London Summary

1916

London, Sept. 11 — Armies of the five Nations have begun to turn back the German-Bulgar invasion of Greek territory. The British have crossed the Struma and driven their enemy toward Kavala in severe fighting. Under Serbian pressure on the other flank the Bulgarians have retreated toward Monastir, and the French, in the center, have let loose the full power of their artillery, pulverizing Bulgaria's defenses.

Greece is on the verge of war. A Ministerial crisis is imminent, and it is believed Premier Zaimis has already tendered his resignation, reports Reuter's correspondent at Athens. The Greeks, fired by the surrender of the whole provinces to the Bulgars without a blow, are flocking to the Allies for arms and a chance to drive out their bitterest foes.

While Russia is pouring troops into Southeastern Rumania, where the German-Bulgar army has conquered most of the Dobudja, it is claimed, the Rumanian forces are still advancing in Transylvania and overcoming vigorous Austrian resistance.

Vienna declares Russian attacks on Halics in Galicia and along the Kovel front in Russia have been brought to a standstill.

German counter-attacks against the British and French on the Somme front last night and today broke down without regaining any lost ground.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 7.

Little Waldo Suffers

1910

"It's disgusting," said Mrs. Waldo Beaconhill of Boston; "the makers of children's blocks never think of putting Greek letters on them; and there is my poor little Emerson simply dying of ennui for the want of a good fairy tale in words of moderately extensive syllabification."



Slap on the Wrist

Tightwad — Did you ever notice, my dear, that nearly all these misers reported in the papers are single men?
Mrs. Tightwad — Yes; but that's only natural. Married misers are too common to be worth mentioning.

Art of Writing Very Old

1910

New Discoveries Carry Back Existence of Written Documents Centuries Beyond Phoenician Record

The revelations made at the remains of a great prehistoric palace at Knossos, in Crete, which is believed to be the original of the fabled "Labyrinth," would seem to carry back the existence of written documents on Greek soil some eight centuries beyond the earliest known monuments of Greek writing and five centuries beyond the earliest dated Phoenician record as seen on the Moabite stone.

These discoveries, therefore, place the whole question of the origin of writing on a new basis. It is thought that the Cretan hieroglyphs exactly correspond with what, in virtue of their names, we must suppose to have been the pictorial originals of the Phoenician letters on which the alphabet is based.

Among these are Aleph, the ox's head; Beth, the house; Daleth, the door, and so forth. This contravenes the old theory of De Rouge that the Phoenician letters were derived from early Egyptian forms signifying quite different objects.

Even or Odd

1910

This game is the most ancient, perhaps, that we know. The children who played in the streets of Athens and in the Roman Forum in early ages, knew and loved it, and little children find amusement in it still. It is played in this manner: One child hides in her hand a few beans, nuts, or just bits of paper, and asks her companion to guess if they are odd or even.

If the playfellow guesses odd and on opening her hand the other displays an odd number, she forfeits the articles to the guesser, who hides them in her turn. But if the guess is odd and the number even, the guesser pays a forfeit and the first hider retains the beans, etc. The guess must be right to win.

Where Grammar Came From

1917

Barbarous Macedonian Held Responsible for Invention

The world reached its highest known stage of intelligence before grammar was even invented, much less studied, Ernest C. Moore writes in the Yale Review.

I have had some curiosity to find out where and how so great a blight upon young life first came into being, and why it ever became a school study, and I find that the Greeks knew it not; that their triumphant literature and their matchless oratory came to flower before grammar was dreamed of; that it was not in any sense one of the great arts which they wrought out and with which they armed the human race; that after Greece had declined, a barbarous Macedonian made himself owner of all Egypt, and in order to surround himself with the most spectacular form of ostentation of which his vain mind could conceive, he set to collecting not only all the rare and precious objects and books and manuscripts there were in the world, but he capped it all by making a collection of the living men of the world who had any reputation anywhere for knowing and thinking.

