HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO2079 12/9/02 "SEASONAL FROLICS" ====================================================== SEASONAL FROLICS ENTRIES From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Seasonal Frolics Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 20:44:41 -0000: >From 'The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall' (1923), the first four lines of Scene XX: Watchman She's glode off like a ghost, with deathly mien; It seems towards the ledge - yes, she - the Queen. Brangwain (entering hurriedly) She's over the cliff, and Tristram's brachet with her! ... What have we here? ... Sir Tristram's body? O! Patrick Roper ============= Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 08:34:32 -0500 From: Robert Schweik Subject: Hardy's Worst Lines I'll start things off with the opening lines of Hardy's "To a Tree in London" Here you stay Night and day, Never never going away! (CPW, Volume 3, p. 203) It is, I think, the exclamation mark that makes the line seem particularly dotty to me. Bob Schweik ========== Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 06:58:25 -0800 From: Betty and/or John Cortus Subject: Worst Lines : Although I'm not eligible to participate I can't resist telling you my favorite worst lines. "'Ha,' they hollowly hackered, / You come forsooth . . .'" From "The Obliterate Tomb" stanza 21 Betty Cortus ========== Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 14:29:59 -0500 From: taylor Subject: RE: Hardy's Worst Lines From "Without Ceremony," Emma poem, "Before I had thought thereon, Or noticed your trunks were down." Apologies for ruining this poem Dennis Taylor ============ Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:10:37 -0600 Thread-Topic: Hardy's worst From: "Mink, Joanna" As much as I like cats and appreciate Hardy's kindness towards them, I always grimace at the last lines of "Last Words to a Dumb Friend" (CP 619): "Your small mound beneath the tree, Showing in the autumn shade That you moulder where you played." JoAnna S. Mink ========== Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 16:37:53 -0600 From: David Havird Subject: Re: Hardy's worst I love these lines! Not that this means they're good lines! But who besides Hardy would have seen the situation in just this way and said so in these words--"moulder where you played"? Really, great! Not at all bad in the jejune way that Bob Schweik's lines were bad! David Havird ========== Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 20:15:35 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: RE: Hardy's Worst Lines This, Dennis, is priceless! (the best so far, for me!). Reminds one of some of those other unfortunate Victorian phrases such as "he ejaculated, politely..." Rosemarie ========== From: "Gary Alderson" Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 19:50:08 -0000 Well if you're dragging it downhill, from "In the small hours".... "I lay in my bed and fiddled..." very innocent, Victorians. Gary Alderson ========== Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 01:46:01 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines There's an interesting sidekick to all of this (came up today). Roy Buckle wrote me to say he finds it "scurrilous" that we should bring up Hardy's (now) ambiguous usages and I was struck anew with the predicament Hardy was in with his contemporaries. Why did only some find him so offensive with usages referring to, say, the "buttocks" of cows (struck out by Leslie Stephen as scurrilous) or references to the female sexual appetite (Mrs Oliphant on Sue Bridehead) whereas others took this all in their stride? Is this a difference of class? of education? of culture? of region? of generation? Clearly to "fiddle " in bed didn't signify in the same way it signifies to today's readers but when did the change come about? or when did it come about that a woman's "wanton" imaginings (FFMC) should be struck out as offensive by Hardy's editor but remain inoffensive to readers today? Ponderingly, Rosemarie =========== From: "Gary Alderson" Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 08:13:23 -0000 I was pondering my submission, wondering what the singers and audiences of the Music Hall would have made of it. I'm pretty sure they'd have spotted the double-meaning. Double-entendre was one of their specialities. The stage-musical "Everybody's doing it", containing the same song, came out in 1911. Gary Alderson ========== From: Martin Ray Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 09:44:42 +0000 (GMT) The first edition of Moments of Vision (1917) printed "The Caged Goldfinch" with a final third stanza: True, a woman was found drowned the day ensuing, And some at times averred The grave to be her false one's, who when wooing Gave her the bird. Robert Lynd in his review for the Nation (December 1917) commented thus: "Apart even from the ludicrous associations which modern slang has given the last phrase, making it look like a queer pun, this poem seems to us to drive sorrow over the edge of the ridiculous. That goldfinch has surely escaped from a Max Beerbohm parody". This theatrical slang sense of 'bird' dates from the mid-nineteenth century. Here is an example, then, not of modern usage retrospectively distorting Hardy's lines, but of Hardy "overlooking" his own contemporary usage. He understandably omitted the stanza in later editions of the poems. All the best Martin Ray ========== Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 