From the Archives

Reader’s Digest has been helping loyal readers in all manner of unforeseen ways over the decades, as this letter from November 1948 proves. My friend’s summer cottage is far off the beaten track. One day when her husband was away, she was peacefully reading and sunbathing when she heard footsteps. There was no time to retreat to the house. She slapped her magazine down in the place of underwear and had just folded her arms across her chest as the local carpenter came trudging around the corner.

Ignoring anything unusual, he discussed some work he was to do. My friend grew momentarily more uncomfortable but at last she had an inspiration. “Very well,” she said. “You take the measurements while I slip into something more comfortable than the Reader’s Digest.”