“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” — Anatole France
Curiously, when France died in 1924, doctors found that his brain was two-thirds normal size. But, said surgeon Louis Guillaume, “It was the most beautiful brain one could dream of seeing. Its convolutions were marvelous.”
Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing, and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right: it wasn’t. So there wasn’t any harm done.
— Mark Twain, “Advice to Youth,” 1882
(“An Unpublished Poem by Burns”)
O mickle yeuks the keckle doup,
An’ a’ unsicker girns the graith,
For wae and wae! the crowdies loup
O’er jouk an’ hallan, braw an’ baith
Where ance the coggie hirpled fair,
And blithesome poortith toomed the loof,
There’s nae a burnie giglet rare
But blaws in ilka jinking coof.
The routhie bield that gars the gear
Is gone where glint the pawky een.
And aye the stound is birkin lear
Where sconnered yowies wheeped yestreen,
The creeshie rax wi’ skelpin’ kaes
Nae mair the howdie bicker whangs,
Nor weanies in their wee bit claes
Glour light as lammies wi’ their sangs.
Yet leeze me on my bonny byke!
My drappie aiblins blinks the noo,
An’ leesome luve has lapt the dyke
Forgatherin’ just a wee bit fou.
And Scotia! while thy rantin’ lunt
Is mirk and moop with gowans fine,
I’ll stowlins pit my unco brunt,
An’ cleek my duds for auld lang syne.
— Punch, collected in James Parton, The Humorous Poetry of the English Language, 1884
In 1917, when a young T.S. Eliot was working at Lloyds Bank in London, one of his superiors met the critic I.A. Richards on holiday in Switzerland.
The banker was relieved to hear that Richards thought Eliot a good poet. Some of his colleagues had feared that poetry was a poor grounding for a career in finance, but if the young man really enjoyed his hobby then perhaps it could help him in his work.
In fact, the banker said, “I don’t see why — in time, of course, in time — he mightn’t even become a branch manager.”
“The Travelling Egg”
Procure a goose’s egg, and after opening and cleaning it, put a bat into the shell, and then glue a piece of white paper fast over the aperture. The motions of the poor little prisoner in struggling to get free, will cause the egg to roll about in a manner that will excite much astonishment.
— Samuel Williams, The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations, 1847
“How to Melt Steel”
Heat a piece in the fire till it is red hot; then holding it with a pair of pinchers or tongs, take in the other hand a stick of brimstone, and touch the piece of steel with it; immediately after the contact, you will see the steel melt and drop like a liquid.
— “Uncle George,” Parlour Pastime for the Young, 1857
“The Gun Trick”
Provide yourself with a fowling piece or musket; permit any one to load it, only retaining for yourself the privilege of putting in the ball. But instead of loading it with a real ball, retain the latter in your possession, having had a recognisable mark put upon it, and load with an artificial one made of black lead. On the application of the ramrod the latter will, of course be easily reduced to powder. When you are fired at, you produce the marked ball, holding it between your thumb and finger.
— Alfred Elliott, The Playground and the Parlour, 1868
Selected winners of the Bookseller/Diagram prize for oddest book title of the year:
Last year’s winner, The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais, is the subject of some controversy, as it was written by an automatic authoring machine rather than a human being. But, said awards administrator Philip Stone, “Given the number of celebrity memoirs out there that are ghostwritten, I don’t think it’s too strange.”
Unfortunate literary non-sequiturs:
“Mrs. Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness.” — George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
“She touched his organ, and from that bright epoch even it, the old companion of his happiest hours, incapable as he had thought of elevation, began a new and deified existence.” — Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit
“‘Oh, I can’t explain!’ cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his work. ‘I’ve only one way of expressing my deepest feelings–it’s this.’ And he swung his tool.” — Henry James, Roderick Hudson
“Mrs Ray declared that she had not found it all hard, and then,–with a laudable curiosity, seeing how little she had known about balls,–desired to have an immediate account of Rachel’s doings.” — Anthony Trollope, Rachel Ray
“The organ ‘gins to swell;
She’s coming, she’s coming!
My lady comes at last …”
— W.M. Thackeray, “At the Church Gate”
“Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!”
— Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”
One of two “Letters to Cynthia” in Christopher Morley’s Mince Pie (1919) is titled “In Praise of Boobs.”
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s story “The Bottle Imp,” the titular imp will grant its owner (almost) any wish, but if the owner dies with the bottle then he burns in hell. He may sell the bottle, but he must charge less than he paid for it, and the new buyer must understand these conditions.
Now, no one would buy such a bottle for 1 cent, as he could not then sell it again. (The imp can’t make you immortal, or support prices smaller than one cent, or alter the conditions.) And if 1 cent is too low a price, then so is 2 cents, for the same reason. And so on, apparently forever. It would be irrational to buy the bottle for any price.
But intuitively most people would consider $1,000 a reasonable price to pay for the use of a wish-granting genie. Who’s right?
See also Tug of War.
Full text of a letter from Edward Lear to Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, 1862:
Thrippy Pilliwinx, —
Inkly tinky pobblebockle able-squabs? Flosky! Beebul trimble flosky! Okulscratch abibblebongibo, viddle squibble tog-atog, ferry moyassity amsky flamsky damsky crocklefether squiggs.
Flinky wisty pomm,
Slushypipp
“I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin,” Lear once wrote, “but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle–so all is peace.”
This excerpt from Coriolanus contains every letter of the alphabet but Z:
O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgin’d it e’er since.
This one, from Milton’s Paradise Lost (from the Z in grazed to the b in Both), contains all of them:
Likening his Maker to the grazed ox,
Jehovah, who, in one night, when he passed
From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke
Both her first-born and all her bleating gods.
See Quick Brown Fox, A Biblical Pangram, A Pangrammatic Highway, and Nevermore.