Dan'l Webster

"Keep cool," said the great man who was born on this day in 1782, "anger is not an argument."

So said Daniel Webster, so lofty & admired a statesman in our antebellum that he's to be found in Stephen Vincent Benet's far out short story, The Devil & Daniel Webster, which was made into a swell movie w/ the even sweller Edward Arnold (You guys know him from, right? as the villain in the Frank Capra movies.) s D. W. & Walter Huston appearing as Mr. Scratch, a.k.a. the Devil, n 1941. Anyway, Dan'l Webster shares a birthday w/ A. A. Milne, conjurer of Winnie the Pooh. And it's all neither here nor, as they say, there, being as just now I need to get out in the frosty perilous world & get a jug of milk so I'll have some for my coffee (Folger's Instant, taken the way my folks did, w/ just a bit of white), to sustain me through this danged manuscript that's been in hanging about far too long. It's a bit of a hammock: A great set-up, a nifty ending, and in between? the valley of the shadow of death.