415 - Bioquiz
Prize (my admiration) for the most inventive answer to the bonus question, from your classmate John Brigham:
The year: 1893
The Place: Mr. Bartley’s Burgers, Mass. Ave. Cambridge (a little poetic license on this, please)
The conversation:
Charles Cutter and Herbert Putnam are having a quiet lunch discussing Cutter’s departure from the Boston Athenaeum. They’ve returned to their old haunts near the Harvard campus in part to avoid the Boston scene (Charles wanted to get some discrete advice from his friend, who was now practicing law in Boston). More than that, though, they had always loved to meet here and come up with any number of better ways to organize the long lists of burger names scrawled on the walls.
“Maybe they could be Cuttered by condiment?” suggested Putnam, with a wry smile, absent-mindedly also trying to come with a good rhyme for Gouda.
“Or perhaps, they should figure out a way to share out their splendid burgers with other fine institutions?” chuckled Chuck.
At this moment, a young couple came in and sat down with their young child at the next table. The child seemed to take a special interest in the librarian banter. Both Cutter and Putnam were distracted by his stares and finally struck up a conversation with the boy’s parents.
“What’s his name?” asked Charles.
“Vannevar!” exclaimed the proud father.
“How wonderful!” said Charles as his friend muttered under his breath “the boys are going to tease him.”
“You’re one to talk, Herbert, I think the boy looks quite wise – just look at how he’s carefully organizing his rattles by size and by shape!”