Forced to make do on a meager three pounds of potatoes a week during the long nights of rationing, patient Britons could find small comfort in the advice of the great epistler, but last week a clutch of lesser literary lights were doing their best to make up for Britain's lack of spuds with a bumper crop of digestible macaronics.

First, he had there a dean, a great divine, and a man of excellent learning; and a sub-dean, a repeater of the choir, a gospeller, an epistler of the singing-priests, and a master of the children: in the vestry a yeoman and two grooms, besides other retainers that came thither at principal feasts....

There were the dean and sub-dean of his chapel; the repeater of the choir; the gospeler, the epistler, or the singing priest; the master of the singers, with his men and children.

Because "Your loving friend" or "humble servant" is a common phrase in country letters; therefore the young Epistler is "Yours, to the Antipodes!" or at least "to the Centre of the earth!": and because ordinary folks "love" and "respect" you; therefore you are to him, "a Pole Star!" "a Jacob's Staff!" "a Loadstone!" and "a damask Rose!"