[Ed Shacklee]

Yes, long ago when I was still in the Midwest, perhaps during the high school years, though I remember it the same way Jerome and Susan do.

Ed

[Michael Juster]

I'm confused, Jerome.

[Richard Meyer]

Originally Posted by Michael Juster

I'm confused, Jerome.

L3 in your posted version is to the Cabots, while Jerome remembers it as to Cabots.

I agree with Jerome's version.

Richard

[Michael Juster]

Ah, I see now. That's one of many variants. The posted version is, I think, as authoritative as we have--but you'll just have to twist in your shorts until the next issue of Light to get the explanation.

[Ann Drysdale]

I can't remember when I first heard this but it was a long time ago. I have come across it as a quiz question, being asked to supply the last line.

[Claudia Gary]

Yes, but I only remembered lines 3 and 4.

Jerome's version is metrically better, in any case.

[Rob Wright]

Yes, My Grandfather (a Harvard man stalwart and hairy) was fond of it and said it once a month at least.

[R.A. Briggs]

I read it in one of the anthologies of light verse I loved as a kid, and did not remember Sargent as the author. I've got the same third line in my head as Jerome Betts. I was confused by it, because I didn't know what a Lowell or a Cabot was.

[Stephen Hampton]

Not that I can recall. But it seems so very familiar; I'm thinking that I should remember.

[Michael Cantor]

I've known this one for what seems like all my life - probably since college, and definitely long before I moved to Boston. I remember the joy I had in (eventually) realizing that Henry Cabot Lodge was of the Cabots. I also seem to remember (can't remember the name, and I'm being a good guy and not googling) that it was a tune not just a poem, written by a classy and funny gentleman who ground out dozens of similar numbers, very funny, social and political subjects, a big entertainer on the college scene in the fifties and sixties and beyond. Assuming I'm right, you probably caught him at Harvard. (He never played Cooper Union.) And I remember L3 as Jerome does.