Re: "write him" was Re: More questions

phild scripsit:

> As Padraic said, "stop-cock" in the United States
> refers to a device in Chemistry Lab which opens
> and closes the bottom of a glass tube. (Isn't this
> term also used by professional plumbers to refer
> to any kind of water valve?)
Indeed, but they also use "lavatory" to describe a sink (and they
have the etymological right of it, to be sure.)

I see the sigmonster has chosen Mencken's 1919 translation of the DoI
into the American vulgate for this message.  Perhaps I should give
the original here ("he" in both versions being George III):

         He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
         uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public
         Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
         with his measures.

--
He made the Legislature meet at one-horse       John Cowan
tank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that     jcowan@reutershealth.com
hardly nobody could get there and most of       http://www.reutershealth.com
the leaders would stay home and let him go      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to work and do things as he pleased.    --Mencken, _Declaration of Independence_