Happy Birthday to malver and <user site="livejournal.com" user=

[the_gneech]

Sorry for the delay. :) For your present, here's today's Forgotten English (© Jeffrey Kacirk):

nupson
A simpleton, a fool.

--Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908

Birthday of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598),
who, in his "Precepts and Directions for the Well Advice of a Man's Life," conveyed to his son the art of selecting a wife: "Use great providence and inspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence shall spring all thy fortune -- good or evil. And it is an action of life like unto a strategem of war, wherein a man can err but once. If they estate be good, match near home and at leisure; if weak, far off and quickly. Inquire diligently of her disposition, and how her parents have been inclined in their youth. Let her not be poor, how generous soever, for a man can buy nothing in the market with gentility. Nor choose a base and uncomely creature altogether for wealth, for it will cause contempt in others and loathing in thee. Neither make choice of a dwarf or a fool, for by one thou shalt beget a race of pygmies. The other will be thy continual disgrace, and it will irk thee to hear her talk."

...and he wondered why his daughter-in-law never wrote to him.

-The Gneech

Comments

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

I'd be more surprised that any exchange would have followed the famous quote between Winston Churchill and Nancy Astor.

(to paraphrase)
"Sir, if you where my father-in-law, I'd poison your tea."
"Madam, if you where my daughter-in-law, I'd drink it."

[leoni2.livejournal.com]

Ah, good oh Winny. Always good for a quote.

[unlikeminerva.livejournal.com]

Why thank you!

Happy belated unbirthday!

[malver.livejournal.com]

Many thanks!!