"Hooey," said Bill inelegantly. "Just as if you didn't swipe my entire stock of Old Sleuth in days gone by and force me to read Trollope or something equally wordy."
Old Sleuth
Old Sleuth, appearing in The Fireside Companion story paper beginning in 1872, was the first dime novel detective and began the trend away from the western and frontier stories that dominated the story papers and dime novels up to that time. He was the first character to use the word “sleuth” to denote a detective, the word’s original definition being that of a bloodhound trained to track. And he also is responsible for the popularity of the use of the word “old” in the names of competing dime novel detectives, such as Old Cap Collier, Old Broadbrim, Old King Brady, Old Lightning, Old Ferret and many, many others.
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope (24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical conflicts of his day.
Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.
"Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic." — W. H. Auden
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although it was never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Harvard's curriculum and students became increasingly secular throughout the 18th century and by the 19th century had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.
Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty year tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.
James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gilpin Faust was elected the 28th president in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $27.4 billion as of September 2010.
The university comprises eleven separate academic units — ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study — with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area. Harvard's 210-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3.4 miles (5.5 km) northwest of downtown Boston. The business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in Allston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are located in the Longwood Medical Area.
As of 2010, Harvard employs about 2,100 faculty to teach and advise, approximately 6,700 undergraduates (Harvard College) and 14,500 graduate and professional students. Eight U.S. Presidents have graduated from Harvard and 75 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff. Harvard is also the alma mater of sixty-two living billionaires, the most in the country. The Harvard University Library is the largest academic library in the United States, and the second largest library in the country.
The Harvard Crimson competes in 41 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Ivy League. Harvard has an intense athletic rivalry with Yale University traditionally culminating in The Game, although the Harvard–Yale Regatta predates the football game
"Maybe he went incog., like a Student Prince."
The Student Prince is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Alt Heidelberg. The piece has elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works. The plot is mostly faithful to its source.
It opened on December 2, 1924, at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre on Broadway. The show was the most successful of Romberg's works, running for 608 performances, the longest-running Broadway show of the 1920s. Even the classic Show Boat, the most enduring musical of the 1920s, did not play as long - it ran for 572 performances. "Drinking Song," with its rousing chorus of "Drink! Drink! Drink!" was especially popular with theatergoers in 1924, as the United States was in the midst of Prohibition. The operetta contains some of the most beautiful, yet gruelling, tenor arias in the operetta repertoire, notably the Serenade ("Overhead the moon is beaming").
Ernst Lubitsch made a silent film of the operetta titled The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, starring Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. The stage work was revived twice on Broadway – once in the 1930s and again in the 1940s. Mario Lanza's performance on the soundtrack of the 1954 MGM film The Student Prince, renewed the popularity of many of the songs. Composer Nicholas Brodszky and lyricist Paul Francis Webster wrote three new songs for the film. Two of these songs – "I'll Walk with God" and "Beloved" – became closely associated with Lanza, although the role was played on screen by British actor Edmund Purdom, who mimed to Lanza's recordings. In recent years, the operetta has been performed each summer at the Heidelberg Castle Festival
"I've noticed in him is is tendency to say "Thank you" in one syllable, as though it were a thing you played billiards with."
In other words, he says, "k'You," sort of like Patrick McGoohan.
Bill Porter is a selectman
The board of selectmen is commonly the executive arm of the government of New England towns in the United States. The board typically consists of three or five members, with or without staggered terms.
"You know, the more I look at your friend Emma, the more she reminds me of that mammoth bronze Buddha, the resigned one in Japan somewhere."
Bill is referring to teh Great Buddha of Nara.
Buddha was never fat, however. Author Phoebe Atwood Taylor may have confused the Buddha with Hotei, a fat-bellied individual whom even Chinese restaurants use as a "happy Buddha" representation!
(Hotei, God of Luck)
Why venerate a ... gasp.... extremely fat man? Because up until the later 20th century, most people in the world barely got enough to eat. To be "overweight" was the sign of a prosperous individual.
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