It’s been reported that Dorothy Parker would answer the phone with “What fresh hell is this?” Probably not true. It has been reported that when her doorbell rang, she would say “What fresh hell can this be?” That’s more likely.

On October 16, 1888, a letter was postmarked the previous day was delivered George Lusk, who was chairman of a group of volunteers who were patrolling the Whitechapel area of London because of a series of murders. You know those killings as the Jack the Ripper murders. The letter (accompanying half of a kidney) that Lusk received on this day in 1888 was the “‘From Hell’ letter“.

I won’t go into all the details of the letter, or other letters others received, nor the Whitechapel murders in general. I’ll just mention that George Lusk didn’t know what fresh hell he was encountering that day, and he probably wasn’t expecting what he got.

Dorothy Parker, meanwhile, was expecting the worst, but often didn’t get it.

I truly hope your expectations and results are both far away better than the real and imagined fresh hells of Lusk and Parker.