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A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words
Albert Beveridge III is looking for the source and exact wording of a statement to the effect that anyone who hadn't lived before the First World War didn't know how pleasant life could be.
William Calder III asks for Goethe's source for the Latin hexameter Ut clavis portam, sic pandit epistula pectus (As a key a door, so a letter opens the heart).
"the thought of Sam Butler" (September-October). Frank Rettenberg found this line in the poem "English Liberal," by Geoffrey Taylor, printed in A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry (1946).
"...and two cars in every garage" (November-December). Malcolm Jewell noted that William Safire, in his book New Political Dictionary, contends that during the presidential campaign of 1932, Democrats inaccurately attributed this slogan to Herbert Hoover and the Republicans.
"Save them bones for Henry Jones" (November-December). Susan Moss was first to credit Danny Barker, Vernon Lee, and Henry Jones as the composers of this song, which can be heard performed by Ray Charles, Lou Rawls, and Milt Jackson on a 1988 CBS audio cassette tape, Just Between Us.
"a regular income" (November-December). D. Scott Sherill recognized this quip as the fourth sentence of Oscar Wilde's short story "The Model Millionaire."
"a girl's capricious frown" (November-December). Anthony Shipps identified these lines from the poem "Song VII," published in the third volume of The Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writings of Francis Hopkinson (1792).
"When a jolly man..." (November-December). Glenn Miller was first to send in this mnemonic for the last names of the U.S. presidents from Washington to Cleveland: "When a jealous man makes apple jam very hot to please the French pie baker, let John gather his green apples clean."
"all things dull and ugly" (November-December). Osborne Ingram first identified Monty Python's Eric Idle as the author of the parody, reprinted in Words I Wish I Wrote, collected by Robert Fulghum.