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A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words
Editor's note: Having answered all queries submitted since publication of the last issue, we celebrate this department's twentieth anniversary by challenging readers anew to identify the following "unsolved mysteries."
"What will be the outcome/If income don't come in?/Where from will come the money/To buy the food and gin?"
"Never pay a man a penny more than you have to; that's stealing from the owners."
"Young as the young never are/seasoned with summer..."
Venus...Mercury (July-August). World War II veteran Addison Merrick credited GI wisdom for the proper version of this adage: "One night with Venus, six months with bismuth and mercury" (a pre-penicillin treatment for syphilis).
"[From] mud,...the lotus" (July-August). Clark A. Barrett offered a variant on this theme, Edwin Markham's eight-line poem "Take Your Choice." Its second and sixth lines run: "The delicate lily must live in the mire" and "In the mire of the river the lily blows...."