Taking them from their homes where they had some relation to the daily necessities of human beings, and had really been of some use, he shut them up for life in one of his palaces at Alexandria, which the folks were in the habit of calling "the hencoop of the muses;" and out of sheer desperation, since they could do nothing better to amuse themselves, they counted the words in the books which real men had written, and prepared tables of the forms and endings which the users of words employed. The lifeless dregs of books which their distilling left we now call grammar, and study instead of books and even speech itself. In their lowest depth of indifference to the moving, pulsing life of man, not even the Alexandrians sank so low as that.

Old Ways of Keeping Time

1910

Devices That Were Adopted by the Egyptians, Romans and Early English People

As far back as history will take us we find that there was always some crude means of reckoning time. The clock is, of course, a comparatively modern invention, the first mechanical ones that would keep the time even approximately having been made in 1250 A.D.

The early Egyptians divided the day and night each into 12 hours, a custom adopted by the Jews or Greeks probably from the Babylonians.

The day is said to have been first divided into hours in 293 B.C., when a sun dial was erected in the temple of Quirinus at Rome. As early as 158 B.C. the time was called in the streets of Rome by regular public criers.

In the early history of England we are told that the people found a means of measuring time by the use of wax candles. It was reckoned that three inches of candle would last an even hour.

Among most of the nations of the north day began at sunrise, while among the Athenians and Jews it began at sunset. With the ancient Romans it began, as it does with us, at midnight.

Meaning Changed in Translation

1899

It is difficult for those who understand but one language to realize that a translation of a work in an alien tongue is not equal to the original.

An odd experiment was made not long ago by an English writer, the result of which will be read with interest, and by many with surprise.

He wrote a four-line epigram, asked a friend to translate it into Latin, and sent the Latin to another friend with the request that he turn it back into English. This English version was turned by another into French. The process went on until the lines had passed through Greek, English, German, English, Persian, English. The first English version may be compared with the final translation:

I.
I heard that S. would write my "Life"
When I gave up my breath.
I felt that this indeed would add
A new delight to death. — G.S.L.

VI.
He — "Dear, in my song you still shall live,
Though under earth you lie!"
She — "Ah! had you now that grace to give
I should not need to die." — O.S.

—Youth's Companion.

The Douglas Shoe

1900

The best advertised and consequently the best known shoe in the world today is undoubtedly made by the W. L. Douglas Shoe Co., of Brockton, Massachusetts.

The one idea of this company has always been to sell a shoe for $3.50 which equals in every way the $5 shoes of any other concern. They are able to do this on account of there being no middle man's profit, as the goods are sold direct from the factory to the wearer. In 60 of the principal cities of the country they have their own retail stores. The goods are made in all sizes and widths, and few shoes equal them for style and durability.

The factory at Brockton employs over 3,100 hands, and, all labor troubles are settled by the state board of arbitration. Nothing but union labor is employed, and pay is about the best average wages of any shoe workers in the United States. The factory payroll amounts to $17,435 per week. This company makes shoes for men only, and it is their proud boast that over one million men wear them. — Denver (Colo.) Post.


Geese and Sages

One day in presiding at table at his country home in Windsor, Vermont, with a swarm of grandchildren about him, Senator William W. Evarts is said to have asked: "What is the difference between this goose before dinner and me after?" After much futile guessing, he answered, in quiet glee: "Now the goose is stuffed with sage, and soon the sage" — pointing to himself — "will be stuffed with the goose."


Words

In coining such modern words as "telegram," "photography," etc., the Japanese have recourse to the Chinese language, as we do to the Greek.

Poisoning as a Profession

1916

Use of Deadly Gases Recalls Politics of the Dark Age Statemen and Diplomats

It is interesting today, when the opposing armies are "removing" their opponents en bloc by the use of poisonous vapors, to recall the horror evoked by the deeds of poisoners in the past. The names of the Borgias and the Medici are to this day held up to the detestation of mankind. Yet these and their like only poisoned individuals; the fighting forces today are compelled to endeavor to poison entire armies!

