Sir Margaret St. John Cassowary: My Life

PANIC GRIPPED THE British aristocracy when it was announced that Sir Margaret St. John Cassowary was preparing his memoirs for publication. A certain Prime Minister had once described Sir Margaret as “not too bright, poor fellow,” but the one subject about which he knew his onions was the deepest and most embarrassing secrets of just about everyone, or at least everyone of the rank of baronet or above. If those secrets were exposed to the prying eyes of the general public, it would chip at the very foundations of social order. Nothing less than rampant republicanism might be the result.

Legal challenges were mounted at once. A certain anonymous person, known in court records as Lord John of Doe, applied to Her Majesty’s Court of Uncommon Pleas for a writ of habeas mandamus in excelsis; but the court ruled (setting an important precedent) that the letter of the law allowed such a writ to be issued only when pheasants were involved and in imminent danger. Another court challenge was rejected on the grounds that it was nearly time for tea.

Having failed in the courts, some of the more desperate sort turned to more direct measures. No fewer than four separate attempts were made on Sir Margaret’s life; but he survived them all and continued as blithely as if he had not even been aware of the plots against his person, which in fact may have been the case.

Finally, and most desperately of all, a bomb was thrown at the publisher’s offices. It was not, however, thrown very well: instead of penetrating the building, it bounced off the front wall and rolled into the middle of the annual parade of the Anarchists’ Society. The results were in some ways lamentable, and in other ways not.

In the midst of all this furore, Sir Margaret suddenly expired from a surfeit of lampreys, becoming the first English noble to perish in such a manner for more than four hundred years. He had, however, prepared for such an eventuality, and his solicitors shortly delivered a large package to his publishers, containing the much-anticipated manuscript. Eagerly the editors opened the package, but their eagerness began to evaporate when they saw that the manuscript appeared to be completely indecipherable.

A few days later, however, a letter arrived at the publishers’ office. It was written in the hand of Sir Margaret himself, who had instructed his solicitors to send it separately from the manuscript.

“I have known for some time,” Sir Margaret wrote, “that certain personal enemies of mine would stop at nothing to obtain the manuscript of my memoirs, which I have titled My Life in reference to the fact that it largely deals with my life. I have therefore written the manuscript in what I flatter myself must be an unbreakable cipher. If you are reading this letter, it is because I have met my demise, and my solicitor has been instructed to forward the manuscript to you. I shall therefore reveal to you, and only to you, the key to the cipher.

“The code is astonishingly simple and yet, to my knowledge, entirely secure. I have simply replaced every letter in every word with an X. Punctuation marks and spaces have each been replaced with an X as well, so as to leave no hint or clue by which the manuscript may be interpreted. Only to you have I revealed this key, which my solicitor has been instructed to keep securely stored separate from the manuscript until such time as it may be needed. Without this key, the manuscript is worthless. And now, perhaps, I shall have my revenge on all those former friends who said behind my back that I was not too bright. Simply reverse the encryption process which I have described to you, and you will see what sort of friends they really were to Queen and country. Even after death, revenge is sweet.”

 

Daisies. In the Cretaceous period, daisies grew thirty feet tall and were carnivorous.

Deer. Technically, deer do not “lose” their antlers; rather, they misplace them.

Democracy. Democracy originated as a parlor game.

Democrats; Republicans. Scientists have now mapped the genetic differences between Demo­crats and Republicans, raising the hope of an eventual cure.

Dessert. “Dessert” was originally a separate meal, but during the Civil War it was combined with “dinner” as a rationing measure.

Diet. Dr. Boli has discovered a foolproof and revolutionary new diet by which it is possible to eat all you want and still get fat, but no one will publish his research.

Dinosaurs. Paleontologists have determined that dinosaurs moved by a process called “stop-motion animation.”

It is not true that dinosaurs are extinct; they simply value their privacy.

Disease. Disease is the normal condition of the human body. Health is an aberration.

Egypt. The ancient Egyptians were remarkably poor chiropodists.

The Nile flood was originally semiannual, but one of the floods was canceled in the extensive budget cuts of Thutmose IV’s reign.

