“The Ingenious Patriot”

Having obtained an audience of the King an Ingenious Patriot pulled a paper from his pocket, saying:

‘May it please your Majesty, I have here a formula for constructing armor plating that no gun can pierce. If these plates are adopted in the Royal Navy our warships will be invulnerable and therefore invincible. Here, also, are reports of your Majesty’s Ministers, attesting the value of the invention. I will part with my right in it for a million tumtums.’

After examining the papers, the King put them away and promised him an order on the Lord High Treasurer of the Extortion Department for a million tumtums.

‘And here,’ said the Ingenious Patriot, pulling another paper from another pocket, ‘are the working plans of a gun that I have invented, which will pierce that armor. Your Majesty’s royal brother, the Emperor of Bang, is eager to purchase it, but loyalty to your Majesty’s throne and person constrains me to offer it first to your Majesty. The price is one million tumtums.’

Having received the promise of another check, he thrust his hand into still another pocket, remarking:

‘The price of the irresistible gun would have been much greater, your Majesty, but for the fact that its missiles can be so effectively averted by my peculiar method of treating the armor plates with a new –‘

The King signed to the Great Head Factotum to approach.

‘Search this man,’ he said, ‘and report how many pockets he has.’

‘Forty-three, Sire,’ said the Great Head Factotum, completing the scrutiny.

‘May it please your Majesty,’ cried the Ingenious Patriot, in terror, ‘one of them contains tobacco.’

‘Hold him up by the ankles and shake him,’ said the King; ‘then give him a check for forty-two million tumtums and put him to death. Let a decree issue making ingenuity a capital offence.’

— Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables, 1899

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On Your Own

“Marriage is the only legal contract which abrogates as between the parties all the laws that safeguard the particular relation to which it refers.” — Shaw

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Doubt

A remarkable number of apparently intelligent people are baffled by the fact that a different group of apparently intelligent people profess to a knowledge of God when common sense tells them — the first group of apparently intelligent people — that knowledge is only a possibility in matters that can be demonstrated to be true or false, such as that the Bristol train leaves from Paddington. And yet these same apparently intelligent people, who in extreme cases will not even admit that the Bristol train left from Paddington yesterday — which might be a malicious report or a collective trick of memory — nor that it will leave from there tomorrow — for nothing is certain — and will only agree that it did so today if they were actually there when it left — and even then only on the understanding that all the observable phenomena associated with the train leaving Paddington could equally well be accounted for by Paddington leaving the train — these same people will, nevertheless, and without any sense of inconsistency, claim to know that life is better than death, that love is better than hate, and that the light shining through the east window of their bloody gymnasium is more beautiful than a rotting corpse!

— Tom Stoppard, Jumpers, 1972

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Position

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From an appreciation of Ernest Rutherford by C.P. Snow in the November 1958 issue of The Atlantic:

Worldly success? He loved every minute of it: flattery, titles, the company of the high official world. He said in a speech: ‘As I was standing in the drawing room at Trinity, a clergyman came in. And I said to him: “I’m Lord Rutherford.” And he said to me: “I’m the Archbishop of York.” And I don’t suppose either of us believed the other.’

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Query

Jones had been greatly depressed; he declared himself a murderer, and would not be comforted. Suddenly he asked me a question. ‘Are not the parents the cause of the birth of their children?’ said he. ‘I suppose so,’ said I. ‘Are not all men mortal?’ ‘That also may be admitted.’ ‘Then are not the parents the cause of the death of their children, since they know that they are mortal? And am I not a murderer?’ I was, I own, puzzled. At last I thought of something soothing. I pointed out to Jones that to cause the death of another was not necessarily murder. It might be manslaughter or justifiable homicide. ‘Of which of these then am I guilty?’ he queried. I could not say because I had never seen the Jones family, but I hear Jones has become a great bore in the asylum by his unceasing appeals to every one to tell him whether he has committed murder, manslaughter, or justifiable homicide!

