Let them express themselves!

Mrs. Cloyd Farquhar, a worried and concerned mother in Mansfield, Ohio, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

I'm worried about what they're telling my son Edgar in school. He's in the second grade and they're not teaching them any spelling. They call it “whole language.” You should see what they let him write – like, he'll write “mi muthr is reel nais she givs me ays crem” and things like that, and they give him an A on it and won't correct it at all! His teacher Miss Kaminsky says the idea is to let them express themselves in any way they want to, because if you keep imposing rules on them it will stifle them and they won't express themselves.

Does that make sense to you? What do you think?

By the way, we LOVE your column!

Aylene Farquhar (Mrs. Cloyd Farquhar)

Manfield, Ohio

Dear Mrs. Farquhar,

Miss Kaminsky is exactly right. The important thing is to give the children a way to express their feelings. Spelling rules come way down the list of things to worry about.

-- The Grammer Genious

Worth saying means worth spelling right!

Upton S. Heberling, a retired shoe store manager, Pearl Jam enthusiast, and founder of the fan blog pearljam.blogspot.com, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

When I here Eddie Vetter sing “Black” its the most meloncolic song of all times from begining to end. I remmember when i use to lissen to this song a million times because i mist my girl so much, i didnt want are love to go bad. if you are going thrugh that and feel like you are spinning too, just hange in their because it is just a mater of time, you will make it thrugh as I did, now I'm hapy again and still lisening to this song makes me remmember all the sad momints, im just glad my depretion is part of my past.

Upton

Dear Upton,

Your letter is so full of egregious spelling errors that it is impossible to give it any regard. Write to me again when you actually have some feeling or opinion to express in the accepted way.

– The Grammer Genious

Sister knows what she knows

Stanisław Danziger Szczepański, a junior at Saint Ursula Ledóchowska Catholic High School in Altoona, PA, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our teacher, Sister M. Mieczysława of the Congregation of the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus, says that a "hangnail" is called that because its pain reminds us of the pain Our Lord suffered when HANGing from the NAILS on the cross. Is that true?

Thanks you.

Stanisław

Dear Stanisław,

To address that interesting question, I consulted the noted etymology expert Rabbi Sholem Meir Shofman-Lipschitz of the Chabad Lubavitch Synagogue, a block away from your school in Altoona, and his response was: "Schmegegge!" Then he laughed and hung up the phone. I hope that answers your question, but it might be a good idea not to relay the rabbi's response back to Sister Mieczysława.

The Grammer Genious

P.S. Do those nuns still wear those big black burka things?

Shakespeare at the Seven-Eleven

Melanie Gumpotts, a Senior Cheerleader at Donald Rumsfeld High School in Odessa, Texas, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

At the Seven Eleven on the corner there is a cardboard sign on the door with "NO BAREFEET" written on it with a sharpy.

I know it's quoting somebody because the quote marks are real big. I've been writing a term paper for Mrs. Eckolm's class and I love quotations but I don't know who are they quoting, and neither does the lady at the 7-11 counter in there. She laughed when I asked her. Do you know? Also I can't find barefeet in the dictionary.

Melanie Gumpotts, Senior Cheerleader

Dear Melanie,

What -- you don't know? I can't BELIEVE you don't know! It's from Hamlet, of course. The "play within a play," Act II, Scene II:

“No barefeet up and down, threat’ning the flame

With bisson rheum, a clout about that head

Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,

About her lank and all o’er-teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;—"

Doesn't that ring a bell? It DOESN'T?? Don't they teach you kids ANYTHING anymore? No wonder this country is being run, in turns, by the evil, the feeble-minded, and the craven.

The 7-11 counter lady laughed at you because she couldn't BELIEVE you didn't recognize the Shakespearean reference on her entry door. She is apparently casting her pearls before swine.

No offense.

The Grammer Genious

How would an English teacher know?

Terry Ratigan, a petulant, assertive, pimpled, skinny, smelly, tatted, and facially pierced would-be tough guy at L. Ron Hubbard Middle School in New Baltimore, Michigan, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,


We had to right "How I spent my summer vacation" for Mrs. Echol's's 7th grade English. I wrote how I spent it, but she didn't like it, even though that's how I really spent it so who is she not to like it? I didn't like it either.


Here's what pisses me off, she didn't like when I said "The cops must of saw us." She said its wrong, even though they really must of or else why did they bust us? She wasn't even there, so what is she talking about? Me and Cliff might put sugar in her gas tank in the parking lot.


