The Misanthrope’s Corner

THE spirit of recycling in all its vainglory was expressed by John P Marquand, author of The Late George Apley. He did not live to see recycling as we know it, but as a scion of Old Yankee Massachusetts he was an expert on the battier aspects of New England thrift.

Engraved on his mind was a boyhood chiding he received from an aunt. One day as he was cleaning out his desk he found half of an old pair of scissors, a single rusty blade with a single rusty thumb-hole. He was about to toss it in the wastebasket when his shocked aunt told him that it would make a “perfectly good” letter opener.

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Florence King

Florence King was a contributing editor of National Review.

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THE spirit of recycling in all its vainglory was expressed by John P Marquand, author of The Late George Apley. He did not live to see recycling as we know it, but as a scion of Old Yankee Massachusetts he was an expert on the battier aspects of New England thrift.

Engraved on his mind was a boyhood chiding he received from an aunt. One day as he was cleaning out his desk he found half of an old pair of scissors, a single rusty blade with a single rusty thumb-hole. He was about to toss it in the wastebasket when his shocked aunt told him that it would make a “perfectly good” letter opener.