Relic on the Lethe

Out of the annals of newspaper advertisements comes a story too fabulous not to be true: George Washington was a jackass enthusiast. Let me explain. In the 1780s, George Washington, seeking to introduce mules as work animals in America, attempted to obtain some Spanish donkeys. At the time, Spain was the leading breeder of tough, hardy mules, due to the development of larger donkeys in Catalonia and Andalusia. After several failed attempts of procuring animals, Washington reached out to King Charles III of Spain for help. The King made a concession of five donkeys - two jacks and three jennets - to Washington.  Mount Vernon's records indicate the two Spanish jacks (male donkeys) were sent separately to ensure at least one would reach Washington. Sure enough, only one survived the trip across the Atlantic. This gray draft donkey, christened "Royal Gift," arrived in Massachusetts in 1785, and after an overland journey reached Mount Vernon in December. The Marquis de Lafaye...

Just the One Just fair enough to be pretty, Just gentle enough to be sweet, Just saucy enough to be witty, Just dainty enough to be neat. Just tall enough to be graceful, Just slight enough for a fay, Just dressy enough to be tasteful, Just merry enough to be gay. Just tears enough to be tender, Just sighs enough to be sad, Just soft enough to remember, Your heart through the cadence made glad. Just meek enough for submission, Just bold enough to be brave, Just pride enough for ambition, Just thoughtful enough to be grave. A tongue that can talk without harming, Just mischief enough to tease, Manners pleasant enough to be charming, That put you at once at your ease. Generous enough, and kind-hearted, Pure as the angels above; Ah, from her may I never be parted, For such is the maiden I adore.   American Magazine, February 1914 . Like our other poem plucked from The People's Voice, this one is also unattributed. Interestingly, it seems to have several versions, and no one attributed...

It's the 1870s. Travel is getting faster, but it's still not instantaneous. Imagine you're on a long boat trip, and you want to have a little snack, but you find your butter has gone rancid. You can't exactly go around to the corner store and pick up a fresh batch. What do you do? If you're the French navy, the answer was apparently to create artificial butter for your sailors, and incidentally spark a century-long debate on the healthiness and purity of food. Articles that repeated this breakthrough word for word started circulating in Virginia newspapers in the early 1870s, generally reading, as this version in Tri-Weekly News, Volume 7, Number 141, 6 December 1872 : Artificial Butter.— At the request of the [victual] department of the French navy for some wholesome substitute for butter that would keep well, Mege Mouriez [Mège-Mouriès] , after a long course of experiments, has succeeded in producing an excellent substitute for genuine butter, that does not b...

Indeed, an account in Daily Independent, Volume 1, Number 16, 9 August 1923 relates the experience of passengers on the liner Muenchen sharing news from Germany. They described conditions in Germany as approaching complete chaos. . . . Gustav Van der Loo, a steel merchant . . . said that the price of steel had skyrocketed since the occupation of the Ruhr . "I can’t tell what is going to happen to Germany," he said; "the people don’t know themselves." The landlords who are forbidden by law to raise rents, he added, were in a bad way. In some German cities, he said, tenants are paying the equivalent of ten cents a month in American money for an apartment. This occupation of Germany by French and Belgian forces in 1923 was occasioned by Germany defaulting on reparation payments from the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. While a bit beyond the scope of our short blog format, this description of the worsening conditions in Germany was a foreshadowing ...