Their wholesale methods will doubtless go to enrich the annals of historical poisoning. For poison has played a great part in history. The employment of poison by the ancients is graphically and terribly illustrated in the deaths of Socrates, Demosthenes, Hannibal and Cleopatra, while in the reign of Artaxerxes II. (Memnon), B.C. 405-350, Phrysa poisoned the Queen Statira by cutting food with a knife poisoned on one side.

In the early part of the Christian era numberless professional poisoners arose, and for a long time exercised their trade with impunity. "Poisoning," says a well known authority, "was so much in use as a political engine that Agrippina (A.D. 26) refused to eat of some apples offered her at table by her father-in-law, Tiberius." It is a curious fact that Agrippina, while refusing to partake of these apples from her fear of being poisoned, was herself guilty of the poisoning of Claudius; but poetic justice was meted out to her in the death (by poison) of her son, Britannicus.

It was at this time, too, that the infamous Locusta flourished. She is said to have supplied, with suitable directions, the poison by which Agrippina got rid of Claudius; and she was also the principal agent in the preparation of the poison that was administered to Britannicus by order of his brother Nero.

"It was the custom of the Romans to drink hot water," says Mr. Wynter Blythe, "a draught nauseous enough to us, but, from fashion or habit, considered by them a luxury. And as no two men's tastes are alike, great skill was shown by the slaves in bringing the water to exactly that degree of heat which their respective masters found agreeable.

"A slave brings water to Britannicus; it is too hot; Britannicus refuses it. The slave adds cold water, and it is this cold water that is supposed to have been poisoned. In any case, Britannicus died, and extraordinary lividity spread over the corpse, which they attempted to conceal by painting the face."

There has come down to us a curious document, said to have been drawn out by Charles de Mauvais, King of Navarre, which shows how arsenic was much favored as a political weapon by crowned heads in the fourteenth century. It is a commission of murder given to a certain Wouderton.

"Go thou to Paris. Thou canst do great service if thou wilt. Do what I tell thee. I will reward thee well. Thou shall do thus: There is a thing which is called sublime arsenic. If a man eat a bit the size of a pea he will never survive. Thou wilt find it in Pampeluna, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and in all good towns through which thou will pass, at the apothecaries' shops.

"Take it and powder it; and when thou shalt be in the house of the king, and of Valois, his brother, the Dukes of Berry, Burgundy and Bourbon, draw near and betake this to the kitchen, to the larder, to the cellar, and in other places where thy point can be best gained. Put the powder in the soups, meats or wines, provided that thou canst do it secretly. Otherwise do it not."

Wouderton, failing to accomplish his task, was detected and executed in 1384.

No better example of this dread in which poisoners were held can be quoted than the fact that at so late a period as the reign of Henry VII extraordinary precautions were thought necessary for preserving the life of the infant heir. It was ordained that no person, of whatsoever rank, except the regular attendants in the nursery, were to approach the cradle, except with an order from the king's hand. Moreover, everything intended for the royal infant was boiled, to prevent all risk of poison as far as possible.

One of the more recent instances of political poisoning is that of the Sultan Abdul-Aziz, who died May 30, 1876. By reason of his advanced ideas he was forced to abdicate the throne, and four days later the unhappy sultan was found dead, it is almost certain by foul play. — From London Answers.

Ancient Gold Mining in Tubal-Cain

1915

From Their Method Originated the Legend of the Golden Fleece

Country Still Rich in Most Valuable Ores

In the legend of the Golden Fleece lies hidden the record of an ancient method of the Tibareni, the sons of Tubal, for the collection of gold.

The north coast of Asia Minor produced large quantities of the precious metals, as well as copper and iron. Gold was found in the gravel, as often happens still in streams draining from copper regions. The gold in copper ores, originally containing insignificant amounts of the precious metals, accumulates in the course of ages, and sometimes forms placers of astonishing richness.

The ancient Tibareni washed the gold-bearing gravel, first by booming, which concentrated the gold into relatively small amounts of sand. This was then collected and washed through sluices having the bottoms lined with sheepskins. The gold would sink into the wool, while the sand would be washed away in the swift current, writes Courtenay de Kalk in the Mining Age. The skins were removed from the sluices, the coarser gold shaken out, and the fleeces, still glittering with the yellow metal, were hung upon boughs to dry so that the rest of the gold might be beaten from them and saved.

The early Greek mariners, witnessing this process, carried home tales of the wonderful riches of a land where a warlike race of miners hung golden fleeces upon the trees in the grove of Ares. After so many millenniums the metalliferous country of Tubal-Cain is once more coming into prominence. The natives still cull the high-grade copper ore, and break it into smalls, which they cover with wood and roast to matte; they still work the matte in forge-like furnaces to black copper, which they ship to Alexandretta and to Euxine ports. They still make the famous carbonized iron that was celebrated as Damascus steel because it was distributed through this mart to the rest of the world after receiving a finish by local Damascene workmen.

These decadent methods, that give a hint of the approved practice of the father of metallurgy, will soon became wholly extinct, for the modern miner is studying the disseminated copper ores of the Black sea coast, and threatening to rekindle on a magnificent scale the smoldering fires of Tubal-Cain.

Antiquity of Geometry

1907

The Science May Have Existed In India For Long Ages

Did we learn our rule of three and our Euclid from India? Researches have brought to light astronomical tables in India which must have been constructed by the principles of geometry. Some are of the opinion that they have been framed from observations made not less than 3,000 years before the Christian era, and if this opinion be well founded the science of geometry must have been cultivated in India to a considerable extent long before the period assigned to its origin in the west, so that many of the elementary propositions may have been brought from India to Greece.

The Indians have a treatise called the "Surya Sidhanta," which professes to be a revelation from heaven communicated to Meya, a man of great sanctity, about 4,000,000 years ago. This book contains a rational system of trigonometry which differs entirely from the first known in Greece and Arabia. In fact it is founded on a geometrical theorem which was not known to the geometricians of Europe before the time of Victa, about 200 years ago. And it employs methods of demonstration unknown to the Greeks, who used others. The former have been attributed to the Arabs, but it is possible they have received this improvement in trigonometry as well as the numerical characters from India. — Chicago Tribune.

The Greek Myrmex — Deadly Weapon in a Fight

1907

It Was the Deadliest Weapon of the Ancient Pugilist

The four ounce glove was unknown to the ancient pugilist. When the boxers and fighters came together in the old days of Greece they wore upon their hands the cestus, which was in itself a terrible adjunct to any fighter. But Dr. Daniel G. Briton discovered that there was sometimes attached to the cestus a deadlier weapon, consisting of a three pronged fork of bronze.

This was known as the myrmex, and Dr. Brinton, who found this specimen, gave it to the museum of archaeology in the University of Pennsylvania. Classical literature has frequent references to the myrmex, which is described as the deadliest weapon of the ancient pugilist. The right hand was swathed in tough hide, bound in place with thongs and supplemented by small knobs of lead or iron, to which was affixed the myrmex. Dr. Brinton made his discovery in Paris by examining the Greek and Roman marbles in the Louvre. One of these groups represented a fighter bearing on his right fist the cestus and myrmex.

Combats in those days were much more brutal and dangerous than those of the modern prize ring. It is easily seen that a single blow of the myrmex might cause death or permanent injury.

The Beauty of the Feet and Dancing

New York, July 1914

Feet Underestimated, Says Mrs. Vlissengen, Patron of Dancing

"God made feet as well as hands, the devil had nothing to do with them," declared Mrs. Jean Vlissengen, who arrived yesterday from Chicago.

