Word: yips
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...protested that he had never seen or heard of the woman, Chan Kam, 53, who was suing him for maintenance and claiming they had been married for 26 years. The woman admitted that she had never before laid eyes on Wat. But Wat's sister-in-law, Yip Wan-tai, testified that before Wat's mother died in 1932, the mother had instructed her to marry Wat to Chan, then 28. The ceremony was duly carried out: the bride wore red, and Wat was represented, said Yip, by a rooster. No one ever told Wat about the wedding...
Under Chinese law and customs, which are binding in Hong Kong courts, proxy weddings are legal, and senior relatives may sponsor them. But under cross-examination last week, sister-in-law Yip admitted that she had not really used a rooster as Wat's proxy. Yip explained that she feared that the rooster would die before Wat returned-certainly an ill omen for Wat's marital bliss with Chan. Therefore Wat had been represented at the ceremony by a more durable cakebox...
...lawyer hopefully contended that substituting a cakebox for a rooster was highly irregular and invalidated the ceremony. But Magistrate Hin Shing-lo ruled that because of Yip's superstition, the cakebox was legal; he ordered Wat to pay $17.50 a month maintenance henceforth to his lawfully wedded wife. His lawyer urged Wat to appeal, but Wat had had enough. He accepted the court's ruling and next day boarded a ship-alone-for the unmysterious West...
...inaugurated President in his own right. Around him his ever-present ex-Rough Riders yip-yipped while bands blared the old Rough Rider song, There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. But day by day the U.S.'s pell-mell progress and social stresses kept getting ahead of T.R.'s promises of "A Square Deal All Around." T.R. began to press harder against what he called "malefactors of great wealth...
...revolution than at the time Roosevelt became President." Around T.R. in his last year in the White House, their productivity racing ahead of population, surged 88 million Americans, men in derbies in the new Model Ts, women in the new sheath gowns and Merry Widow hats, teen-agers shouting Yip-I-Addy-I-Ay and Take Me Out to the Ball Game and taking in George M. Cohan in The Yankee Prince...