I have nothing against undertakers personally. It's just that I wouldn't want one to bury my sister.

Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening.

Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Where, indeed. Many a badly stung survivor, faced with the aftermath of some relative's funeral, has ruefully concluded that the victory has been won hands down by a funeral establishment - in disastrously unequal battle.

In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.

[On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.