Entries from January 2006 ↓

So one of them accepted six or seven observations that were in agreement, except that they could not be regularized, upon a world–planet–satellite–and he gave it a name. He named it “Neith.”

Monstrator and Elvera and Azuria and Super-Romanimus–

Or heresy and orthodoxy and the oneness of all quasiness, and our ways and means and methods are the very same. Or, if we name things that may not be, we are not of lonely guilt in the nomenclature of absences–

But now Leverrier and “Vulcan.”

Leverrier again.

Or to demonstrate the collapsibility of a froth, stick a pin in the largest bubble of it. Astronomy and inflation: and by inflation we mean expansion of the attenuated. Or that the science of Astronomy is a phantom-film distended with myth-stuff–but always our acceptance that it approximates higher to substantiality than did the system that preceded it.

So Leverrier and the “planet Vulcan.”

And we repeat, and it will do us small good to repeat. If you be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized–being themselves hypnotized, or they could not hypnotize others–or that the hypnotist’s control is not the masterful power that it is popularly supposed to be, but only transference of state from one hypnotic to another–

If you be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized, you will not be able even to remember. Ten pages from here, and Leverrier and the “planet Vulcan” will have fallen from your mind, like beans from a magnet, or like data of cold meteorites from the mind of a Thomson.

Leverrier and the “planet Vulcan.”

And much the good it will do us to repeat.

But at least temporarily we shall have an impression of a historic fiasco, such as, in our acceptance, could occur only in a quasi-existence.

The Vitalized School, (1918) by Francis B. Pearson, an Ohio educator with progressive leanings. Not quite as engaging as his other books — in fact it’s quite creepy — The Vitalized School presents an idealized view of The Teacher (always female) and her relationship to the administration (always male) and to her students (usually empty vessels thirsty for inspiration).

Halil the Pedlar, by Maurus (Mór) Jókai. Translated by R. Nisbet (1901). Jókai (1825-1904) was a Hungarian novelist. This historical novel is set in the time of the overthrow of Sultan Achmed III (early 1700’s) — tulips and rebellion! There’s an interesting little passage on forcing tulips to bloom in autumn:

First of all he set about preparing a special forcing-bed of his own invention, in which he carefully mingled together the most nourishing soil formed among the Mountains of Lebanon from millennial deposits of cedar-tree spines, antelope manure, so heating and stimulating to vegetation, that wherever it falls on the desert, tiny oases, full of flowers and verdure, immediately spring up amidst the burning, drifting sand-hills, and burnt and pulverized black marble which is only to be found in the Dead Mountains. A judicious intermingling of this mixture produces a soft, porous, and exceedingly damp soil, and in this soil the Kapudan Pasha very carefully planted out his tulips with his own hands. He selected the bulbs resulting from last spring’s blooms, making a hole for each of them, one by one, with his index-finger, and banking them up gingerly with earth as soft as fresh bread crumbs.

Then he had snow fetched from the summits of the Caucasus, where it remains even all through the summer—whole ship loads of snow by way of the Black Sea—and kept the tulip-bulbs well covered with it, adding continually layers of fresh snow as the first layers melted, so that the hoodwinked tulips really believed it was now winter; and when towards the end of August the snow was allowed to melt altogether, they fancied spring had come, and poked their gold-green shoots out of their well-warmed, well-moistened bed.

On the eve of the Prophet’s birthday about fifty plants had begun to bloom, all of which had been named after battles in which the Mussulmans had triumphed, or after fortresses which their arms had captured. Then, however, the Kapudan Pasha was obliged to go to sea and command the fleet, in other words, he was constrained to leave his beloved tulips at the most interesting period of their existence.

On the very evening when the Sultan arrived at Scutari, one of the Kapudan Pasha’s gardeners came to him with the joyful intelligence that Belgrade, Naples, Morea, and Kermanjasahan would blossom on the morrow.

The Kapudan Pasha was wild with impatience. There they all were, just on the point of blooming, and he would be unable to see it. How he would have liked a contrary wind to have kept back the fleet for a day or two.

Thanks to Janet B. for post-processing this text!

Lectures on Language, as particularly connected with English Grammar, by William S. Balch, published 1838. William Stevens Balch (1806-1887) was a Universalist minister, who traveled around giving lectures on grammar. This is a series of lectures on grammar and the English language, given and written for a popular (i.e. not technical) audience. Once you get past the excessive use of partial italics, it’s quite readable. Balch is not a precriptivist, though he does insist that one should follow his method for understanding grammar.

