Word: briefest
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...fine old name, and after his father died when Gilbert was two years old and his mother when he was twelve, Gilbert came into a handsome fortune. Hating court life in the Versailles of Louis XV, the marquis went into the army. At 19, with only the briefest of military training, he set off to become a hero of the American Revolution...
...been 60 years since Coolidge became President at the death of Warren Harding, 56 years since he issued one of the most famous and briefest political statements in history-"I do not choose to run"-and 50 years since his death. If the celebration works out as planned, Coolidge Week will end on Sunday when John Coolidge, 76, the President's only living son, will drive down from Plymouth Notch, Vt., the family's old home town in the Green Mountains, to Northampton. On the courthouse lawn there, John Coolidge will unveil a new gray granite bust...
...comedy. He was also one of the century's great celebrities and surely one of the most mysterious. Part faun, part satyr, he was avidly stalked, not just by gossips and journalists but by artistic, intellectual and political leaders fascinated by his movies. Yet he permitted only the briefest glimpses of his true self as he flitted through the thicket of myth and misinformation he deliberately created as a hiding place. Even his autobiography had almost nothing useful to say about how his genius functioned. It is an appropriate irony that the best record we shall probably ever have...
...such things at a distance, most men feel not only revulsion, but also a proper urge to enact society's revenge. Lock the bums away forever. At the same time, they can still imagine what it feels like to be present at the atrocities, even for the briefest instance; every life has analogues of its own. The essential circumstance is that of the mob, always a terrifying entity, whatever its goal. One thinks of lynch mobs before rape mobs, but all mobs have the same appearances and patterns, the same compulsion to tear things down or apart. The object...
...Chorus Line, the long-running musical dramatization of a Broadway audition, is just such a masterpiece. As each of the aspirants rise to audition, exposing their secret dreams and their desperation, their message becomes most intense: before long, we too are backstage, yearning for even the briefest chance in the spotlight...