On July 3, 1863, 20-year-old Pennsylvania seamstress Ginnie Wade was kneading dough in her sister’s kitchen when a bullet pierced the door behind her and passed through her heart, killing her instantly.
She was the only civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Motto heartening, inspiring,
Framed above my pretty desk,
Never Shelley, Keats, or Byring
Penned a phrase so picturesque!
But in me no inspiration
Rides my low and prosy brow —
All I think of is vacation
When I see that lucubration:
When I see another sentence
Framed upon a brother’s wall,
Resolution and repentance
Do not flood o’er me at all
As I read that nugatory
Counsel written years ago,
Only when one comes to borry
Do I heed that ancient story:
Mottoes flat and mottoes silly,
Proverbs void of point or wit,
“KEEP A-PLUGGIN’ WHEN IT’S HILLY!”
“LIFE’S A TIGER: CONQUER IT!”
Office mottoes make me weary
And of all the bromide bunch
There is only one I seri-
Ously like, and that’s the cheery:
— Franklin Pierce Adams, Tobogganning on Parnassus, 1913
In 1946 an American doctor named Jones was tried in Ohio for performing six illegal abortions (State v. Jones, 80 Ohio App. 269). In one of the six cases, the only evidence was the testimony of the woman herself, Jacquelin Harris. But under Ohio law, the recipient of an abortion was an accomplice to the crime, and the unsupported testimony of an accomplice was suspect and insufficient for a conviction.
This means trouble:
“This puts the jury in a position of returning a self-annulling verdict,” writes Peter Suber in The Paradox of Self-Amendment. “If they find Jones guilty, then they must find that Harris was his accomplice, then they must find her evidence against Jones insufficient, then they must acquit Jones. But if they find Jones innocent, then they must (at least may) find Harris’ evidence legally sufficient, then they must (at least may) convict Jones.”
Jones was found guilty, ironically because, as an accused party, he was presumed innocent, and so the witness was presumed not to be an accomplice. “This led to the remarkable situation that the testimony was admissible and could lead to a conviction,” writes Michael Clark in Paradoxes From A to Z, “notwithstanding the fact that the conviction undermined the probative value of the testimony.”
See Turnabout.
“A propos of dreams, is it not a strange thing if writers of fiction never dream of their own creations; recollecting, I suppose, even in their dreams, that they have no real existence? I never dream of any of my own characters, and I feel it is so impossible that I would wager Scott never did of his, real as they are.”
— Charles Dickens, letter to C.C. Felton, Sept. 1, 1843
“The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.”
— Samuel Butler, Notebooks
“Only a few isolated figures in letters stand out as real; Sir Roger de Coverley, I suppose, Mr. Pickwick certainly, and, of course, Sherlock Holmes … Such characters, I mean, as create a real illusion; so that a man attaining Heaven might look round him and say, ‘And now, where’s Pickwick? Oh, no, I forgot; of course, he’s only a character in a book.'”
— Ronald Knox, “A Ramble in Barsetshire,” Essays in Satire, 1928
What is the best full house? Suppose you are playing poker and a genie offers to arrange the deal so that you receive the full house of your choice. What hand should you specify?
“A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence.” — Brander Matthews
An old philosophical friend of mine was grown, from experience, very cautious in this particular, and carefully avoided any intimacy with [captious, overcritical] people. He had, like other philosophers, a thermometer to show him the heat of the weather, and a barometer to mark when it was likely to prove good or bad; but there being no instrument invented to discover, at first sight, this unpleasing disposition in a person, he, for that purpose, made use of his legs; one of which was remarkably handsome, the other, by some accident, crooked and deformed. If a stranger, at first interview, regarded his ugly leg more than his handsome one, he doubted him — if he spoke of it, and took no notice of the handsome leg, that was sufficient to determine my philosopher to have no farther acquaintance with him. Every body has not this two-legged instrument; but every one, with a little attention, may observe signs of that carping, fault-finding disposition, and take the same resolution of avoiding the acquaintance of those infected with it. I therefore advise those critical, querulous, discontented, unhappy people — if they wish to be respected and beloved by others, and happy in themselves, they should leave off looking at the ugly leg.
— Benjamin Franklin, 1780
The law in a certain village requires that any wife who can prove that her husband has been unfaithful must shoot him before sundown on the same day. Every wife reasons perfectly, and all the wives know this. Further, every wife knows instantly when another’s husband has been unfaithful but never whether her own is.
One day the mayor announces that there is at least one unfaithful husband in the village. In fact there are 40 unfaithful husbands, but the wives do not know this. What happens?
“Last night Mr. Creston Clarke played King Lear at the Tabor Grand. All through the five acts of that Shakespearean tragedy he played the King as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the Ace.” — Eugene Field, Denver Tribune, c. 1880
Awaiting the dawn sat three prisoners wary,
A trio of brigands named Tom, Dick and Mary.
Sunrise would signal the death knell of two;
Just one would survive, the question was who.
Young Mary sat thinking and finally spoke.
To the jailer she said, “You may think this a joke,
But it seems that my odds of surviving till tea
Are clearly enough just one out of three.
But one of my cohorts must certainly go,
Without question, that’s something I already know.
Telling the name of one who is lost
Can’t possibly help me. What could it cost?”
The shriveled old jailer himself was no dummy.
He thought, “But why not?” and pointed to Tommy.
“Now it’s just Dick and me!” Mary chortled with glee,
“One in two are my chances, and not one in three!”
Imagine the jailer’s chagrin, that old elf.
She’d tricked him. Or had she? Decide for yourself.
— Richard E. Bedient, “The Prisoner’s Paradox Revisited,” American Mathematical Monthly, March 1994