January 2011

As a lifelong Classics Illustrated collector and the author of a work-in-progress on the series, I enjoyed Donna Richardson’s article in the May/June issue. I was disappointed, however, to find none of the original line-drawing covers reproduced. A comparison of the 1943 Classic Comics cover of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with the 1949 Classics Illustrated substitute and the 1953 painted-cover replacement dramatically reveals how far the series evolved in terms of “respectability.”

Not a bad record, I’d say.

I want to commend your excellent, exciting article on the horseracing champion Ruffian in the September issue. I took my magazine to work and was reading Gene Smith’s story during my lunch hour. Fortunately for me, the door to my office was closed so no one could see the tears streaming down my face and the fourteen wadded tissues on my desk as I read about the spectacular life and tragedy of this magnificent animal.

Regarding your editorial “Getting It Right” (September 1993) on accuracy: “Dictionaries are like watches; the best is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.”—Samuel Johnson.

I would rather have an American Heritage that is not quite true than no American Heritage at all. I think most of your readers feel the same way.

Keep up the good work.

I was enjoying reading Geoffrey Ward’s article about Stephen A. Ambrose’s book on the 101st Airborne (“The Life and Times,”” July/August) until I came to the parts about my brother, Lt. Herbert M. Sobel.

The words used to describe Herb, his actions, and the opinions of the men in “Easy Company” were certainly shocking to me. Comparing him to Wouk’s Captain Queeg as “friendless, suspicious, envious … cruel” and a slave-driving taskmaster is a description incomprehensible to me.

Herb was always a wonderful brother to my sister and me and a devoted son to our mother. He was attentive, caring, and always considerate. His sense of humor was acknowledged by all who knew him. These attributes were his before, during, and after the war.

Could being in the war change one’s whole personality as described by Ambrose, or might the men of “Easy Company” not have recognized a good commander who taught them the tough things they had to know for survival and success?

The first thing I saw when I got home the other evening was the marvelous July/August issue of American Heritage —featuring a fabulous piece on Chicago, “The White City” by Donald Miller. What a blockbuster! I had a ton of work waiting for me and thought I’d just scan the story, but I got hooked after the first two pages and read every word. It is truly riveting, full of fascinating bits of information I never knew before. I can’t thank you enough for publishing this treasure.

When American television was very young, but American royalty-worship was not, the biggest, loudest, most pointless battle for supremacy among the networks was over which would be first—by mere minutes, if necessary—to show pictures of the coronation of the British queen. It was a tale of intrigue and double-dealing, and of such enormous popular interest one wonders how the Founders would have felt, they who had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defeat Elizabeth IFs ancestor and rid their country forever of his rule and his heirs.

Brown and Jones would a-camping go, but Smith demurs. His new game of Owl Hockey has arrived. So too is Nature oft of more than one mind!

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Who has spied yon wood chuck on his tree stump, and not been put in mind of the Mining Board’s recent idea of adapting the “Chinese Rule on metalliferous ores?

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A dull knife cleaves rotten bark as good as a sharp ‘un after dark.”

— Anon.

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A man may stand straight as a tree, and a tree stand straight as a man, yet neither stands straight as the flag pole in my dooryard.

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Mister Grizzly, when you come to call, pray leave your ‘mittens in my hall!” —Old Mohican Quatrain

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The meadow in winter is a counterpane, the snow-laid hills are pillows, but Father Nature has gone away with the foot-warmer, and shan’t come back again ere the buds are on the willows! —Derwent Clumbard McNee

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If make a snow ball you must, then get some snow and pat it into a sphere. Wet snow will cohere and dry snow, not. So find some wet snow. The snow ball should fit into the palm of the hand or you will have no grip for a hurl. If you live where there is no snow, there is nothing to be done.

If you would do as does the Esquimault of Prince Albert Land, you would not make a snow ball.

Look in the Esquimault’s house. There is to be found not a one orchestrion, or bisque doll, or silver-finished chatelaine purse.

That worthy, for his part, will expend of his sinew and brain-power only in return for that which may yield him food, or shelter, or a warm pair of muck lucks for his feet. Even in his idle time he is never idle. He is looking out for polar bears. Alake a snow ball? He would as likely make a hemstitched linen doilie, or an ostrich boa!

No, the urge that spawns the snow ball is known only to the great base ball-playing races far to the south.

Miss Millsap, of Boston, has dissolved her betrothal to Mr. Jim Eagle Feathers of New Brunswick, who has removed to China. So we hear from Millsap Pere , aboard R.M.S. Celtic avec famille , en voyage to Bayreuth.

Has anyone found a malacca walking cane, with a griffin’s head for the grip? Mr. Parmalee of New York City has mislaid just such, on a walking tour of Connecticut. He would give a sack of allsort nuts to the finder.

H.R.H. the King Regent of Bulgaria, on his late New York City visit, shot a hansom near Madison Square Park, thinking it a cariboo!

Mr. Brack, “the camphor king,” is building a cottage at the Ad-I-Ron-Dacks, said to be modelled after the Braunschweig Palace, only in logs. His new luncheon raft is now abuilding at Bath. It has a pipe organ.

Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt, of Philadelphia, have withdrawn the offer of a $1 reward for return of their Pug dog, after it was found by a maid in the Conservatory.

That much of the world’s air is in the wrong place cannot but he plain to an “old sea dog,” who has plied Neptuma’s lar vast empty reaches and found there nought but idle air; surplus ozone; becalmed breeze, and layabout zephyr.

It is useless air, required never to so much as turn a Kansas wind mill, nor dry a line ot Pennsylvania wash, nor cool a hot pan of fresh Missouri corn bread.

“Give It Over, Portugee!”

Reader, foreign climes are empty climes, where air malingers merely. And would the Portugee, the Hindoo, the Hottentot, over whose supine suzerains hovers the mass ot this ether redundant, have a plan for stirring it to useful life?

Only when such “Lesser breeds without the Law” have taught themselves Lnghsh, would we know and “scotch such plans.

While at the same instant, or very near to it, busy America gasps for all the air that is currently elsewhere!

A Horrible Suffocation Is Foreseen In Ohio