Word: squinting
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Knife & Corn. The Maya, he says, were remote cousins of the Inca, the Iroquois and the Eskimo. Squat, copper-colored, often cross-eyed (admiring crossed eyes, they hung beads of resin before the eyes of their infants to induce a squint), they were wise, brilliant, cruel...
...oldster (73) with a keen eye for his well-tailored clothes and his role as an "Important Man." Alvanley Johnston stepped down from the cab of a locomotive and into a rumpled blue suit about 40 years ago. At 71, his blue eyes still have the engineer's squint, his round face the deep lines of a man who has long worked outdoors...
...favored needy sit, dull as cattle, while a coolie ladles their gruel out of a wooden bucket. Many are rheumy-eyed from malnutrition and blink and squint constantly as they slup their food. The sound is like the suction of noisy plumbing. When they are through, they wrap their bowls and chopsticks in cotton rags and go quietly away to wait for another meal...
Cause Célèbre. Mr. Quennell's liveliest figure is his least known one: John Wilkes. This squint-eyed, witty, opportunistic M.P. had immense charm, justly boasting that he could "talk away" his ugly face in half an hour. He led a dazzlingly licentious existence-swilling, wenching, dabbling in the "blasphemous and priapic" rites of the notorious Hell Fire Club. "Wilkes," said Lord Sandwich, "you will die of a pox or on the gallows." "That depends, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress...
...stab him with a fork. Dressing up in his sister's clothes was his favorite pastime. By the time he went to school, the boy was a weak-eyed, skinny mollycoddle and prig, already "pathetically conscious of being a misfit." He would jeer at anyone who had a squint or a clubfoot; homely girls made him burst into hysterical laughter. He thrilled with the hope of being kidnapped. Charles Dickens and Louisa M. Alcott were his idols. To confidants he showed a collection of photographs of Broadway celebrities, remarking: "That's what I'm going...