Electricity. So-called “solar power,” by which electricity appears to be generated from nothing but sunlight, is actually a well-known conjuror’s trick, easily accomplished by even an amateur magician.

Benjamin Franklin invented the first electric light, but it worked only when struck by lightning.

Elements. It is an open secret that scientists have been very much disappointed in the performance of most of the chemical elements discovered in the past 75 years, and some have grumbled that all the really useful elements had been discovered by 1900.

Evergreens. By law, all conifers are required to be evergreen, but the bald cypresses have such a strong lobby that the law has never been enforced.

Fish. All fish are the same size; the apparent size difference between a minnow and a shark is an optical illusion.

Foot. By English common law, the reigning monarch’s foot is required to be exactly twelve inches long.

George III. King George III of England was perfectly sane, but the rest of the world was stark raving bonkers.

Gospels. So many Gospels were under con­sideration for inclusion in the New Testament that the Council of Nicea had to draft the world’s first form-letter rejection.

Grass. Botanically speaking, most common lawn grasses are miniature species of bamboo.

Gum erasers. Chewing gum cannot be left too close to a gum eraser, or all the flavor will be lost.

Hawaiian. “Aloha,” the characteristic greeting in Hawaiian, is not a truly native word. It is derived from the word for “hello” in Pig Latin.

Horses. Horses were admitted to the parliament of Scotland for a brief period in the 1990s, but the experiment was considered a failure because the horses never once voted aye on any bill introduced.

Calendar. Not until 1992 were astron­omers, using minute observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, able to determine the exact date of Secretaries’ Day.

When England switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, several days were lost, which are still kept in storage in a heavily guarded wing of the National Archives.

Canaries. Canaries and other talking birds are born speaking Hebrew, and can only with diffi­culty be taught to pronounce a few words of other languages.

Released into the wild, canaries quickly learn to clip their own wings.

Candles. Candle wax, once melted and allowed to solidify again, becomes the hardest substance known to man, and is frequently employed in the cutting of diamonds.

It is not possible to burn a candle at both ends. If one end of the wick is ignited, the other end will immediately be extinguished.

In colonial times, turnip greens, boiled and mashed into a paste, were often used as a substitute for tallow in the manufacture of candles.

A candle at the north end of a room will in­variably burn more brightly than a candle at the south end of the same room. The cause of this phenomenon is unknown.

Candy. A very palatable substitute for licorice can be made from broccoli properly cooked.

Cardboard. Cardboard is nothing more than wood in an early stage of development.

Cats. Most cats can be taught to read if trained from a young age.

A cat’s fur contains all the nutrients the cat needs to survive, which is why cats spend so much time licking themselves.

There are many more cats than commonly supposed, but most of them are too small to be seen with the naked eye.

Cement. It has been proved by science that the attachment of two bodies made to adhere by cement or glue is more emotional than physical.

Chameleons. Light is necessary for a chameleon to take on the color of its environment; in a com­pletely dark room, the animal reverts to its natural color, which is plaid.

Cheese. Cheese never spoils; it simply changes into a different kind of cheese.

In medieval times, the cheesemongers of Limburg were the only tradesmen exempt from the requirement of presenting a tithe of their goods to the Church.

Many fine edifices made of blocks of Romano cheese in the 1300s are still standing today.

Circles. English common law prohibited the squaring of a circle, and the prohibition is still enforced by 47 of the 50 states. Vermont allows it only under licensed psychiatric supervision.

The risible superstition that crop circles are messages from extraterrestrial visitors per­sists to this day, despite the frequent proofs to the con­trary. It is now well known to scientists that crop circles are messages from an ancient underground civilization.

Clematis. “Clematis” is the most variably pro­nounced word in the English language, but only the pronunciation Dr. Boli uses is correct.

Clocks. The first clocks had ten hours marked; the two extra hours were added during the time of Elizabeth I to give the queen time to practice her virginals.

In the southern hemisphere, clocks run counter-clockwise.

Coffee. During the Second World War, chicory was often used as a substitute for coffee, which meant that endive had to be used as a substitute for chicory.

