My first wife, née Jane Marie Cox, now dead of cancer, was such an adept student of literature in college that she was nominated by the English Department for the highest honor, which was election to Phi Beta Kappa, a national society of our most diligent students. Her election was opposed by the History Department, whose wares she had denounced often and vocally as being as void of decency as child pornography. She was in good company of course, as I am able to demonstrate with the help of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: “History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes,” Voltaire;
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