Last month received a letter that began, Are you the Samuel that went to Sewanee twenty years ago? did not know how to answer the letter. A boy with my name once attended college at Sewanee, and although knew him fairly well and think liked him that boy had long since disappeared. Some good things happened to him at college, and have often considered writing about them. The trouble is that am not sure if the things remember actually happened. Did that boy actually carry a hammer into Professor Martin's class one day, and when an old roommate, Jimmy, asked why he had it, did that boy really say for nailing hands to desks? And did he tell Jimmy to flatten his hand out on the desk if he did not believe him-whereupon, trusting a friend, Jimmy did so? Shortly afterwards when Professor Martin asked Jimmy why he had screamed, did Jimmy answer, Pickering hit me with a hammer? And did that boy stand up and say, I cannot tell a lie; hit him with my little hammer? No, no--the person whom have become certainly didn't do that. This person lives in a world without Jimmys, hammers, screams, and exclamation points. For fifteen years have taught writing. For ten of these years writing has taught me, and have labored not so much to compose sentences as to compose my life. Hours at the desk and countless erasures have brought success. haven't committed a comma blunder in almost five years, certainly not since married my second wife. Happily have forgotten what participles and gerunds are, but then have forgotten most things: books, loves, and most of my identities. At my dining room table dangling modifiers are not mentioned, and ignore all question marks as my days are composed, not of lurid prose and purple moments, but of calm of mind and forthright, workaday sentences. Rarely do use a complex sentence, and even more rarely do live with complexity. In a simple style write about simple people, people born before the first infinitive was split and the wrath of grammarians fell upon humanity. Occasionally write about a small town in Virginia where spent summers as a boy. In the center of the town was the railway station. Clustered about it were the bank and post office, Ankenbauer's Cafe and Wilbur Vickery's store. Mr. Vickery was a big man; alongside him his wife, whom he called Little Bitty Bird, seemed no larger than a sparrow. Mrs. Vickery spent her days in the domestic