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I was in the class of '86 at Harvard. I was not expelled in '87 nor any other year. I never did anything very bad at Harvard nor anything very good either. I was rusticated in '86 for an excess of political enthusiasm and a certain deficiency in intellectual attainments. I did not return to be graduated. There did not seem to be either reason or hope. I think the less said about my college career the better. Perhaps that is so with the rest of my career. However, exercise your own judgment, only please print the facts, or perhaps I should say, please don't. WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST Los Angeles, Calif.
Rustication: An old-fashioned academic penalty whereby delinquent or intractable undergraduates are sent away, generally to their homes to continue their studies under a supervisor designated by the college. --Ed.
AUG. 6, 1934
I do not know when I ever saw such a conglomeration of lies. The 638 was not the engine my husband was killed on and was never a passenger engine, and as to my son being a highway laborer, that was a base lie; he was never on a highway in his life unless he drove over it. Whoever gave you the information did not get it from me. I just want to tell you that I do not like one thing you said and please never attempt it again without my permission. MRS. CASEY JONES Jackson, Tenn.
SEPT. 14, 1936
I can talk but I hate to interrupt Groucho. I spoke in public last year in Portland when I asked for a raise in salary but I don't think anyone heard me. I make a practice of speaking every time Chico makes a grand slam, so you can look for another speech in 1937. Regret I can't get Zeppo in this wire. HARPO MARX Culver City, Calif.
OCT. 11, 1937
The records on "spittin' image" should certainly be kept straight. I don't think that the expression has anything to do with saliva. It originated, I believe, among the darkies of the South and the correct phrasing--without dialect--is "spirit and image." It was originally used in speaking of some person whose father had passed on--and the colored folks would say--"the very spi't an' image of his daddy." JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS JR. Atlanta, Ga.
OCT. 16, 1939
TIME erred (perhaps only slightly) in saying that Col. Lindbergh in his broadcast speech represented "everybody." Although this is of no interest to the Colonel (or to TIME, or posterity) I beg to say that he did not represent me.
Neither I nor any other veteran of the First World War can quarrel honorably with the Colonel's sincere pacifism. But his choice of a simile, "We must be as impersonal as a surgeon with his knife," seems to me singularly unhappy. It is an insult to the medical profession.
If surgeons were truly impersonal (or, one might say, truly neutral) they would not heed the calls of distress from suffering humanity when they themselves were otherwise engaged in watching the ticker, or playing bridge, or writing thoughtful treatises on the insanity of their fellow men. They would not go to the considerable trouble and risk of using their knives to remove the malignant growths in the body of civilization. They would always find comfortable refuge behind that ancient question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"