Word: vow
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last week an old man died, another old man retired, a law was held constitutional. Behind these scattered but related facts was a story of greed and gold, of political intrigue and the fulfillment of an old vow. One character in the tale was a North Carolina runt, now vanished into a historical footnote; another was a great American jurist who liked yellow-backed French novels and claiity in the law, and who had an eye both for the exact word and for a well-turned ankle...
...grew so huge that it would wrap itself many times around a nearby hill. It devastated the countryside and when cut into pieces reunited and slew its attackers. A local witch told Sir John he could kill it if he would fix razor blades to his armor and vow to kill the first living thing he saw after vanquishing the Worm. If he broke the vow, the beldame said, for nine generations no Lambton would...
Making his vow and donning his razor blades, Sir John challenged the Worm. They fought on a rock in the river, and after the Worm had wounded itself on the blades Sir John hacked it in two with his sword. One half floated down the river and, unable to rejoin, the Worm died. But Sir John did not kill the next living creature he saw. It was his father. The next nine generations of Lambtons died violent deaths...
...night a bouquet of flowers is mysteriously moved from his bedroom shrine to his bed, and the next morning he is suddenly well. The cure is hailed as a miracle. Thereupon the young man decides to renounce his wife for the priesthood, and she agrees to take the vow of chastity which will allow him to do it, even though she has for some time desired his anticlerical brother...
...launched against the Nazi "new order." Timed with the sinister visit to Norway of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler, it militantly recalled broken Nazi promises to respect Norwegian church and civil laws, resoundingly detailed examples of brutal violence by Quisling's "uniformed hooligans," challenged Nazi banning of preachers' vow of secrecy - "the foundation of the church, the Magna Charta of the conscience." The Bishops expected no satisfactory answer from the State's Councilor; the answer they listened for was that of the Norwegian people...