Terry Ratigan
L. Ron Hubbard Middle School
New Baltimore, Michigan

Dear Terry,

Don't put sugar in her gas tank. It won't help. Putting sugar in English teachers' gas tanks just makes them worse than ever. In fact, the prune-faced old ones who write meaningless scrawls in red pencil all over your papers are mostly that way because they got sugar put in their gas tanks in the parking lot during their careers.

English teachers are just randomly opinionated people that you have to get past. Don't pay any attention to anything they say. They just make rules up and it NEVER makes any sense. If you think the cops must of saw you, then they probably did.

The Grammer Genious

An Academic Incident Involving Poutine

Dr. Peaches Barkowitz of Saint-Hyacinthe-sur-Richelieu-de-Veaudreuil-Beauharnois, Quebec, a renowned cognitive scientist, analytic philosopher, and linguistic theorist, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,


We here in Quebec have great respect for our more superiorly educated betters in the great and powerful United States, and especially for you personally in light of your sterling, unsurpassed, and well-deserved reputation. We hope you can shed light on an argy-bargy we have been having at meeting after meeting of our department. To show you the depths of rancor to which this dispute has sunken, in sad fact at the most recent meeting poutine was thrown. You can imagine what that looked like, strewn across an academic gown.


Here is the claim at issue: Were any of the many words borrowed into English from Semitic languages originally constructed on the basis of Semitic taxonomy employing finite-state transducer algorithms?


Yours, 
Dr. Peaches Barkowitz
Chair, Department of Linguistics 
École des Hautes Études Linguistiques
Saint-Hyacinthe-sur-Richelieu-de-Veaudreuil-Beauharnois
Quebec H2J-1W8, Dominion of Canada

Dear Dr. Peaches,

I'm pretty sure Semitic means terroristic, so if any of those words ever somehow got into our language, you can be sure they have been flushed out and gotten rid of by now and probably sent to Gitmo. Nine-eleven changed everything, you know. Or maybe you DON'T know, you being way up there in Canada and all.

The Grammer Genious

PS. Do you people have Philly cheese steaks way up there in Canada? Maybe you should switch to them. They would hold together a little better than poutine when thrown.

The Definition of Awesomeness

Zip Tigh, a dog-fighting and fantasy football enthusiast from Baltimore, Maryland, writes:

Dear Grammer Genios,

Me and my friend Jason seen Batlle Los Angilos, it was awesome. Did you see it?

signed, Zip Tigh

Dear Mr. Tigh,

I viewed that film at a special showing held for celebrity bloggers last month in Jackson Hole. The pre-release buzz had prepared me for something special, and yet the sophistication, literacy, and intellectual brilliance of this modern Iliad completely took me aback. Aaron Eckhart out-Brandoed Brando with his breathtaking, layered performance. Predictably, the drive-by philistines who fancy themselves “movie critics” have, to a man, panned the film, having utterly missed its clever, subtle, and ironic homage to Somerset Maugham and Tennessee Williams. This is a film for the ages – awesome indeed, in the full meaning of the word.

The Grammer Genious

A bright future for a young lad!

Mrs. Judy Lindquist, a housewife of Seattle Washington, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our family has an issue. We are feeling very happy and lucky right now, but still we have this issue, maybe.

Ok here’s the thing. We have only this one child, Jason, and of course we are very anxious for him to have everything that America has to offer a young man, so that he can get ahead in life. For many years, my husband Thorvald and I have been working behind the scenes to get Jason accepted into the Ballard Motorcycle Club, a local and very prestigious band of motorcycle toughs in Ballard. They practically own Ballard, and woe betide you if you get on their bad side. So of course we wanted Jason to get into that club.

Well, last month he was accepted, and we were delighted, but here’s the thing. As part of the initiation he was supposed to get the words “BORN TO LOSE” tattooed across his forehead in purple. The thing is, he was told to report to the gang’s tattoo guy who lives in his car near the Urban Rest Stop in Ballard, so Jason sat in the back seat for the tattooing and the guy seemed preoccupied, and he kept going around to the front seat to noodle on his guitar, and his chick this Gothic kinda girl kept coming in and out and doing lines and generally distracting everybody, and well the bottom line is that the words on Jason’s forehead aren’t exactly in a straight line, and they say “BORN TOO LOOSE”. As soon as Thorvald and I saw it, we looked at each other and we both said at the same time, “The Grammer Genious!” So we are writing to you and what we want to know is, is this a big deal, or not? Should we be concerned? Should we do anything about it?

