Pedestalism

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IIT KGP: 1995

We watched a cute new couple with a new-born kid occupy an FTA across the street from our Heavenly Qrs B-140.

Give it to KGP for naming her Qrs with an oomph...FTA stood for Faculty Transit Apartment....much like the seat in a Transit Lounge at the Moscow Airport for those who didn't have a Transit Visa (unless you were a Fellow Traveler).

I know of newly arrived Calcuttans who occupied our Dandakaranya-Outpost FTAs resign and go back to Cal when they heard what they fancied were the outlandish howls of foxes, vixen, and wolves; and laughs of hyenas...pure bunkum and fevered imaginative excuses to get back...

On the other hand, there were many who loved their cute li'l 1-BR FTAs and overstayed their welcome declining routine offers of regular (non-transit) fabulous 3-BR Qrs and preferring to pay instead the whopping Penalty Rent as long as they could....till the mother-in-law arrived to stay...we even heard fake guls of employed couples renting more than one cute FTAs (one for the hubby, two for the missis and M-i-L; baa..baa..black sheep)....

Coming back to our real cute couple, they made themselves at home very quickly possibly because they were returning Home from a more desolate Campus in the US...

On our walks along the Gate # 5 Road, my wife and I used to smile at them and they warmly reciprocated.

One fine evening after a month or so, we found the couple, Dr and Mrs JK, at our door with their kid ringing our door-bell demurely. As soon as they stepped in, Mrs JK apologized to me profusely for not having known all these days that I was the gps of the Phy Dept, almost accusing me for not carrying a Placard round my famous neck to that infamous effect.

It turned out that her elder brother, HR, was our student 25 glorious years back when all my world was young, lad, and all those (Bengalee) lasses queens...

And HR, now at Delhi in a rather Plum Post, asked his sister to locate gps of Phy as soon as they set foot in KGP and convey his best wishes etc.

But HR didn't know that a young couple with a cute kid settling down in a new un-Delhi god-forsaken campus have more compelling business than hound an old hag. And HR was asking everyday.

And when someone told them that the regular old goon they meet daily with their sweet son was himself THE gps, their joy knew no bounds.

And we became fast family friends...stone's throw across the street...

On return from their next Winter Vacation at Delhi, Dr and Mrs JK called on us; and Mrs JK said that HR didn't believe they hit upon the RIGHT gps.

Apparently HR asked if the said gps they met smoked cigarettes with both hands, was a sworn bachelor, lean and hungry-looking like yon Cassius, and was discovered one night by HR and his classmates swigging Golden Eagle in a cubicle in Anarkali all by himself in Gole Bazaar....and stuff like that....

To all of which his sister rebuked: "Pagal hai!...He is a most respected non-smoking vegetarian teetotaler Professor with a Golden Wife and a Platinum Son".....

...Upon which HR stuck to his guns and lamented that his old gps is perhaps dead from lung cancer or worse (bless his soul!) and is faked by a pretender-gps...like that fake Golden Deer of Ramayan...

.......And HR was inconsolably forlorn ....

And Mrs JK confronted me point blank with all her brother's foolproof watertight claims; and I had to request her to go rather easy on the Anarkali Golden Eagle stuff but the rest was all in the Public Domain of my Wife and Son...

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Being the sole elder son with six young sisters, I postponed talk of my marriage till most all of them got married....

And when that eventually was happening, as my good luck would have it, I spoke to my mother discreetly asking her to hunt a suitable bride to this suitable boy of 36.....which she did.

Upon which my younger sister (by a decade) wondered to me privately:

"I never knew you were the marrying sort...."

Upon which I asked her what was wrong with me?.......

....I was of average build, average pay, average complexion, a li'l more than average age, a li'l less than average virtue...

She said that was all ok but she never ever THOUGHT!......

....almost as if I betrayed her and broke her sisterly heart...

