AS that resonant lady was reading her poem in Washington at the

inauguration of President Clinton, parallel lines were running in the

opposite direction out of Glasgow South Side.

Maya Angelou's sweet concern was to write into her verses just about

everybody in the world.

For his part, Adam McNaughtan, local songster and rhymer, was more

exclusive. In a poem he says took about as long to produce as to peruse

he wants some people mentioned not at all for a while. His couplets are

for those who feel the world is too much with them. They are a

counterblast to the bad news of every next day.

His aim is to help a retreat from wars and rumours of wars. If instead

of watching television bulletins you find yourself making a mug of

cocoa, he is your man:

It's pleasant whiles to pit the world's troubles at your back,

And forget the war in Bosnia, for get aboot Iraq;

To ignore the Shetland oil slick an' the mess the country's in,

Consider not the Lilleys who nae longer toil nor spin . . .

And there are those same old names which absorb more than their share

of printer's ink:

Forget Lamont and Major, it's never them to blame,

An' the Opposition leader, the dy namic whitsisname,

An' the Scottish National Party

who've begun to flex their muscles,

To free us frae the Saxon chains an' sell us aff to Brussels.

McNaughtan recommends the protective shield of reading a book,

although buying a library of them would work better. A fire to warm the

toes is a further help. To have a glass of something sustaining is also

no hindrance, he allows.

Well, he would. Since he has about chucked the teaching, he sells

books. How in his shop window he sits with his broad back turned to the

outside world is one of the reliable sights of the changing city. But

removing a volume from his shelves can feel like extracting a drop of

his blood.

Sometimes a transfusion becomes necessary, whatever his sense of loss.

In the winter catalogue with his escapist poem resided a stray biography

of Alexander Woollcott of vague memory. Bang went #4.

Woollcott was a short, fat man with a squeaky voice who liked to claim

he was the best writer in America, except he had nothing to say. He was

a mixture of Nero and St Francis of Assisi. Now he is remembered for how

he made (or pinched) the crack that all the things he liked to do were

immoral, illegal, or fattening.

His name was a burden. It irked him how variously Woollcott can be

misspelled. And because of a youthful fondness for wearing girl's

clothes he was sometimes miscried Louisa M. Woollcott. He explained

often that he stayed single because married men make poor husbands.

Why he is being resurrected here is because this rig of the page has

been turning itself into a memorial column for the exhumed work of

defunct scribblers of yesteryear.

The biography, called Smart Aleck by Howard Teichmann, appeared about

30 years after his death in 1943. His name may always live for one

distinction in the perishable trade of journalism.

Towards the end of his life he had the arduous pleasure for a theatre

critic of playing the part of himself on the stage. With a third company

he toured gamely in The Man Who Came to Dinner. In a film Monty Woolley

played Woollcott. (Moss Hart and George Kaufman in their script also

took off Noel Coward and Harpo Marx.)

Adam McNaughtan's beguiling jingle prompted a hope that Smart Aleck

would be a reminder of more innocent times with gladder tidings, and a

quick dip suggested happy news. For the time being, however, the book

has been left behind to travel endlessly as lost property on a No. 5

bus. Two tales stick.

One concerned a New York production of George Bernard Shaw's St Joan.

Because the play's three hours and a half would run after the last

trains of suburban theatregoers, Shaw was asked to make cuts. He cabled:

BEGIN EARLIER OR RUN LATER TRAINS.

Secondly, when Harpo Marx, a great pal of Woollcott, turned up in a

dilapidated motor he was asked what the wreck was called. ''My town

car,'' Harpo replied.

''What was the town?'' Woollcott asked. ''Pompeii?''

Although not a lot to go on, it may be enough to suggest that where

jollier days, if they have ever existed, are to be found is in forgotten

pages which have not quite fallen off the shelves. On some other

Thursday, if the book comes in off the buses, there will be another

look, you bet.