Bassetts Scrap Book, Vol 2, No 11
Articles in this issue
- p. 2
New Year reflections tracing the history of calendar reform, from the ancient Chinese, Persian, and Egyptian New Year dates through to Charles IX of France's 1564 decree fixing 1 January as the start of the civil year.
- p. 3
A humorous New Year resolution poem in which the speaker lists an ambitious programme of self-improvement for the coming year while tacitly acknowledging that most of the resolutions will not be kept.
- p. 3
A comic dialogue between two passengers on a train who tie themselves in verbal knots debating whether 'is' and 'was' can substitute for each other grammatically, culminating in one of them missing his station.
- p. 8
A schoolmaster's anecdote about a little Italian boy who disrupts a class vote on a national flower because, having been taught that you never vote until you know how much you will be paid, he refuses to cast his ballot for nothing.
- p. 4
A comic tall tale of an American tourist who pumped his bicycle tires with compressed London fog, and when pursued by mounted Indians on the prairie escaped by blowing a puncture and hiding them in the resulting mist.
- p. 1
An opening poem for January 1905 celebrating the consoling presence of small beauties — roses, birds, clouds — in everyday life, urging readers to find some small sweet way to set the world rejoicing.