The post that followed Saturday’s editorial on bread was, by any reasonable expectation, heavy. A representative selection appears below, with the editor’s replies set in brackets where a point seemed to want clarifying. Letters appearing here are trimmed where they run long and, on the rare morning the pond’s credulity demands it, tidied for plausibility.
From Drake Halford of the east shore, filed at the reeds on Sunday morning
Sir, In the spirit of Saturday’s editorial, which read the seasonal pressure as a matter not of supply but of distribution, I submit, for whatever the gazette’s purposes may be, the following arithmetic from a household of five.
On Monday last this household, the five members noted in my fifth and sixth filings, consumed at the east bank approach a total of nine crusts across the morning’s principal feeding. The figure is, I believe, accurately recorded. It works out to an average of one and four-fifths crusts per member, a figure not materially different from the corresponding average of the cooler months. I offer it as a data point. I should add, in fairness to the season, that Monday’s crusts were of average quality and that no member of the household made a second approach.
DRAKE HALFORD, OF THE EAST SHORE
[With thanks, the editor records the figures. They are the first quantitative submission from a household of five since the Halford filings reached that number. The figure of nine crusts is recorded. On the average per member the editor offers nothing, considering it a matter for the household.]
From the Household Adjoining the Halfords, filed at the reeds on Sunday afternoon
Madam, We write, for the first time in some months, to register our considered disagreement with the arithmetic our neighbours of the Halford household filed earlier in the day. Five members cannot in any respectable accounting be expected to consume only nine crusts at the rate the gazette reports, the more so in a household whose members have, across the seasons of our long acquaintance, never once been observed to refuse a second approach. The figure of nine, we are bound to suggest, was arrived at by methods that would not survive scrutiny.
THE HOUSEHOLD ADJOINING THE HALFORDS
[The editor receives the letter and notes its return to these pages after some weeks away. The matter of the second approach is, the editor concedes, a methodological point the original filing did not address. The gazette regards arithmetic between adjoining households as a matter for the parties themselves.]
From a travelling drake, filed at the shallows on Sunday evening
Sir, I write briefly to commend the gazette on Saturday’s editorial, in which the considered opinion at last taken was of a character this correspondent has, since the spring, had reason to advocate. The position the gazette has taken is the position the season required. I shall observe, with the appropriate patience, what becomes of it. Further correspondence will follow as conditions warrant.
A TRAVELLING DRAKE
[The editor takes the commendation with the gratitude it deserves. The gazette has, in the period since the spring, given the matter the consideration the writer’s earlier letter asked for. Further dispatches on the index will follow as conditions require.]
From a correspondent of established habit
HONK
[The editor accepts the submission. A small illustration of a loaf was, as on the previous occasion, included with the letter, and is held in the editor’s keeping with the appropriate respect.]
The rest waits its turn for a later edition, as space and the season’s temper allow. Correspondents are welcome to send their letters reed-ward by whatever honk carries; the editor promises to take in every one of them more or less entire, and to give it the patience the week has left over.