Cola. Cola and coffee come from the same plant, but grown in different soils.

Computers. Blaise Pascal invented an early com­puting machine; but his graphical user inter­face for it, which relied on the cooperation of a live mouse, was only intermittently successful.

Constitution, American. By the thirty-sixth amend­ment, the President is required to raise his hand if he needs permission to go to the bathroom while addressing Congress.

Pernix Ineptus: De Architectura

PERNIX INEPTUS WAS born in Ostia about 320 a.d., but he spent most of his early life among poor relatives in the country, where the rude huts of the farmers were the only constructions that met his eye. The memory of these early years stayed with him for most of his career, and indeed even his most mature designs were frequently described as “rude” by his contemporaries. None of his buildings has survived, but as he was the nephew of Pernix Illustrius, who was twice consul, Ineptus was commissioned to design a number of important public works. The most celebrated of these were a theater in his native Ostia, in which a natural rock formation unfortunately blocked the view of the stage from most of the seats right of center; a public bath, also in Ostia, which was washed away by a water supply that proved somewhat too generous; and a Christian basilica on the Aventine, which became so unstable as its foundation settled that Pope Quintus IV had it exorcised—a measure that failed of its desired effect, since, according to a contemporary account of the event, the demonic forces threw down the entire west front while the rite of exorcism was being performed.

Although De Architectura is lost, an epitome by one of Pernix’ students survives. The prologue to this epitome tells us that the original work was in eleven books, which Pernix regarded as the perfect number “for the reason that it may be evenly divided into quarters two different ways.” Scholars have not been able to determine what Pernix thought he meant by that.

The first book was a treatment of the geometry that architects employ; to judge by the epitome, Pernix’ geometry was non-Euclidean, but not plausibly so. The second book treated of mathematics, but the epitome omits this subject entirely, on the grounds that Pernix never bothered to teach it to his students.

After that came several books treating of the various orders of architecture: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite, and a new order which Pernix claimed as his own invention, and which from his own name he styled the Pernicious. The epitome is frus­tratingly vague on this new order, but it appears to have been based on the “parts of eleven”: that is, the ratios between the various numbers into which Pernix believed eleven could be evenly divided. If the reading in the unique manuscript is correct, the decorations on the capitals were inspired by intertwined tapeworms.

For reasons no longer clear, these books were followed by two books on wine and its effects on the architect. In the epitome, this section is largely incoherent.

The last book, clearly inspired by Vitruvius, was a book of clever mechanical contri­vances. The epitome gives only three of them, which it says may serve as representative examples of the whole: a device for making holes of any desired size in the earth, which appears to be what we should call a shovel; a device for holding any number of items elevated at a certain distance from the floor, which appears to be a table; and a device for preventing sheets of papyrus or other thin and light material from blowing away in the wind, which appears to be a rock.

The epitome ends with an epilogue, from which we learn that Pernix perished when the roof of his own villa, which he had designed for himself, fell in on him, killing him instantly: a death which the author of the epitome regards as proper and fitting for a master who, he says, both lived and died by architecture.

Air. “Oxygen” is an imaginary gas hypothesized in the nineteenth century to account for certain phenomena then not understood. We actually breathe ether.

Alexander the Great. Archaeologists have re­cent­ly established that Alexander the Great died of a surfeit of saag paneer.

Apalachicola. Any straight line on the earth’s surface, if extended indefinitely, will eventually pass through Apalachicola.

Anthropology. Just as theology is the study of God by men, so anthropology is properly the study of men by God.

Antimony. The word “antimony” was invented by Samuel Johnson as a hoax, but by the time the deception was revealed it was too late.

Bakers. In medieval times, just as the barbers were also the surgeons, so the bakers were also the nuclear physicists.

Ballpoint pens. The first ballpoint pens were invested as an April Fool’s prank.

Bats. Bats cannot truly fly; the bats we see apparently “flying” have actually been thrown at high velocities.

Beer. The ancient Greeks believed that wine was a gift from the gods, but beer was a gift from the Johnsons down the street.

