costume and custom

I was delighted to see that this week's poem for memorization in Greta's class was by Gelett Burgess. (It's his most-known work, the nonsense poem "The Purple Cow.")

Early in my adult life I came across a first edition of his 1901 book The Romance of the Commonplace, and I've gotten it out and enjoyed its prose (purpler than his cow, I'm afraid) every couple of years since. I guess he's my second-favorite essayist, the first being the incomparable Robert Benchley, whose collections I discovered in my parents' library and read and loved from 8th grade on.

Only a short while back, before the poem came along, I'd pulled it off the shelf again. I especially love one piece, "Costume and Custom," which puts forth so much of what I've always thought a man should be: whimsy, standards, a mind opened and closed to the right things.

Click on the book cover to read.