Memoirs of Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. Published 1852.

This is one of those books that you will read snippets aloud to your family. It’s full of bits about the manias that people have gotten into up until the 19th century. Tulips, alchemy, witchcraft, beards, cant phrases “Does your mother know you’re out?“, the Crusades… all these and more are represented in this two-volumes-in-one set. It is not by any means scholarly — it was then and is now rather “popular non-fiction.” Even though Mackay wasn’t always correct with his reporting, he was nearly always entertaining.¹

This is a project that I’ve been working on for a very long time, it was one of the first I signed up to post-process for DP, and over the three years it took me to do it, I learned so much and therefore had to change things so many times…

But it’s uploaded now, and has its own life. Be well, Delusions!

1. Except the Crusades chapter tends to drag on… but then again, so did the Crusades.[back]

The experiment of free government is not one which can be tried once for all. Every generation must try it for itself. As each new generation starts up to the responsibilities of manhood, there is, as it were, a new launch of Liberty, and its voyage of experiment begins afresh.

Robert C. Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1852, p. 163. Noted in Lord Acton, A Lecture on the Study of History Delivered at Cambridge, June 11, 1895. London: MacMillian and Co., 1911.

Mrs Whittelsey’s Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3 (1852). Abigail Goodrich Whittelsey (1788-1858) edited several periodicals with names similar to this one. Her brother was “Peter Parley.”

This is a rather religious periodical full of advice to young mothers, some reprinted from other works, some original.

Some, however, sounds familiar…

THE STUPID, DULL CHILD.

There is always great danger of wounding the sensibilities of a timid, retiring child. It requires great forbearance and discrimination on the part of parents and teachers, in their endeavors to develop the latent faculties of the minds of such children, (whether this dullness is natural, or the effect of untoward circumstances,) without injuring the sensibilities of the heart.

This is especially true at the present day, when the world is laying such heavy demands upon the time and attention of parents. We not unfrequently hear a father confessing, with regret, to be sure, but without any apparent endeavors to obviate the evil, that his time and thoughts are so absorbed in the cares of his business, that his little children scarcely recognize him, as he seldom returns to his family, till they are in bed, and goes forth to his business before they are up in the morning.

Thanks to Josephine Paolucci for Post-processing this periodical!

A fair young girl was to the altar led
By him she loved, the chosen of her heart;
And words of solemn import there were said,
And mutual vows were pledged till death should part.

But life was young, and death a great way off,
At least it seemed so then, on that bright morn;
And they no doubt, expected years of bliss,
And in their path the rose without a thorn.

Cherished from infancy with tenderest care,
A precious only daughter was the bride;
And when that young protector’s arm she took,
She for the first time left her parents’ side.

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