Chapter & Verse

A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words

Dale Higbee hopes to learn the source of a comment by Archibald MacLeish: “We know all the answers; it’s the questions we don’t know.”

Alethea Black requests the title and author of a poem about how life would be if we grew younger over time. The last line is, “And suffering, of course, is joy.”

Karl Engelman asks if anyone can identify an “insightful commentary” that defines conversation between two people as, in fact, an interaction among six participants, with each side consisting of the person speaking, the person the speaker thinks he is, and the person the other speaker thinks the first speaker is.

“Rooty-toot-toot” (November-December 2005). David Challinor, whose father was in the first graduating class of Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon), in 1908, recalls hearing this verse sung in Pittsburgh in the 1920s. But Catherine Dwyer and other fans of Rice University (“Institute” until 1960; opened in 1912) vehemently claimed this variant of what may be an old Boy Scout cheer. (Robert Bradbury supplied a traditional last line, rendered in falsetto: “Our class won the bible!”) Among other candidates: the city jail and MIT.



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

Click here for the January-February 2006 issue table of contents

You might also like

Centralizing University Discipline

Harvard establishes new disciplinary procedures for campus protest violations.

Five Questions with JoAnn Manson

A veteran women’s health advocate on federal funding cuts

Doctors for Change

Countway Library exhibit explores historic anti-nuclear activism

Most popular

Blanche Calloway, Cab’s Enterprising Older Sister

The success and struggles of a pioneering musician

Harvard Sues Over Funding Freeze

The University takes the Trump administration to federal court.

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

Explore More From Current Issue

The Trump Administration's Impact on Higher Education

Unprecedented federal actions against research funding, diversity, speech, and more

89664

Jessica Shand—Math and Music at Harvard

Jessica Shand blends math and music.

89677

Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library

How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life

89684