Notes & Asides - Brief Article - Column

National Review, March 11, 2002

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: I noticed in your Dec. 31 issue that W. H. von Dreele committed a common but regrettable error in his poem "Daschle's Guilty Pleasure." The seventh reindeer in Clement Clarke Moore's poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," was named Donder by Mr. Moore, not Donner.

I can't imagine myself pointing this out to any other publication, but I thought that you, of all people, would like to know.

Louis H. Sanford

Elk Rapids, Mich.

Dear Mr. Sanford: Mr. Buckley's

Asked me to reply

Concerning Donner/Donder; since the

Former's faulty, I

Can only say my mother read it

The way I wrote it. Give her credit.

W. H. von Dreele

New York, N.Y.

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: How do you explain the frequent usage in journalism (as in the Dec. 3 issue of NR) of a phrase such as "a college acquaintance of Evelyn Waugh's," when the word "of" makes the possessive unnecessary?

Don R. Gerlach

Akron, Ohio

Dear Mr. Gerlach: But that's the way the language is spoken. We say "a friend of Bob's" even though the possessive is redundant.

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: I've been meaning to ask you about Matthew 6:19 ("Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt . . ."), which was the subject of a discussion in N&A some years ago.

Is the sentence in the King James Version grammatically correct? If the subject of the clause is compound ("moth and dust"), shouldn't the verb be "do," not "doth"?

Sincerely,

Gould B. Hagler Jr.

Sandy Springs, Ga.

Dear Mr. Hagler: Yes, but Matthew never said he was a stickler on grammar, right?

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: I was recently amused to hear a circuit-court judge in Miami-Dade County, Fla., comment, at a hearing involving a recalcitrant witness's answers to deposition questions, that she would not tolerate such "Clintonesque" responses. It appears that Mr. Clinton's legacy, at least in the judicial arena, is to have his name associated with evasive, dishonest, and deceitful sworn testimony.

I guess this goes along with the additional honor of having had to resign from the Supreme Court bar rather than be permanently disbarred.

Sincerely,

Mary Lingerfeldt, Esq.

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: Rereading Plato's dialogue, the Sophist, I was struck by how Bill Clinton absorbed the habit of parsing out definitions while studying at Oxford. Three quotes from that dialogue, translated by Oxford's own Benjamin Jowett:

(1) stranger: I said that not-being is unutterable, unspeakable, indescribable: Do you follow?

theaetetus: I do after a fashion.

stranger: When I introduced the word "is," did I not contradict what I said before?

(2) stranger: And yet it should not be defined as one of many, and should not even be called "it," for the use of the word "it" would imply a form of unity.

(3) stranger: Suppose that a person would profess that he knew how to make and do all things, by a single art.

theaetetus: All things?

stranger: I see that you do not understand the first word that I utter, for you do not understand the meaning of "all."

So we can conclude that Clinton's stay at Oxford was not all wasted.

Regards,

Warren C. Fisher

Blue Bell, Pa.

Dear Mr. Fisher: We are all instructed.

Thanks.

-WFB