July 6, 2008

"Maybe replace the whole paragraph with 'Sometimes, when people break up, they should say why.'"

I missed this the other day. Hilarious.
Posted by Ann Althouse at 5:25 PM
Tags: , ,

4 comments:

George M. Spencer said...

"I set out for Williamsburg some days before that appointed for our meeting, but was taken ill of a dysentery on the road, & unable to proceed. I sent on therefore to Williamsburg two copies of my draught, the one under cover to Peyton Randolph, who I knew would be in the chair of the convention, the other to Patrick Henry. Whether Mr. Henry disapproved the ground taken, or was too lazy to read it (for he was the laziest man in reading I ever knew) I never learned: but he communicated it to nobody."

Thomas Jefferson's recollection of Patrick Henry, editor.

(This regards an earlier political document Jefferson wrote, not the Declaration.)

7/6/08, 7:29 PM
Johnny Roosh said...

Whereas I have just returned from a trip to Boston with my son to see the Freedom Trail and other historic sites therabout and

Whereas it has been some time since I have read the Declaration of Independence

I found the actual text quite moving to read again.

As for the humor, not so much. Thanks for the link nonetheless.

7/6/08, 7:36 PM
Anonymous said...

I'm sitting in my dining room, 150 feet from the line of march of the Minutemen on their way to the North Bridge on the 19th of April in '75.

They've improved the road. Following the Minutemen from Lexington through Bedford, there are gas stations, a McDonalds, a Stop & Shop, a Whole Foods, a couple of strip malls, and, when you get to Monument St. in Concord, just after you've passed Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (where Emerson, the Alcotts, Hawthorne, et al. are buried), you're greeted by a real estate office. Turn right and the North Bridge is just up the street. Judging from what's there today, the biggest problem the locals would have had back in 1775 was finding a parking place.

Yes, Jefferson's prose could be improved, and, believe me, they've improved that old Colonial crap around here, too.

7/6/08, 9:08 PM
rcocean said...

Very Funny. The thing about the stuck shift key was hilarious. And Mencken's rewrite linked in the Comments section was also very good.

I always love this line:

"We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends".

7/7/08, 10:08 AM

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