Death Do Us Part

From the will of John G—-e, who died at Lambeth around 1772:

Whereas it was my misfortune to be made very uneasy by Elisabeth G—-e, my wife, for many years, from our marriage, by her turbulent behavior; for she was not content with despising my admonitions, but she contrived every method to make me unhappy; she was so perverse in her nature, that she would not be reclaimed, but seemed only to be born to be a plague to me; the strength of Sampson, the knowledge of Homer, the prudence of Augustus, the cunning of Pyrrhus, the patience of Job, the subtilty of Hannibal, and the watchfulness of Hermogenes, could not have been sufficient to subdue her; for no skill or force in the world would make her good; and as we have lived separate and apart from each other eight years, and she having perverted her son to leave and totally abandon me, therefore I give her one shilling only.

From the Annual Register.

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Second Thoughts

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On the Bench his lips would often be seen to move, but no sound proceeding from them would be heard by the Bar. The associate sitting beneath him could tell another tale. … ‘What a damned fool that man is!’ — then, after an interval, ‘Eh, not such a damned fool as I thought;’ then another interval. ‘Egad, it is I that was the damned fool.’

— J.B. Atlay on Lord Lyndhurst, in The Victorian Chancellors, 1906

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“A Waste of Time”

A little boy spent his first day at school. ‘What did you learn?’ was his aunt’s question. ‘Didn’t learn nothing.’ ‘Well, what did you do?’ ‘Didn’t do nothing. There was a woman wanting to know how to spell “cat,” and I told her.’

— John Scott, The Puzzle King, 1899

The 12-year-old Winston Churchill found examinations “a great trial”: “I would have liked to have been examined in history, poetry and writing essays. … I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know.”

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Queries

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Questions put by Benjamin Franklin to his Junto, a club for mutual improvement that he founded in Philadelphia in 1727:

  • How shall we judge of the goodness of a writing? Or what qualities should a writing have to be good and perfect in its kind? (His own answer: “It should be smooth, clear, and short.”)
  • Can a man arrive at perfection in this life, as some believe; or is it impossible, as others believe?
  • Wherein consists the happiness of a rational creature?
  • What is wisdom? (“The knowledge of what will be best for us on all occasions, and the best ways of attaining it.”)
  • Is any man wise at all times and in all things? (“No, but some are more frequently wise than others.”)
  • Whether those meats and drinks are not the best that contain nothing in their natural taste, nor have anything added by art, so pleasing as to induce us to eat or drink when we are not thirsty or hungry, or after thirst and hunger are satisfied; water, for instance, for drink, and bread or the like for meat?
  • Is there any difference between knowledge and prudence? If there is any, which of the two is most eligible?
  • Is it justifiable to put private men to death, for the sake of public safety or tranquillity, who have committed no crime? As, in the case of the plague, to stop infection; or as in the case of the Welshmen here executed?
  • If the sovereign power attempts to deprive a subject of his right (or, which is the same thing, of what he thinks his right), is it justifiable in him to resist, if he is able?
  • Which is best: to make a friend of a wise and good man that is poor or of a rich man that is neither wise nor good?
  • Does it not, in a general way, require great study and intense application for a poor man to become rich and powerful, if he would do it without the forfeiture of honesty?
  • Does it not require as much pains, study, and application to become truly wise and strictly virtuous as to become rich?
  • Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summer time?

From Carl Van Doren’s biography. “New members had to stand up with their hands on their breasts and say they loved mankind in general and truth for truth’s sake. … In time the Junto had so many applications for membership it was at a loss to know how to limit itself to the twelve originally planned.”

| History · Society

Points of Pride

She’s the girl that makes the thing that drills the hole that holds the spring
That drives the rod that turns the knob that works the thingumebob,
And it’s the girl that makes the thing that holds that oil that oils the ring
That works the thingumebob THAT’S GOING TO WIN THE WAR!

— Popular song of 1942

“I’ve Danced With a Man, Who’s Danced With a Girl, Who’s Danced With the Prince of Wales”

— Popular song of 1927

Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetallist. ‘There,’ people of wide experience would say, ‘There goes the sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire.’

— G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 1904

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Two Solutions

[O]ur self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success: thus,

https://books.google.com/books?id=JLcAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA310

Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator. To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where disappointment is incessant and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do.

— William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

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