Worldly Wise

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Proverbs from around the world:

  • Don’t buy someone else’s problems. (Chinese)
  • Strange smoke irritates the eyes. (Lithuanian)
  • The poor lack much, but the greedy more. (Swiss)
  • It is the mind that wins or loses. (Nepalese)
  • The point of the needle must pass first. (Ethiopian)
  • God did not create hurry. (Finnish)
  • When you go, the road is rough; when you return, smooth. (Thai)
  • If you want to marry wisely, marry your equal. (Spanish)
  • Where is there a tree not shaken by the wind? (Armenian)
  • Wherever you go, you can’t get rid of yourself. (Polish)
  • Money swore an oath that nobody that did not love it should ever have it. (Irish)
  • Character is habit long continued. (Greek)
  • Where you were born is less important than how you live. (Turkish)
  • It is better to prevent than to cure. (Peruvian)
  • Don’t do all you can, spend all you have, believe all you hear, or tell all you know. (English)
  • Better is better. (German)

(From Reynold Feldman and Cynthia Voelke, A World Treasury of Folk Wisdom, 1992.)

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Pseudonyms

Fictitious correspondents invented by T.S. Eliot in kick-starting a letters page in The Egoist in 1917:

The Rev. Charles James Grimble
Muriel A. Schwarz
Charles Augustus Conybeare
Helen B. Trundlett
J.A.D. Spence

Apparently this wasn’t unusual for Eliot, who wrote for The Tyro in 1921 as Gus Krutzsch. When I.A. Richards invited Krutzsch to meet him in Peking, Eliot replied, “I do not care to visit any country which has no native cheese.”

As a hedge against hard times, W.C. Fields used to open bank accounts under assumed names, including Sneed Hearn, Dr. Otis Guelpe, Figley E. Whitesides, and Professor Curtis T. Bascom.

“He had bank accounts, or at least safe-deposit boxes, in such cities as London, Paris, Sydney, Cape Town, and Suva,” said his friend Gene Fowler in 1949. “I do not know this for a fact, but I think that much of his fortune still rests in safe-deposit boxes about which, deliberately or not, he said nothing.”

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Bedfellows

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I was in the chair at a most interesting meeting at the Wakefield Asylum last night. It was, too, a curious sensation, sleeping under the same roof as 1,500 lunatics. I was kept awake by thoughts of the kind of sleep that was going on about me. … I made some preliminary remarks on the wide and desolate borderland of cerebral disturbance that lies between sleep and mania.

— Richard Monckton Milnes, letter to Henry Bright, Nov. 26, 1873

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The Sermon Game

In Ambrosia and Small Beer (1964), Edward Marsh describes a way of passing time during a long sermon:

[Y]ou look out for words beginning with each letter of the alphabet in succession, and if you get as far as Z (for which you may count a Z in the middle of a word) you cast a Bible on the ground and leave the building. It is palpitating. On this occasion we were held up by B, which seemed as if it would never come; and as the sermon was short neither of us got beyond M.

In Strong Drink, Strong Language (1990), John Espey writes,

Like most ministers’ children, I imagine, I early perfected several techniques for surviving sermons — counting games, making knight’s moves through the congregation using bald heads, or brown-haired, or ladies’ hats for jumps; betting my right hand against my left on which side of the center aisle the next cough would come from; or what the division would be in the Lord’s Prayer between ‘debts’ and ‘trespasses.’ I had, after all, heard everything, and more than once, by the time I turned ten.

P.G. Wodehouse’s 1922 story “The Great Sermon Handicap” describes a variation on a horse race: “Steggles is making the book. Each parson is to be clocked by a reliable steward of the course, and the one that preaches the longest sermon wins.” In 1930 a group of Cambridge undergraduates carried this out in real life — the winner, for the record, was the Rev. H.C. Read, “riding” the parish church of St Andrew-the-Great.

| Religion · Society

Bother

Apocryphal but entertaining: Allegedly the Duke of Wellington sent this letter to the British War Office during the Peninsular War of 1808-1814:

Gentlemen:

Whilst marching to Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your request which has been sent by H. M. ship from London to Lisbon and then by dispatch rider to our headquarters.

We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents, and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty’s Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.

Unfortunately, the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion’s petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensive carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstances since we are at war with France, a fact which may have come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen at Whitehall.

This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty’s Government, so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability but I cannot do both:

  1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London, or perchance
  2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.

Your most obedient servant,

Wellington

| History · Society

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card. But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival; guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the marketplace is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.

But having bought as many as they suppose to be sufficient, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them. And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also. And let this account suffice about Exmas-cards.

— C.S. Lewis, “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter From Herodotus,” Time and Tide, Dec. 4, 1955

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Tableau

A pleasing little detail: In Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 story “Rescue Party,” a federation of aliens visit Earth immediately before the sun explodes, hoping to rescue its inhabitants. To their surprise, they don’t find us (it turns out we’ve fled the planet), and they comb our deserted civilization.

The explorers were particularly puzzled by one room — clearly an office of some kind — that appeared to have been completely wrecked. The floor was littered with papers, the furniture had been smashed, and smoke was pouring through the broken windows from the fires outside.

T’sinadree was rather alarmed.

‘Surely no dangerous animal could have got into a place like this!’ he exclaimed, fingering his paralyzer nervously.

Alarkane did not answer. He began to make that annoying sound which his race called ‘laughter.’ It was several minutes before he would explain what had amused him.

‘I don’t think any animal has done it,’ he said. ‘In fact, the explanation is very simple. Suppose you had been working all your life in this room, dealing with endless papers, year after year. And suddenly, you are told that you will never see it again, that your work is finished, and that you can leave it forever. More than that — no one will come after you. Everything is finished. How would you make your exit, T’sinadree?’

The other thought for a moment.

‘Well, I suppose I’d just tidy things up and leave. That’s what seems to have happened in all the other rooms.’

Alarkane laughed again.

‘I’m quite sure you would. But some individuals have a different psychology. I think I should have liked the creature that used this room.’

No explanation is given. “His two colleagues puzzled over his words for quite a while before they gave it up.”

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Degrees of Variance

In a 2008 essay, computer scientist Paul Graham offered a hierarchy of verbal disagreement:

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“The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read,” he wrote. “But the greatest benefit of disagreeing well is not just that it will make conversations better, but that it will make the people who have them happier. … If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more meanness down in [Name-Calling] than up in [Refuting the Central Point]. You don’t have to be mean when you have a real point to make.”

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Decisions

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‘Suppose that a foolish man has seized hold of a plank from a sinking ship, shall a wise man wrest it away from him if he can?’

‘No,’ says Hecaton; ‘for that would be unjust.’

‘But how about the owner of the ship? Shall he take the plank away because it belongs to him?’

‘Not at all; no more than he would be willing when far out at sea to throw a passenger overboard on the ground that the ship was his. For until they reach the place for which the ship is chartered, she belongs to the passengers, not to the owner.’

‘Again; suppose there were two to be saved from the sinking ship — both of them wise men — and only one small plank, should both seize it to save themselves? Or should one give place to the other?’

‘Why of course, one should give place to the other, but that other must be the one whose life is more valuable either for his own sake or for that of his country.’

‘But what if these considerations are of equal weight in both?’

‘Then there will be no contest, but one will give place to the other, as if the point were decided by lot or at a game of odd and even.’

— Cicero, De Officiis, 44 BC

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