia. At 35, he had given all of his adult years to underground Bolshevik work, and it seemed they had been spent in vain. To Olga Alliluyeva, his future mother-in-law, he wrote a letter thanking her for food parcels and asking only for a few picture postcards: "In this accursed country [of frozen tundras] I have been overcome by a silly longing to see some landscape, be it only on paper...
Gallerygoers who peered into the canvases for traces of faces or places did so in vain. "Naturally," concluded the manifesto, "there is no use looking . . . They have all melted into the void...
Even in the age of declining Supreme Court prestige, the appointment had its note of irony. In Franklin Roosevelt's vain but tumultuous campaign to pack the nation's highest court with added New Dealing justices, no man raised a louder voice for the White House enterprise than burly, boot-jawed "Shay" Minton. As a result of his signal service, he had been mentioned for just about every vacancy on the court that turned up in the past decade. But until Harry Truman broke the news last week, his name had hardly entered the speculation this time. Battle...
...hard fact seemed to be that Broadway's production roster, which had shrunk from 224 in 1928-29 to an alltime low of 70 last season, was going to shrink further still. The modest wartime boom was really over, but high production costs remained. Producers looked in vain for the freehanded angels who had gone with the boom. Reported Variety last week: "Nearly all [producers] have to ... flail the underbrush for money...
License Fee. In Mayo, Md., Salesman Roy E. Miffleton protested in vain, finally paid a $12.50 fine for kissing his wife in public...