Signed, Mrs. Thorvald Lindquist, Seattle, WA

Dear Mrs. Lindquist,

Congratulations on launching your son into a bright future! I wouldn’t worry about the tattoo wording. You’re going to have to stop helicoptering over the lad now, since he is out and on his way. The important thing is that he got in, and his life path is now secure. You and your husband should just relax and savor the satisfaction of a parenting task well done!

Good English teachers know their dumb

Miss Aspidistra Flynn, Head of the English Department at St. Isadore of Seville High School in McAlisterville, Pennsylvania, writes:

Dear Grammar Genius,

My ninth graders and I follow your blog religiously. We profit immensely from your knowledge and wisdom regarding English grammar and usage, but mostly we enjoy and revel in your continual wit, good humor, and the droll ripostes you drop into your daily column. Repeated quotations from your insightful and humorous writing, along with the gay laughter they provoke, echo throughout the day in the halls of St. Isadore of Seville High School.

Yesterday a question came up in class which only you can answer. (I willingly acknowledge that, being the product of a late 20^th century American public education, I myself am of course limited in the amount and quality of knowledge I am qualified to impart to the students).

The question is this: What is the difference in meaning and proper usage between the words “perspicacity” and “perspicuity”?

I must add that I have been refraining from retiring solely because of the usefulness of your blog in my classroom. God bless you for your work.

Sincerely,

Aspidistra ("call me Aspie!") Flynn

Dear Aspie,

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement. Your frank avowal of the manifest incompetence of modern-day English teachers is curiously refreshing. Your right: when it comes to English, you English teachers all really are awful dumb. Would to God that English teachers everywhere in our crumbling education system were as honest as you are.

In answer to your question, those two fancy words that you said are both pretty big, so actually there is not much point in piddling around and trying to draw some hoity-toity distinctions between them. I would advise your ninth graders to just avoid both of them.

The Grammer Genious

Grandpaw said the F-word

Mrs. Elihu Garrison, a farm housewife who lives outside Wabash, Indiana, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Last Sunday at dinner when I was arranging the table, I was trying to push the mayonnaise jello salad sideways and I accidently dumped a whole, big, hot, maple peach glazed ham into Grandpaw's lap, and he stood right up and yelled the F-word right in front of the children. I never heard Grandpaw say that word ever before in my whole life. And on the Sabbath! What do you suppose came over him? He was peevish the whole rest of the evening. I think he must of learned that word when he was in the Korian War. I had to re-trim the ham.

Signed, Mrs. Mary B. Shell Garrison

Dear Mrs. Garrison,

Was that the first time in your whole life that you ever dumped a whole, big, hot, maple peach glazed ham into your father's lap? If so, maybe he was just surprised, is all.

My mom used to stick dried cloves and pineapple slices all over the ham, so Grandpaw was lucky, in a way, and so were the children -- think what he might of said with cloves and pineapple all over his pants.

The Grammer Genious

Homework help, for teachers

Dr. Sylvia Batillo. an AP English teacher at Hammond High School in Columbia, Maryland, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

What is the difference, if any, between "perpetuate" and "perpetrate"? To all intensive purposes, they seem the same to me. Some smart-ass kids in my AP English class asked me about those words, with a smirk. They're always trying to emberrass me.

Dr.Sylvia Batillo, Ed.D.

Dear Dr. Batillo,

Oh, those words are about the same, give or take. There are probably some little differences, but people that insist on going on and on about some fancy little differences are just thinking too hard, or else trying to show off.

If you want to get those kids off your back, you should get them into FANTASY FOOTBALL! I'm totally besotted with it, it's all I ever do or think about. I bet you can do the whole thing on a Smart Board, and they'll stop asking you dumb English stuff.

The Grammer Genious

A deal breaker

Mr. Leon Czolgosz Sullivan, a tool-and-die maker and political anarchism activist in Detroit, Michigan, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Please settle an argument between my girlfriend and me. She corrects my grammar all the time, even in public when we’re, like, out in a restaurant or something. I think that correcting another person’s grammar is a deal-breaker. It’s like she’s not listening to what I’m saying, she’s just tracking my grammar.  So I’m thinking of breaking up with her. What do you think?