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A couple of years ago I was sadly written off by all my well-meaning relatives wholesale as a Gone-Case after I was laid low for 2 years from Post-Retirement Depression.

But they couldn't dream that IIT KGP trains her Physics folks to reinvent themselves as IAS Officers landing Governorships of Reserve Banks, Quantum Financiers, Wholesome Biologists, Software Professionals and just plain lazy limericists.

They rather expected me to stand to reason, shrink, shrivel, shut-shop and die...

And are surprised.

Here is the verbatim excerpt from my IAS B-i-L's Foreword to my Famous Booklet: Limericks & Light Verses (2009):

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"....Life’s wonders never cease. Miracles crisscross our paths so often that we fail to notice the out-of-ordinariness contained in them.

One such wonder is Prof. GPS. A well-groomed Theoretical Physicist drops off Physics: his erstwhile bread and butter, seductress, companion and ‘What have you?’; and takes to limericks, the veritable word-toon jingles. A solemn Don transmutes into a mischievous, no-harm-meant tongue–wag and an iconoclast blasting anybody that is somebody or anything that is something. Poking fun at one and all seems to be his staple daily diet. What better marvel can there be than a solemn and erudite egghead of an elitist IIT taking to limericking as a full time occupation using Deccan Chronicle as feedstock… As a result, there are 100 and more ditties of myriad hues and flavors, and they are all impregnated with plethora of innuendos and puns..."

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Why do we install people on our own sculpted pedestals; and feel upset or surprised when they step down and scoot without our permission?

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Barberosa - 2

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Yesterday's Post Barberosa - 1 ended with the sentence:

"....The Musician was hanged till death by his neck and his flute burnt to cinders and ashes...."

I suspect that me and my blogs would face the same Fate one of these days.

Well, the reason is that most of my blogs have real flesh-'n-blood people, living and dead.

And people take offense.

Why People? Because, as I explained in: Post A Comment, People like to talk about People, not mere Ideas and Events all the time.....they love Low Grade Comments like the King's Donkey's Ears.

In Journalese they call it: Human Interest Stories; qua Gossip.

Anyway, last year early 2009, before the General Elections, I posted some 100 limericks mostly on Politicians, some of them quite biting.

And hints were thrown at me by my well-wishers to keep quiet...I may be done to death by one or more of several Senas.

But I persisted.

I didn't delete any of those but one: That had to do with Cricketers: Tiger Pataudi and Sachin Tendulkar, titled: Tiger Tiger Burning Bright, which I deleted.

Reason: I felt that Fan Clubs of Cricketers can be more touchy than Political Senas; and their cricketing clubs (bats) can be more battering.

Again, in one of my blogs which I seem to have deleted, I narrated the true story of a Celebrity whom I had to de-whisker to save the honor of my friend DB whom he professed not to know after sharing a Month's Summer School Accommodation at tiny Ooty. I called him DT (Apparently he pulled the same Amnesia Act about me later on, after sharing 3 intimate days and nights at one of those other IIT Faculty Hostels and losing to me a Prestige Bet of Rs 0. 25: Twenty Five Paise only on Constant of the Motion).

Immediately I got a request from DQ to please let him know who this DT was. Since DQ was my grandstudent (rather like a grownup Ishani), I let out the Expansion by e-mail.

Aniket waited six long months and more:

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Aniket:

"..Since you are in the mood to tell the truth for a change :) I am unable to suppress my curiosity and am tempted to strike while the iron is hot - who was "DT", the character you introduced in one of your older posts? He seemed a big hit both with you and DB (Ooty Summer School, etc).... :)......."

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And how could I refuse Aniket, my Foreworder?

So I told him DT stood for Ocimum Sclavus; and he winked.

