Vacation from Dreariness

"I'm afraid that I have made the not uncommon mistake of trying to act as though I was still as young as I used to be." With that reluctant admission, Syndicated Columnist Joseph Alsop took off for Europe last week on an indeterminate leave of absence. His abrupt departure seemed surprising in a man who has always relished the partisan enthusiasms of a presidential campaign, the chance to expound for his readers on every facet of American politics. But this year, said Joe in his final column, "the campaign has been a dreary business." And in a letter to his syndicate, he explained that the dreariness was as much in him as it was on the hustings:

"Last year, supposing I could work nonstop as I once could, I devoted my whole holiday from the column to my book on the Greek Bronze Age. Consequently, I went back to my regular work about as stale as one of those pieces of 3,000-year-old bread that they sometimes find in Egyptian tombs. Then last spring I made an extremely taxing round-the-world reporting trip. After getting back from Saigon in mid-May, I was never really well, and this general misery crystallized into an interminable bout of summer flu and bronchitis that made this year's holiday from the column the opposite of restorative.

"I shall not bother you with symptoms, except to say that I am now having recurrent liver trouble, plus pretty nearly all the other afflictions normal for a 53-year-old man in a tired, rundown condition. My doctor says, in effect, that I am like the One Hoss Shay just prior to its famous last journey--still able to take the road, but unless immediately repaired, quite likely to come apart for good and all."

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