Leon Czolgosz Sullivan

Dear Leon,

Correcting another person’s grammer is totally unacceptable, but don’t break up with her yet. First do things like, after she has made some long, thoughtful statement and it’s time for you to answer, say, “You’ve got a piece of spinach on your tooth,” and the next time say “Is there something inside your nose?” and the next time say “That spot on your arm looks like it itches,” and keep doing that until SHE breaks up with YOU.

Incidentally, you should of written “my girlfriend and I,” not “my girlfriend and me.”

The Grammer Genious

Elbow noodle

Miss Veda Pierce, an inmate at California's Folsom Prison serving time for killing her mother’s estranged husband in 1945 when he refused to become her lover, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

What is an elbow noodle?

Signed Veda Pierce, Prisoner #14858

Dear Veda,

You must be pretty much out of it from spending so many years in the slammer. It’s a very popular fad expression among the young people nowadays. An elbow noodle is when you’re standing next to somebody and you tickle them in the ribs with your elbow. Like in, “I think he likes me. He gave me an elbow noodle while we were standing in line.”

Hey, do you prisoners still bang on your tin trays to piss off the bulls? Just curious. I just watched Wallace Beery in "The Big House" again.

The Grammer Genious

Shuddup, ya old bag

Miss Evangeline Pettibone, a strict prescriptivist who has been teaching award-winning English literature and grammar classes at Erasmus Hall High School in New York City since 1977, writes:

Dear Grammar “Genius,”

Your “blog” was recently brought to my attention by two of my better students who, I regret to say, had apparently been taking it seriously.

It is difficult for me adequately to express my distress at your dreadful writing style. The naive young people see it and mistake it for passable English. It sets a very bad example indeed, and it frustrates and undercuts our efforts as educators, upon whom society has placed the burden of elevating our students’ love and appreciation of our beloved English language, as perfected by Shelley, Keats, and the immortal Swinburne.

Your intolerant and dismissive attitude, your fatuous, presumptuous assertions, your willful philistinism and, in particular, your egregious serial solecisms are profoundly distressing. I mention in particular your profligate misuse of the word ”whom,” a pronoun the function and force of which you clearly have no understanding whatever.

I beg you to close down this “blog” of yours, at least until such time as you have successfully completed a serious college-level course in writing.

Sincerely,

Miss Evangeline Pettibone, M.A.

Chair, English Department

Erasmus Hall

New York, NY

Hey listen, Pettibone, your not the boss of English, I know all about you. My friends and me took plenty of your brand of miserable crap back in high school and we should of told you off back then. You gave my friends and I a bellyful what with your “objective passives,” “dangling particles,” and “split propositions.” 

I happen to have a God-given insight and feeling for English without haffing to stick my nose into a bunch of books and I also make plenty of dough giving out advice about it, so just get lost you prune-faced old celibate.

Also, I’m very sorry if anyone has been offended by this.

The Grammer Genious

Comma or not

Esther Blodgett, a young Hollywood starlet married to an aging faded alcoholic matinee idol, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Does the sentence “Next time you pour my gin down the drain[,] I’ll break your little goddamn neck” require a comma between the main clause and the dependent adverbial complement?

Signed, Esther Blodgett

Dear Miss Blodgett,

Nah.

The Grammer Genious

P.S. I'm selling your autograph on eBay, if that's ok with you.

This guy can't talk normal

Mr. Jean-Baptiste Drouillard, who runs a rent-it store in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, and has never ventured into the U.S. before because he is afraid of the primitive health care system here, writes:

Mon cher Génie Grammaire,

Ma femme et moi avons l'intention de aller aux États-Unis pour faire des courses. Nous voulons acheter de bacon et de fromage, parce qu’on ne peut pas obtenir ces choses au Canada. Et nous aimerions aussi obtenir du sirop d'érable. Le sirop d'érable canadien a le goût du poisson.

Pourriez-vous nous suggérer quelqu'un bon magasin dans le New York où l'on peut acheter de telles choses? Nous vous remercions beaucoup.

Jean-Baptiste et Octavie Drouillard

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec

P.S. Est-il vrai que vous avez des punaises dans votre pays?

Dear Jean whatever,

What the hell do you think this is, the United Nations? If you want to get along on this continent, LEARN THE LANGUAGE! Your letter makes no sense at all, froggy.

The Grammer Genious

The Tea Party vs. Jimi Hendrix

Danny Crook of Guthrie Center, Iowa, who writes and sells term papers and master's theses on the Internet and plays bass with the grunge band Worst Case Scenario in Des Moines on weekends, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious.