Not so Super Supratim. He simply rubbished the entire blog as nothing new since I had already told the story in all its gory detail a decade ago on his Reconight; and wanted fresh gossip:

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Supratim:

"...............Thanks so much for such a prompt response to my request, I read it last night itself within a few minutes of your posting it after forsaking preparing for my class on Tuesday. But that story wont do and you have to post a fresh one on big egos. The reason is that I heard about this story from you some years back (2000 or 2003) when I had gone to visit KGP. So it does not qualify; I demand some local KGP color of which there are plenty, not some deliberately forgetful DT from another IIT :) So I really don't mind you deleting that blog post, as long as you promise to replace it by another juicy rise and fall of ego story. ........................."


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This is the trouble with folks who have monster minds with elephantine memories (unlike DT). They are the sworn enemies of absentminded repetitive bloggers.

Once I asked A if he didn't ever miss KGP, Bombay and Hyderabad and feel nostalgic. He replied at once that his memories are so fresh and vivid that he never misses anything however much he tries.

This ought to be called Photalgia. Somewhat like Dorothy Parker: "When you are with me I miss the fun of missing you..."

Anyway, this Supratim once saved the Day for IIT KGP without his knowing it. He was then a Research Scholar at Bhubaneshwar (doing more Scholaring than Researching) in 1999.

IIT KGP had to print her Academic Calendar well in advance in June 1999 for the whole Academic Year, which spanned February 2000. And there was this prolonged discussion and debate if 2000 was a Leap Year or not (2000 being a special millennial year; we are lucky to see Y2K, rather). IIT KGP didn't want to goof and make a laughing stock of herself; and time was running out.

Then Gangulysaab who was in charge rang me up and asked me.

I didn't want to goof up either and be hanged by the Senate of which I was an absentee landlord.

So, I e-mailed Supratim @ Bhubaneswar and wanted the Funda pronto: there was no Google then but some Netscape or stuff. But within minutes he sent me the entire write-up on it straight from the horse's mouth: Royal Astronomical Society, which I printed and passed on to Gangulysaab who tabled it in the Senate and got it approved vis RAS.

Also at that time I compiled a crazy File called: gps Autographs in MS Word which many of the recipients (about 60 ex-students) couldn't convert onto their primitive computers most of which were not equipped with Windows.

Supratim once again came to the rescue and gave a detailed recipe of what to do, like FTPing and stuff which I didn't know; and I made it an Addendum to the File.

Talk of Dr Dracula: http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/05/dr-dracula.html

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In a recent blog called Cook It Up, I wrote something like: "My father was a long-suffering man: he had the courage of his wife's convictions.."

Right now my 87-year-old mother is staying for a few weeks at my IAS B-i-L's place at Chennai; and daily I am scared that he will translate this unholy sentence into juicy Telugu to my mother... Barberous?

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But my 81-year-old Literary Uncle and my relevant Auntie whom I love are most sportive:

When the latest Ishani booklet arrived at their place, it turned out apparently that their son Ravi, a physics post-graduate and so a literary gem too, was present and whisked the booklet away.

After a couple of days he brought it back and asked his mother who that EMM (Extreme Methodical Mind) could be, after narrating the story of the chap who forgot to download the trunk with his wife's saris and complained to the Station Master with all the gory details.

My wonderful Auntie pointed to her husband sitting on his cot and replied:

"There, there, there he is, sitting and smiling...your Infallible Dad..who else?"

I wish there were more such sportive Uncles and Aunites on this planet so I can blog fearlessly.. .

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The blogging finger blogs; and having blogged
Blogs on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall stop it cancel half a Blog
Nor all your Tears restore an entire Blog of it

......Amaar Khayyal

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Barberosa - 1

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Unlike my son I avoid visiting Hair-Cutting Saloons as long as I can.

He is different.

Whenever he is tensed up on his Project Manager Job, he walks into the nukkad A/C Saloon, has a Hairdo, and a Massage (maalish) of his head, shoulders and torso given violently by the resident ruffian Barber-Masseur at a heavy surcharge...

