Letters, Feb. 16, 1931

(3 of 4)

This is a good producing farm, bought at a reasonable price, has no buildings on it other than the necessary barns and tenant house. It is handled by Judge Payne in a farmer-like manner. He dons his working clothes and spends one day a week giving it his personal supervision. If anyone thinks it is a pleasure resort let him follow Judge Payne that one day.

C. E. TlFFANY

Warrenton, Va.

Tombstone Papers

Sirs:

... I found in TIME of Jan. 26 unusual interest in the statement (p. 18) that the Nassau Guardian is "one of the world's few newspapers to be composed |sic| on inverted tombstones from old graveyards." . . .

I imagine there is a gross inaccuracy in your estimate of the newspapers that are imposed upon inverted gravestones. I have seen hundreds of these memorial slabs turned to practical use in country printshops of America, and because they made excellent and durable imposing stones. I infer they must still remain in almost equal numbers. . . .

Because I have been interested in collecting the folklore of American printing and printers I should be glad if anyone can accurately trace this custom of turning tombstones face down to the use of irreverent printers.

JAMES H. THOMPSON

Bristol Center, N. Y.

Let tracers report.—ED. Nightmare in Genoa Sirs:

Having an idle moment I glanced at the correspondence in a copy of TIME. Distance lends enchantment, but in any case I found your replies brief and piercingly to the point. But I was struck by the difference between the system of thrust and parry, illustrated by your pages devoted to the letters of clients, and that of any normal argument.

Then I retired, having had a Ford roadster in and out of hand over a damned bad road between Nice and this place which lays a leading claim for Columbus' nativity.

Oddly enough I dreamt in the night, and a singular dream it was too. For I was married, hut to an old hag who was burning my humidor and thwarting all pleas for justice in the matter. Then suddenly in the dream she died having uttered the last word and sealed my mouth to an humble and eternal silence.

As I stood wondering how I really felt about my deceased spouse, there was a golden coffin before me. Out of it rose a desk and a typewriter and behind it was the form of the deceased, cutting and bisecting thousands of notes and letters, occasionally setting one aside, pausing and jotting down a brief paragraph or two. After each of these strange interludes she would pick up a knife, sharpen it a bit on her old boot and then stab an imaginary figure at her side, resuming her work with a mumble: "Another last word." . . . G. C. MERRILL

Genoa, Italy

Wisconsin He Would Thrill Sirs:

I want to thank you

For your item terse and rude,

Describing so succinctly

Our senatorial dude.

If only I had skill, sir Just to draw as you can write, Wisconsin I would thrill, sir, With a sketch in black and white.

Of little Master Robert With his wavy raven mane, In his cutaway and spats. And his topper and his cane.

His cohorts in the sticks, sir, Little dream he acts like that, It would put him in a fix, sir, To be dubbed aristocrat.