Chapter & Verse

John Mitchell requests the source and the rest (if any) of a ditty that begins...

John Mitchell requests the source and the rest (if any) of a ditty that begins "'Twas midnight on the ocean,/Not a streetcar was in sight./I went down to the corner store/To buy myself a light./ The man behind the counter/Was a woman old and gray/Who used to sell bananas/On the road to Mandalay."

Andrew Webster seeks the author's name and the rest of a poem that begins "No matter what happens to man/ The world is well made, though."

A. Shneur Horowitz wonders who described children as "that outlaw band."

Timothy Fleck hopes someone can provide the correct wording and a source for the assertion, "There are only three true arts: [?], [?], and pastry decoration. Architecture is a branch of pastry decoration."

June Skye Szirotny asks if anyone can provide an authoritative source for Richard Ellmann's assertion, in his 1973 essay "Dorothea's Husbands," that Beatrice Potter Webb referred to Herbert Spencer as Casaubon, the elderly scholar in George Eliot's Middlemarch.

"Truro" (January-February). Frank Kelly Jr. was first to identify "Memory of Cape Cod," from The Harp Weaver and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem was read at the funeral mass of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

"hell-fire sunset" (January-February). Cathe Giffuni identified "Wild Wales," in Sylvia Townsend Warner's Scenes of Childhood and Other Stories, as the source.

Most popular

AI Outperforms Doctors in Emergency Room Tasks, New Harvard Study Shows

Researchers say the technology could help physicians with triage, diagnosis.

Martin Nowak Placed on Leave a Second Time

Further links to Jeffrey Epstein surface in newly released files.

Harvard Alumni and Faculty Win Five Pulitzer Prizes

Winners include Jill Lepore, Bess Wohl, and Pablo Torre.

Explore More From Current Issue

A dancer in a black leotard poses gracefully in a bright studio, with mirrors reflecting her movement.

A New ‘Black Swan’ Musical Cranks Up the Tension

The creative team of the A.R.T.’s new show dish on adapting Darren Aronofsky’s thriller classic from screen to stage.

A woman in glasses gestures while speaking to two attentive listeners at a table.

How to Cook with Wild Plants

From wild greens spanakopita to rose petal panna cotta, forager and chef Ellen Zachos makes one-of-a-kind meals.

Woman with long hair, smiling, wearing a black sweater, in a textured beige background.

For This Poet, AI is a Writing Partner

Sasha Stiles trained a chatbot on her manuscripts. Now, her poems rewrite themselves.