Word: violet
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Poison for the Girls. In 1940, the Federal Food & Drug Administration was conducting a drive against "abortion pastes." During a routine checkup, an inspector discovered that Faiman was selling a violet-colored, sweet-smelling paste called "Metro-Vac" containing a poisonous metallic salt. It induced abortions all right, just as many powerful drugs will. But the FDA considers the preparation one of the most dangerous in existence. If the active drug gets into the bloodstream (as it often does), the patient dies...
...gadget was as flashy as a jukebox, and paid off even better. It was called the "Spectro-Chrome." A 1,000-watt bulb was propped up in the back of it, shining through red, yellow, green, blue and violet panes of glass. The instructions that came with the box reflected sunny assurance: it would "measure and restore radioactive and radio-emitive equilibrium by attuned color waves." It would also cure all diseases that man is heir...
...conversation, with its "Chinese nests of parentheses" and its sentences that "dropped to the floor and bounced about like tiny rubber balls"; his way of coming into a room, carrying his silk hat, stick and gloves; his reputation as both a wit and a bore ("Nobody bored him," said Violet Hunt, "he took care of that. . ."); his reputation for incomprehensibility ("Poor old James," said George Meredith, "he sets down on paper these mysterious rumblings in his bowels -but who could be expected to understand them?"); his reputation for social snobbery, and his reputation for knowing women only by observation...
...loves to have long chats with the town carpenter, who says he is "kindly and simple, but stubborn at times. The other day we were watching a sunset and I said, 'Just look at that wonderful streak of orange.' He replied, 'No, Jean, it's violet,' and he convinced me. Then I looked again and was mad at myself. It was really orange, you know...
...bank built an elegant parlor for women, where they could "cut coupons and eat bonbons with equal relish." Off the parlor was a room with scissors, threaded needles, hairpins, violet water, lavender salts, scented soaps. This leisurely atmosphere paid off in accounts from prim matrons and black-bonneted dowagers. Women still flock to the bank's Victorian quarters with their paneling, candelabra and the fireplace whose log fire glows cheerily in winter...