I am a huge, huge fan of Jimi Hendrix. He’s mostly all I listen to, and of course I’ve memorized everything he ever wrote because I've heard it all about a million times. My favorite line of his is in Purple Haze, where he says “Scuse me while I kiss this guy.” I love its charming gayness.

So imagine my shock and surprise when I went to a website that's supposed to have his lyrics, and they had changed them to “Scuse me while I kiss the sky.” What the hell??! That sounds weird! What he said was a clear as a bell, and everybody knows what it was. I don’t understand why they’re trying to change it now. What do you think?

Signed, Danny Crook

Dear Danny,

This is clearly part of the Tea Party Movement’s campaign to remove all traces of gayness from the arts, and to recharacterize all the gay icons of the past and pretend that they were all straight -- Sinatra,  Liberace, Johnny Cash -- all the well-known gay icons.

I agree that the words he said are so plain and clear, and so well known, that trying to change this bit of “charming gayness,” as you call it, into something other than what it manifestly is, is just plain silly. The best proof of that is the fact that “Scuse me while I kiss this guy” gets a quarter of a million hits on Google. Case closed! That’s why the Tea Party is not going to get away with this.

The Grammer Genious

Finally, a smart person!

Mary Ellen Patterson, the assistant manager of West End Bowling in Minot, North Dakota, and a real crowd pleaser during Friday night karaoke at Gino’s Lounge in the same strip mall, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

What’s the difference between an occultist, an oculist, an ocularist, an ophthalmologist, an optometrist, and an optician? There’s a case of Bud Lite riding on this.

Signed, Mary Ellen Patterson

Dear Ms. Patterson,

I see your point – and a very clever one it is indeed! All of those names designate people who help us to see things more clearly.

Why do we have so many different words that mean essentially the same thing? I don’t know, Ms. Patterson, it's a real waste, isn't it? You’ve posed a good question, made all the more astute by your not having overtly stated it. I wish all my correspondents were up to your level.

The Grammer Genious

Hurray! Pivoted Stochastic Instantiations!

Rutherford B. Hayes McDonald, the Chairman of the Board of the humungous multinational arms conglomerate Weapons Systems Я Us, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our firm is currently ramping up and rolling out an open source-based cloud data storage and processing solution, embodying an innovative paradigm of distributed, self-organizing structures in analytics, employing stochastic processes to incorporate pivoted values thereby providing a multi-level infrastructure of interconnected testbeds of interdisciplinary, heterogeneous, scaled scenarios for tailored solutions to produce context-based instantiations of self-management concepts with roll-up and drill-down operations, leveraging stakeholder expectations for transformational algorithms, mechanisms, and multivariate, quantitative protocols.

We have worked hard to make that description as clear and simple as we could, without being inaccurate or misleading. But, surprisingly, we are encountering comprehension barriers with our potential customers, which is causing us to wonder if there is some way that we might describe this product more cogently. We would therefore be grateful for any suggestions you might give us in that regard.

Collegially yours,

Rutherford B. Hayes McDonald, Chairman and CEO

Weapons Systems Я Us

McLean, Virginia

Dear Ruthie,

Frankly, you took the very words right out of my mouth. If the customers can’t understand that, they’re not worthy of the product. What, they don't know how to use a dictionary? What do they want from you, baby-talk? I say, screw ‘em.

The Grammer Genious

The Grammer Genious on Classical Music

William Jefferson Slade ("the Grammer Genious") has kindly produced a little music appreciation lesson, as a cultural benefit for all his blog fans, and to aid them in their personal growth.

A rather objective case of an overly passive voice

Jade Bernadette Panagiotopoulos-McGillicuddy, an 11^th grader at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our AP English teacher Miss Medzigian made us write college application essays for practice, the kind you have to write to get into college. I wrote mine about like that I was a dog and I was going to go to college with my human, and what would college be like for my human and I, and what would I want to get from the college experience as a dog, ecsetera. I thought that up myself. You have to take some weird, imaginational attitude like that in your essay to get into a descent college. It’s title is “College For My Master And I”. Nobody helped me write it, my nosey mom wanted to but I wouldn’t even let her look at it because it’s none of her business.

Anyway I spell checked it and everything and I thought it looked real good and I turned it in, and when I got it back old Medzigian said “the pronouns confused the objective with the subjective,” and there was “too much passive voice” in it. I have *ZERO* idea what she is talking about. Do you?