— Rueben Abel, ed., Humanistic Pragmatism: The Philosophy of F.C.S. Schiller, 1966

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Other Duties as Assigned

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From Bismarck’s Reflections and Reminiscences, 1898:

At the time of my first stay at St. Petersburg, in 1859, I had an example of another Russian peculiarity. During the first spring days it was then the custom for every one connected with the Court to promenade in the Summer Garden between Paul’s Palace and the Neva. There the Emperor had noticed a sentry standing in the middle of a grass plot; in reply to the question why he was standing there, the soldier could only answer, ‘Those are my orders.’ The Emperor therefore sent one of his adjutants to the guard-room to make inquiries; but no explanation was forthcoming except that a sentry had to stand there winter and summer. The source of the original order could no longer be discovered. The matter was talked of at Court, and reached the ears of the servants. One of these, an old pensioner, came forward and stated that his father had once said to him as they passed the sentry in the Summer Garden: ‘There he is, still standing to guard the flower; on that spot the Empress Catherine once noticed a snowdrop in bloom unusually early, and gave orders that it was not to be plucked.’ This command had been carried out by placing a sentry on the spot, and ever since then one had stood there all the year round.

“Stories of this sort excite our amusement and criticism, but they are an expression of the elementary force and persistence on which the strength of the Russian nature depends in its attitude towards the rest of Europe.”

| History · Society

Review

Examination questions from the final Classical Honours School at Oxford University, 1899 — “to have passed through it was the hallmark of a superbly educated man, and its graduates went on to rule the nation and, in that heyday of British imperialism, half the world too”:

  • Sketch the history of the Syracusan democracy between the fall of Thrasybulus in 466 B.C. and the accession of Dionysius I in 406 B.C.
  • Is it a fact that thought begins not with the term but with the judgement?
  • Describe the circumstances which led to the Bank Charter Act of 1844.
  • What were the leading characteristics of fourth-century tyranny?
  • To what extent does history confirm Machiavelli’s views on mercenary armies?
  • In what respects has Aristotle’s advance in psychology enabled him to improve on the moral theories of Plato?
  • What account can be given of our perception of distance?
  • What is the ground of the obligation to veracity?
  • Trace the history of the principle of betterment in the English system of local taxation.
  • Describe the relations of Rome with Numidia at different periods of history.

“The general assumption was that a man who had mastered this range of thought and theory could master anything.”

From Jan Morris, The Oxford Book of Oxford, 1978.

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Tip

“We went back to England together. When we arrived at the customs shed, Syrie said: ‘Always choose the oldest customs official. No chance of promotion.'” — Somerset Maugham, quoting his wife

| Literature · Society

Sharp Dealing

An episode from P.T. Barnum’s childhood in Bethel, Connecticut:

‘What is the price of razor strops?’ inquired my grandfather of a peddler, whose wagon, loaded with Yankee notions, stood in front of our store.

‘A dollar each for Pomeroy’s strops,’ responded the itinerant merchant.

‘A dollar apiece!’ exclaimed my grandfather; ‘they’ll be sold for half the money before the year is out.’

‘If one of Pomeroy’s strops is sold for fifty cents within a year, I’ll make you a present of one,’ replied the peddler.

‘I’ll purchase one on those conditions. Now, Ben, I call you to witness the contract,’ said my grandfather, addressing himself to Esquire Hoyt.

‘All right,’ responded Ben.

‘Yes,’ said the peddler, ‘I’ll do as I say, and there’s no backout to me.’

My grandfather took the strop, and put it in his side coat pocket.

Presently drawing it out, and turning to Esquire Hoyt, he said, ‘Ben, I don’t much like this strop now I have bought it. How much will you give for it?’

‘Well, I guess, seeing it’s you, I’ll give fifty cents,’ drawled the ‘Squire, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, which said that the strop and the peddler were both incontinently sold.

‘You can take it. I guess I’ll get along with my old one a spell longer,’ said my grandfather, giving the peddler a knowing look.

The strop changed hands, and the peddler exclaimed, ‘I acknowledge, gentlemen; what’s to pay?’

‘Treat the company, and confess you are taken in, or else give me a strop,’ replied my grandfather.

‘I never will confess nor treat,’ said the peddler, ‘but I’ll give you a strop for your wit;’ and suiting the action to the word, he handed a second strop to his customer. A hearty laugh ensued, in which the peddler joined.

‘Some pretty sharp fellows here in Bethel,’ said a bystander, addressing the peddler.

‘Tolerable, but nothing to brag of,’ replied the peddler; ‘I have made seventy-five cents by the operation.’

‘How is that?’ was the inquiry.

‘I have received a dollar for two strops which cost me only twelve and a half cents each,’ replied the peddler; ‘but having heard of the cute tricks of the Bethel chaps, I thought I would look out for them and fix my prices accordingly. I generally sell these strops at twenty-five cents each, but, gentlemen, if you want any more at fifty cents apiece, I shall be happy to supply your whole village.’

Our neighbors laughed out of the other side of their mouths, but no more strops were purchased.

(From his 1855 autobiography.)

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