Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 4, No 11
Articles in this issue
- A humorous New Year's poem counting down ten little resolutions that fall away one by one to temptations such as a poker game, a horserace and a preacher's sermon.
- A New Year's miscellany of short notes and facts, including the claim that the first temperance order was formed by the Landgrave of Hesse in 1600 with members pledged not to drink more than seven glasses of wine at a time.
- A fable poem about a small toad who wakes in spring, swells with conceit believing the world is his own, and shouts that the day's commotion is all because he has come out.
- A poem by George William Curtis in which the waves of the evening sea alternately tell a dreamer to dream no more and to dream again.
- A reflective poem by John White Chadwick remembering the kind, brave and true who walk with us no more, finding the unknown more homelike since they have entered there.
- A question-and-answer feature explaining the origins of phrases and stories, including the "Three Tailors of Tooley Street," the "Wooden Nutmegs" nickname for Connecticut, and Mlle. Bertin, milliner to Marie Antoinette.
- A day-by-day list of historical events occurring in January, from the suspension of specie payments in 1862 to the launch of the Great Eastern in 1858, prefaced by a note on the month being named for the two-faced god Janus.
- The League of American Wheelmen department notes the Secretary's twentieth year in office since Jan. 17, 1887, and lists the delegates regularly nominated to the National Assembly from New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.