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Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956, p. 30—
Mr. Pickford was one of the finest Sanskrit scholars of his day. He was very poor; he had sacrificed his life to Sanskrit and his sister. His sister kept house for him in a little village where he was rector, a few miles outside Ipswich; a dour, bitter, selfish woman whom no one liked. So, for his sister's sake, he had put aside marriage, advancement, happiness, and had taken that obscure living in a poky village in a backward county, to make her a home where were few to hate her.
One day a letter came addressed to Mr. Pickford. Through several weeks he had been hoping for it; if it came, it might offer him an academic position where he could carry to fruition his life's work in Sanskrit. Every morning his sister went downstairs to meet the postman and see whether the letter had come: “No, John, it has not come today; perhaps it will come tomorrow.”
Long afterwards the Vice-Chancellor in whose gift that position lay, meeting Mr. Pickford accidentally in the streets of Ipswich, greeted him coldly: “I considered it discourteous of you not even to have acknowledged the offer which I made you.” Mr. Pickford made no comment. But, when he got back to the ugly, lonely, village rectory, he spoke to his sister. “Yes,” she said defiantly, “of course the letter came; I read and burned it. I’m very happy where I am, and you’re much better off in a place suited to you.”
A little later Horrid Old Pickford killed himself. My father preached his funeral sermon. There was no mention of, no hint of reference to, that story in it; but the Stoic view of self-murder was upheld by the Anglican preacher.
NOTE There is a short video that pertains to visual puns as embedded figures at this online link.
