Word: spiriting
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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Next day, Mr. Truman put his call to action in a formal emergency proclamation: "I summon all citizens ... I summon our farmers, our workers . . . and our businessmen ... I summon every person of every community to make, with a spirit of neighborliness, whatever sacrifices are necessary for the welfare of the nation...
...life he produced 14 books-poems, novels, short stories-some masterly, some amateurish. He pursued an erratic career as reporter and war correspondent. He made punishing journeys to wars and insurrections, and he acquired a Bohemian notoriety that reads like a composite of Poe and De Quincey. A rebellious spirit, he took a peculiarly joyless pleasure in scandalizing the age. A groundless charge of drug addiction provoked a characteristic response: he concocted a piece on the opium habit...
...mystify their ma. In bed at night they tied an apple to a string and bumped it loudly on the floor. Hearing the sonorous raps, Mrs. Fox climbed upstairs to investigate, and of course found both children apparently fast asleep. Cried puzzled Mother Fox: "Is this a disembodied spirit that has taken possession of my dear children...
...fake-hunter, Magician Harry Houdini, Rinn spent a long time looking for evidence of psychic power he could believe in. As a youngster, he was bowled over when a medium ordered him to place the spout of a kettle to his ear and thus receive the words of a "spirit voice." Only after he himself became a magician did Rinn realize that he had been duped (out of $5) by a double-bottomed kettle equipped like a telephone receiver and in contact with a "spirit" hidden behind a panel...
Always the Normal. Thenceforth, Magician Rinn fervently practiced what he and most of his fellow magicians insistently preached: that no "spirit manifestation" existed that they could not duplicate by plain trickery. They showed how clammy "spirit hands" (that brushed the brows of spectators at dark séances) were concocted out of paraffin or simply from "a kid glove filled with wet sawdust . . . kept on ice." One piece of so-called "ectoplasm" ("ectopiffle would be a better name," remarked a surly magician) proved to be a chunk of animal lung. The only "spirit body" that Rinn failed to duplicate...