Word: wretched
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...were to muster before me the murderer with blood-wet hands, the thief in possession of his loot, the highwayman armed with bludgeon and pistol, the firebug with his torch, the burglar with dark lantern and jimmy, and if you were to place with that assembly of rogues the wretch who had corrupted an election, I would unhesitatingly declare the corruptionist the blackest scoundrel of them all. I would so say because the man who attacks the foundations of his Government and thereby assails the very structure of society is the greater criminal, the more intolerable villain, for his criminality...
...little grey-haired widow, Mrs. Bessie Ellinger, Janitress of three Manhattan tenements, heard loud cries in one of her hallways, rushed in to find a quivering taxi-driver being beaten by three bandits. Moved by the wretch's groans, she fell upon his attackers from behind. They fled to the empty cab but Bessie Ellinger leaped on the running board. Holding on with her arm through the window of the cab door while the knaves pounded her hand and twisted her fingers to make her let go, she drew a police whistle from her apron pocket and blew...
...modern times." His triumphant entrance and forced march (unhappy man!) around the hall, preceded by the Mayor and Mayoress and the "perspiring City Fathers" and followed by the entire assemblage which fell in behind, "whooping and cheering like a Sunday School class at a picnic"-and then, the ungrateful wretch returning to England and writing his dreadful American Notes...
...Moliere's L'Avare (The Miser), that barbed satire on French thrift, the visiting star's abundant sense of the ludicrous makes the hoarding old wretch a spendthrift of merriment, a caricature instead of a nightmare. Similarly, in Octave Mirbeau's play about business his funnybone seems constantly elbowing out the dramatic elements. Instead of suggesting the ironhanded vulgarian of a millionaire, whose god is business, De Feraudy reminds one of Mr. Jiggs in the comic supplement series, Bringing Up Father. In an intense scene he puts his finger on a rocking wine bottle...