Bassetts Scrap Book, Vol 3, No 4
Articles in this issue
- p. 1
A June opener with a Bobolink-and-strawberry poem followed by sharp seasonal aphorisms on wild oats, chorus girls, rolling stones, and the mutual confusions of proverbs.
- p. 3
An account of domestic hearths in Yorkshire farmhouses that have burned continuously for centuries, with the record held by a farm at Osmotherly whose peat fire has never been extinguished in five hundred years.
- p. 4
A cross-cultural survey of how Chinese, Japanese, and Hindu families mark the beginning of a child's schooling, from dressing boys as girls to fool jealous gods in China, to making offerings to Tenjinsen the god of penmanship in Japan.
- p. 6
A note on the confused dating of Independence Day, with a professor claiming the real date is August 18 (when the Declaration was signed), another suggesting July 2 (when it was adopted), and the issue of the last signature added in November.
- p. 5
A short parable about a man who spent his life making money and found he had no heart, then went to the Market of Love and bought a beautiful maiden — only to discover that women with real hearts never sell themselves.
- p. 6
An anecdote of a congressman who spent his entire toast rhapsodising over the roses and stars and damask of the Missouri woman, only to be answered by the Kansas delegate with the deadpan: 'The women of Kansas are all that and then some.'
- p. 7
A defence of the metric system's mathematical logic while honestly admitting that its polysyllabic terminology — not the measurements themselves — is what keeps ordinary people from adopting it.