Word: niceness
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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This is, after all, not a bad thing. Any language must be alive, and must keep its vitality, even at the expense of losing some of its "literary" quality. Such slovenly usage as is to be found in the weakening of the words "pretty", "nice", "fine", and their like is distinctly "bum", but new words--even such plebeian ones as "bum"--often add color to the language. The beauty of English is that it can easily assimilates such new words and phrases, and can sift out the slang which it finds worthy of keeping...
...looks the fashionable ladies she read about in the society columns. She even managed to build an imitation pergola in the back yard and swung there, in a Gloucester hammock, hoping, for a duke. She had an insatiable instinct for what people with private incomes like to call "nice things." When Stephen came along, he checked completely with all her aspirations. They fell in love and were married...
...natural accidents?a sudden " crush " of Laurel's on the widowed first-love?the revival of an ancient and baseless scandal about Stella herself?made the issue plain. Stella saw that Laurel wasn't her kind? that she herself was the handicap on Laurel's becoming "nice." So she gave Laurel up in the only way that could bring a definite breach between them?let Stephen divorce her and married the wreck of an ex-society-riding-master, a worthy whom Laurel couldn't bear. She smashed Laurel's faith in her, and told her she was going to South...
...accouchement, 20 years ago. She loved him-but he was a roué-oh such a roué!-so she took her millions and their daughter (his little daughtaire 'e 'ad not seen 'ardly at all) and came to America, intent upon marrying daughter to a nice, clean-cut, young American millionaire, sans blue blood or indiscriminately amorous proclivities...
...child. A happy curtain is rung down. The cast is well selected, and Alice Brady, who takes the leading role, gives, according to the critics, a notable performance. Heywood Broun: "We saw one of the finest performances the American theatre has known in our time." Percy Hammond: "Nice, rough, nursery stuff, calculated to charm the sophisticated drama lover who wishes to be made a child again just for tonight...