03:11:10 -0800 (PST) From: Andrew Hewitt Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines Paul Fussell discusses this change in The Great War and Modern Memory, with reference to, for example, the usage you cited earlier of 'ejaculate'. But there are two things here aren't there? -- the narrowing/expanding connotations of particular words, and the subject-matter that it is permissible to write about. Best wishes Andrew Hewitt =========== From: Martin Ray Sender: enl090@abdn.ac.uk Subject: Re: Emma's trunks Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 11:53:56 +0000 (GMT) I had often wondered about Emma's trunks in "Without Ceremony": how could she get her trunks down from her rooms in the attic without Hardy "noticing", since (I thought) they would have had to go down a very narrow staircase right past his study door? On a recent visit to Max Gate, Andrew Leah very kindly showed me the storage room on the other side of the house where the trunks would have been kept, and which has its own staircase well away from H's study. It would have been perfectly possible for him not to "notice such things". Incidentally, what we think of as the "modern" meaning of words is often no such thing. Trunks as short breeches can be found in Pickwick Papers. Swimming trunks appear in 1883. Trunks as knickers dates from 1896. Best to all, Martin Ray ========== Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 21:24:22 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines This is most interesting, Gary --- especially given that Music Hall attracted artists in large numbers (Hardy, Lautrec and of course the infamous Colette cult among many others) -- I suppose it's just the kind of "free air" that Da Vinci also enjoyed in sketching erotica ("scurrilous" according to the London Tate Gallery who keeps it safe in archives well away from public scrutiny). So, are we looking at yet another double-standard here? With Victorians at the Musical Hall censoring (obviously not TH) material that they openly enjoy on Saturday night but don't want in family living-rooms on Monday? Best, Rosemarie ========== Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 18:20:20 +0100 Subject: Re: Seasonal Frolics From: Eric Christen (Communicated by Hudson Lowe himself) >From THE DYNASTS, act seven, scene nine (page 698 of The New Wessex Edition, 1978): NAPOLEON (starting) Whose frigid tones are those, Breaking upon my lurid loneliness So brusquely? . . . Yet, 'tis true, I have ever known That such a Will I passively obeyed! Hudson Lowe says that this is not in character: "During the six years when I saw Napoleon nearly every day I never heard him express the idea that he was not the absolute master of himself. He could never have 'passively obeyed' any will but his own!" -- Eric Christen Email: ericjchristen@bluewin.ch ========== From: "harrybatt" Christen Date: 17 Dec 2002 Worst Lines: Amazing to read the name of the poet of the "Railway disaster of the Silvery Tay" (I am quoting from memory) in connexion with Hardy! I am delighted! I know I have a copy of one of his books somewhere in the house: is it worth trying to find it? Can we still laugh at his naive clumsiness? Could there be gems in some parts? -- Eric Christen Email: ericjchristen@bluewin.ch ========== From: "Angela" Subject: Seasonal Frolics Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 21:29:21 -0000 Worst lines: Also The Dynasts, Napoleon's final line seems to pre-echo one of Eccles's 'I am deaded' speeches in the Goons (BBC Radio). .... - Not England's, - she Whose tough, enisled, self-centred, kindless craft Has tracked me, springed me, thumbed me by the throat, And made herself the means of mangling me! Angela Bell AngelaBell@hardyholidays.demon.co.uk ========== From: "harrybatt" Subject: Re: Seasonal Frolics Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 11:30:06 -0600 : >From THOMAS HARDY, The Complete Poems, Edited by James Gibson McMillan, London, Ltd 1976 Uncollected Poems, p. 939 Also from The Dynasts Budmouth Dears (Hussar's Song) When we lay where Budmouth Beach is, O, the girls were fresh as peaches, With their tall and tossing figures and their eyes of blue and brown! And our hearts would ache with longing As we paced from our sing-songing, With a smart Clink! Clink! Up the Esplanade and down. John Bridell, Minneapolis The sing-songing was, perhaps, a little too bawdy for the Budmouth girls who were engaged in tossing their figures. John Bridell, Minneapolis The sing-songing was, perhaps, a little too bawdy for the Budmouth girls who were engaged in tossing their figures. I regret that I failed to mention that these lines >from Budmouth Dears were also from THE DYNASTS, PT iii, ACT ii SC. 1 John Bridell, Minneapolis ========== Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 19:22:58 +0100 From: David Clark Subject: RE: SEASONAL FROLICS To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu Worst Lines: I take it The Dynasts counts. If so, I've always appreciated Hardy's (unwitting) tribute to the great Scots bard William McGonagall: Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far, Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar. Note in passing that, Hardy's apparently clumsy attempt at maintaning the scansion with the accent on the last syllable of Trafalgar is not too far off - although the Spanish word Trafalgar does not carry an accent on the final "a", the pronunciation of the word stresses the final syllable. Merry