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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 329025, member: 5833&quot;]Reads to me like completely facetious doggerel.&nbsp; The (pretended) offense is that the author has included marrying as one of the way people harm themselves, right in there with hanging, drowning &amp; shooting each other:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I’ve sent you the papers to read at your leisure,</p><p><br /></p><p>And I hope they will give you a vast deal of pleasure.</p><p><br /></p><p>You’ll see how ingeniously people now plan</p><p><br /></p><p>To do to themselves as much harm as they can.</p><p><br /></p><p>How some hang, and some marry, some drown and some shoot,</p><p><br /></p><p>Each other in duels, is past all dispute.</p><p><br /></p><p>He has of course said this quite deliberately, then asks forgiveness, lamenting that if it ever got about, his prospects of finding a wife would be ruined.</p><p><br /></p><p>If the name of the Rectory is pronounced the same as the names of the Evelyn Waugh characters, it add another humorous touch:</p><p><br /></p><p>… to my shame, I realise I’ve been getting something wrong all these years. The surname of the pupil Peter Beste-Chetwynde and his mother Margot Beste-Chetwynde – like the non-U oik that I am, I’ve been pronouncing that to rhyme with “test get chinned”. But now I realise that it should be pronounced “beast cheating”[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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