And when I get ready to retire I’m going to build me an up-to-date bungalow in some lovely resort, not in Como or any other of the proverbial Grecian isles you may be sure, but in somewheres like Florida, California, Santa Fe, & etc., and devote myself just to reading the classics, like Longfellow, James Whitcomb Riley, Lord Macaulay, Henry Van Dyke, Elbert Hubbard, Plato, Hiawatha, & etc. Some of my friends laugh at me for it, but I have always cultivated a taste for the finest in literature. I got it from my Mother as I did everything that some people have been so good as to admire in me.
Zero Hour, Berzelious Windrip
Although this list of great literature suffers from age, it seems difficult to dismiss the possibility that the author, Sinclair Lewis, was not being a tad satirical.
You can look up the great works of such literary giants as Elbert Hubbard and Henry Van Dyke on Wikipedia as I did but the real eye-opener is this guy Hiawatha (not Longfellow’s epic hero). I don’t know if Windrip ever read any works attributed to Hiawatha (if there are any) but despite the vagaries of oral history, the story of Hiawatha is quite interesting.
Do you think an “up-to-date bungalow” references such wonders of the world as electricity and indoor plumbing?
A Celebration of Reading 
Buzz Windrip writes: “not in Como or any other of the proverbial Grecian isles.” This implies that Lake Como is one of the Greek islands in the Mediterranean. Really? And notice that those are “proverbial isles.” I thought they were real islands. Do you suppose that Lewis is suggesting that Windrip is a bit lacking in knowledge of the real world?
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