I love this cover. Great book too!

This sounds a lot like the 'bata scóir' used in Ireland during the 19th century. Children would wear a notched stick fastened to their necks. Each notch represented the child being caught speaking Irish rather than English at school.

It doesn't seem to fit at all in the back. Perhaps if I try to stand against the wall most of the time...

Marmion on the Baptism of Christ.

Not one of the funnier passages of this book, but it never even occurred to me that the arrival of earthworms to New England was so recent.