Patience Is a Virtue We Are Reluctant to Receive

Franklin Pierce Adams (1881 – 1960) was an American columnist, well known for his wit and his newspaper column, “The Conning Tower.” Having one’s work published in F.P.A.’s column was enough to launch a career, as in the case of Dorothy Parker and James Thurber. Parker quipped, “He raised me from a couplet.” 

“You can learn many things from children,” wrote Adams. “How much patience you have, for instance.”

During World War I, Adams was in the U.S. Army, serving in military intelligence and also writing a column, “The Listening Post,” for Stars and Stripes. As a panelist on radio’s Information Please (1938–48), he was the designated expert on poetry, old barroom songs, and Gilbert and Sullivan, which he always referred to as Sullivan and Gilbert.

F.P.A. was married and had two sons.