This note contains one of MT's most famous lines -- perhaps his most profound display of the way humor can help human beings cope with reality. He wrote it in May 1897, while living in London. A reporter showed up at the door of the house MT was living in, to ask if the reports of the writer's death were true. MT replied by sending this note out to him. It is often misquoted, but the fact that it is so often quoted shows grateful people are for this example of grace in the face of what Wallace Stevens calls "the old catastrophe."
