Two books that I had ordered were waiting for me in my box this morning. One was the long-awaited third and final volume of William Manchester's study of the great Winston Churchill, "The Last Lion." The other was a biography of H. L. Mencken by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. I opened the Mencken bio and there was a wonderful quote from...William Manchester.

"Fifty years ago I spent my mornings reading to an old man who suffered as I now suffer, from a series of strokes. He was a writer. He was H. L. Mencken. I have never known a kinder man. But when he unsheathed his typewriter and sharpened its keys, his prose was anything but kind. It was rollicking and it was ferocious. Witty, intellectual polemicists are a vanishing breed today. Their role has been usurped by television boobs whose IQs measure just below their body temperatures. Some journalism schools even warn their students to shun words that may hurt. But sometimes words should hurt. That is why they are in the language. When terrorists slaughter innocents, when corporation executives betray the trust of shareholders, when lewd priests betray the trusts of little children, it is time to mobilize the language and send it into battle. When Mencken died in January 1956, he was cremated. That was a mistake. He should have been 'rolled in malleable gold and polished to blind the cosmos.' I still miss him. America misses him more."

Just before Manchester himself passed in 2004, having only begun the third volume of his Churchill bio, he appointed to Paul Reid the task of finishing his work, which is why it took awhile between Vol. 2 and Vol. 3. I can see now why I so enjoyed Manchester's writing. He was a Menckenite.