Signed, Jade Panagiotopoulos-McGillicuddy

Dear Jade,

Sure I understand, Jadey! Words mean what they mean! Look them up!

By “objective,” your teacher must have meant that the dog in the story objected too much about something, and also what the dog said was too subjective and not factual enough. And she thinks the dog’s voice was too passive sounding. If your teacher would prefer a more assertive voice, then change the dog into a cat! There ya go! Problem solved!

Use your DICTIONARY, Jadey. It solves everything!

The Grammer Genious

Glennbeck, Maine

Bill Colly, an unemployed real estate salesman on Medicaid, and the head of the Tea Party Movement in Bangor Maine, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

I am the chairman of the Tea Party Movement here in Bangor, Maine. There is a rumor going around here that Bangor was named after Bangalore, India, except the people that originally named it spelled it wrong. If that's true, we're going to run candidates to change the name of the city, probably to Glennbeck, Maine. Is it true that Bangor was named after some foreign place?

Signed,

William Colly, Chairman, Tea Party Movement of Glennbeck, Maine (formerly Bangor)

Dear Bill,

Of course it's true. Everybody knows that. Why, it's even on the internet. I'm surprised you thought you should even ask. Now go out there and kick ass!

The Grammer Genious.

A pitiable unintentional poet

The Grammer Genious received the following letter anonymously, from a sad victim of that tragic, newly recognized mental illness that compels its poor victims to couch any expression of opinion in Shakesperian sonnet form. 

Dear Grammer Genious,

Help me if you would. My wife keeps nagging me about the way I talk to her. So give me, if you could, your thoughts, and let the chips fall where they may. She says that every time I talk to her, it sounds as if I think I’m some great poet. She claims that rhymes seem always to occur in such a way that, although I don’t know it, I’ve made a poem. In a way, I’m flattered that she’d think I’m that smart. As if I’d ever have any notion how to write a “sonnet”.  I’ve never written anything that mattered.  For sure she ought to know I’m not that clever.  I don’t know what put that bee in her bonnet.

Signed, the Unintentional Poet.

Dear Unintentional Poet,

Roses are red, violets are blue. You have our deepest sympathy.. um,  bada-boo, bada-boo. Or something like that.

Signed, the Grammer Genious.

A canine epitaph

Mrs. Caesar Rodney du Pont IV, the famous waste-management heiress and leading social figure of Wilmington, Delaware, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Recently, our dear and beloved bloodhound Leslie passed away suddenly. Caesar and I are utterly devastated. A treasured family member for many years, Leslie had a remarkable artistic sensibility and a unique and well-known sense of humor, despite the continual, lifelong burden of humiliation at having his gender misconstrued by ignorant people due to his ostensibly ambiguous given name. In addition to keeping the du Pont family larder well supplied with game, this extraordinary canine's unsurpassed olfactory skill was responsible for the apprehension and incarceration of more than 480 fugitive miscreants in three states.

In early January, Leslie's earthly remains were temporarily interred in a local pet cemetery with a moving High Episcopalian ceremony, pending the design and realization of his own sarcophagus to be erected in the ancestral family plot of the du Ponts. My husband and I have commissioned the celebrated Italian marble sculptor Finocchio di Balducci with the tomb's design and execution, and we are now searching for an appropriate poetic sentiment to be carved upon its base. That is the reason for our writing to you. As a person of broad belletristic knowledge and famously exquisite literary taste, you would be our choice to proffer suggestions for a befitting epitaph. Our gratitude would be most profound for any help you might give us in this our hour of deep sorrow.

Yours very sincerely,

Cunegonde Felicity du Pont (Mrs. Caesar Rodney du Pont IV)

The Boxwoods

Wilmington, Delaware

Dear Mr. and Mrs du Pont,

The sentiment that springs immediately to my mind for her would be a version of Edgar Allen Poe's "To Helen," with certain modifications."Leslie, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicean barks of yore..." I cannot think of a more appropriate poem for your dear departed bitch, particularly in light of the artistic sensibilities that you say she exhibited during her lifetime.. For example, where the original has "thy hyacinth hair," the version for Leslie would read, "thy hyacinth ears." "The agate lamp within thy hand" would become "The agate lamp hanging from thy muzzle." And so forth.

With deepest sympathy,

The Grammer Genious