It is almost grotesque, the contrast between the books themselves and the manner in which they are produced. One may picture the incongruous elements of the situation,–a young society man going up to his suite in a handsome modern apartment house, and dictating romance to a type-writer. In the evening he dines at his club, and the day after the happy launching of his novel he is interviewed by the representative of a newspaper syndicate, to whom he explains his literary method, while the interviewer makes a note of his dress and a comment on the decoration of his mantelpiece.

Surely romance written in this way–and we have not grossly exaggerated the way–bears no relation to modern literature other than a chronological one. The Prisoner of Zenda and A Gentleman of France, to mention two happy and pleasing examples of this type of novel, are not modern in the sense that they express any deep feeling or any vital characteristic of to-day. They are not instinct with the spirit of the times. One might say that these stories represent the novel in its theatrical mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just as a respectable bookkeeper likes to go into private theatricals, wear a wig with curls, a slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does the novel like to do the same. The day after the performance the whole artificial equipment drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper becomes a bookkeeper once more and a natural man. The hour before the footlights has done him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one place, but what is a prompter for if not to act in such an emergency? Now that it is over the affair may be pronounced a success,–particularly in the light of the gratifying statement that a clear profit has been realized towards paying for the new organ.

Leon H. Vincent: from “Stevenson’s St. Ives” in The Bibliotaph, and Other People. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.

Doctors lay by your Irksome Books
And all ye Petty-Fogging Rookes
Leave Quacking; and Enucleate
The vertues of our Chocolate.

Let th’ Universall Medicine
(Made up of Dead-mens Bones and Skin,)
Be henceforth Illegitimate,
And yeild to Soveraigne-Chocolate.

Let Bawdy-Baths be us’d no more;
Nor Smoaky-Stoves but by the whore
Of Babilon: since Happy-Fate
Hath Blessed us with Chocolate.

Let old Punctæus Greaze his shooes
With his Mock-Balsome: and Abuse
No more the World: But Meditate
The Excellence of Chocolate.

Let Doctor Trigg (who so Excells)
No longer Trudge to Westwood-Wells:
For though that water Expurgate,
’Tis but the Dreggs of Chocolate.

Let all the Paracelsian Crew
Who can Extract Christian from Jew;
Or out of Monarchy, A State,
Breake àll their Stills for Chocolate.

Tell us no more of Weapon-Salve,
But rather Doome us to a Grave:
For sure our wounds will Ulcerate,
Unlesse they’re wash’d with Chocolate.

The Thriving Saint, who will not come
Within a Sack-Shop’s Bowzing-Roome
(His Spirit to Exhilerate)
Drinkes Bowles (at home) of Chocolate.

His Spouse when she (Brimfull of Sense)
Doth want her due Benevolence,
And Babes of Grace would Propagate,
Is alwayes Sipping Chocolate.

The Roaring-Crew of Gallant-Ones
Whose Marrow Rotts within their Bones:
Their Bodyes quickly Regulate,
If once but Sous’d in Chocolate.

Young Heires that have more Land then Wit,
When once they doe but Tast of it,
Will rather spend their whole Estate,
Then weaned be from Chonolate.

The Nut-Browne-Lasses of the Land
Whom Nature vayl’d in Face and Hand,
Are quickly Beauties of High-Rate,
By one small Draught of Chocolate.

Besides, it saves the Moneys lost
Each day in Patches, which did cost
Them deare, untill of Late
They found this Heavenly Chocolate.

Nor need the Women longer grieve
Who spend their Oyle, yet not conceive,
For ’tis a Helpe-Immediate,
If such but Lick of Chocolate.

Consumptions too (be well assur’d)
Are no lesse soone then soundly cur’d:
(Excepting such as doe Relate
Unto the Purse) by Chocolate.

Nay more: It’s vertue is so much,
That if a Lady get a Touch,
Her griefe it will Extenuate,
If she but smell of Chocolate.

The Feeble-Man, whom Nature Tyes
To doe his Mistresse’s Drudgeries;
O how it will his minde Elate,
If shee allow him Chocolate!

’Twill make Old women Young and Fresh;
Create New-Motions of the Flesh,
And cause them long for you know what,
If they but Tast of Chocolate.

There’s ne’re a Common Counsell-Man,
Whose Life would Reach unto a Span,
Should he not Well-Affect the State,
And First and Last Drinke Chocolate.

Nor e’re a Citizen’s Chast wife,
That ever shall prolong her Life,
(Whilst open stands Her Posterne-Gate)
Unlesse she drinke of Chocolate.

