Some Burdensome Names

1914

Perhaps the most burdensome name ever given to a child was to the daughter of Arthur Pepper in 1882. It comprised one name for every letter of the alphabet, in this way: Anna Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louise Maud Nora Ophelia Quince Rebecca Starkey Teresa Ulysis Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeno, P of course provided in the surname, Pepper.

Hundreds of examples of this poor form of parental wit occur in the entries for the past few years Noah's Ark Smith, Sardine Box, Jolly Death, Judas Iscariot Brown, One-too-Many Johnson, Not-Wanted Smith, Bovril Simpson, Merry Christmas Figgett, Odious Heaton, Anno Domini Davis, are the names of children probably living who will have to bear them through life, unless they wash themselves clean with subterfuge.

There was for a long time a curiosity in nomenclature on the Australian pension list. His name was "Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-Kingdom-of-Heaven Smith." But the officials of the Pension department very pardonably abbreviated him into Tribby Smith."

It is not surprising that the names of Dickens' characters — odd though they are — should be found in real life, for it was from life that many of them were taken. Some, as we know, were copied from the names over shop doors, etc, but this was not the novelist's only source of selection. Among his papers John Forster found carefully drawn up lists of names, with the source from which he obtained them and the longest lists were those drawn from the "Privy Council Education Lists." Some of the names thus noted are too extravagant for anything but reality — Jolly Stick, Bill Marigold, George Muzzle, William Why, Robert Gospel, Robin Scrubbam, Sarah Goldsacks, Catherine Two, Sophia Doomsday, Rosetta Dust, Sally Gimblett!

Some of The Genuinely Odd Things That Happen in Life

1893

OF GENERAL INTEREST.

—Dr. McBride, of Orange, Va., uses a flock of geese as a team of horses, which draw him over the ice in a specially prepared vehicle at the rate of one and a quarter miles a minute. He is now making a balloon in which he proposes to ride drawn by the same team.

—The man who orders plain butter in a New York restaurant and discovers it to be oleomargarine, or other kind of substitute, can have the proprietor arrested and fined, and the informer receives half the fine. The way in which the proprietor can protect himself is to print on his bills of fare the confession that his butter is not genuine.

—Uncle Joe Ardle, an old Georgia darky living on the Savannah river, thinks it about time to take to the woods. After the earthquake of 1886 he was afraid to live on the ground, so he built a hut in the branches of a huge oak tree, where he lived contentedly until the storm of a few weeks ago blew him and his hut clear out of the trees and almost into the river.

—The keeper of a cheap but clean restaurant in the French quarter in New York has hit upon the plan of advertising his wares by means of pictures on the flags of the sidewalk. He hires a chalk artist for this work, and you may see upon the flags just within the stoop line well-drawn fish in groups of three, and other lifelike representations of the viands that the place affords.

—An alligator eight feet two inches in length and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds was lately caught in the Mississippi. Alligators are quite plentiful in southwestern rivers, but they rarely attain a length of more than four feet. So far as known, this one is by far the largest ever taken from the Mississippi. Some of its teeth are over two inches long and very like the teeth of a shark.

—The Evening Democrat, Warren, PA, Oct. 17, 1893, p. 3.

Note: I've never heard of the French quarter in New York. Probably make that New Orleans.
—Towns county, Ga., boasts of a novel specimen of the "white" negro. This one has been "turning" for several years, until the left side of his face is perfectly white while the right side remains almost jet black. Negroes whose skin changes from black to a light brown or reddish white are not uncommon in the south, but the change mostly shows in blotches, giving them a mottled appearance.

—Stock raising is a business beset with many risks which do not cease until the flocks and herds are safely marketed. A flock of sheep was being driven through Grant county, Ore., to market at Baker City a few days ago, when, in passing through a narrow ravine, the sheep stampeded, and after the scare was over the stockman counted over sixty head of dead sheep that had been smothered in the crush.

—It may distract the attention of those who suffer from headache to learn that in early English days there were remedies "for headache, and for old headache, and for the ache of half the head." "Eye work and the fiend's temptations" are also mentioned in this catalogue. Ache of half the head, or hermicrania, from which George Eliot suffered so much, has been considered a distinctively modern disease, but there is nothing new.

—A strange fatality hangs over the Weeks family of Albion, Ind. Sherman was killed recently while climbing a tree. His brother entered the army during the war and died of lockjaw. Cornelius lost his life by swallowing a copper cent. Thomas jumped from a train and was killed, while Charles, still another brother, committed suicide by swallowing poison. Edward Weeks, also a brother, moved west some years ago and has never been heard of.

—Miss Minnie Rush, of Lakeville, Indiana, has discovered for herself and, perhaps for her sisters a new field of employment. For the past three years she has had charge of the passenger, freight and telegraph offices of the Vandalia line in her town, the receipts for which are fully ten thousand dollars a month. Miss Rush is only twenty-one years old, but she has organized railroad excursions which have netted handsome profits to her employers the past year, besides conducting the ordinary affairs of the office with skill and success.

—An ingenious mechanic in the Catskills has long manufactured small articles of use and ornament from the excrescences that grow upon the maple and other trees of the mountain region. He travels far in search of these nodules, seasons them for many years, and then fashions them into polished jewel boxes and many other beautiful things. He is especially careful that his material shall be well seasoned, a fact that means a good deal when one knows that the wood that goes to form some parts of thoroughly well made pianos should be seasoned thirty or forty years.