My first lesson in the meticulous use of words occurred in connection with a series of burglaries in the neighborhood. Just behind us on Exeter Street lived a well-known Boston spinster, Miss Ella Day by name. One moonlight night, when I was about ten years old, I was aroused by the noise of a watchman’s rattle and hurried to the window hoping to catch sight of the burglar leaping over the back-yard fences. Although I could see no burglar, I did see Miss Day’s attenuated right arm projecting from her window with the rattle, which she was vigorously whirling, at the end of it. Thoroughly thrilled, I called across to her:

‘Miss Day! Miss Day! What is it? Robbers?’

Even now I can hear her thin shaking voice with its slightly condescending acerbity:

‘No — burglars!’

— Arthur Train, Puritan’s Progress, 1931