“Business Signs in London”

A stranger is surprised in London by some of the signs, which have been handed down for generations, which are used to distinguish particular places of business. Many of them are perfectly unmeaning, but are corruptions of the original signs. A public house was called ‘The Bag of Nails,’ which was derived from the old name, ‘The Bacchanals.’ ‘The Bull and Goat’ was corrupted from ‘The Bologne Gate,’ as the place was called in compliment to Henry VIII, who took the place in 1642. There is another public house called ‘The Goat and Compasses.’ It was established in the old Puritan times. In the days of Cromwell, it was ‘God encompasses us;’ but in Queen Victoria’s time it is ‘The Goat and Compasses.’ There is one public house called ‘The Three Loggerheads.’ The sign has a picture of two men, and the inscription underneath:

‘We three
Loggerheads be.’

And the passer by wonders, as he reads it, where on earth the third loggerhead can be.

— Ballou’s Monthly Magazine, June 1861

| Language · Society

Print Charming

During the Depression, magazines and newspapers regularly carried advertisements for “talent bureaus” promising to assess the writing of undiscovered authors. Sensing a scam, Author & Journalist editor Willard Hawkins asked his daughter to compose “the most impossible, inane and childish semblance of a story that it was possible to conceive.” She obliged with “Her Terrible Mistake,” the story of 17-year-old Mary Jane Smith, who “fell devinely in love with a very nice fellow who was a machinic by the name of Jack Berry.” When a stranger seduces Mary Jane, her “fionce” exposes him as “a villian in sheeps clothing.”

Universal Scenario Co. of Hollywood declared this “admirably suited to talking picture presentation” and for $10 offered to submit it “personally to those producers whose current production demands call for this particular type of story.”

Encouraged, Hawkins now had Lottie Perkins write a 30,000-word novel, The Missing Twin:

‘Mr. Jones I think something has happened at home. I think we ought to have left someone to take care of our children. What will I do if someone has kidnapped them out from under my nose. How can you sit there and let them be stolen from me. O my babies. How could anyone be so crule as to steel you.’

Economy Publishers of Tacoma, Wash., read this “with ever increasing pleasure and admiration for the author. My! how your characters live and breathe and walk out into the room before one … !” They agreed to publish the book for $375, returning 40 percent of all royalties to Perkins.

In the end, Author & Publisher found that in most such cases, the publisher printed only about 100 copies — and profited $200.

| Hoaxes · Literature

Retractor

retractor chess problem

An oldie but a goodie:

From this position, White retracts his last move, then Black retracts his and replaces it with a move that permits White to mate him immediately.

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Wanted

A young gentleman on the point of being married, is desirous of meeting a man of experience who will dissuade him from such a step.

— Advertisement, London Times, quoted in William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

| Society

A Dedicated Reader

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frenchy/244882388/
Image: Flickr

Between August 2000 and May 2002, more than 1,100 ancient books disappeared from the French monastery of Mont Saint-Odile. There was no sign of forced entry; the monks changed the locks and reinforced the library door with steel, but the books continued to vanish. The thief even left a rose, taunting them.

Finally police installed a video camera and caught Stanislas Gosse, a Strasbourg engineering teacher, entering the darkened library through a cupboard. He confessed that he had discovered a lost map in public archives that revealed the secret entrance — he climbed the exterior walls of the monastery, entered the attic, descended a narrow stairway, and operated a hidden mechanism to open the back of the cupboard. He then browsed the library by candlelight. Apparently the passage had been used to spy on monks in medieval times, when the library had served as the monastery’s common room.

Gosse was convicted of “burglary by ruse and escalade,” fined, and given a suspended sentence. “I’m afraid my burning passion overrode my conscience,” he said. “It may appear selfish, but I felt the books had been abandoned. They were covered with dust and pigeon droppings, and I felt no one consulted them anymore.”

“There was also the thrill of adventure–I was very scared of being found out.”

| Crime

Thump

The thunder storm of Sunday night — the winding up of one of the most oppressive days ever inflicted on mortal man — was really terrific. The whole firmament growled thunder and shot lightning. It was blinding to look out, and at frequent intervals the thunderbolts burst overhead with a power that shook the solidest structures — then rolled with angry growling along the wings of the storm. St. Paul’s church was struck, but not seriously injured. Beyond this, we have heard of no casualty, unless we may account for such the raining down of an alligator about two feet long at the corner of Wentworth and Anson streets. We have not been lucky enough to find any one who saw him come down — but the important fact that he was there, is incontestible — and as he couldn’t have got there any other way, it was decided unanimously that he rained down. Besides the beast had a look of wonder and bewilderment about him, that showed plainly enough he must have gone through a remarkable experience. By the last accounts he was doing as well as an alligator could be expected to do after sailing through the air in such bad weather.

— Charleston Mercury, quoted in Niles’ Weekly Register, July 8, 1843

| Oddities

Sublime, Ridiculous

http://books.google.com/books?id=1EoBAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Amazingly, Cyrano de Bergerac was banned from the United States for 15 years because a federal judge decided that Edmond Rostand had plagiarized it from a Chicago real estate developer.

The developer, Samuel Gross, had written The Merchant Prince of Cornville in 1896 and had 250 copies printed privately. In 1900 he brought suit in U.S. district court, and Judge C.C. Kohlsaat ruled that Rostand was “a plagiarist and by inference a perjurer” for “obviously” borrowing from Cornville and then denying he’d ever heard of it. The judge issued a perpetual injunction against the production of Cyrano in the United States.

So was Rostand guilty? Decide for yourself — here’s a sample of the work he “stole”:

Violet: I thought I heard some one speak, but not from underground, for he’s not a goblin; nor yet from the sky, for he’s not an angel; nor yet from the earth, for no dreadful man is near. Why, what is that in the sky? ‘Tis last eve’s moon, that will not to her couch by day. To rest! pale planet. Oh gentle moon, where is thy blush? Thou art dismantled by the roseate sun. Alack! what divine dramas are there in the skies!

The ban was eventually overturned: In 1915 Gross failed to stop an operatic production of Cyrano, and in 1923 the original play was revived successfully. I’m not really sure what happened to The Merchant Prince of Cornville.

| Crime · Literature

The Malcontents Abroad

In 1852, two years after condemning all of Europe, cranky Victorian travel writer Favell Lee Mortimer turned to the east for Far Off: Asia and Australia Described. What did she learn of the colorful people, rich history, and sophisticated cultures of these exotic lands?

  • “The reason why the Armenians live in holes in the ground is because they hope the Kurds may not find out where they are.”
  • “It is impossible to trust a Persian.”
  • “The Buddhists are full of tricks by which to get presents out of people.”
  • “The Chinese are very selfish and unfeeling.”
  • “The Arabs are so unforgiving and revengeful that they will seek to kill a man year after year.”
  • “In disposition the Siamese are deceitful and cowardly.”
  • “It must be very terrible to live in the midst of such murderers as the people of Bokhara seem to be.”

And: “All the religions of China are bad, but of the three, the religion of Confucius is the least foolish.”

| Literature · Society

C Story

You arrive in purgatory to find it’s just a typewriter on a desk. As you take your seat, you notice that the C key is glowing faintly.

A demon says, “All you have to do is type the integers, in order: ONE, TWO, and so on. The first time you strike the C key, you’ll be released into paradise.”

That doesn’t sound too bad. Assuming it takes 10 seconds on average to type each number (and that you spell each correctly, in English), how much time will pass before you first type the letter C?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles