The MLA FL Program in 1960

You have heard three excellent talks on this, the final session of a three-day meeting that will doubtless seem, to some of you, to have begun three weeks ago. Your arches are fallen, your ears are tired, your lungs are filled with convention hotel air, carefully preserved from one annual meeting to the next, wafted from New York to Chicago to Philadelphia. You have reached the point where, in the memorable words of William Riley Parker, the seats are making more impression on the audience than the speeches. You are ready for a foreign-language funny story, and I happen to have one, which I read in the October number of the Newsletter of the Montana FLTA. Mrs. Smith is complaining to Mr. Jones, the principal of her son's school: “Mr. Jones, my Johnny is an intelligent, conscientious boy. He studies hard and he gets good grades in all his subjects, except one, French. He tries and tries, Mr. Jones, but my Johnny simply can not learn that language!” Mr. Jones: “How fortunate, Mrs. Smith, that your Johnny was not born in France!”