The Press: So You Want an Answer?

"You are a horridly ill-mannered, thoroughly selfish, slothfully inclined person . . . smugly superior and insufferably condescending. . . . By your own account you come near . . . being a rotter."

A woman had rashly written a letter to the Washington Post's corrosive "Mary Haworth" (real name: Elizabeth Young), complaining about having to wash her baby's diapers. That was how Columnist Haworth let her have it. Post readers ate it up.

Disillusioned, Eh? When a woman wrote a letter telling how she had roped a husband by cajolery and bold pursuit, and...

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