I’ve been without internet when not at work, so I didn’t have my Tuesday meme post scheduled the way I usually do. Hence, you get it on Wednesday!

McKinley peered at the world through deep-socketed gray eyes that seemed almost luminescent. Kindly and sweet-tempered, he once invited into his closed carriage, during a downpour, a hostile reporter who had been attacking him in print throughout a congressional reelection campaign. “Here, you put on this overcoat and get into that carriage,” he told the rain-soaked journalist. “I guess you don’t know who I am,” replied the surprised scribe. “I have been with you the whole campaign, giving it to you every time you spoke and I am going over to-night to rip you to pieces if I can.” “I know,” said the congressman, “but you put on this coat and get inside so you can do a better job.” PRESIDENT MCKINLEY: ARCHITECT OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY

WWW Wednesday

WHAT have you finished reading recently? William McKinley, Kevin Phillips; and a radio drama of The Two Towers.

WHAT are you reading now? Listening to a radio drama of Return of the King, nosing into PJ O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores, thinking I need to get back into Into the Planet.

WHAT are you reading next?

Oh, Mr. Polk has been sitting in the 1840s for over a year now, having watched me work steadily deeper into the ‘impending crisis’ late last year and then suddenly bound a century forward to frustrate LBJ by reading all the presidents around him but not him.