Nor dost the Levite any Harme,
It keepeth his Devotion warme,
And eke the Hayre upon his Pate,
So long as he drinkes Chocolate.

Both High and Low, both Rich and Poore
My Lord, my Lady, and his —-
With all the Folkes at Billingsgate,
Bow, Bow your Hamms to Chocolate.

By Don Diego de Vadesforte, a.k.a. Capt. James Wadsworth, in Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke.

Man is the only animal with the powers of laughter, a privilege which was not bestowed on him for nothing. Let us then laugh while we may, no matter how broad the laugh may be, and despite of what the poet says about “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” The mind should occasionally be vacant, as the land should sometimes lie fallow, and for precisely the same reason.–Egerton Smith.

Related in: Book of Wise Sayings, Selected Largely from Eastern Sources, by William Alexander Clouston. London, Hutchinson & Co., 1893.

12. The Expulsion of Gutturals.–(i) Not only did the Normans help us to an easier and pleasanter kind of sentence, they aided us in getting rid of the numerous throat-sounds that infested our language. It is a remarkable fact that there is not now in the French language a single guttural. There is not an h in the whole language. The French write an h in several of their words, but they never sound it. Its use is merely to serve as a fence between two vowels–to keep two vowels separate, as in la haine, hatred. No doubt the Normans could utter throat-sounds well enough when they dwelt in Scandinavia; but, after they had lived in France for several generations, they acquired a great dislike to all such sounds. No doubt, too, many, from long disuse, were unable to give utterance to a guttural. This dislike they communicated to the English; and hence, in the present day, there are many people–especially in the south of England–who cannot sound a guttural at all. The muscles in the throat that help to produce these sounds have become atrophied–have lost their power for want of practice. The purely English part of the population, for many centuries after the Norman invasion, could sound gutturals quite easily–just as the Scotch and the Germans do now; but it gradually became the fashion in England to leave them out.

14. The Story of the GH.–How is it, then, that we have in so many words the two strongest gutturals in the language–g and h–not only separately, in so many of our words, but combined? The story is an odd one. Our Old English or Saxon scribes wrote–not light, might, and night, but liht, miht, and niht. When, however, they found that the Norman-French gentlemen would not sound the h, and say–as is still said in Scotland–licht, &c., they redoubled the guttural, strengthened the h with a hard g, and again presented the dose to the Norman. But, if the Norman could not sound the h alone, still less could he sound the double guttural; and he very coolly let both alone–ignored both. The Saxon scribe doubled the signs for his guttural, just as a farmer might put up a strong wooden fence in front of a hedge; but the Norman cleared both with perfect ease and indifference. And so it came to pass that we have the symbol gh in more than seventy of our words, and that in most of these we do not sound it at all. The gh remains in our language, like a moss-grown boulder, brought down into the fertile valley in a glacial period, when gutturals were both spoken and written, and men believed in the truthfulness of letters–but now passed by in silence and noticed by no one.

From: A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, By JMD Meiklejohn, published 1887. (Bookp(h)ile.)

‘Gammon!’ said Harry. ‘Wait a moment,’ said I; ‘I shall throw sixes;’ and to be sure down came the sixes, striking him on the ‘seize’ point, and then rebounding to my own, swept every man from the table. The board was put up, and after a little closing chat with Mrs. H——, I was taking leave, when Harry called me back. ‘Julian,’ said he, ‘Come and breakfast to-morrow upon ‘Zounds and Sounds.’’ ‘Zounds and Sounds!’ said I, ‘I shall be delighted! What a charming dish! I remember of——’ ‘And Jule,’ said Harry, interrupting me, ‘perhaps Fanny would come?’ ‘Oh, impossible! you know she is delicate yet, and the mornings are quite chilly.’ ‘Well, good night; and don’t forget that we breakfast early.’ ‘My dear Sir,’ said I, ‘I could rise at cock-crow for Zounds and Sounds.’ • • • Now, I had never even heard the words before; but I pique myself on knowing strange and choice dishes; not the far-fetched things of the French, but things good per se, and without a sea of condiments; the delicate, the rare subtleties which our own women know so well to compound. Of course, I ought to know Zounds and Sounds, and of course, I should not hurry to disclaim that knowledge. Harry might have known, and then again he might not; but he remembered, as I have since ascertained, of having eaten something of the kind some thirty years since; something he had perhaps cloyed of, and so forgotten, but something very delectable; something that would perhaps touch his palate again like the maple-sugar and other dainties of his boyhood. Having found the article that day, he had secured a large quantity without asking what they were, and had them taken privately to his house, with a view of making up the dish himself. I came home, rolling the magic words ‘as a sweet morsel under my tongue,’ and immediately sought out a curious dictionary, in which various strange things are expounded; and failing in that, looked into Crabbe’s Synonymes, (by the rule of contraries, I suppose, for there certainly could be nothing like Zounds and Sounds,) but as Longfellow says, ‘All in vain!’ Fanny having retired, I got into my slippers and sat down by the fire to ruminate a little. ‘Zounds and Sounds!’ said I. ‘What an incomparable phrase! What a sweet suffusion of the z! What vibratory tingling upon the tympanum! How pleasantly percussive to the brain; and how even the teeth partake of the sensation! I declare! I must write a song upon Zounds and Sounds! I will. I will write an invitatory song to the Editor. Let me see. Zounds, rounds, bounds and hounds. Exactly! Now then:

Finishing the song, I looked about for my flute to find a tune for it, but reflecting that I should wake the house, put it by again for another time. ‘After all,’ said I, ‘a flute couldn’t touch that z sound. Indeed what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew’s-harp? Ay, that’s the thing! A Jew’s-harp has something like it; and so—so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are—Yes,’ said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, ‘Zounds and Sounds are bumble-bees!—bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered in some warm climate where they abound, and pickled! Henceforth let no man call that bee ‘humble;’ he is bumble, most decidedly!’ And with this thought I hurried off to bed. • • • It may have been an hour afterward, while I was in the maze between sleeping and waking, that the words ‘Zounds and Sounds’ escaped me, unawares. ‘What’s that?’ said Fanny, starting up. ‘Are you sure that I spoke?’ said I. ‘Indeed, I am; you said something about going down town.’ ‘Did I? Well, I forgot to tell you. I am going down town; so you must not be surprised at my rising early to-morrow. I think of breakfasting out.’ ‘You think! I should think you did; thinking aloud, and asleep too! Don’t think so again, dear; you woke me out of a sound sleep.’ • • • At an early hour the next morning, I was at my friend’s house. How I got there, I do not now remember; but I have a distinct recollection of a ringing sensation in my head, and of not being quite sure that I was awake, till the romping of a dozen children, and a buzzing sound every where of Zounds and Sounds aroused me to a full sense of the great treat that was coming. Then it was that I sang the last night’s song, and it took immensely, especially with the children. Harry was not there to hear it, and lost that pleasure, (as I have never repeated it,) unless he heard it in the kitchen, where he was superintending the burden of the song. Shortly after, came the call of ‘breakfast,’ and we all walked in, at least fifteen of us, and took seats at the table before the Zounds and Sounds were brought in. Harry was already seated at the head. Presently the Zounds came in, piping hot; but before they had reached the table, Harry turned to me and asked if I had any preference. ‘Have you taken the stingers out?’ said I, thinking of bumble-bees. ‘Stingers!’ said Harry. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said I; ‘only a joke;’ and making a bold guess at some white things that now appeared on the table, added, ‘A little of the breast.’ Harry smiled, but said nothing. Plates were now served all around. Breakfast went on, and Zounds and Sounds went down, and every body appeared to be perfectly charmed with the dish. One might say, to be sure, that they were a little saltish, and then again, with that exception, there was no remarkable flavor; but that might be the rarity, not to have any flavor. No one, however, thought aloud in this manner. On the contrary, there was a manifest inclination to detect resemblances of taste and flavor to those of very many rare and delicate cookeries; but after awhile there came a pause. It was during this pause, that my friend turned to his wife and inquired if she was quite sure they were seasoned properly. ‘I think they are a little salt,’ said Mrs. H——; but, my dear, you know you prepared them yourself.’ Harry looked thunder-clouds, and called one of the servants. ‘Mary,’ said he, ‘take the key and bring me a raw Zound. You will find two buckets-full in the wine-cellar.’ Wondering at this, we wondered still more at finding our coffee-cups all empty at the same time. Each one was waiting for drink. The raw Zound was now brought, and Harry, plunging his fork into it, while all eyes were fixed upon him, turned it over and over, examining it on all sides, and then, with his arm at a right angle, raised it deliberately to his nose. Almost instantaneously, and while still some distance off, there came a very wise expression about his nostrils, which, as the Zound came nearer, dilated still more and more, deepening the expression to a frightful extent, till, all doubts removed, he shouted out: ‘Codfish! by thunder!’

We had actually taken within us, and bepraised, the unfreshened tongues and bladders of codfish!

Jervas, who affected to be a Free-thinker, was one day talking very irreverently of the Bible. Dr. Arbuthnot maintained to him that he was not only a speculative, but a practical believer. Jervas denied it. Arbuthnot said that he would prove it: “You strictly observe the second commandment;” said the Doctor, “for in your pictures you ‘make not the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth’”!

