Boy, that was a doozy. There’s a vile stomach bug going round (going round up here on Long Island, anyway). My son got it Tuesday & spent the whole day talking into the big white telephone. My stomach’s been a good friend to me—I *never* have problems. I got this one, though, & have been flat on my back groaning for most of the last 24 hours. Hoo-ee. Let the poet describe it: I wakened on my hot, hard bed,

Upon the pillow lay my head;

Beneath the pillow I could hear

My little watch was ticking clear.

I thought the throbbing of it went

Like my continual discontent;

I thought it said in every tick:

I am so sick, so sick, so sick;

O Death, come quick, come quick, come quick,

Come quick, come quick, come quick, come quick. . . . (And that, from a very minor poet—and, by the way, a granddaughter of Charles Darwin—is about nine times better than anything T.S. Eliot ever wrote.)