Word: vainly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Vain Hope. At 9:44 a.m. all was gay chatter aboard the Rangoon-Prome Express. At 9:45 an earth-shattering explosion, followed in quick succession by two more, picked up long sections of the track and shook the cars in the air like wet laundry. Gunfire poured from the trackside paddyfields and jungle as two cars of the train plowed into the disabled engine ahead. Other cars of the long train overturned in a nightmare of confusion, as tumbled, screaming passengers were impaled on splinters or crushed in the press of twisted steel...
...sands, and the sunshine of eternity rang around them . . . For an age-one lonely, solitary, divine and everlasting moment-the full impact of the terrible destiny of his fellowmen struck Falconer between his eyes ... A love for all his brothers, a pity in all their foolish and vain sacrifices, covered his eyes in sorrow and gladness...
...wartime executive officer of the Public Relations Section of ComFleets command, his job, his staff, and the tropical island of Tulura constitute the hub of the naval universe. On his desk rests a three-inch shell casing full of paper clips, and a sextant which he tries in vain to sight; over it hangs the sign, "Think Big!" Nicknamed "Marblehead" because he lacks more than hair, Nash affects British knee-length shorts, carries a swagger stick, and talks a strange mixture of adman and old salt ("My hatch is open for ideas...
...Kentucky to Missouri under the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers? (The presence of one distinct species of blind fish in widely dispersed caves in the region implies such a linkage.) Why is Texas' Kiser Cave full of carbon dioxide? (Three airmen, equipped with oxygen tanks, almost died trying in vain to find the answer.) Do cave-dwelling bats have a burial ground to which they fly when feeling ready for death? (As many as 30 million bats live in a single cave, but few dead bats are ever found...
Music could mellow the caustic Mencken strain. He once moved Angoff by saying, "Schubert knew God, he knew that God, too, was afraid, that God, too, trembled and was in doubt and got angry and regretted and yearned in vain, like you and me and all of us." Though he spouted misogynisms, Mencken was deeply in love with his wife, Sara Haardt, who lived only five years after their 1930 marriage. When she was dying he told a friend, "Women are always waiting . . . women are always waiting for-birth, for kisses, for love, for growing-up, for smiles, for death...