Christmas to all, Dr. David M. Clark ========== Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 11:06:59 +0100 Subject: Re: SEASONAL FROLICS From: Eric Worst Lines: Amazing to read the name of the poet of the "Railway disaster of the Silvery Tay" (I am quoting from memory) in connexion with Hardy! I am delighted! I know I have a copy of one of his books somewhere in the house: is it worth trying to find it? Can we still laugh at his naive clumsiness? Could there be gems in some parts? -- Eric Christen Email: ericjchristen@bluewin.ch ========== SEASONAL FROLICS ENTRIES From: "Patrick Roper" To: Subject: RE: Seasonal Frolics Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 20:44:41 -0000: >From 'The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall' (1923), the first four lines of Scene XX: Watchman She's glode off like a ghost, with deathly mien; It seems towards the ledge - yes, she - the Queen. Brangwain (entering hurriedly) She's over the cliff, and Tristram's brachet with her! ... What have we here? ... Sir Tristram's body? O! Patrick Roper =========== Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 08:34:32 -0500 To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu From: Robert Schweik Subject: Hardy's Worst Lines I'll start things off with the opening lines of Hardy's "To a Tree in London" Here you stay Night and day, Never never going away! (CPW, Volume 3, p. 203) It is, I think, the exclamation mark that makes the line seem particularly dotty to me. Bob Schweik ================================================ Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 06:58:25 -0800 To: HARDY-L From: Betty and/or John Cortus Subject: Worst Lines : Although I'm not eligible to participate I can't resist telling you my favorite worst lines. "'Ha,' they hollowly hackered, / You come forsooth . . .'" >From "The Obliterate Tomb" stanza 21 Betty Cortus ========================================== Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 14:29:59 -0500 From: taylor To: HARDY-L , Subject: RE: Hardy's Worst Lines >From "Without Ceremony," Emma poem, "Before I had thought thereon, Or noticed your trunks were down." Apologies for ruining this poem Dennis Taylor ======================================== Subject: Hardy's worst Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:10:37 -0600 Thread-Topic: Hardy's worst From: "Mink, Joanna" To: As much as I like cats and appreciate Hardy's kindness towards them, I always grimace at the last lines of "Last Words to a Dumb Friend" (CP 619): "Your small mound beneath the tree, Showing in the autumn shade That you moulder where you played." JoAnna S. Mink ========================================== Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 16:37:53 -0600 From: David Havird X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu Subject: Re: Hardy's worst I love these lines! Not that this means they're good lines! But who besides Hardy would have seen the situation in just this way and said so in these words--"moulder where you played"? Really, great! Not at all bad in the jejune way that Bob Schweik's lines were bad! David Havird ================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 20:15:35 -0500 To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: RE: Hardy's Worst Lines This, Dennis, is priceless! (the best so far, for me!). Reminds one of some of those other unfortunate Victorian phrases such as "he ejaculated, politely..." Rosemarie ===================================== From: "Gary Alderson" To: Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 19:50:08 -0000 Well if you're dragging it downhill, from "In the small hours".... "I lay in my bed and fiddled..." very innocent, Victorians. Gary Alderson ========================================= Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 01:46:01 -0500 To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines There's an interesting sidekick to all of this (came up today). Roy Buckle wrote me to say he finds it "scurrilous" that we should bring up Hardy's (now) ambiguous usages and I was struck anew with the predicament Hardy was in with his contemporaries. Why did only some find him so offensive with usages referring to, say, the "buttocks" of cows (struck out by Leslie Stephen as scurrilous) or references to the female sexual appetite (Mrs Oliphant on Sue Bridehead) whereas others took this all in their stride? Is this a difference of class? of education? of culture? of region? of generation? Clearly to "fiddle " in bed didn't signify in the same way it signifies to today's readers but when did the change come about? or when did it come about that a woman's "wanton" imaginings (FFMC) should be struck out as offensive by Hardy's editor but remain inoffensive to readers today? Ponderingly, Rosemarie =============================================== From: "Gary Alderson" To: Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 08:13:23 -0000 I was pondering my submission, wondering what the singers and audiences of the Music Hall would have made of it. I'm pretty sure they'd have spotted the double-meaning. Double-entendre was one of their specialities. The stage-musical "Everybody's doing it", containing the same song, came out in 1911. Gary Alderson ============================================== From: Martin Ray To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 09:44:42 +0000 (GMT) : The first edition of Moments of Vision (1917) printed "The Caged Goldfinch" with