Word: background
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...preferred to dwell more on intimate character sketches of Cape Cod folk rather than to bother too greatly with plot. He sees his quaint people whole and puts them on paper so, sketches them lightly and then inks them in with dialogue and anecdote, the situation furnishing a light background to the picture. The other thing I discovered about Mr. Lincoln was that when he was a boy he had a toy theatre. Did you have a toy theatre? Did you paint the scenery and write the plays? Well, I did; and, like Mr. Lincoln, I kept it up until...
...about had better get out of the way if he valued his health. The freshman picked himself up dumb-founded, tears of humiliation in his eyes and hating Haughton. P. D. had had no intention of being mean or unkind, but nothing was to break into the background he had set for us, nothing detract from our line of thought. Later he looked up the boy, explained the situation, told him he was doing, his manager-ship job all right, and the boy was lett happy and holding P. D. in the same respect and admiration that we all felt...
...Prime Minister is in the hands of the desperadoes of his party. The country is revolting against this form of Government, as it is not Government by the better men of the party, but by men in the background, who pull the strings and dictate the policy and hold the Prime Minister in bondage...
...that these were the growing pains of vigorous young intellect. It could not foresee that the orthodoxy whose purity they tried to maintain unattached by heresy, would pale gradually before the onslaught of the mind until these cherished tenets of theological metaphysics were held only in the background and with deepest reservations by their apostolic successors, until the science of orthodox apologetics had forsaken its metaphysical subtleties for the less tenuous claim of acting as a social cohesive and a moral leaven...
That is the earliest historical background for all the stories and canter about X. You meet the tale at every step. "X runs a race with Y. At the half mile mark X passes Y running at 7.5 miles an hour. By how much did X win?" It is always the same; and always the happy ending,--X wins, and Y loses. Occasionally Mrs X (X') is called upon for assistance, but she invariably backs her husband to the discomfiture of Y. Even Z somehow seems to be able to put a deal across while Y is left struggling with...