A wonderful inscription appears on the inside cover of a book I am reading for my sabbatical research, Ken Roemer’s The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings, 1888-1900 (Kent State UP, 1998). This is a copy from the shelves of our library at the College of Charleston. From the author to his dissertation director, the note reads:
Dr. Cohen,
The margins of this book are blank. But for me they are filled with the hundreds of comments and suggestions you offered. I chose you as a dissertation director because you impressed me as one of the most conscientious teachers I have ever met; your supervision of my dissertation proved that my impression was correct. (To say nothing of going beyond the call of duty–imagine reading a dissertation in Spiller’s cabin!)
Thank you; and thank you for the continual advice and encouragement.
Ken
I have not researched who Dr. Cohen is. I wonder if Spiller’s cabin was the cabin of Robert Spiller, author of the monumental literary history of the US from way back. But those details, though I would love to know them, really don’t much matter. The main thing is Wow. How cool.