New England Diary

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'scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D'

 

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls 

are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds 

(also, with the church's protestant blessings 

daughters,unscented shapeless spirited) 

they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead, 

are invariably interested in so many things— 

at the present writing one still finds 

delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles? 

perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy 

scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D 

.... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above 

Cambridge if sometimes in its box of 

sky lavender and cornerless, the 

moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy 

-- E.E. Cummings,  "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls''