This is to take exception to a term used by Chris Kaltenbach of the Baltimore Sun, in the article April 16, "On the Trail of Lincoln's Assassination."
In describing a character in the play Lincoln had chosen to see on that tragic evening — "Our American Cousin" —Kaltenbach used the word "rube." This is a term as offensive — or nearly so — to rural people as racial and anti-semitic terms are to their recipients.
I feel strongly that The Flier should have omitted it, substituting (in brackets) something much less offensive and stereotypical, even though both the writer and the Sun had failed to do so.
Patricia Marti
Columbia