Entries from September 2006 ↓

The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, Volume 23, Issue 1. Probably edited by Lewis Gaylord Clark, but I can’t find a definitive (i.e. library) reference to this.

This is the first issue of what is likely to be a very long series.

Volume Bookp(h)ile

Washington city is agitated over the antics of a hypnotic tramp, who has scared the nervous suburbanites almost into hysterics. According to several excited parents, he is in the habit of hypnotizing their little boys and girls and making them steal to provide for his wants. The man is described as a well-dressed and polished man, 25 years old, rather tall, with dark mustache and deep-set eyes. Mrs. Martha Hays, one of the complainants, declares that the tramp took her son, Willie, into the railroad yards and hypnotized him by making him gaze at a bright metal disk. After he had got him under the influence, the mother says, the tramp made the boy go to her house and steal a quantity of clothes and provisions. Another case is reported where the man is said to have used his influence on a little girl and caused her to go to the grocery store where her family dealt, and get him a dozen cigars and a pint of whisky. She deceived the grocer by stating that the articles were for her father. Several other cases of the kind have been reported, and the police, who at first were inclined to regard the thing as a joke, are now seriously looking for the man with the deep-set blue eyes.

The quaint little town of St. Nicholas, in East Flanders, boasts the possession of two children of such extraordinary abnormal growth as to put completely in the shade all similar infant prodigies of the past or present. These veritable Brobdignagian youngsters are boy and girl. The leder, Master Clement Smedst, is 15 years of age and weighs no less than 420 pounds (30 stone); the circumference of his body is 6 feet 6 inches; he measures 36 inches around the leg and 28 inches around the arm. His sister Bertha, is 8 years old, and turns the scale at 224 pounds (16 stone). In spite of their enormous dimensions their activity is remarkable, for they trip and skip about with all the agility of other children their age. It is an astonishing sight to see these infant mountains of humanity romping about in country lanes with other children of the village. One would imagine them to be the offspring of a race of giants, so high do they tower over the heads of their little playfellows. Their appearance is decidedly interesting, both having extremely handsome and regular features. Bertha, like other girls of tender years, delights in nursing a doll, which seems ludicrously out of place and proportion in the arms of the young giantess. The couple are attracting the attention of the country around, and on fine days crowds of people flock into the quiet little town in order to catch a glimpse of these colossal children.

The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi, by Giacomo Leopardi. Translated by Frederick Townsend. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887.

Thanks to Daniel Emerson Griffith for post-processing this book.

The Wit and Humor of America, Volume 5, by Marshall P. Wilder. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1907.

Thanks to Suzanne Lybarger for post-processing this book!

The Dead Men’s Song: being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison, Together with a Browse Through Other Gems of His and Recollections of Older Days, by Champion Ingraham Hitchcock.

This is the story of the poem Derelict with appropriately gruesome woodcut illustrations, including facsimiles of sheet music written for (part of) the poem (originally published in 1891).

Thanks to the fabulous David Newman for his transcription of the music to A Piratical Ballad. You can see the whole thing at PG, but if you want to practice your singing, see my page: A Piratical Ballad.

Bookp(h)ile

It is stated that at Niagara Falls, during a recent storm, the strong easterly gale sent the waters of Lake Erie westward, leaving the Niagara River and tributaries lower than were ever known before. Buffalo Creek was so low that all the vessels in it were grounded, and Niagara Falls was a rivulet compared with its native grandeur. The bed of the American branch was so denuded that you could travel in its rocky bed without wetting your feet, and mysteries that were never before revealed came to light on that day. Rocks that were heretofore invisible appeared in their full grown deformity upon the surface, and great was the consternation among the finny tribes. The Three Sisters were accessible to foot-passengers, and many traversed where human foot had never trod, with perfect impunity and dry feet. Below the falls was the wonder of wonders. The water was full twenty feet lower than usual, and the oldest inhabitants gazed in wonder at the transformation. Near Suspension Bridge the celebrated rock at Witmer’s mill, upon which a drowning man caught and was rescued several years ago, which barely projects it head above the water, was laid bare 20 feet above the surface. Suffice it to say the wind subsided that evening, the waters returned to their wonted haunts, the fish breathed freer, the rocks again hid their diminished heads, and the roar of the cateract [sic] resumed its ancient tone, and the waters rushed onward to the sea. Niagara was herself again.

(1813)

I have in my possession a curious volume of Latin verses, which I believe to be unique. It is entitled Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatorum libri quinque. It purports to be printed at Perth, and bears date 1679. By the appellation which the author gives himself in the preface, hypodidasculus, I suppose him to have been usher at some school. It is no uncommon thing now a days for persons concerned in academies to affect a literary reputation in the way of their trade. The “master of a seminary for a limited number of pupils at Islington,” lately put forth an edition of that scarce tract, the Elegy in a Country Churchyard (to use his own words), with notes and head-lines!–But to our author. These epigrams of Alexander Fulton, Scotchman, have little remarkable in them besides extreme dulness and insipidity; but there is one, which, by its being marshalled in the front of the volume, seems to have been the darling of its parent, and for its exquisite flatness, and the surprising stroke of anachronism with which it is pointed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion. It is addressed, like many of the others, to a fair one:–

Which, in humble imitation of mine author’s peculiar poverty of stile, I have ventured thus to render into English:–

The happy idea of an American war undertaken in the cause of beauty ought certainly to recommend the author’s memory to the countrymen of Madison and Jefferson; and the bold anticipation of the discovery of that Continent in the time of the Trojan War is a flight beyond the Sibyll’s books.

(more from Charles Lamb, from “Table-Talk from The Examiner“)