The melody is like a lullaby, a few simple, descending chords accompanying a tale of heroes and the rest of us plain men who thought, vainly, that one day we might be too.
The war correspondent Drew Middleton wrote, "Two armies of plain men who had marched and fought from the blood-splashed beaches of Normandy and the shattered streets of Stalingrad have met on the Elbe River in the heart of Germany, splitting the Third Reich and sealing the doom of the German Army, whose tread shook the world only three short years ago".
As played by the barrel-chested Zachary Fine, this Mark Antony is "a plain blunt man" who shares with Sinatra a plebeian knack for channeling and giving lucid voice to his listeners' discontent.
Like Truman, Adams is portrayed by Mr. McCullough as a scrupulously honest man, dedicated, hard-working and without pretense: a plain-spoken man who steered a remarkably steady course through a particularly turbulent time in the nation's political history.
Faulkner describes the first glimpse of a woman who charms Lanagan as she enters a restaurant with someone: "He was just a plain man," he wrote.
(Mr. Goings, a plain-spoken man who favors plaid shirts, is more practical, saying that screws rust and eventually give out).
He is a plain-spoken man who likes to declare that his department is widely recognized as tops in the county.
Mr. Polley, a plain-spoken man who seemed to avail himself of his own internal mute button only rarely, was largely relegated to the margins of history, a condition that rankled.
"Our sales agents tended to focus on fancy restaurants while ignoring the needs of the common drinker," said Mr. Peng, a plain-spoken man who wears short-sleeve shirts and acknowledges that he does not really like beer.
Since 1936, under the alias of Dr. Seuss, Geisel, a plain and gentle man who is now fifty-six, has written and illustrated nineteen humorous books for children, all but three in galloping verse.
