Ivanhoe . . .

is hilarious! I have just finished reading it; for some reason, I had never read it before. When I got to the part where the tragic Jewish heroine, imprisoned by a lecherous knight, threatens to throw herself from the battlements if he comes a step closer to her, I started laughing aloud so hard that my sister asked me, with the tolerant expression she reserves for my most imbecilic moments, if I was all right. (The blond-haired Saxon maiden, in a similar perilous situation, merely starts weeping uncontrollably. Yet she is the one who ends up with the hero. Life is so unfair.)

Etiquette Tip of the Day

"Polite people do not drop names. If, however, one should drop accidentally, the best thing to do is to leave it where it fell and ask the waiter for a new one."