Chapter & Verse

A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words

Pat Donovan hopes that someone can provide her with the original source of the phrase “…and she wiped the ambassador’s nose”; the reference is to an infant envisioned by his doting mother as a distinguished diplomat one day.

 

Dorothy Richardson requests an identification of the poetic fragment with which William Dunlap closes his History of the American Theatre (1832): “Time rushes o’er us; thick as evening clouds/ Ages roll back; what calls them from their shrouds?/ What in full vision brings their good and great,—/ The men whose virtues make the nation’s fate;/The far, forgotten stars of human kind?/ The STAGE —the MIGHTY TELESCOPE OF MIND!”

 

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

You might also like

The Gretel and the Great War author on how the Lampoon derailed his science career—and set him on a literary path.

The popular Harvard English professor published Under Water this spring.

All That’s Unseen charts the Harvard graduate’s uneasy journey from Appalachia to Cambridge and back.  

Most popular

The stakes are high for this husband and wife: one of them will die if they don’t find a cure.

A former Harvard College writing tutor changes her mind on LLMs.

Professor Cornell William Brooks and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts hold a lively debate on DEI and Project 2025.

Explore More From Current Issue

Three young women posed side by side against red background.

The 2026-2027 Ledecky and Summer Undergraduate Fellows

A flooded office scene with computers, a woman working, and a pink sunset backdrop.

A College student’s attempt to recapture the romanticism of the workplace.

Colorful cartoon animals, including dogs, cows, rabbits, and a fence, on a pink background.

Inseparable cows, big dogs fostering a tiny kitten, and a show beagle’s second act