Pip Pip

Uncle Seymour had been invited to the University of Oxford to give a talk. He was being shown around the colleges by a fellow academic, and they walked past a worker cleaning imposing gothic stone structures. His English companion turned to my uncle and said, with a wry smile, "They collect the dirt and send it to Yale so they can put it on their buildings."

Is it sophisticated to copy the British? When did "the English academic" make a comeback?

French, but who can tell

[The Chronicle of Higher Education]