From Shearjashub Spooner: Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, Volume 2. 1880.

We scarcely know when we have been more amused, than in reading lately a satirical sketch, entitled ‘The House of Mourning: a Farce.’ Squire Hamper and his lady, personages rather of the rustic order, who have come up to London from the family seat in the country, in the progress of shopping in a street at the west end of the metropolis, stop at a dry-goods undertakers, with a hatchment, and ‘Maison de Deuil,’ or House of Mourning, by way of a sign over the door. ‘Mason de Dool!’ exclaims the Squire, responding to his wife’s translation; ‘some foreign haberdasher’s, I ’spose.’ The lady, however, coaxes him to go in; for although she has lost no friends, she longs to see the ‘improvements in mourning,’ which she can do by ‘cheapening a few articles, and buying a penny-worth of black pins.’ The worthy pair enter, take an ebony chair at the counter, while a clerk in a suit of sables addresses the lady, and in sepulchral tones inquires if he ‘can have the melancholy pleasure of serving her.’ ‘How deep would you choose to go, Ma’am? Do you wish to be very poignant? We have a very extensive assortment of family and complimentary mourning. Here is one, Ma’am, just imported; a widow’s silk, watered, as you perceive, to match the sentiment. It is called the ‘Inconsolable,’ and is very much in vogue in Paris for matrimonial bereavements.’ ‘Looks rather flimsy, though,’ interposes the Squire; ‘not likely to last long, eh, Sir?’ ‘A little slight, praps,’ replies the shopman; ‘rather a delicate texture; but mourning ought not to last forever, Sir.’ ‘No,’ grumbles the Squire; ‘it seldom does, ’specially the violent sorts.’ ‘As to mourning, Ma’am,’ continues the shopman, addressing the lady, ‘there has been a great deal, a very great deal indeed, this season; and several new fabrics have been introduced, to meet the demand for fashionable tribulation, and all in the French style; they of France excel in the funèbre. Here for instance is an article for the deeply-afflicted; a black crape, expressly adapted to the profound style of mourning; makes up very sombre and interesting. Or, if you prefer to mourn in velvet, here’s a very rich one; real Genoa, and a splendid black; we call it the ‘Luxury of Woe.’ It’s only eighteen shillings a yard, and a superb quality; fit, in short, for the handsomest style of domestic calamity.’ Here the Squire wants to know ‘whether sorrow gets more superfine as it goes upward in life.’ ‘Certainly—yes, Sir—by all means,’ responds the clerk; ‘at least, a finer texture. The mourning of poor people is very coarse, very; quite different from that of persons of quality. Canvass to crape, Sir.’ The lady next asks if he has a variety of half-mourning; to which he replies: ‘O, infinite—the largest stock in town; full, and half, and quarter, and half-quarter mourning, shaded off from a grief prononcé to the slightest nuance of regret.’ The lady is directed to another counter, and introduced to ‘the gent. who superintends the Intermediate Sorrow Department;’ who inquires: ‘You wish to inspect some half-mourning, Madam? the second stage of distress? As such Ma’am, allow me to recommend this satin—intended for grief when it has subsided; alleviated, you see, Ma’am, from a dead black to a dull lead color. It’s a Parisian novelty, Ma’am, called ‘Settled Grief,’ and is very much worn by ladies of a certain age, who do not intend to embrace Hymen a second time.’ (‘Old women, mayhap, about seventy,’ mutters the Squire.) ‘Exactly so, Sir; or thereabout. Not but what some ladies, Ma’am, set in for sorrow much earlier; indeed, in the prime of life; and for such cases it is a very durable wear; but praps it’s too lugubre: now here’s another—not exactly black, but shot with a warmish tint, to suit a woe moderated by time. The French call it a ‘Gleam of Comfort.’ We’ve sold several pieces of it; it’s very attractive; we consider it the happiest pattern of the season.’ ‘Yes,’ once more interposes the Squire; ‘some people are very happy in it no doubt.’ ‘No doubt, Sir. There’s a charm in melancholy, Sir. I’m fond of the pensive myself. Praps, Madam, you would prefer something still more in the transition state, as we call it, from grave to gay. In that case, I would recommend this lavender Ducape, with only just a souvenir of sorrow in it; the slightest tinge of mourning, to distinguish it from the garb of pleasure. But possibly you desire to see an appropriate style of costume for the juvenile branches, when sorrow their young days has shaded? Of course, a milder degree of mourning than for adults. Black would be precocious. This, Ma’am, for instance—a dark pattern on gray; an interesting dress, Ma’am, for a little girl, just initiated in the vale of tears; only eighteen-pence a yard Ma’am, and warranted to wash.’ The ‘Intermediate Sorrow Department,’ however, derives no patronage from the ‘hard customer;’ and we next find her in the ‘Coiffure Department,’ looking at caps, and interrogating a show-woman in deep mourning, who is in attendance, and enlarging upon the beauty of her fabrics: ‘This is the newest style, Ma’am. Affliction is very much modernized, and admits of more gout than formerly. Some ladies indeed for their morning grief wear rather a plainer cap; but for evening sorrow, this is not at all too ornée. French taste has introduced very considerable alleviations.’ Failing however, in ‘setting her caps’ for the new customer, the show-woman ‘tries the handkerchief’ enticement; exhibiting one with a fringe of artificial tears worked on the border—the ‘Larmoyante,’ a sweet-pretty idea.’ The Squire intimates that as a handkerchief to be used, it would most likely be found ‘rather scrubby for the eyes.’ But the show-woman removes this objection: ‘O dear, no, Sir—if you mean wiping. The wet style of grief is quite gone out—quite! The dry cry is decidedly the genteel thing.’ No wonder that the Squire, as he left the establishment with his ‘better half,’ was fain to exclaim: ‘Humph! And so that’s a Mason de Dool! Well! if it’s all the same to you, Ma’am, I’d rather die in the country, and be universally lamented after the old fashion; for, as to London, what with the new French modes of mourning, and the ‘Try Warren’ style of blacking the premises, it do seem to me that before long all sorrow will be sham Abram, and the House of Mourning a regular Farce!’

