Reading habits of many years are hard to break

To the editor:

"Get everything off the table. The cleaning lady is coming." "That's a paradox. And impossible."

Everything is growing exponentially. In church the half-page bulletin is up to five pages. There's a second songbook in the rack and a Bible. Books have been my life's blood. I hope to read each Sunday-school lesson in King James of 1612 and in dad's German Luther and Ivan Nothdurft's Spanish. In the secular world, The Wall Street Journal eats shelf space like a hungry tiger but has not made me rich.

Scholars of ancient Troy claimed the state of a civilization may be judged by the way it handled trash. My wife and mother are and were great housekeepers. My forte is in messing things up. Let the cobbler stick to his last.

But surely not all is hopeless. The generation that has looked fearlessly into the waters of the Roswell pool and listened to the ricochets from the Dallas knoll and rejects the shibboleth about eight glasses of water a day will not be put down by litter on the table.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau