Entries from July 2007 ↓

The management of the Grand Opera House announces the engagement for three nights only. Nov. 11, 12 and 13, of Santanelle, the master of hypnotism, and the most talked about man of the day. His long successful series of entertainments in Detroit, covering 28 performances, caused the liveliest commotion rmoung men of learning, the newpapers particularly, and medical profession generally. Santanelli’s endorsement signed by 75 of 26 medical students from the Detroit College of Medicine and the Michigan College, pronounce him a man of honesty of purpose and thoroughness in all his claims. He is a mystifier of the deepest skill; many physicians and scientific men and women attend his interesting exhibitions, soley for what they may be able to gain in the study of hypnotism.

The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, Volume 23, Issue 5.

Volume Bookp(h)ile

On the broad, brown salt meadows that skirt the Housatonic river just above its mouth is a vast colony of marsh wrens. In the acres of tangled tules and cat-tails they have built nests innumerable, prettily woven affairs of reed and cat-tail leaves. The nests, which are as large as one’s head, are so compactly constructed and so thoroughly thatched as to be entirely weather-tight. As a rule, the thrifty little chattering wrens prefer not to occupy a last year’s nest, so there are eery season hundreds of empty ones. They are not allowed to remain vacant long, however, for there are too many creatures seeking just such snug shelters.

One species of field or meadow mice, take possession of a great many of them, and the old mice can be seen at all times of the day nimbly running up and down the reeds, coming to an going from their cosy homes. Like most squatters, they are not the most desirable settlers, and, sad to say, frequently repay their open-hearted landlords by eating all the pink eggs in the near-by wrens’ nests. If caught in the act, a dozen of the excited birds will organize a vigilance committee, trail the thief to his home and drive him and his family from the nest, tearing it to pieces to prevent any return.

Big spiders, too, love to nest in the abandoned basket-like abodes, and live for many seasons in them.

The most desirable tenants of all are the big black and white hornets. By fare the greater number of the old nests are inhabited by these fiery fellows, and, odd to relate, they are best of friends with the landlords. As if by agreement with the wrens, they keep a perpetual guard over the new nests, as well as those where they live. Let a dog, an unconscious rail or snipe shooter, a bird’s-egging boy, or any creature whatever approach the nests within a few yards, and, suddenly, without warning, a cohort of winged warriors will fall on the intruder, and flight is the only safe course. To fight would mean death, for the hornets would soon be reinforced by other nestfuls until they would cover the victim and sting him to death.

The wrens seem fully conscious of the value of such sentinels, for they take care to build their new nests always very near the old. The birds are themselves very defenseless, and, their nests being easily located on account of size and the noise made by the wrens, they have been in some localities entirely wiped out by egg-collectors. The boys have learned to give this colony a wide berth, however, and the Housatonic marsh-wrens are fast increasing in numbers, and, unless the hornets shift their quarters, are likely to sing happily there in the reeds and raise many a brood of young in years to come.

• There is a man in Missouri whose feet are so large that he has to put his trousers on over his head.¹

• A Kentucky Shoemaker, for the sake of economy, has his sign painted thus:

           E
  BROWN’SHO—
           P
  

• A West Virginia man is so peculiarly affected by riding on a train that he has to chain himself to a seat to prevent his jumping out of the car window.²

• People in Madison county, Ky., who have paid their taxes are entitled to be married free by the sheriff.

• An Illinois farmer owns a hen which lays twin eggs every day.

• Geigersville, Ky., is the birthplace of a boy who was an inveterate tobacco chewer before he was a year old.

• An Alabama father has taught all his children to read with their books upside down.

• A Mississippi woman, who chews tobacco and drinks whisky, thinks that women have all the “rights” they need.

• A Minnesota girl of 15 can distinguish no color, everything being white to her, and she is compelled to wear dark glasses to protect her eyes from the glare.

• Young Darling killed a man in Washington county, Ky., the other day, and Love Divine stole a wagon load of tools in Fayette county.

• The servants in a school for girls in Connecticut, while cleaning up the rooms after school closed, discovered 3,678 wads of chewing gum stuck about in various places.³

• A Florida negro is growing fat on snake steaks.

• One county in Pennsylvania has contributed two members to congress, two to the state senate and two convicts to the penitentiary.⁴

• A Mississippi river steamboat roustabout drinks a half gallon of whisky every day.

• A South Carolina widow became her own mother-in-law recently. That is to say, she is now the wife of her husband’s father.⁵

• A New Hampshire girl of 23 never tasted hot bread until three weeks ago, when she stopped with friends at a Boston hotel.⁶

• A dude in Philadelphia was turned out of the club to which he belonged because he paid his tailor’s bill two days after he got his clothes.⁷

• An Idaho school teacher enforces obedience with a revolver.

• A Baptist preacher in Georgia refuses to baptize except in running water.

• An Arkansas hunter has a hound that will catch his tail in his teeth and roll down a hill faster than any other hound in the pack can run.⁸

• A Maine mother has an old slipper, still in use, which has spanked six generations of her family.⁹

• Michigan has a man who is so fat that he can’t fall down hard enough to hurt himself. He is known as the human spheroid.

• A Delaware peach grower has found an apple with fuzz on it growing on a peach tree.

• An Indiana calf, now two months old, has hoofs like a horse.

• A Chicago man paid his first visit to St. Louis in July, and he liked it so well that he has gone there to live.¹⁰

• A Texas preacher threw a Bible at a deacon who started to run away with the collection, and knocked him down the front steps of the church, breaking his leg in two places.¹¹

1. Oh really![back]
2. Wonder what he’d think about airplanes?[back]
3. They counted them all?![back]
4. These days, they’d be the same two people.[back]
5. At least she’s not her own grammaw.[back]
6. Didn’t they have ovens in New Hampshire?[back]
7. Can’t have any responsible parties here![back]
8. I’d like to see that.[back]
9. I wonder if it’s still in use?[back]
10. This is news?[back]
11. That was some throw![back]

Not my normal posting, but since this was inspired by the Ann Arbor Art Fairs (currently under way), I thought it might fit pretty well.

(CC) Rights

(Sources: I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? and Bill Liao’s Flickr. Editing by Bill Tozier.)

Nature is incomplete. She leaves man to provide for himself his raiment, shelter, and surroundings. Nature in her works throws out suggestions of beauty, rather than its perfect and complete embodiment. Her gold is imbedded in the rock. Her creations are limited by the particular material and the narrow conditions which are at her disposal at a given time and place. To seize the pure ideal of beauty which Nature suggests, but never quite realizes; to select from the universe of space and the eternity of time those materials and forms which are perfectly adapted to portray the ideal beauty; to clothe the abodes and the whole physical environment of man with that beauty which is suggested to us in sky and stream and field and flower; to present to us for perpetual contemplation the form and features of ideal manhood and womanhood; to hold before our imagination the deeds of brave men, and the devotion of saintly women; to thrill our hearts with the victorious struggle of the hero and the death-defying passion of the lover;–this is the mission and the significance of art.

Art is creative. The artist is a co-worker with God. To his hands is committed the portion of the world which God has left unfinished–the immediate environment of man. We cannot live in the fields, like beasts and savages. Art has for its purpose to make the rooms and houses and halls and streets and cities in which civilized men pass their days as beautiful and fair, as elevating and inspiring, as the fields and forests in which the primeval savage roamed. More than that, art aims to fill these rooms and halls and streets of ours with forms and symbols which shall preserve, for our perpetual admiration and inspiration, all that is purest and noblest and sweetest in that long struggle of man up from his savage to his civilized estate.

THE DUTY.

Beauty is the outward and visible sign of inward perfection, completeness, and harmony.–In an object of beauty there is neither too little nor too much; nothing is out of place; nothing is without its contribution to the perfect whole. Each part is at once means and end to every other. Hence its perfect symmetry; its regular proportions; its strict conformity to law.

The mind of man can find rest and satisfaction in nothing short of perfection; and consequently our hearts are never satisfied until they behold beauty, which is perfection’s crown and seal. Without it one of the deepest and divinest powers of our nature remains dwarfed, stifled, and repressed.

How to cultivate the love of beauty.–It is our duty to see to it that everything under our control is as beautiful as we can make it. The rooms we live in; the desk at which we work; the clothes we wear; the house we build; the pictures on our walls; the garden and grounds in which we walk and work; all must have some form or other. That form must be either beautiful or hideous; attractive or repulsive. It is our duty to pay attention to these things; to spend thought and labor, and such money as we can afford upon them, in order to make them minister to our delight. Not in staring at great works of art which we have not yet learned to appreciate, but by attention to the beauty or ugliness of the familiar objects that we have about us and dwell with from day to day, we shall best cultivate that love of beauty which will ultimately make intelligible to us the true significance of the masterpieces of art. Here as everywhere, to him that hath shall more be given. We must serve beauty humbly and faithfully in the little things of daily life, if we will enjoy her treasures in the great galleries of the world.

THE VIRTUE.

Beauty is a jealous mistress.–If we trifle with her; if we fall in love with pretentious imitations and elaborate ornamentations which have no beauty in them, but are simply gotten up to sell; then the true and real beauty will never again suffer us to see her face. She will leave us to our idols: and our power to appreciate and admire true beauty will die out.

Fidelity to beauty requires that we have no more things than we can either use in our work, or enjoy in our rest. And these things that we do have must be either perfectly plain; or else the ornamentation about them must be something that expresses a genuine admiration and affection of our hearts. A farmer’s kitchen is generally a much more attractive place than his parlor; just because this law of simplicity is perfectly expressed in the one, and flagrantly violated in the other. The study of a scholar, the office of the lawyer and the business man, is not infrequently a more beautiful place, one in which a man feels more at home, than his costly drawing room. What sort of things we shall have, and how many, cannot be determined for us by any general rule; still less by aping somebody else. In our housekeeping, as in everything else, we should begin with the few things that are absolutely essential; and then add decoration and ornament only so fast as we can find the means of gratifying cherished longings for forms of beauty which we have learned to admire and love. “Simplicity of life,” says William Morris, “even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside. If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. If the real thing is not to be had, learn to do without it. If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

THE REWARD.

The refining influence of beauty.–Devotion to art and beauty in simplicity and sincerity develops an ever increasing capacity for its enjoyment. As Keats, the master poet of pure beauty, tells us,

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep,
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

The refining influence of the love of beauty draws us mysteriously and imperceptibly, but none the less powerfully, away from what is false in thought and base in action; and develops a deep and lasting affinity for all that is true and good. The good, the true, and the beautiful are branches of a common root; members of a single whole: and if one of these members suffer, all the members suffer with it; and if one is honored, all are honored with it.

THE TEMPTATION.

Luxury the perversion of beauty.–Luxury is the pleasure of possession, instead of pleasure in the thing possessed. Luxury buys things, not because it likes them, but because it likes to have them. And so the luxurious man fills his house with all sorts of things, not because he finds delight in these particular things, and wants to share that delight with all his friends; but because he supposes these are the proper things to have, and he wants everybody to know that he has them.

The man who buys things in this way does not know what he wants. Consequently he gets cheated. He buys ugly things as readily as beautiful things, if only the seller is shrewd enough to make him believe they are fashionable. Others, less intelligent than this man, see what he has done; take for granted that because he has done it, it must be the proper thing to do; and go and do likewise. Thus taste becomes dulled and deadened; the costly and elaborate drives out the plain and simple; the desire for luxury kills out the love of beauty; and art expires.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

Ugly surroundings make ugly souls.–The outward and the inward are bound fast together. The beauty or ugliness of the objects we have about us are the standing choices of our wills. As the object, so is the subject. We grow into the likeness of what we look upon. Without harmony and beauty to feed upon, the love of beauty starves and dies. Our hearts become cold and hard. Not being called out in admiration and delight, our feelings brood over mean and sensual pleasures; they dwell upon narrow and selfish concerns; they fasten upon the accumulation of wealth or the vanquishing of a rival, as substitutes for the nobler interests that have vanished; and the heart becomes sordid, sensual, mean, petty, spiteful, and ugly. The spirit of man, like nature, abhors a vacuum; and into the heart from which the love of the beautiful has been suffered to depart, these hideous and ugly traits of character make haste to enter, and occupy the vacant space. What Shakspere says of a single art, music, is true of art and beauty in general:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

The hollowness of ostentation.–Man is never proud of what he really enjoys; never vain of what he truly loves; never anxious to show off the tastes and interests that are essentially his own. In order to take this false attitude toward an object, it is necessary to hold it apart from ourselves: a thing which the true lover can never do. He who loves beautiful things will indeed wish others to share his joy in them. But this sharing of our joy in beautiful objects, is a very different thing from showing off our fine things, simply to let other people know that we have them. Ostentation is the vice of ignorant wealth and vulgar luxury. It estimates objects by their expensiveness rather than by their beauty; it aims to awaken in ourselves pride rather than pleasure; and to arouse in others astonishment rather than admiration.

THE PENALTY.

Vulgarity akin to laziness.–Art, and the beauty which it creates, costs painstaking labor to produce. And to enjoy it when it is produced, requires at first thoughtful and discriminating attention. The formation of a correct taste is a growth, not a gift. Hence the dull, the lazy, and the indifferent never acquire this cultivated taste for the beautiful in art. This lack of perception, this incapacity for enjoyment of the beautiful, is vulgarity. Vulgarity is contentment with what is common, and to be had on easy terms. The root of it is laziness. The mark of it is stupidity.

At great pains the race has worked out beautiful forms of speech, for communicating our ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of life, instead of from its pure and noble aspects.

Vulgarity with reference to dress, dwellings, pictures, reading, is of the same nature. It results from the dull, unmeaning gaze with which one looks at things; the shiftless, slipshod way of doing work; the “don’t care” habit of mind which calls anything that happens to fall in its way “good enough.”

From all that is precious and beautiful and lovely the vulgar man is hopelessly excluded. They are all around him; but he has no eyes to see, no taste to appreciate, no heart to respond to them. “All things excellent,” so Spinoza tells us, “are as difficult as they are rare.” The vulgar man has no heart for difficulty; and hence the rare excellence of art and beauty remain forever beyond his reach.

From: Practical Ethics, by William DeWitt Hyde. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1892, p. 89 ff.

It is said that when Victoria, late queen of England, had read Alice in Wonderland she was so pleased that she asked for more of the author’s books. They brought her a treatise on logarithms by the Rev. C. L. Dodgson….

In an academical discussion held at Oxford he once published three rules to be followed in debate. This is one of the three: “Let it be granted that any one may speak at any length on a subject at any distance from that subject.”

From: Stories of Authors, British and American, by Edwin Watts Chubb, 1910.

Information: In Turkestan, on the right bank of the Amou Diara, in a chain of rocky hills, near the Bokharan town of Karaki, are a number of large caves which, upon examination, were found to lead to an underground city, built apparently long before the Christian era. According to effigies, inscriptions and designs upon the gold and sliver money unearthed from among the ruins, the existence of the town dates back to some two centuries before the birth of Christ.

The underground Bokharan city is about two versts long and is composed of an enormous labyrinth of corridors, streets and squares, surrounded by houses and other buildings two or three stories high. The edifices contain all kinds of domestic utensils, pots, urns, vases and so forth. In some of the streets falls of earth and rock have obstructed the passages, but generally the visitor can walk about freely without lowering his head. The high degree of civilization attained by the inhabitants of the city is shown by the fact that they built in several stories, by the symmetry of the streets and square, and by the beauty of the clay and metal utensils and of the ornaments and coins.