Word: websterisms
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...Francis, who would have preferred to be a scholar, felt obligated to carry on the family tradition of public service. He cut down on the drinking bouts, made an effort to appear "grave, sober, formal, precise and reserved," and began his new career by going to work in Daniel Webster's law office. No one has better expressed this pull of family tradition than the young-and reformed-Charles Francis: "Many men have been surprised that in a distinguished family much of the same spirit and feeling is transmitted from father to son, but nothing appears to me more...
...Glorious Fourth that Daniel Webster predicted would be celebrated "with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations, and copious, gushing tears" has come to be the day for the big ball game, the teeming beach, the crawling traffic, the long drink-in short, like every summer weekend only more so, slightly set apart perhaps by the American Legion parade and a public display of professional fireworks...
...Massachusetts Supreme Court struck a blow to "save our world-renowned fish chowder from degenerating into an insipid broth." As all seasoned slurpers should know, New England fish chowder is full of dangerous objects-from bones to bits of shell. And when Priscilla Webster swallowed without seining at Boston's Blue Ship Tea Room, she got a bone in her throat that required hospital extraction. Miss Webster sued, won a jury verdict of $1,800. On reversing it, the Supreme Court absolved the restaurant of responsibility for the damage done by "the bone of contention," even though "we sympathize...
North House's Kay Webster plowed to victory in the 20-yard butterfly event, breaking the existing record by 5 seconds with a time of 11.6 seconds. In the 40-yard breast stroke, East House freshman Debble Brewster lost first place by falling to touch the edge of the pool with both hands at the finish. Jessica Tuchman of South House walked away with the blue ribbon...
...punishable by metamorphosis into some monstrous, less-than-human form. Life, he writes, is "a perilous moral journey." The freaks are those who have fallen from grace. Piety is rewarded by full humanity. His "piety," of course, is in the Latin sense of pietas. He is pious in what Webster notes as a second meaning: "Loyal devotion to parents, family, race, etc." And his pieties have been paid as son, husband, father and brother in stories which point the moral perils of each condition...