Chapter & Verse

Helen Snider hopes someone can provide all the verses to a song dating at least to 1907 that begins, "The elephant goes round and round,/The...

Helen Snider hopes someone can provide all the verses to a song dating at least to 1907 that begins, "The elephant goes round and round,/The band begins to play./The little boys around the monkey cage/Had better stay away."

 

Gregg Hurwitz requests a source for the statement "There is no justice. There is only the law."

 

Henry Urrows asks who first wrote or said, "The well-educated Englishman is the noblest work of God."

 

Emily DeHuff has heard that the sentence "The sheep are asleep on the hillside" is significant in World War II cryptography, but has been unable to find out why. She requests assistance.

Harry Goldgar would welcome a citation for the comment "Wagner is the Puccini of music," which he has heard attributed to Igor Stravinsky.

 

"I smell a rat" (March-April). Jon Weinberg was first of several readers to report that the original statement (which continues, "I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky; but I'll nip him in the bud") is attributed to Sir Boyle Roche, an eighteenth-century member of the Irish parliament. Sharon Fenwick noted that Roche is also alleged to have said, "Half the lies our opponents tell about us are not true."

 

Send inquiries and answers to "Chapter and Verse," Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138.        

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