Good Humor, Seldom Overdone
In Robert Underwood Johnson’s file were two telegrams. One read “Deeply regret that I have been detained. Clermont late. (signed) Robert Fulton.” One was “signed” by Henry George, (an economist famous for this theory of a “single tax.”), who came close to membership in the Hall, but never made it: “Deeply regret my absence from your goodly company. Have had a breakdown in my single taxcab.” In his own version of the early history of the Hall, a book called Your Hall of Fame, Dr. Johnson wrote, “It is somewhat ominous that the present writer was once addressed as the ‘Director of Hollow Fame.'” Once he even admitted that he was, in his words, “not without a keen sense of humor.”