plain brown wrapper

Plain BROWN wrapper:

I've been reading a 1237 page book for some time now. It is an ambitious and brilliant attempt to write the history of the world by Columbia university professors, published in 1980. You may say that's quite a lot of time to go by since it was compiled, but consider this: that the scope of the undertaking, from the beginning of time thru 1980, is immense.

I got self-conscious having my curious eyes glued to the pages of this book for so long. So I took it upon myself to read it sparingly but intensely, and I put a grocery bag cover over it to keep friends and acquaintances from knowing just what it was I was reading and devoting so much of my time to.

I marked the bag cover "PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER." Talk about hiding one's light under a bushel! My children in their rovings through the house I'm pretty sure never peeled the cover back to see what I was reading. Or if they did, they likely closed the book forthwith, though they are good students with inquiring minds.

Now that I am curtailed in my pursuits as a high-iron worker, or even radish-buncher, I am going to finish this excellent tome at last.

And daughter Erin is a senior majoring in history at Lawrence. I hope she reads this entry to find out what my intentions are, and what this plain brown wrapper business has been all about.