Word: wittedly
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Cribbage Board. A hearty, goodfellow type of woman, Perle Mesta is an Oklahoma widow, whose wealth came from a marriage of Oklahoma oil and Pittsburgh machine tools. Not even her warmest admirers, who liked her liveliness, would credit her with overwhelming charm or notable wit. But ambassadors, Senators and Cabinet officers come at her beck. In a city where a hostess' success can be scored like points in a cribbage game by counting up the rank of her guests, Perle Mesta outscores them all. Unlike her predecessors, Perle Mesta won her position not by prestige and not alone...
Hell with Angells. He was a chipper, bouncy little man, more distinguished than handsome ("Apparently Yale doesn't choose its presidents for pulchritude," he said). Though he was famed for his wit and brilliance, few Yale undergraduates could have claimed to know him well. In his Woodbridge Hall office ("The only hell with Angells in it," students called it), the president had had little time for student callers. He seldom entertained, and in all those 16 years he never acquired a nickname...
...after his retirement in 1937 that Yalemen got to know him better, for President Emeritus Angell seldom missed a chance to return to campus. He was an honored guest at all Yale functions, made speeches with a wit that seemed to mellow with age. Last month, though incurably ill with cancer, he made one of his speeches at the 25th anniversary of his nursing school ("I have only one criticism ... of [nurses]. When they use a needle to stick you, they always choose a blunt needle"). That was the last time Yale ever heard him. Last week, at 79, James...
...villagers of Minsk in Czarist Russia, little Morris Raphael Cohen seemed definitely feebleminded. He was painfully shy, so listless, awkward, and clumsy that neighbors called him Kalyé-keh (a colloquialism for half-wit). Only his mother really knew him. "Never mind," she would say when people taunted him. "Some day they will all be proud to have talked to my Meisheleh...
...about sums up the difference in the talents of Miss Lillie and Mr. Haley. Mr. Haley does very well for himself in his sketches, as I have said, but Miss Lillie can't help but grow funnier with familiarity. She is obviously more than a comedienne; she is a wit...