I guess it is the age-old Amritanjan Principle: A bigger nuisance drives away the smaller

I am told that this Body-Massage Thing can be cruelly addictive: Ministers have to carry their Masseurs (and Cooks) in the First Class Cargo wherever they tour.

Anyway, I don't like to be touched by strangers: my hairdo is over in 5 minutes: the chap will ask: Long or Short and like the Buddhist I am, I reply: Medium. And finally when he shows the Big Mirror this way and that I get scared because of the Heavily Distorted Lateral Inversion and close my eyes.

And my wife would chase me back to the Saloon saying that the left half (I mean the right) has not been clipped aright.

I think this aversion for touching strangers is inbuilt in our middle class society: we would rather fold up our palms and say Namaste than shake hands with every Tom, Dick and Harry (of the same sex).

Indeed my MD Physician Cousin stunned me saying she never shakes hands. I asked her why. She said she would lose her Power to the other Chap...much like a high voltage getting grounded. And she cited the instance when Raam shook hands with Parashuram via the latter's mini-axe and bled-in all his Vast Powers.

I am inclined to side with her...goofy though she sounds.

I think I blogged a Piece on this Power Transfer Theorem long long ago:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/04/shocking.html

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"....Then I read about Electric Eels. These chaps wantonly generate a pretty high voltage difference (around 600 Volts) between parts of their bodies like the two ends of their tails, without inflicting any shocks on themselves. They then catch a poor fish which at once dies of shock and gets happily eaten.

Oh Well! Can we not do what a lousy witless eel does? A curious thought. Maybe some Yogis can do it. With intense reverence to Him and equally to rationality, could this be what Ramakrishna Deb did to Vivekananda when he touched him and dispatched him into a well-described trance state?..."

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Anyway, I postpone Visits to the Saloon till the last moment when the few strands of hair left in place fall across my eyes and blind completely a half-blind chap.

In my childhood there were no Saloons: the State-Barber used to visit us with his surgical kit, and my father and I used to extend each other the needed Moral Support at the Package Deal.

Here is today's half-century-old Chandamama story:

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The State-Barber of this King fell ill and sent his Son of a Barber (SoB, sorry) on Deputation for the Day.

When the SoB first saw the King sans his Pagdi (Crown), he was astonished beyond himself: the King had Donkey's Ears; and he was threatened with Death if ever he leaked this State Secret.

On returning home, the SoB took ill. No drugs worked and he was in bed for a fortnight. Finally his Physician rightly diagnosed that the SoB was suffering from a little-known Mental Condition (Odium Secretesa), and he would die if he didn't tell the secret that he was vainly trying to conceal: his belly was bloating...

Since the SoB declined to tell, come what may, it was suggested that he go to the nearby Forest and whisper his deadly secret into one of those flourishing ant-holes.

Which he did.

And recovered miraculously the next moment.

Months passed by and an itinerant musician looking for a good bamboo shoot for his flute found one coming up on the said ant-hole, cut it, fashioned it into a lovely flute, played a dozen tunes on it mellifluously, and decided that the flute played so well that he would play one of his rich melodies in the King's Court and get rich rewards in liquid cash.

He got a Right Royal Welcome by the King's Bodyguards who were mesmerized by his divine tunes.

As soon as the King arrived and the Court assembled and the musician ordered to perform, the flute could play only one tune monotonously:

"Our King has Donkey's Ears....Our King has Donkey's Ears... Our King has Donkey's Ears.."

The Musician was hanged till death by his neck and his flute burnt to cinders and ashes....

To be continued...


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GoogleGul

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The latest Ishani booklet (75 pages) bristles with references and wholesale quotations.

