Word: hobgoblin
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...consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds, President Roosevelt has amply demonstrated in the past eight years that his is an intellect of no little capacity. Consequently the American people might have been guilty of a slight touch of skepticism when he spoke last October of keeping American boys out of the war and, more specifically, of prohibiting ships carrying the American flag to enter war zones. From all indications of the past few days that skepticism was justified...
...faults are obvious. ... I suffer from cacoëthes loquendi, a mania or itch for talking. . . . But there never has been superadded to these vices of mine the withering, embalming vice of consistency. . . . Let me quote Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen...
...they did. With part of his hobgoblin flotilla, Vice Admiral Keyes attacked the canal's protecting mole to create a diversion (one of the submarines rammed the mole's viaduct, exploded as planned), while the three concrete-laden block-boats steamed into the mouth of the canal, touched off explosives and sank in the channel. The losses were appalling, the instances of gallantry uncountable. One of the diverting boats alone sustained 182 casualties. One man, shot through the middle, wrapped his vessel's ensign around him, went on fighting. Two officers, both painfully wounded in the legs...
...Washington, where business often mixes with politics, Chip was meanwhile establishing a reputation as the Capital's greatest little mixer. After newshawks caught him and Presidential Secretary Marvin Mclntyre at a hotel room party given by the lobbyist for Utilitarian Howard Colwell Hopson, the roly-poly New Deal hobgoblin, Chip resigned. Presently, through Jim Farley's good offices, Chip bobbed up again as secretary of the Democratic National Committee. Today he and his beauteous second wife, "Evie" Walker, who has become a Washington chitchat writer (and last month, a mother), are the New Deal's sportiest couple...
Accustomed to playing against the Scoreboard in their year-round circuit of medal-play tournaments, many an able pro succumbs to fluttering nerves in a man-to-man contest. But to most U. S. pros there is a hobgoblin even more terrifying: a wispy, 135-lb. colleague affectionately known as "Little Poison...