I have an old friend who lives just around the corner from one of the main lines of travel in New England, and whenever I am passing near by and the railroads let me, I drop in on him awhile and quarrel about art. It’s a good old-fashioned comfortable, disorderly conversation we have generally, the kind people used to have more than they do now–sketchy and not too wise–the kind that makes one think of things one wishes one had said, afterward.

We always drift a little at first, as if of course we could talk about other things if we wanted to, but we both know, and know every time, that in a few minutes we shall be deep in a discussion of the Things That Are Beautiful and the Things That Are Not.

Brim thinks that I have picked out more things to be beautiful than I have a right to, or than any man has, and he is trying to put a stop to it. He thinks that there are enough beautiful things in this world that have been beautiful a long while, without having people–well, people like me, for instance, poking blindly around among all these modern brand-new things hoping that in spite of appearances there is something one can do with them that will make them beautiful enough to go with the rest. I’m afraid Brim gets a little personal in talking with me at times and I might as well say that, while disagreeing in a conversation with Brim does not lead to calling names it does seem to lead logically to one’s going away, and trying to find afterwards, some thing that is the matter with him.

“The trouble with you, my dear Brim, is,” I say (on paper, afterwards, as the train speeds away), “that you have a false-classic or Stucco-Greek mind. The Greeks, the real Greeks, would have liked all these things–trolley cars, cables, locomotives,–seen the beautiful in them, if they had to do their living with them every day, the way we do. You would say you were more Greek than I am, but when one thinks of it, you are just going around liking the things the Greeks liked 3000 years ago, and I am around liking the things a Greek would like now, that is, as well as I can. I don’t flatter myself I begin to enjoy the wireless telegraph to-day the way Plato would if he had the chance, and Alcibiades in an automobile would get a great deal more out of it, I suspect, than anyone I have seen in one, so far; and I suspect that if Socrates could take Bliss Carman and, say, William Watson around with him on a tour of the General Electric Works in Schenectady they wouldn’t either of them write sonnets about anything else for the rest of their natural lives.”

I can only speak for one and I do not begin to see the poetry in the machines that a Greek would see, as yet.

But I have seen enough.

I have seen engineers go by, pounding on this planet, making it small enough, welding the nations together before my eyes.

I have seen inventors, still men by lamps at midnight with a whirl of visions, with a whirl of thoughts, putting in new drivewheels on the world.

I have seen (in Schenectady,) all those men–the five thousand of them–the grime on their faces and the great caldrons of melted railroad swinging above their heads. I have stood and watched them there with lightning and with flame hammering out the wills of cities, putting in the underpinnings of nations, and it seemed to me me that Bliss Carman and William Watson would not be ashamed of them … brother-artists every one … in the glory … in the dark … Vulcan-Tennysons, blacksmiths to a planet, with dredges, skyscrapers, steam shovels and wireless telegraphs, hewing away on the heavens and the earth.