Here is a short list:

1. Alice in Wonderland; 2. Alice Through The Looking Glass; 3. Tompkins in Wonderland; 4. Sherlock Holmes; 5. Mills & Boon; 6. Shudraka's Mricchakatika; 7. James Thurber; 8. Mark Twain; 9. Hamlet; 10. Julius Caesar; 11. Shakespeare Sonnets; 12. As You Like It; 13. Antony & Cleopatra; 14. Robert Browning; 15. Jim Corbett; 16. Holy Bible; 17. Oliver Wendell Holmes; 18. Pickwick Papers; 19. R K Narayan; 20. Wodehouse; 21. Omar Khayyam; 22. Ramayan & Mahabharat; 23. Iliad; 24. Ramana Maharshi; 25. Three Men in a Boat

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The booklet is meant for those of my elder generation and some younger who are unaware of the Net, Google, and even MS Word.

You can well imagine the terrific impression I generated.

I even wonder at times what my late Father and Uncle who taught me English assiduously inside and outside the Class Room would feel if this booklet is suddenly thrust into their hands. They never saw a Computer and hadn't heard of Copy-Paste.

They would surely think:

1. That I read a lot
2. I have a vast collection of books
3. I took about 3 years to write, type and get the booklet printed
4. I must be someone they ought to be proud of and show off to their Heavenmates

"So sorry, sirs, to have duped you: I read about a fiftieth of English that you did".

Rest is Google (like Hamlet's quote: Rest is Silence)

That brings us to Shakespeare:

Mani Sankar Aiyyar was rather honest. He said that all the Shakespeare he learned was from Jeeves:

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Friday, March 6, 2009

A little dishonesty is BRITISH!

"Most Britons falsely claim to have read Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' ": Report

I too tried 'Peace and War',
Found it an unreadable bore;
But I read all of Shakespeare
Songs & Sonnets & King Liar.

But, most I love my Bertie,
Shaken to his foundations;
He said with honesty,
"Hamlet's full of Quotations"

Posted by G P Sastry (gps1943@yahoo.com)

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The other day I wrote my Last Will and Testament which had this quote:

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Who steals my purse steals trash;
'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

Othello Act 3, scene 3, 155–161

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Sonoo and Sailaja knew I stole it from Google; but my wife was terribly impressed; which is what matters {;-}

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The latest Ishani booklet has a wonderful Foreword by Pratik which has this delightful quote from Multatuli:

"And then there shall be in the land some who welcome him with love, who lay their hands on his head, and say: Sit down with us to meat, live with us in our house, and share all that we have, for I have known your father".

I at once Googled for Multatuli and found that he was a Dutch Colonial Officer who rebelled against Colonialism and his Latin pen-name means: I Have Suffered Much.

I immediately felt that Pratik was the Owl Who Was God.

I gently asked him about this heartwarming quote.

He said he found it in his late Father's Diary.

QED

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Flow

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During our extended youth, there was a Tennis Star called Bjorn Borg.

Those were the silly days of Rally Tennis. Anything like 50 Exchanges between the opposing players were the norm. (I have a suspicion that my wife used to Count them, like she used to count the number of wagons in a goods train when we were stuck at Puri Gate Railway Crossing and announce proudly: 87).

Very unlike the later Power Tennis slam-bang of Pete Sampras (my favorite).

Borg said once that when he gets going (into maybe his 100th rally) he felt a spiritual sort of Flow (of soul?).

When I joined IIT KGP as an Associate Lecturer in Physics at 21, I soon discovered that if you talk sense in the Lecture Hall, IITians listen.

Then on for 40 years I once in a while used to get a sensation like what Borg said he got...a sort of Flow when things were going rather well. It is a sense of Power...

I missed it as soon as I retired and got all the withdrawal symptoms.

It took about 3 years for me to get back that feeling when a blog piece happens to be going well while composing...it feels like the good old Flow.

The other day I happened to compose a piece titled: Half Tricks, and was feeling my oats while posting it.

Teernajee, a Central School student of maybe Class 8 says it is the best piece of all...she should know.

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Wool-Gul-Hyla

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Siddhartha:

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"O Go Dada, have u heard?

talk such foolish and absurd?