a final third stanza: True, a woman was found drowned the day ensuing, And some at times averred The grave to be her false one's, who when wooing Gave her the bird. Robert Lynd in his review for the Nation (December 1917) commented thus: "Apart even from the ludicrous associations which modern slang has given the last phrase, making it look like a queer pun, this poem seems to us to drive sorrow over the edge of the ridiculous. That goldfinch has surely escaped from a Max Beerbohm parody". This theatrical slang sense of 'bird' dates from the mid-nineteenth century. Here is an example, then, not of modern usage retrospectively distorting Hardy's lines, but of Hardy "overlooking" his own contemporary usage. He understandably omitted the stanza in later editions of the poems. All the best Martin Ray =========================================== Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 03:11:10 -0800 (PST) From: Andrew Hewitt Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu Paul Fussell discusses this change in The Great War and Modern Memory, with reference to, for example, the usage you cited earlier of 'ejaculate'. But there are two things here aren't there? -- the narrowing/expanding connotations of particular words, and the subject-matter that it is permissible to write about. Best wishes Andrew Hewitt ======================================== From: Martin Ray Sender: enl090@abdn.ac.uk To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu Subject: Re: Emma's trunks Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 11:53:56 +0000 (GMT) I had often wondered about Emma's trunks in "Without Ceremony": how could she get her trunks down from her rooms in the attic without Hardy "noticing", since (I thought) they would have had to go down a very narrow staircase right past his study door? On a recent visit to Max Gate, Andrew Leah very kindly showed me the storage room on the other side of the house where the trunks would have been kept, and which has its own staircase well away from H's study. It would have been perfectly possible for him not to "notice such things". Incidentally, what we think of as the "modern" meaning of words is often no such thing. Trunks as short breeches can be found in Pickwick Papers. Swimming trunks appear in 1883. Trunks as knickers dates from 1896. Best to all, Martin Ray ====================================== Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 21:24:22 -0500 To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy's Worst Lines This is most interesting, Gary --- especially given that Music Hall attracted artists in large numbers (Hardy, Lautrec and of course the infamous Colette cult among many others) -- I suppose it's just the kind of "free air" that Da Vinci also enjoyed in sketching erotica ("scurrilous" according to the London Tate Gallery who keeps it safe in archives well away from public scrutiny). So, are we looking at yet another double-standard here? With Victorians at the Musical Hall censoring (obviously not TH) material that they openly enjoy on Saturday night but don't want in family living-rooms on Monday? Best, Rosemarie ======================================= Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 18:20:20 +0100 Subject: Re: Seasonal Frolics From: Eric Christen To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu (Communicated by Hudson Lowe himself) >From THE DYNASTS, act seven, scene nine (page 698 of The New Wessex Edition, 1978): NAPOLEON (starting) Whose frigid tones are those, Breaking upon my lurid loneliness So brusquely? . . . Yet, 'tis true, I have ever known That such a Will I passively obeyed! Hudson Lowe says that this is not in character: "During the six years when I saw Napoleon nearly every day I never heard him express the idea that he was not the absolute master of himself. He could never have 'passively obeyed' any will but his own!" -- Eric Christen Email: ericjchristen@bluewin.ch ========================================= From: "harrybatt" Christen To: Worst Lines: Amazing to read the name of the poet of the "Railway disaster of the Silvery Tay" (I am quoting from memory) in connexion with Hardy! I am delighted! I know I have a copy of one of his books somewhere in the house: is it worth trying to find it? Can we still laugh at his naive clumsiness? Could there be gems in some parts? -- Eric Christen Email: ericjchristen@bluewin.ch ============================================= From: "Angela" To: Subject: Seasonal Frolics Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 21:29:21 -0000 Worst lines: Also The Dynasts, Napoleon's final line seems to pre-echo one of Eccles's 'I am deaded' speeches in the Goons (BBC Radio). .... - Not England's, - she Whose tough, enisled, self-centred, kindless craft Has tracked me, springed me, thumbed me by the throat, And made herself the means of mangling me! Angela Bell AngelaBell@hardyholidays.demon.co.uk ============================================== From: "harrybatt" To: Subject: Re: Seasonal Frolics Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 11:30:06 -0600 : >From THOMAS HARDY, The Complete Poems, Edited by James Gibson McMillan, London, Ltd 1976 Uncollected Poems, p. 939 Also from The Dynasts Budmouth Dears (Hussar's Song) When we lay where Budmouth Beach is, O, the girls were fresh as peaches, With their tall and tossing figures and their eyes of blue and brown! And our hearts would ache with longing As we paced from our sing-songing, With a smart