I noticed my typo in the subject line of my post of the joke about the teakwood merchant. It is one of my most persistant typos. I set out to type the article "an," but my fingers get carried away and make it the conjunction "and." I also get "here" when I go for "her."

And speaking of John G. Whittier:
My mother used to read me the poem about the barefoot boy. No, actually she recited it. She said it reminded her of me. She always stopped with the line "I was once a barefoot boy." Many years later, I figured out why. She didn't want to use the dirty word "republican" which showed up in the next sentence.
Howard