Word: velvets
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...principle . . . that you can't sharpen an ax on a velvet grindstone has given place to the view that if the pupils don't like it, they shouldn't be required to do it. ... The underlying assumption seems to be ... that students will write clearly and correctly by some sort of blessed intuition if only the teacher does not depress them with such inconvenient and unprofitable matters as spelling, paragraphing, punctuation, sentence structure, grammar and the choice and order of words...
...plenipotentiaries have had trouble with sartorial protocol since the days of Benjamin Franklin. When Minister Franklin appeared before the King of France in plain brown velvet knee breeches he was called uncouth. When Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes refused to expose his shanks to the Court of St. James's in knee breeches he stirred comment. When Ambassador Joseph Patrick Kennedy showed up at the same court in a tail coat, someone said he looked like "one of the less important waiters...
Sweet-faced, velvet-voiced Singer Maxine Sullivan, the darling of nightclubs, schoolboys and college youths, last week found a new, choicer audience. Sweet-swinging such ballads as Barbara Allen and Who Is Sylvia?, café-au-lait-colored Miss Sullivan was the cream of a "Coffee Concert" in Manhattan's Museum of Modern...
...good Peter reeled with the blow . . . and missing his footing, by reason of his wooden leg, down he came on his seat of honor with a crash which shook the surrounding hills, and might have wrecked his frame, had he not been received into a cushion softer than velvet, which some kindly cow had benevolently prepared for his reception...
...these firms have switched to U.S. goods, frequently have relabeled them "Made in Germany." Many a firm peddled as much propaganda as merchandise. Smart Latin Americans, comparing U.S. anti-Axis professions with U.S. commercial practice, thought Good Neighborliness was funny: a papier-mâché hand in a velvet glove...