The vaunted superiority of traditional German beers is illusory: in reality, they only taste better.

Bicycles. Hero of Alexandria invented the first working bicycle, but he fell off and refused to ride the thing again.

In Bridgeville, Delaware, all bicycle bells are required to play Westminster chimes.

Books. The codex, or book with pages bound on one side, was invented as a tool for pressing flowers. An anonymous postclassical herbalist was the first to hit on the idea of writing on the pages.

Bouquets. The cut-flower bouquet originated in medieval Luxembourg, where sales of ornamental plants were taxed by the number of roots.

Malodore of Antioch: The Fruits of Wisdom

NOTHING HAS SURVIVED of The Fruits of Wisdom except a single reference to the work in Irenaeus: “As for Malodore the Antiochian, his ‘Fruits of Wisdom’ have rotted on the ground.” Nevertheless, on the basis of certain references in other Gnostic writers, Malo­dore’s work is believed to have had some influence on the growing Gnostic movement of the second century a.d. Thus Valentinus Arbiter says, “For it is not by bread alone that man lives, as Malodore says, but also by cheese”; and Circumflex Magnus remarks in his third book of Apophthegmatic Discourses that “Justin found gnosis in the schools, but Malodore at the grocer’s.” Some fifteen or so references to Malodore, some of which may in fact quote from The Fruits of Wisdom, are known from various Gnostic writers, and it is notable that every one of them has something to do with food in one form or another. It would be tempting to deduce from that observation something about the tenor of Malodore’s philosophy, but it would not be worth the trouble.

Schizophrenides: Dactylomachia

THIS EPIC IN twenty-four books, which described the climactic battle of a war fought by finger-puppets, is one of the few works of classical antiquity known to have been delib­erately misplaced rather than lost in the strict sense.

Little is known of Schizophrenides’ life. The Doric peculiarities of his dialect were de­nounced by contemporary critics as an affectation rather than a genuine relic of his native speech. It is known from surviving Athenian police blotters that he attempted, without invitation, to participate in a number of poetic competitions; in these he would doubtless have been defeated but for the technicality that he was thrown out before he could read his poems. We also have a surprisingly large number of ostraca that bear his name surrounded by a wide range of Greek obscenities, on the basis of which historians believe he was ostracized not very long after he arrived in Athens. Of his subsequent career nothing is known.

Very little of the Dactylomachia survives today. The grammarian Euphues, in his book On the Abuse of the Greek Tongue, quotes a few lines from Schizophrenides that, from their multiple references to knuckles, are assumed to have come from the Dactylo­machia; and a unique graffito in the ruins of Ephesus quotes one line of the poem beside a crude drawing of a poet with an ass’s head. These fragments incline us to agree with the gen­erally harsh judgment of the antique critics.

The Dactylomachia was not unknown to students of literature even centuries after the time of Schizophrenides. A fragment of Petronius describes a literary soiree in which a round of quotations from the Dactylomachia is followed by a trip to the vomitorium.

It was the great Apuleius who held the last known copy of the work. Having spent an evening reading from it to a group of drunken literary acquaintances, he felt so ashamed of himself the next morning that he secreted the manuscript some­where in a villa which he was about to abandon. Since then the work has not been seen, which is just as well.

Dr. Boli’s Demonology, in the Form of a Dialogue. The need of an up-to-date introduction to this neglected science has long been felt. Dr. Boli’s vast knowledge of the subject is acknowl­edged by well-informed demons in all the civilized countries of the globe; and by casting the work in the form of a dialogue, he has made the acquisition of a good working knowledge of the demonic world not only painless but pleasant. 8vo, 385 pp.

Dr. Boli’s Encyclopedia of Misinformation. Third edition, re­vised and enlarged, with many new & inaccurate engravings. As the standard work on the subject, this book has already found its way into every respectable library; but so many of the copies in circulation are nearly worn out with use that the publication of this new edition must be universally welcomed. It remains only to say that the third edition, in addition to the new material it offers, has also been thoroughly revised throughout, and many true statements inadvertently included in the previous editions have now been expunged. Folio, 1759 pp.