Overview

Excerpts from the index of the British literary and society journal Tatler, 1709-1711:

Age, if healthy, happy
Ancestors, their examples should excite to great and virtuous actions
Animals, a degree of gratitude owing to them that serve us
Atheist, behaviour of one in sickness
Barbers, inconveniences attending their being historians
Classics, absolutely necessary to study them
Climate, British, very inconstant
Cowards never forgive
Cunning opposed to wisdom
Duels, the danger of dying in one, represented
Earth, its inhabitants ranged under two general heads
Examination, self, advantages attending it
Fame, common, house of, described
Feet, pretty ones, a letter concerning them
Flies and free-thinkers compared
Gardens, the best not so fine as nature
Honour, temple of, can be entered only through that of Virtue
Horse, described by Homer, Virgil, Oppian, Lucan, and Pope
Janglings, matrimonial
Ladies, all women such
Laughter, the chorus of conversation
Master, how he should behave to his servants
Pedants, their veneration for Greek and Latin condemned
Peruke, a kind of index to the mind
Possession, true, consists in enjoyment
Reproof distinguished from reproach
Sloth more invincible than vice
Terrible Club, account of it
Time not to be squandered
Wisdom opposed to cunning
Women should have learning

Henry Wheatley said that the indexes “possess that admirable quality of making the consulter wish to read the book itself.” Leigh Hunt wrote, “As there is ‘a soul of goodness in things evil’ so there is a soul of humor in things dry … so an Index, like the Tatler’s, often gives us a taste of the quintessence of his humor.”

| Literature

The Five Regiments

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Modern_Puzzles_and_how_to_Solve_Them/FS8PAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA65&printsec=frontcover

From Henry Dudeney:

“The illustration represents a map (considerably simplified for our purpose) of a certain district on the Continent. The circles are towns and the lines roads. During the war five regiments marched to new positions on the same night. The body stationed at the upper A marched to the lower A, that at the upper B to the lower B, that at the upper C to the lower C, that at the upper D to the lower D, and the regiment at the left-hand E marched to the right-hand E. Yet no regiment ever saw anything of any other regiment. Can you mark out the route taken by each so that no two regiments ever go along the same road anywhere?”

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Interloper

A pleasing detail from Built for Speed, University of Idaho zoologist John A. Byers’ 2003 account of a year studying pronghorn antelope in western Montana:

“It can be really bizarre if, when I’ve been alone for several hours, I spot a human standing or walking in the distance. For an instant, my reaction is, ‘What the hell is that?’ A large mammal that walks on its hind legs seems very strange.”

| Science & Math

Post Holes

According to the International Mail Manual, it’s prohibited to send:

clocks to Algeria
fur to Australia
flypaper to Botswana
playing cards to Brazil
bicycles to China
leeches to Cyprus
absinthe to Germany
gardenias to Guatemala
bees to Iceland
fashion newspapers to Iran
fireworks to Ireland
sand to Israel
nutmeg to Italy
hoverboards to Japan
deer antlers to Kazakhstan
tea to Libya
cinnamon to Nepal
keys to New Zealand
pastries to Panama
vitamins to Peru
aspirin to Tunisia
eggs to Turkmenistan
honey to Zimbabwe

It’s illegal to send “daggers, sword-canes, brass knuckles, blackjacks, and other secret weapons” to Cote d’Ivoire.

| Crime · Society

Living Memory

An item for Independence Day: In 1937 the New York Times reported that the last living son of a Revolutionary War soldier was still in good health and living in North Calais, Vermont. William Constant Wheeler, then 89, was the son of Comfort Wheeler, who had been 81 when William was born.

Comfort had enlisted in the Continental Army as a teenager. According to the Boston Post, “Wheeler recollected many things he had been told by his father regarding the war of ’75. Many times Constant said his father spoke of meeting George Washington and he admired General Putnam, whose bluff, hearty way he often mentioned.”

William was himself a veteran of the Civil War. According to FindAGrave, he died in 1941 at age 93.

(Thanks, Bevan. Here’s a photo [!] of a man who crossed the Delaware with Washington.)

| History

Offensive Escargot

https://www.bl.uk/stories/blogs/posts/knight-v-snail

In the illuminated manuscripts of the 13th and 14th centuries, the margins are often decorated with images of armed knights fighting snails. “This has created a good deal of puzzlement amongst art historians and book historians, wondering just what do they mean?” University of York scholar Kenneth Clarke told the BBC.

“The basic idea is the overturning of existing or expected hierarchies,” suggested University of Chicago art historian Marian Bleeke. “It is supposed to be surprising and even funny — I think we get that implicitly today,” she says. Art historian Lilian Randall found 70 examples in 29 books, most printed between 1290 and 1310, commonly in France.

Perhaps the fight represents a struggle between classes, or illustrates cowardice. Possibly it’s political comment whose meaning has been lost. It may even represent the Resurrection. The meaning is still a matter of debate.

The British Library has a gallery.

(Thanks, Carsten.)

| Oddities

Sob Story

In 1886, on republishing Henry Mackenzie’s 1775 novel The Man of Feeling, University College London English professor Henry Morley underscored the book’s sentimentality by adding an “Index to Tears” that records every instance in which a character weeps — 46 occasions in less than 200 pages:

Hand bathed with tears                     27
I could only weep                          48
Tears, wrung from the heart                51
Tear stood in eye                          65
Dropped one tear, no more                  67
Tears, press-gang could scarce keep from   69
Big drops wetted gray beard                70
Moistened eye                              72
Girl wept, brother sobbed                  74
Tears gushed afresh                        75
Tears flowing without control              96

And so on. At the top he notes, “Choking, &c, not counted.”

| Literature

“An Autograph Inside a Tree”

https://archive.org/details/the-strand/The%20Strand%20v26%201903/page/117/mode/2up

‘The tree from which these pieces were taken was recently cut down and broken up for firewood, when at six and a half inches below the bark the carving was found in the solid timber. About fifty or a hundred years ago the letters and other figures were cut in the bark, with the usual result in the death of a thin layer of the exposed wood, which became surrounded by brown colouring matter. In time the bark grew over this, and finally covered it with fresh wood.’ — Prof. Stewart, of the Royal College of Surgeons, has been good enough to supply us with this interesting photograph.

— Strand, July 1903

| Oddities

Another Skeleton Pair

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tomba_degli_Amanti_di_Modena,_foto_P._Terzi.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

These remains were discovered in 2009 by archaeologists in Modena, Italy. They’re believed to have been buried between the 4th and 6th century AD. At first they were thought to be a male and a female, but it’s now been confirmed that they’re both male.

They were buried with their hands interlocked. They’re now on display at the Civic Museum of Modena.

Further affectionate skeletons: Iran, Italy, Greece, Romania.

| Death · Oddities