Behooven

Bad as they were, one perforce felt masculinely behooven to admire their courage . . . conversely, one could not refrain from meanly wondering just where and for how long they’d been secretly practicing . . . however, applause and many encores (from bilge to crow’s nest) greeted all antics from our two Pavlovas . . . and reflectively, their presentations were far less hurtful than having to listen to the amateur squeakings of scrawny, self-imagined sopranos and contraltos who habitually appeared at well-remembered ship’s concerts in bygone years.

Now it behooves me as it has never behooven me before, to bid you farewell with the warning, “Don’t let this happen to you.”

No, she reported later, her husband did not take any note whatsoever of the notice, and as a result he was not behooven to avoid doing what he, as a towering literary agent, seems to have been born to do, and that was to telephone.