Some of us may have disagreed with Miss Molly about a few things like politics, life, art and just about everything else. But we carried her column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette out of respect for her sheer natural talent. Till it got so we could anticipate her every Texanism before she repeated it. After a while, that kind of thing gets to be old sombrero.

You have to feel sorry for a younger generation that never knew Molly Ivins in her prime, but only Molly Ivins the public monument, the folk heroine who was rolled out on appropriate occasions to delight those of the right, or rather left, persuasion.

But there was a time when Miss Ivins delighted all, when every column was as wry as a really good margarita, as doughy and nourishing as a hand-rolled tortilla fresh off the griddle. As when, always a Fort Worth kind of gal, she described Dallas as the kind of town "that would have rooted for Goliath to beat David."

Miss Molly was a Smithie of the old, pre-politically correct school, class of '66. She was at her most adorable - how she would have hated that word, adorable - when mixing her Smith Latin and Old Texican, as in: "The sine qua non, as we say in AmarilloŠ."

I was once married to a lady like that (Waco High, '54; Smith College, '58), though she would never have thought of showing off her learning. And there's just no other word for that combination of Texan and Terence but adorable.

Finally, let it be said in tribute to Miss Molly that, even when she stole a line or three, inadvertently of course, she stole only from the best: Florence King.

You have to admire somebody with both that kind of taste and that kind of nerve. No wonder she didn't last at the New York Times.