Month: July 2011
-
People Who Still Believe In Witchcraft
Burning old women at the stake as witches is a pleasantry no longer indulged in, even in Salem, but belief in witchcraft is not altogether dead. Only a few months ago a woman in Jersey City had a neighbor haled to court on the charge of pretending to possess powers of evil and threatening to […]
-
Babies Who Earn A Man’s Wage And Support Families
You have to admit, they are cute kids. The one on the far left is Marie Borgreve, “who takes posing seriously and, at four years, assumes the dignity of forty.” I think she looks a bit like Kiernan Shipka, who plays Sally Draper on Mad Men. BABIES WHO EARN A MAN’S WAGE AND SUPPORT FAMILIES: […]
-
When Mark Twain Nearly Changed His Literary Career
Here’s a first person account of Mark Twain’s reaction to a bad review. WHEN MARK TWAIN NEARLY CHANGED HIS LITERARY CAREER: A Disappointment That Incidentally Gave Him a Lifelong Yearning to Kill a Critic. (PDF) From July 30, 1911
-
Exporting An Imaginary America To Make Money
According to IMDB, the current record for foreign box office receipts of an American movie belongs to Avatar. But you don’t have to go too far down the list to find a cowboy movie. The tenth highest foreign box office record belongs to Toy Story 3. EXPORTING AN IMAGINARY AMERICA TO MAKE MONEY: Moving Picture […]
-
Why Does Your Grocer Trust You?
An interesting look at personal credit. “Mr. Brown left in a hurry this morning and forgot to give me any money.” “I haven’t the change, but I’ll drop in to-morrow and pay.” A retail grocer of the upper west side of New York says that he and every other butcher, grocer, and small store-keeper in […]
-
A Stove To Cool The House Instead Of Heating It
Not content to just invent the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell went on to invent other useful things, like a primitive air conditioner that blows air over blocks of ice to cool down the room. “The invention is what, for want of a better name, has been termed an ‘ice stove.’” That’s the gist of the […]
-
Must The Nickel Novel Die Out? It Is In Danger Now
This article is a nice appreciation of the nickel novel (also called the dime novel), which appeared to be on its way out but actually survived another 30 years or so. Not every age produces a Shakespeare, a Dante, a Kipling, or a man destined to have his name written high in large thirty-two candle […]
-
Keeping Track Of The Criminal By His Finger Prints
I love articles like this one. Over in Jersey City awaiting his trial is the man who marked each successful burglary by a note defying the police and jeering at their methods. He has not been proved guilty, but the police are certain he is their man. He was caught by the finger prints which […]
-
Have You Ever Seen A Blue Rose? A Horticultural Problem
This article gives a nice background on the history of roses as a coveted flower, and then gets into the matter of a blue rose. A blue rose is held to be about the hardest thing in the flower-growing world to attain… It can’t be done by any chemical process, of course. Any one rose […]
-
Sure Sign Of Woman’s Emancipation In The Increased Size Of Her Shoes
Shoe manufacturers don’t make small-sized shoes for women any more. They say women’s feet have grown bigger in the last fifteen or twenty years. Small feet, of course, are only comparative. A small foot for a woman twenty years ago was 2 or 2½. Now it is said that there are few if any 2 […]
SundayMagazine.org 