I confess, however, that with the mention of grammar, an association of ideas are called up by no means agreeable. The mind involuntarily reverts to the days of childhood, when we were compelled, at the risk of our bodily safety, to commit to memory a set of arbitrary rules, which we could neither understand nor apply in the correct use of language. Formerly it was never dreamed that grammar depended on any higher authority than the books put into our hands. And learners were not only dissuaded, but strictly forbidden to go beyond the limits set them in the etymological and syntactical rules of the authors to whom they were referred. If a query ever arose in their minds, and they modestly proposed a plain question as to the why and wherefore things were thus, instead of giving an answer according to common sense, in a way to be understood, the authorities were pondered over, till some rule or remark could be found which would apply, and this settled the matter with “proof as strong as holy writ.” In this way an end may be put to the inquiry; but the thinking mind will hardly be satisfied with the mere opinion of another, who has no evidence to afford, save the undisputed dignity of his station, or the authority of books. This course is easily accounted for. Rather than expose his own ignorance, the teacher quotes the printed ignorance of others, thinking, no doubt, that folly and nonsense will appear better second-handed, than fresh from his own responsibility. Or else on the more common score, that “misery loves company.”

It seems also (on very brief reading) that Balch was an early semiotician. Though perhaps “philosopher of language” is more appropriate.

Words are the signs of ideas. Ideas are the impressions of things. Hence, in all our attempts to investigate the important principles of language, we shall employ the sign as the means of coming at the thing signified.

Can’t you just imagine a thirty-year-old minister lecturing on how we all are taught grammar wrongly?

Thanks to Amy Cunningham for post-processing this text. I’m sure it had quite a few challenges!

The greatest height at which an acrobatic performance ever took place was nearly 3,000 feet. An American aeronaut, Prof. Bartholomew, in 1889 at Melbourne, having ascended by a balloon to a height of 3,000 feet, made his ascent in a trapeze attached to a parachute, and during the descent performed a number of acrobatic and gymnastic feats. A cyclist, some time since, ascended at Charleroi, France, by a balloon in charge of Capt. Dennis, to which was suspended his bicycle. He worked the wheels of the machine as though he were riding along a road instead of being suspended at a height of about 1,300 feet. M. Blondin gave an acrobatic performance at the crystal palace, London, in 1862, on a rope 249 yards long, and 172 feet from the ground. On June 30, 1859, he crossed the Falls of Niagara on a tight rope in five minutes; on the Fourth of July he repeated the performance blindfold, trundling a wheelbarrow, and on Aug. 19 of the same year he carried a man on his back. On Sept. 14, 1860, he crossed on stilts in the presence of the Prince of Wales. His feats on the tight rope were extraordinary — he walked across enveloped in a sack made of blankets, turned somersaults and cooked dinner.

[“The descendants of man will nourish themselves by immersion in nutritive fluid. They will have enormous brains, liquid, soulful eyes, and large hands, on which they will hop. No craggy nose will they have, no vestigial ears; their mouths will be a small, perfectly round aperture, unanimal, like the evening star. Their whole muscular system will be shrivelled to nothing, a dangling pendant to their minds.”—Pall Mall Gazette, abridged.]

What, a million years hence, will become of the Genus

Humanum, is truly a question vexed;

At that epoch, however, one prophet has seen us

Resemble the sketch annexed.

For as Man undergoes Evolution ruthless,

His skull will grow “dome-like, bald, terete”;

And his mouth will be jawless, gumless, toothless—

No more will he drink or eat!

He will soak in a crystalline bath of pepsine,

(no Robert will then have survived, to wait,)

And he’ll hop on his hands as his food he steps in—

A quasi-cherubic gait!

No longer the land or the sea he’ll furrow;

The world will be withered, ice-cold, dead

As the chill of eternity grows, he’ll burrow

Far down underground instead.

If the Pall Mall Gazette has thus been giving

A forecast correct of this change immense,

Our stars we may thank, then, that we shan’t be living

A million years from hence!

A Jolly by Josh, by an otherwise unnamed person (1902). A letter from a man (Josh) to his nephew (Tom) who wishes to buy a pony. It is one of the self(?)-published books we’re contributing to the Project Gutenberg archive.

I have no idea who “Josh” is, nor why he would send a copy of his letter to “Charlie.” I doubt he is related to the popular character “Uncle Josh” created at about the same time by Cal Stewart for the Edison Wax Cylinders — Stewart’s “Josh” is much more homespun…

[T]he teacher elevates patriotism to the rank of a motive and proceeds to organize all the school activities in consonance with this conception. Actuated by this high motive the pupils, in time, come to look upon correct spelling not only as a comfort and a convenience, but also as a form of patriotism in that it is an exponent of intelligent observation and as such wins respect and commendation from people at home and people abroad. Or, to put the case negatively, if we were all deficient in the matter of spelling, the people of other lands would hold us up to ridicule because of this defect; but if we are expert in the art of spelling, they have greater respect for us and for our schools. Hence, such a simple matter as spelling tends to invest the flag of our country with better and fuller significance. Thus spelling becomes woven into the life processes, not as a mere task of the school, but as a privilege vouchsafed to every one who yearns to see his country win distinction.