Dear Rear Admiral

Harry Allen Smith, an American journalist, author and humorist whose work was particularly popular in the 1940s and 50s, wrote the following letter of thanks in 1975 to a Dr. Aubrey Wilcox. Wilcox was apparently Smith's proctologist, and it seems the brains behind an aptly shaped Christmas gift opened the previous day.

Transcript follows.


Source

Transcript

December 26 1975.

Dear Rear Admiral:

How appropriate---the candle with index finger extended, for use in massaging my prostate (while lit). I got two candles for Christmas---one from an Aubrey and one from Audrey Christie, the oldtime musical comedy star and one of our ancient friends. Yours, with the courtin’ fingers at the ready, was by far the more impressive.

Did I tell you about some son of a bitch sending me a tube of Preparation H, neatly fixed up to read “Preparation H. Allen Smith”? I don’t happen to have the piles, and I simply can’t throw anything like that away, so I have been assiduously searching for some friend who could use the goozlum. I can’t find a single god damn human being who’ll admit to having the screeching hemorrhoids.

I’ll just hold onto it and use it the next time I get a nosebleed.

yrs

Allen