Wood for Resisting Fires

1896

A report from Consul Robertson on the free port system of Hamburg, just published by the State Department, contains the curious item of information that in the great new warehouses constructed in the German port wood is being substituted for iron to secure better protection against fire.

These buildings were originally provided with iron beams and girders, but when one of them was burned some years ago it was found that the iron had been so bent and twisted by the heat as to become a source of great danger to the adjoining structures. "In all the warehouses, therefore, which have since been built," observes Mr. Robertson, "it has been deemed advisable to substitute wood for iron as much as possible." Probably a heavy wooden beam, imbedded in some non-conducting material that would exclude the air, would be as nearly fireproof as anything except brick or stone. It might be charred on the outside, but the interior would probably remain sound in any ordinary heat.

It is a curious speculation to imagine what would have happened if the present method of construction in Chicago had been in vogue before the great fire. A twenty-five-story, steel-cage building warping into a corkscrew and boring a hole in the sky would be a spectacle worth going miles to see.


Derivation of Whiskers

The word whiskers is derived from whisk, and the Anglo-Saxon wisch, which means a slight brush. Less than a century ago the expression was unheard of, the whiskers as well as the mustache being spoken of as part of the beard. It was only when the latter was divided, and the true whiskers disappeared as well, that their name was changed to the mutton chop part of the beard left on the cheek.

Long Wars Due to Whiskers

1910

Trivial Incident Led to Three Hundred Years of Fighting

For ages beards were the delight of ancient beauties. The sight of a shaved chin excited sentiments of horror and aversion.

To obey the injunctions of his bishops, Louis VII of France cropped his hair a la pompadour and shaved off his luxuriant whiskers. Eleanor of Aquitane, his consort, found him with this uncommon appearance very ridiculous and very contemptible. She revenged herself by becoming something more than a coquette. The king obtained a divorce.

She then married the count of Anjou, who shortly afterward ascended the French throne, and gave him as her marriage dower the rich provinces of Poiton and Guienne; and this was the origin of those wars which for 300 years ravaged France and which cost the French nation 3,000,000 men.

All of which, probably, would have never taken place if Louis VII had not been so rash as to shave off his whiskers, by which he made himself so disgusting to the fair Eleanor.


Love Affairs of the Sexes

It is only her first love affair that a woman cherishes and remembers. Man is so lacking in originality that all the others are merely duplicates.

Full Beards and Red Petticoats

1886

People who can remember back of the civil war must know that shaving was almost universal in those days, and that when the contrary practice began it so agitated the country that the newspapers were filled with leading articles on "The Beard Movement" and "The Mustache Movement."

Probably most of our older readers can remember when they first saw a preacher in the pulpit wearing a mustache and the shock it gave them. It was, if possible worse than the other sacrilegious act of bringing fiddles into the choir.

The event which started the beard movement was the visit of the wonderful Hungarian orator, Louis Kossuth, who was extremely handsome and picturesque in the full beard and mustache and soft felt hat with curling feather. He introduced the soft hat as well as the mustache, and as he traveled all over the country in 1854 and 1855 and spoke every where to great crowds whom he powerfully impressed with the masterly English which he had learned from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Webster's dictionary while he lay in an Austrian prison he advertised both his hat and his hair very widely. It would seem rather trivial nowadays for the newspapers to gravely discuss the "beard movement," but that was not the most trivial matter with which the newspapers of thirty years ago busied themselves.

Prominent among their themes shortly before the war was "the Red Petticoat Movement." It became the sensible fashion for women to wear red flannel petticoats instead of the white cotton one which had been the universal wear before. This was an innovation that worried the newspapers seriously. Many of them held the red garment to be, if not actually immodest, at least bold and daunting, and a symbol of the degeneracy of the age. Charles Mackay, then visiting in the country, published an earnest poetical appeal for "the white, the modest petticoat," which went the round of the press. — Buffalo Express.


1858

The Red Petticoat and the White

Charles Mackay sends the following lines, on an absorbing subject, to the public press:

Oh, the red, the flaunting petticoat,
That courts the eye of day,
That loves to flare and be admired,
And blinks from far away;
It may delight the roving sight,
And charm the fancy free,
But if its bearer's half as bold,
I'll pass and let her be;—
With her red, her flaunting petticoat,
She's not the girl for me!

