Bassetts Scrap Book, Vol 2, No 5
Articles in this issue
- p. 2
A mock-pastoral comic poem describing an entirely confused rural scene where swallows cackle, milkmaids skip about shouting while milking milkweeds, and ravens roost at sunset only to crow at dawn.
- p. 2
A historical note suggesting that the month's name may predate Julius Caesar, deriving from the Saxon word 'hul' meaning wheel — itself a symbol of the summer solstice — with the Senate later applying the honoring name Julius to this pre-existing word.
- p. 4
Nixon Waterman's reflection on the presidential election campaign of 1904, arguing that Americans take politics too seriously in a pyrotechnic manner when calm reasoning would serve the republic better.
- p. 5
A comic anecdote in which William Jennings Bryan is told he has got a barber into trouble with his union for shaving a dead man at the living rate — the charge for shaving a corpse being the higher fee.
- p. 2
A brief poem in which St. Peter instantly admits a sixteen-year-old girl to heaven without question, on the grounds that sixteen is the age when every maid is both girl and angel.
- p. 3
A scientific note explaining that dust appears denser in sunbeams than in surrounding air because the sun's rays cause irregular heating that creates air currents drawing dust particles into the beam.
- p. 6
Alexander J. Linn's account of how he invented the popular superstition linking red-headed women with white horses during a chance observation from the New York Union League Club window, only to have it spread across America in days.