Word: despairingly
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Walking back through the Common from the CRIMSON at about 4 this morning I suddenly realized that I had forgotten my dorm key. This is an unforgivable sin. Discovering that Briggs Hall is not only impregnable, but also uninhabited of this hour of the morning, I gave up in despair and began to head back to the CRIMSON couches. As I left the quad I saw a couple returning to Briggs. In jubilation I asked them if they would let me in. "No," said the girl. "But I live here," I answered. "Let's see your bursar's card...
...also struck a hopeful note. "Neither unreasoning zealotry nor despair is an acceptable attitude for Harvard men...There is a world of reason, modesty, charity and trust in the midst of, and opposed to, the oppressive and contentious world of deceit, anger, vilification and self-righteousness now made so manifest all about us again, as twenty years ago, by would-be exploiters...
...marvel that you could write a full-page Essay about protesters, who despair of making themselves heard, without mentioning the most obvious point: we did hear their bleats. We heard, man. we heard that Bobby Seale is just a spirited kid being imposed upon, that the Chicago Seven were just fun-loving kids out for a lark, that Gene McCarthy's policy of precipitate flight from Viet Nam is best, that the Nixon Administration is a fascist dictatorship, that students own the universities and are entitled to burn them down at will, that Che Guevara was a public benefactor...
...question remains, is it time for Hacker−or anyone−to write the country off? It may be too late to trot out again the "We are a young country" routine. But there is also a premature hysteria to the new-style despair, as if American opinion were going from polarized optimism to polarized pessimism−from the foolish complacence of thinking we were the best to the equally foolish self-contempt of accepting that we are the worst...
...Leibman is a manic delight in the key role, twitching mutely when in despair, brassily egomaniacal in victory, and forever sniffing the theatrical climate like a raunchy Shubert Alley cat. The rest of the cast play lesser roles with no less finesse, and pace-setting Director Harold Stone leaves no comic corner unturned...