From the Mailbag

Recently someone contacted the Robert Benchley Society to ask:

Can you please tell me the date that Mr. Benchley first used the quote

"there are two kinds of people in the world.."

I am writing a paper for school and need the date, at least the year, of the original quote.

Thank you very much for your assistance.

Thank you for contacting the Robert Benchley Society.

The quotation is: "There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not."

In is from his essay "The Most Popular Book of the Month," which is a literary review of the New York Telephone Directory as if it were a novel.

The essay also contains the hilarious line: "But it is the opinion of the present reviewer that the weakness of plot is due to the great number of characters which clutter up the pages. The Russian school is responsible for this."

It appears in the first book of Mr. Benchley's collected writings, titled, "Of All Things" and published in 1921.

David Trumbull