Mrs. Vlissengen put on the pageant which was intended as the culmination of the recent Federation of Women's Clubs in Chicago, but which ended in an investigation by the Chicago police. She indignantly denies, however that the girls were required to wear tights, only the Apollo's costume — or lack of it — was criticized.

"The foot is just as expressive as the hand," she continued. "The Greeks understood this, but we have allowed ourselves to be deprived of its beauty through silly conventions."

Two of the girls who took part in the Chicago pageant, Misses Patsy Shelley said to be a descendant of the poet, and Roschen Turck-Baker, the niece of a well-known Chicago physician will arrive later and do ballroom dancing. Both are 16 years old, and have received all their training from Mrs. Vlissengen. They do no modern dances.

"I have never received any money for my work with these girls," she said. "I wish merely to raise dancing to its proper place among the arts. So I take two or three promising girls a year and train them. I gave Isadora Duncan all her training." — New York Sun.

Dishwasher Runs Amuck With a Bread Knife

California, 1921

History states that the Battle of Thermopylae Pass in ancient days was not such an exciting affair, and if so, it faded into oblivion, alongside of the affair of late yesterday afternoon in which Denny Zanatos, proprietor of the restaurant on Main street above Third, known as Guidi's, did a Marathon down Main street to avoid the wild charge of a Greek dishwasher in the same restaurant, who took after the fleet restauranteur armed with a butcher knife.

The assailant began arguing with Zanatos over wages. Then the battle began, resulting in the knife wielder being arrested by the fire chief and is facing a charge of assault with intent to murder. It is claimed that the prisoner chased Zanatos about the Guidi restaurant a dozen times, not giving the fleeing Athenian a chance to open the door to make escape. Finally a waitress came to the man's rescue and when the door was opened he made one grand leap for the street and would have made Atlanta in her race of the Golden Apple look like a novice had he been her opponent on the mythical cinder path.

—Woodland Daily Democrat, Woodland, California, Dec. 17, 1921, p. 1.

Concerning Beds, Mattresses in Days of Old

1874

During all ages, from the earliest times, men have displayed their invention in designing beds which should gratify their natural love for comfort, for elegance, and for luxury. In the prehistoric times the dwellers in the caves most probably followed the suggestion given them by the animals which they drove out from their rocky dens, in this early stage of the "struggle for existence," and made their beds of leaves. From this condition to providing skins for the coverings of their couches, was a great advance, and with their increasing ability to dominate their surrounding conditions, and provide the materials for gratifying their natural as well as artificial wants, this step was but the first in a long course of invention and improvement applied to beds.

Among the Romans and the Greeks, as well as the other nations of antiquity, such an appliance as a mattress was unknown. They made their beds upon couches of wood, which were covered with skins, furs, woolen and other stuffs. Their luxury in beds consisted only in using more expensive coverings, replacing a sheep's skin by a tiger's or substituting for a rough woolen blanket one of finer texture, or a shawl of silk embroidered in gold and silver thread. These improvements, or those consisting in replacing the wooden bench which formed their support with one of bronze, or even of gold or silver, was really only a display of greater wealth, but could not be considered in these days an advance towards securing the advantages of a comfortable, luxurious, and healthy bed.

In the early period of modern history, beds were almost universally, in Europe, nothing but bundles of straw. As late in England as the times of Queen Elizabeth, when no carpets were used, and the floor was strewn with rushes, the beds were hardly anything better, and a wooden bench, or any rude framework which lifted the bed above the floor, was a luxury. Erasmus, in his letters, describes the social condition of the people during the reign of Henry VIII, and was disgusted at the state of the floors. The rushes, he says, were so seldom changed, and became so damp, that the feet were constantly kept wet, and thence colds and consumption were quite common.

