John Train’s Most Remarkable Names reports that Chazy Lake, N.Y., has a resident named Constant Agony.
In Stories on Stone, Charles L. Wallis notes that a tombstone in Hood River, Ore., reads:
In The American Language, H.L. Mencken mentions an Indian chief in the northwestern U.S. named Unable-to-Fornicate. “And I once knew a Siletz who insisted with firm complacency that his name, no matter what anybody thought it, was Holy Catfish.”
“I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.” — Pascal
“It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” — Mark Twain
“If you want me to talk for ten minutes, I’ll come next week. If you want me to talk for an hour I’ll come tonight.” — Woodrow Wilson
Also:
Harold Macmillan: “What are you doing, prime minister?”
Winston Churchill: “Rehearsing my impromptu witticisms.”
There is just one spot on earth from which, in an hour’s driving time or less, a motoring tourist can reach either Athens, Belfast, Belgrade, Bremen, China, Denmark, Dresden, Frankfort, Limerick, Lisbon, Madrid, Mexico, Naples, Norway, Oxford, Palermo, Paris, Peru, Poland or Vienna. The spot is situated at about 44° 9′ north latitude, 69° 51′ west longitude, in the county of Sagadahoc, state of Maine, U.S.A., and it is surrounded by towns bearing these names, no one of them more than fifty-five miles away.
— Gary Jennings, Personalities of Language, 1965
On a board in front of a stage-office in Buffalo, I once read, ‘Stages start from this house for China, Sardinia, Holland, Hamburg, Java, Sweden, Cuba, Havre, Italy, and Penn Yan.’
— James Freeman Clarke, On Giving Names to Towns and Streets, 1880
Telemann’s Gulliver Suite has an alarming score — the note values in the chaconne appear “Lilliputian” and in the gigue “Brobdingnagian.”
That’s a joke: The chaconne is notated in “3/32” time and the gigue in “24/1.” If they’re played at the correct tempos they resolve into normal-sounding dances in 3/4 and 9/8.
When Mark Twain took his first job as a newspaper reporter, his editor told him never to report anything as fact unless he could verify it by personal knowledge.
That night Twain covered a social gala. He filed the following story: “A woman giving the name of Mrs. James Jones, who is reported to be one of the society leaders of the city, is said to have given what purported to be a party yesterday to a number of alleged ladies. The hostess claims to be the wife of a reputed attorney.”
In 1937, Max Eastman and Ernest Hemingway found themselves together in Max Perkins’ office at Scribner’s. On Perkins’ desk was Eastman’s Art and the Life of Action, which contained an essay critical of Hemingway. They began to argue. Hemingway bared his chest. Eastman bared his. Hemingway slapped him.
What happened next is unclear. “The trouble with these literary bouts,” opined the New York Times, “is that there is never an official referee on hand. Both sides can claim a decision and a foul at the same time, and usually do.”
But in 1947 the House of Books catalog offered for sale a damaged copy of Art and the Life of Action. On page 95, it said, was a spot caused by contact “with Mr. Eastman’s nose when Mr. Hemingway struck him with it in a gesture of disapproval.” The spot was witnessed by Maxwell Perkins.
Advance each letter in PECAN four places through the alphabet and you get TIGER:
Director Curtis Bernhardt was midway through shooting My Reputation in 1944 when he encountered some trouble with one of the stars. Robert Archer insisted on wearing a jacket and shirt while mowing a lawn under the hot California sun.
Bernhardt pressed him, and to his surprise Archer said, “Okay, okay, I’m a girl.”
She was Tanis Chandler, a 20-year-old typist in a local brokerage office who’d gotten tired of waiting for acting jobs. Posing as Archer, she’d won a part in 1943’s The Desert Song, where robes and a burnoose had hid her shape. She’d done so well that the casting office had sent her out for Bernhardt’s film.
“The studios are always yelling about the lack of men,” she said. “I thought I’d have better luck in male roles. Oh, well.”
The Supreme Court of Justice of Belgium has just been called upon to decide a novel and extraordinary question. One of the leading surgeons of Brussels had occasion, about a year ago, to amputate the right leg of a young married lady belonging to the highest circles of the aristocracy. The operator was so pleased with his job that he preserved the leg in a jar of spirits of wine and placed it on exhibition in his consulting room, a card being affixed to the jar giving the patient’s name and the details concerning the circumstance which had rendered the operation necessary. On hearing this, the husband of the lady demanded the immediate discontinuance of the exhibition and the return of the severed member, as being his property. To this the surgeon demurred. He admitted that the plaintiff had property rights in the leg while it formed part his wife, but argued that the leg in its present condition was the result of his (defendant’s) skill and the work of his own hands, and that he was clearly entitled to keep it. The Court seemed rather staggered by this line of argument, and after taking a fortnight to consider the question, has finally decided against the doctor and in favor of the husband’s claim to the possession of the amputated leg of his better half.
— Lancaster Law Review, March 18, 1895
This is clever — in 1885 Andrew Morrison proposed an aerial railway consisting of a series of balloons linked by cables. As each balloon in turn is raised, the passenger car rides down the wire to the next station.
“To render the car as light as possible, a gas-compartment, S, is formed on the top thereof, which, when filled with gas, overcomes by its buoyancy a part of the gravity of the car.”