Letters, Mar. 28, 1949

Smoky Remark

Sir:

Re "The Word That Came to Dinner" [TIME, March 7], permit me to quote a rhyme from the pen of that homely bard—the poet of the people—Uncle Walt Mason:

Great men, beneath some awful stroke

Let loose remarks that fairly smoke,

And we forgive them as we write

The story of their deeds of might.

But little men, who swear and swear,

And thus pollute our common air,

Are foul and foolish as the frogs

That trumpet in their native bogs.

Personally, I do not approve of the type of language that the President used—and I am no Puritan . . ....