‘The very worst line in Latin poetry’ was, according to Professor Tyrrell, achieved by Statius when he apostrophised the condition of childlessness as ‘to be avoided by every effort’ (Orbitas omni fugienda nisu).
— “A Study in Superlatives,” in Sir Edward Tyas Cook, Literary Recreations, 1918
From Henry Wheatley’s index to Samuel Pepys’ diary:
Periwig, Pepys wears one, iii. 116, 327; Pepys puts off the wearing of one for a while, iii. 265; one bought by Pepys, iii. 323; he buys a case for it, iii. 328; Pepys so altered by it that the Duke of York did not know him, iii. 334; Pepys has a second made of his own hair, iii. 341, 342; he sends one to the barber’s to be cleansed of its nits, iv. 190; he buys two more, vi. 245; Pepys agrees with a barber to keep his in order, viii. 33; his, set on fire, viii. 118; King and Duke of York first wear periwigs, iv. 43; danger of wearing periwigs during the Plague, v. 64; Ladies of Honour in, v. 324; periwig shops, iii. 116, 316, 326; vi. 314; viii. 127.
From James Russell Lowell’s index to The Biglow Papers:
Alligator, a decent one conjectured to be, in some sort, humane, 156
Birch, virtue of, in instilling certain of the dead languages, 134
Christian soldiers, perhaps inconsistent, whether, 64
Eating words, habit of, convenient in time of famine, 76
Epaulets, perhaps no badge of saintship, 55
Fire, we all like to play with it, 85
National pudding, its effect on the organs of speech, a curious physiological fact, 51
Paris, liberal principles safe as far away as, 96
People soft enough, 98–want correct ideas, 131
Pleiades, the, not enough esteemed, 103
Present, not long wonderful, 103
Riches conjectured to have legs as well as wings, 92
Satan, never wants attorneys, 48
Speech-making, an abuse of gift of speech, 81
Venetians, invented something once, 135
From Lewis Carroll’s index to Sylvie and Bruno:
Crocodiles, logic of, 230
Electricity, influence of, on Literature, 64
Frog, young, how to amuse, 364
Ghosts, treatment of, in Railway-Literature, 58
Loving or being loved. Which is best? 77
Parentheses in conversation, how to indicate, 251
Weltering, appropriate fluids for, 58
Carroll’s index also includes entries for “Boots for horizontal weather,” “Horizontal rain, boots for,” “Rain, horizontal, boots for,” and “Weather, horizontal, boots for”:
“But what’s the use of wearing umbrellas round one’s knees?”
“In ordinary rain,” the Professor admitted, “they would not be of much use. But if ever it rained horizontally, you know, they would be invaluable–simply invaluable!”
In 1959, Down Beat editor Gene Lees invited Don DiMicheal to be his Louisville correspondent. DiMicheal sent an item about blues singer Blind Orange Adams, and Lees ran it, “because I so respected and therefore trusted Don’s knowledge of the earlier forms of jazz and the blues.”
When the issue appeared he got a panicked phone call. “That was a joke,” DiMicheal said. “I thought you’d get a laugh and take it out of my copy. It’s a pun on Blind Lemon Jefferson! Jefferson, Adams — get it?”
“Too late now,” Lees said. He told the magazine’s editors and publisher, and they began inserting joking references to Blind Orange into their copy. “The career of Blind Orange Adams blossomed during those years,” Lees told author Bill Crow for Jazz Anecdotes (2005). “Soon there was mail about him, and DiMicheal went so far as to rent a postal box and to found the Blind Orange Adams Appreciation Society.”
The joke reached its peak when Lees received a letter from a New York record label that wanted to find and record Adams. “I tried a desperate ploy. I wrote to the company saying that Blind Orange didn’t trust people, and the only one he would deal with was DeMicheal. He would agree to do an album only if DeMicheal and I produced it.” He planned to record saxophonist Eddie Harris as the mysterious singer, but the record label insisted on meeting their artist.
“I can no longer say with certainty what we did to resolve the situation,” Lees said, “but I seem to recall that Don wrote a story killing Blind Orange off in a car crash.”
“My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that, so far as I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a thousand times as much as there is to believe in, judging by experience.” — Augustus De Morgan
There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going,
When they seem going they come: Diplomats, women, and crabs.
— John Hay, in The Library of Wit and Humor, Prose and Poetry, 1884
Onomasticist Elsdon Coles Smith keeps a file on unfortunately named law firms. His list includes Ketcham & Cheatham in New York, Wind & Wind in Chicago, Ruff & Ready in Miami, and Dilly, Dally, Doolittle & Stahl in Akron.
Novelist Paul Auster insists he encountered an Irish firm called Argue & Phibbs. (“This is a true story. If there are those who doubt me, I challenge them to visit Sligo and see for themselves if I have made it up or not.”)
And Lyle Bland’s lawyers, in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, are Salitieri, Poore, Nash, DeBrutus & Short.
Between 1884 and 1896, visitors to Coney Island could stay in an elephant. Each leg of the tin-skinned wooden behemoth was 60 feet long; its ears were 40 feet wide; and the enormous trunk measured 72 feet. The forelegs housed a diorama and a cigar store, and the hind legs contained staircases leading to 31 hotel rooms above — advertised entertainingly as “a main hall head room, 2 side body rooms, 2 thigh rooms, 2 shoulder rooms, 2 cheek rooms, 1 throat room, 1 stomach room, 4 hoof rooms, 6 leg rooms, 2 side rooms, 2 hip rooms, 1 through room from which the Elephant is feeding.” (Presumably this last carried a discount.)
The hotel idea didn’t work out, and in the end the building served mostly as a concert hall and amusement bazaar, with novelty stalls, a gallery, and a museum. Visitors could use telescopes to peer out of the monster’s glass eyes, and it was said that the mists of Niagara could be seen from the howdah on its back, which teetered at a height of 175 feet.
The contractor that built the colossus said that it would last half a century, but within 12 years it had been abandoned and burned to the ground. All that remained was part of a foreleg.
If your first line ends with cow,
Rhyme o w with plough;
Should your second nicely go,
Seek o long, as found in though;
Thirdly, would you try this too,
Double o is found in through;
Fourth, a variance we are taught,
Like an a u is heard in thought;
Speak you, fifthly, of a sorrow,
Give the o obscure in borough;
In the sixth place, you may pick up
Sound of u p in a hiccough;
Turn your seventh couplet off,
Assuming o f as in cough;
Eighthly, sing you of a rock,
Echo c k with a lough;
Ninth and last, and quantum suff,
Sound u f, and cry,–enough!
— I.J. Reeve, in The Wild Garland; or, Curiosities of Poetry, 1865
Pianist Pete Brush was waiting for his wife outside a midtown department store when a woman with a violin case approached him and asked, “How can I get to Carnegie Hall?”
He said, “Go uptown to 57th Street and make a left to 7th Avenue.”
In 1841 a Richard Oglesby Davidson proposed building a flying machine in the shape of an eagle. We know this only because an anonymous Kentucky satirist followed it up with plans for a duck-shaped, steam-powered aërostat of his own — and, as so often, the satire has outlived its target.
The duck was to have been 15 feet long, with wings of whalebone and silk, and contained a steam engine and a small cabin. “I have made a calculation to ascertain the power of the Steam Duck, which, I think proves conclusively that success is inevitable:”
As to the danger from sportsmen, “any one of common sense can perceive that there never was a real bird with a scape-pipe in the situation described; nor wings shaped and constructed as those of the ‘steam duck’: yet it might not be amiss to attach to the works an alarm-bell, which would prevent all possibility of mistake.” One wonders if Davidson thought of this.