GPS says out of wool?

We don't like such scary Gul!!!"

He must write and tell us all

Stories Fat and wide and Tall

When and What and Who and Why

of Cows that sing and Pigs that Fly

If rest he needs then so he must

and then the tales will come,

that hook us on and quench our thirst

Aur Khush Ho jayein Hum!!!

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Aniket:

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By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow) -
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat -
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

- Robert Frost




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Blogger's Block

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Yes, it had to happen one of these days and it has happened...I hit the Blogger's Block.

The symptoms are: exhaustion, emptiness, and fatigue. Like at the end of a mental Marathon. The mind refuses to cooperate although the heart is willing.

Time to take rest and recharge batteries.

Received a wonderful surprise gift from Pratik...a very appetizing book: The Diary of a Nobody. Raring to go..

The Feynman Letters Book gifted by Supratim is almost over. Great Book...Wanted to write a Review...maybe some other day...

On his last trip to the US a month ago, my son brought me a very thoughtful gift: a cute reading light that can be clamped to the book you are reading. Watch-battery-operated tiny LEDs with a Universal Flexi-Spring for angle adjustment. It just gives the extra light needed to make reading comfortable for a chap with about 1.25 eyes.

My son is funny. He is so tensed up with his crazy job that he has no time to read at all. But he does so many li'l li'l things so I can read and write and be out of harm's way...

The last 300 blogs together read like The Life & Good Times of a KGPian hailing from the Sea-Side Village Muthukur... a tiny piece of a half-century's personal history, thoughts and feelings inspired by my many younger colleagues, students, grandstudents and li'l Ishani.

Here is a charming mail from a grandstudent I read once in a while:

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Wednesday April 28, 2010

Dear Prof. Sastry,

I was woken up on the day you put up the blog by a call from a KGP physics-deptt.-mate, now at Stony Brook, with a congrats. And then upon being told the reason for the congratulations, I hurried to see it with my own eyes.

May be thanking you is not appropriate for the same; instead I would like to inform you as to how keenly we watch out for any of your new posts. Your blog has all the ingredients of a R K Narayan novel - the small town boy, the road to the modern world, the modern world (KGP) and its evolution through your own eyes. It is perhaps the only story "based on true IIT experiences" that I read. (I have dared not touch any of Chetan Bhagat- as a general rule I try and avoid books popular at the moment).

Indeed for me your blog is a very interesting albeit a tantalizing read. Tantalizing since it always brings to my mind how close our worldvolumes passed each other by!!!

Hoping to read many many more columns and seeking your blessings.

Yours truly,

Siddhartha

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gps: Meanwhile here is Autocrat:


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Pun.ishment

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http://twainquotes.com/P.html

"...no circumstances, however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the Pun"

------ Mark Twain, a Biography

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http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/751

"-.. Do you mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide--that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life--are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man's laughter, which is the end of the other. A pun is prima facie an insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on the subject is deep raving. I have committed my self-respect by talking with such a person. I should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any modern inundation.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity was like a top? It was in evidence that Doe preserved a dignified silence. Roe then said, "When it begins to hum." Doe then--and not till then--struck Roe, and his head happening to hit a bound volume of the Monthly Rag-bag and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification ensued, with a fatal result. The chief laid down his notions of the law to his brother justices, who unanimously replied, "Jest so." The chief rejoined, that no man should jest so without being punished for it, and charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted, and the pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. The bound volume was forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed.

People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism...

.....And, once more, listen to the historian. "The Puritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its Royal quibble. 'Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,' said Queen Elizabeth, 'but ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.' The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared himself a descendant of 'Og, the King of Bashan. Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the soldier who brought him water, for wasting a casque full upon a dying man.....

The fatal habit became universal. The language was corrupted. The infection spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of the Stuarts."

Who was that boarder that just whispered something about the Macaulay-flowers of literature?--There was a dead silence.--I said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example...."

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