Word: witche
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Governor William Stoughton was a jolly man. Presiding over the witch trials in Salem, he had only nineteen hanged, although another was pressed to death for refusing to testify. If Judge Stoughton was, perhaps, overzealous in his religion, at least his fervor overflowed into education, for he endowed Harvard with several scholarships, a pasture, and Stoughton Hall. In 1700, during Increase Mather's presidency, Stoughton "College" was built at right angles to the cast end of Harvard Hall. The second brick building in the Yard, it had three stories and an attic lighted by dormer windows...
...Witch-hunting had lost much of its glamour by the end of the eighteenth century, but the University faced its perennial housing problem, so the trustees decided to build another monument to the distinguished persecutor of Salem. In a curious reversal of roles, however, the General Court seemingly upheld civil liberties by refusing funds for the enterprise. Lacking any other resource, the crafty trustees held a series of lotteries and, in 1794, hit the jackpot, winning their own ten thousand dollar prize on a redeemed ticket. After this victory of the righteous, there was enought money to build Holworthy...
...Damn Yankees develops a stage full of entertaining characters. Ray Walston, as Applegate, seemed to me the best of all. A fast-talking pitchman with fire-red tie and sox, Walston has the cards, and all the best lines, stacked in his favor. Red-haired Gwen Verdon, as a witch Applegate imports from 'Chicago, sings a little and dances a lot. If you've heard "Whatever Lola Wants," you may have dismissed it is standard juke-box gruel. The meal may seem finer after you watch Miss Verdon grinding it. She also takes part in a prolonged number called "Musical...
...else in the audience, my favorite songs were "Heart" and "Those Were the Good Old Days" which were dished up in uneven helpings, it seemed. "Heart" is pumped a little too much, especially with two reprises in the second act. And Good Old Days," a gruesome duet between the witch and the warlock, is lost in the welter of first act brilliance. Expanding the number and moving it to early after intermission--before Lola begins to soften--would strengthen the whole last half of the show...
...also grievously ruptured the orderly traditional processes of U.S. democracy. To tighten his grip on the mass imagination, the President relied shamelessly on the "devil" theory of history. "Wall Street," "big businessmen," "reactionaries," "economic royalists" were tagged as villains. The logical legacy of the devil theory was the witch hunt. Professor Robinson implies that today's political " 'primitives' of limited intelligence," e.g., the McCarthyites, are the spawn of Roosevelt's intemperate labeling of political enemies. Equally damaging to the American policy, according to Robinson, was F.D.R.'s reliance on his intimate junta of nonelective braintrusters...