Clink! Clink! Up the Esplanade and down. John Bridell, Minneapolis The sing-songing was, perhaps, a little too bawdy for the Budmouth girls who were engaged in tossing their figures. John Bridell, Minneapolis The sing-songing was, perhaps, a little too bawdy for the Budmouth girls who were engaged in tossing their figures. I regret that I failed to mention that these lines >from Budmouth Dears were also from THE DYNASTS, PT iii, ACT ii SC. 1 John Bridell, Minneapolis ================================================== Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 19:22:58 +0100 From: David Clark Subject: RE: SEASONAL FROLICS To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu Worst Lines: I take it The Dynasts counts. If so, I've always appreciated Hardy's (unwitting) tribute to the great Scots bard William McGonagall: Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far, Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar. Note in passing that, Hardy's apparently clumsy attempt at maintaning the scansion with the accent on the last syllable of Trafalgar is not too far off - although the Spanish word Trafalgar does not carry an accent on the final "a", the pronunciation of the word stresses the final syllable. Merry Christmas to all, Dr. David M. Clark ============================================= User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2106 Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 11:06:59 +0100 Subject: Re: SEASONAL FROLICS From: Eric Worst Lines: Amazing to read the name of the poet of the "Railway disaster of the Silvery Tay" (I am quoting from memory) in connexion with Hardy! I am delighted! I know I have a copy of one of his books somewhere in the house: is it worth trying to find it? Can we still laugh at his naive clumsiness? Could there be gems in some parts? -- Eric Christen Email: ericjchristen@bluewin.ch ========== Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 08:00:23 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Seasonal Frolics A Happy and Prosperous New Year to All Our Members! Our Seasonal Frolics Competition is now closed. You were asked to send in examples of Hardy's worst lines of poetry. If this sounds a trifle derogatory to our chosen author remember that a poet as wonderful as he was easily can survive some gentle posthumous ribbing. As well as the entries themselves I have included the various comments about the entries, which sometimes threw light on the meaning or etymology of a word, and at other times merely amused or interested us. We shall now leave it up to the panel of judges to choose the winners and award the prizes. Best Wishes, Betty Cortus ============================================== Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 13:45:25 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: SEASONAL FROLICS Greetings All! TTHA is pleased to announce the two winners of the "Seasonal Frolics" competition -- a great way to start the New Year! By popular vote among TTHA's Directors the winners are: _______ Patrick Roper with: 'The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall' (1923), & the first four lines of Scene XX: "Watchman She's glode off like a ghost, with deathly mien; It seems towards the ledge - yes, she - the Queen. Brangwain (entering hurriedly) She's over the cliff, and Tristram's brachet with her! ... What have we here? ... Sir Tristram's body? O!" AND _________ Angela Bell with" *The Dynasts* & Napoleon's final line (which seems to pre-echo one of Eccles's 'I am deaded' speeches in the Goons --BBC Radio). "Not England's, - she Whose tough, enisled, self-centred, kindless craft Has tracked me, springed me, thumbed me by the throat,/ And made herself the means of mangling me! " ___________ CONGRATULATIONS to our winners. Special mention was also made of 1. Bob Schweik's entry (unfortunately ineligible) -- as follows: "To a Tree in London" "Here you stay Night and day, Never never going away! " (CPW, Volume 3, p. 203) -- It is, I think, the exclamation mark that makes the line seem particularly dotty to me. -- Bob Schweik _____ 2. Martin Ray's entry (unfortunately ineligible) -- as follows: The first edition of *Moments of Vision* (1917) printed "The Caged Goldfinch" with a final third stanza: "True, a woman was found drowned the day ensuing, And some at times averred The grave to be her false one's, who when wooing Gave her the bird." -- Robert Lynd in his review for the Nation (December 1917) commented thus: "Apart even from the ludicrous associations which modern slang has given the last phrase, making it look like a queer pun, this poem seems to us to drive sorrow over the edge of the ridiculous. That goldfinch has surely escaped from a Max Beerbohm parody". This theatrical slang sense of 'bird' dates from the mid-nineteenth century. Here is an example, then, not of modern usage retrospectively distorting Hardy's lines, but of Hardy "overlooking" his own contemporary usage. He understandably omitted the stanza in later editions of the poems. -- Martin Ray. ______________________ Will the winners please choose a title from TTHA publications (or two in the case of "Occasional Series") and contact me personally at Thank you all for your highly entertaining contributions. With every good wish, Rosemarie TTHA book publications are listed at: http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/OrderForms/review.html and: http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/orderMMfest.htm ==========