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Your delightful comments on Monsignor Knox of Oxford (TIME, March 27) include a "Hegelian limerick" to which he is supposed to have written a most clever retort. Can you explain the fact that The Week-End Book (The Nonesuch Press, London, 1931, pp. 217—18) attributes the original limerick to Knox and the retort to one anonymous? For smoothness and epistemologic soundness, I prefer The Week-End Book version which is as follows:
IDEALISM
There once was a man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
Ronald Knox
A REPLY Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Witt continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God.
DOUGLASS W. ORR, M.D.
The Menninger Clinic
Topeka, Kans.
Sirs:
No doubt you'll get letters in flocks
Re the limerick written by Knox.
You say 'twas Hegelian,
But the idea salient
Is Berkeley's. It's he that Knox mocks.
E. F. SHEFFIELD
Montreal, Que.
> Readers Orr and Sheffield are both right.—ED.
Goldfish
Sirs:
Your article on the current collegiate mania for swallowing goldfish, in the April 10 issue of TIME, leads me to call to your attention the fact that the Mayor of Grammont in Belgium has been doing this annually for 500 years, in the Fest der Krakelinge, as a reminder of a famine the town underwent in the 14th Century. Reference: the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung for March 23, p. 433.
ALFRED A. KOSBERG S
chenectady, N. Y.
Sirs:
TIME has been April-fooled. The goldfish record of 89, credited to Clark University, is spurious (TIME, April 10). With all due modesty and measure of penitence, I still claim the championship (66 goldfish and i polli-wog). I hereby retire from competition.
GORDON SOUTHWORTH
Middlesex University
Waltham, Mass.
> Gulper Southworth retired not a moment too soon. Last fortnight Neil Keim, of Wyomissing Polytechnic Institute (Reading, Pa.), swallowed 74 goldfish. University of Arkansas' John Goff bit off a 13-inch king snake's head, swallowed the snake. Oregon State's Marion Salisbury downed 139 angleworms. Lafayette's Justin Stolitsky ate a copy of The New Yorker from cover to cover in 25 minutes. Etc. ad nauseam.—ED.
Chilián Quake
Sirs:
... I spent six days, January 28 to February 3, in Chilián, Búlnes, Linares, Los Angeles, Concepción, Penco and Talcahuano, and rode the first automobile from Concepción to Chilián that got through after the earthquake.