But the white, the modest petticoat,
As pure as drifted snow,
That shuns the gaze in crowded ways,
Where follies come and go.
It stirs the primrose on its path,
Or daisy on the lea;
And if the bearer's like the garb,
How beautiful is she!
With her white, her modest petticoat,
Oh, she's the girl for me!

The Whiskers of Cats

1878

Use of Whiskers to a Cat.

The sense which of all others is most deficient in the cat is that of smell. In this she differs most markedly from the dog. It is said that a piece of meat may be placed in close proximity to a cat, but that, if it is kept covered up she will fail to distinguish it.

This want is, however, partly compensated for by an extremely delicate sense of touch, which is possessed, to a remarkable extent, by the whiskers, or vibrissae, as well as by the general surface of the skin. These bristles are possessed to a greater or less extent by all cats, and are simply greatly developed hairs, having enormously swollen roots, covered with a layer of muscular fibres, with which delicate nerves are connected. By means of these latter, the slightest touch on the extremity of the whiskers, is instantly transmitted to the brain.

Those organs are of the greatest possible value to the cat in its nocturnal campaigns. When it is deprived of the guidance afforded by light it makes its way by the sense of touch, the fine whiskers touching against every object the cat passes, and thus acting in precisely the same manner as a blind man's stick, though with infinitely greater sensibility. Imagine a blind man with not one stick, but with a couple of dozen, of exquisite fineness, and these not held in his hand but embedded in his skin, so that his nerves come into direct contact with them instead of having a layer of skin between, and some notion may be formed of the way in which a cat uses its whiskers.

Curl Your Mustache

1884

At a late hour last evening a young man left a chair in a fashionable uptown barber shop with a handkerchief to his mouth.

"Cut him?" asked the next customer.

"No. He's got his mustache in curlers."

"Eh?"

The barber produced two bits of rubber tubing an inch long and quarter of an inch thick. In one end was a hole with a small rubber ring through it. In the other end was a slit.

"We roll the wet mustache around this tube, and, after making one turn around all with the ring, slip it into the slit. That holds the hair in the curled position until morning, when he takes off the curler. The hair will stay in shape for a day or two. If applied often enough it makes a permanent curl. We charge 25 cents for a pair of curlers and 6 cents for applying them — latest thing for mustaches. — The New York Sun.

His Facial Foliage Given a Trim and Wrapped

1916

Its Fate When Living Up to Its Dignity Was Suggested

There is a comic artist on a New York paper who used to drink a little too much and a little too often. Also he wore a heavy brown beard of which he was very proud.

One morning he came to the office, showing signs of indiscretions the night before. His managing editor endeavored to appeal to his better judgment.

"Old man," he said seriously, "you're too old and too smart to be doing this sort of thing. It might be all right for a lot of smooth faced kids to spend the night over a bar, but you ought to remember that you're no longer a kid. You ought to try to live up to the dignity of that beard of yours."

This last suggestion seemed to throw the culprit into a brown study. He retired to his corner of the art room to think it over. In a few minutes he put on his hat and coat and slipped out, and he didn't come back for two weeks either. But within an hour after his departure the managing editor heard from him. A messenger boy brought in a pasteboard box such as florists use to pack flowers in. The managing editor cut the wrappings and opened the box.

There was nothing inside except a heavy brown beard, which had been newly sheared off the owner's face, with one lone rosebud reposing in the center of it — Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

The Treacle Bible Goes Back At Least to 1701

1920

Interesting Old Bible

One of the original owners of the Treacle Bible, living in the eighteenth century, had made notations on the fly leaf concerning "John, who was born on Friday the 10th of February, 1769, at a quarter after eight at night, was baptized at Crossgate church on March 16 following, by the Reverend Mr. Wheeler, who died of smallpox, 12th Aprile, 1709, and was buried the next day at Crossgate church, aged eight weeks and five days." Other deaths, marriages and births were dated as far back as 1701-1702.


Progressing Rapidly

For the fourth time a new baby had arrived at the home of Robert's sister Nellie. When informed of the event one of his aunts told him in an impressive manner that he was now an uncle for the fourth time. Rather fussed, the little fellow answered: "Goodness me, if things keep on I'll soon be a grandpa."


Novelty Soon Wears Off

An experienced young woman told us the other day that there is a time in every engaged girl's life when about a day's growth of beard adds to her thrill, but that after the novelty wears off clean shaving is much preferred.- Ohio State Journal.

—Bedford Gazette, Bedford, Pennsylvania, January 9, 1920, page 10.