In the dining-rooms, he speaks of the filth collected on the floor among the rushes; the bits of meat and bones thrown to the dogs, who fought around the guests' legs for them; the beer and wine emptied upon the floor; the slices of bread, used as plates for eating their meat on, and then thrown aside, altogether giving us no very high conception of the neatness and fine breeding of the time.

From Delaroche's fine picture of "The Death of Queen Elizabeth," an accurate idea can be gained of the beds of royalty at this period, and consequently those of the common people can be imagined. By a careful study of the times, and from all the contemporary evidence bearing upon this point, Delaroche was enabled to reproduce the scene with a truthful accuracy of detail. The queen is reposing upon a bed formed by spreading cloths upon the floor. She is covered with richly embroidered spreads of velvet, bordered with golden fringe. The moment chosen is when she is upbraiding the Countess of Nottingham for keeping back the ring Essex had sent to his royal mistress just before his execution. The queen herself is gorgeously attired, as was her constant custom, but the comparison between the brilliant coverings of the bed and its position, one which now would be considered as in the dirt, affords an admirable picture of the partial civilization of the times, with its splendor of display and its want of the simplest decencies of the present.

Mattresses were first made of straw or wool, then moss came to be used, and feathers, and finally curled hair. The trouble with all mattresses of these materials is, that they become by use matted and hard, and have to be remade. Besides, too, all of these materials have a greater or a less tendency to retain the bodily exhalations, and in all public places, such as hotels, hospitals, and other institutions where the beds are used in turn by a number of different persons, the danger of contagion, and the difficulty in any case of keeping the beds hygienically clean and pure, according to the demands of the present medical standard, is very great, if not impossible.

Advertising in Olden Times

1878

Macademized roads, in all save the name, were known in the Roman dominions 200 years before the Christian era, were not merely limited to the vicinity of the capital, but were laid down in every province that succumbed to the valor of the Republican arms.

At an equally early age, the Roman Senate, among various other decrees relating to the order and discipline to be observed in the city, enacted that men should give place to women in the streets, and leave them the unmolested use of the smooth line of pavement, which every house-owner had to maintain in good condition in front of his own residence.

Colossal sign-boards announced to the passers-by the business followed in the houses; while in time of Plautus, notices of lost and found objects were displayed on placards written in letters a cubit long; and gladiatorial games, races, shows and theatrical exhibitions, were made public by huge boards displaying colored representations of some of the most striking scenes or sights to be exhibited. The walls, doors, and palings were covered with these rude advertisements, which seemed generally to have been drawn in some bright color on a black red ground.

Although the Romans, like other ancient nations, were ignorant of printing as applied to the multiplication of books, they were familiar with the use of printing type, which their porters used for stamping names on their vases; and we are told that the Emperor Justinian, when he wished to append his signature to a public document, had recourse to a small wooden tablet, on which the letters of his name were cut, which he traced on the paper by following with the point of his style pen the various contours of the carving.

But perhaps the strangest indication of the fact that most of our assumed discoveries and innovations are mere "rehabilitations," to use a French word, of pre-existing things, is supplied by the suggestion which is ascribed to Plato for the establishment of agencies for marriage, by means of which the qualities of each candidate for matrimony might be made known, and men thus have a better chance of procuring wives suited to their various characters.

The idea seems to have been lost for ages, but not wholly, for it revived in great force about a century ago, when some ingenious German, either from the depths of his own consciousness, or from careful study of Plato's writings, established at Hamburg an office for the transaction of matrimonial affairs, in which advertisements for husbands and wives were always to be seen. There was not the slightest mystery or reserve assumed; and there was great frankness displayed both by the ladies and gentlemen who took part in these negotiations, for we are informed by one advertiser that "she is fifty-nine years of age, and having buried her fourth husband within the previous three weeks, is anxious to meet with a good-looking, healthy young man of twenty-six, as successor to her lamented partners. He need be under no trouble or care about money matters, as she has plenty of both, and will leave him her universal legatee."