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Dear Ballot Box:

Do you know that this interminable drudgery imposed on American mothers of petitioning–petitioning for the ballot–this humiliation of forever praying to their own sons to be allowed to enjoy their birthright with the men born of them, furnishes me with stronger evidence of the Darwinian theory than anything I am able to find elsewhere. Were it not for this relic which has no parallel in the history left us of the dark ages–of the long ago buried past,there would be little proof of such an age having once enshrouded the earth.

The brutish vulgarity which we see cropping out in men who ignorantly disgrace themselves by ignoring their own mothers, is conclusive evidence to me that the race must have come up through the long line of animal ancestry to the “man in the dugout,” and from thence to the men in our present Congress, some of whom still seem inclined to root, and grunt, and squeal, if others assert rights equal to their own: lest the visual line of their own pen be the world’s extent, and, if others should be allowed to enjoy like blessings, they would be crowded, off the stage of action. While there are other men on the same floor, who, I am proud to say, are infinitely in advance of all this, which is a promise and prophecy of the oncoming of those others, for which I thank God and take courage; and love to accept this theory because it gives us a better outlook–this law of eternal progress must in cycles of years lift the most sordid to a higher plane of nobler action.

I say, but for this, I could find no way to account for this unaccountable stupidity, this lack of power to comprehend the plainest possible expressions in the English language.

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The question of teaching cookery in the public schools has lately been much considered in England, and arrangements have been made by which the object can be effected. The National Training School for Cookery has been for some time in successful operation, and is now prepared to supply teachers qualified to instruct in this novel branch of school learning. The course pursued at present is for a number of the inhabitants of several adjoining school districts to form by subscription a fund sufficient to guarantee a certain rate of payment to the teacher. Sometimes a young lady of the locality is first sent to the Training School to take a course of instruction there, sufficient to qualify her for a teacher. At other times a teacher already qualified is obtained from the Training School.

The teacher gives one lesson a week in each school to a class of girls whose parents are willing to pay a small fee for this advantage. She may also, in addition, form classes of ladies who desire to improve their knowledge of cookery, and who, pay a higher fee for the more elaborate instruction they receive. In this way a great number of persons are benefited, and the instructress receives an income which may be sufficient; but, if not, it is supplemented from the subscription fund in the hands of the committee. Sometimes a separate school or class specially for cookery is established.

A writer in one of the London papers gives an interesting account of such a school, which has been opened in that city for teaching the children of the poorer classes the simple elements of cookery, and to enable them to prepare cheap and savory dishes for the sick and invalid. About fifteen girls attend— all that the room will accommodate. They pay threepence a lesson, and get besides a dinner of their own cooking. The school is held every Saturday, from ten to four. The pupils first go to market, a few of the girls in turn accompanying the teacher, to learn how to select the articles of food, and to judge of their quality and the proper price to pay for them. On their return, the proper modes of cooking the articles are briefly explained, and a written receipt is given to each girl, who is required to work from it. The teacher, of course, superintends the whole, pointing out defects, and taking care that the pupils are made to understand the virtues of forethought, neatness, and good management. There are usually visitors present, often the clergymen and other members of the committee, who all sit down with the pupils to the dinner which has thus been prepared. After this satisfactory part of the duty has been performed, four of the girls in turn are appointed to wash the dishes and make everything tidy.

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Perhaps it would not be uninteresting to the readers of The Revolution, and may be encouraging to the friends of Female Suffrage, to know how we are getting on in West Virginia. In 1867, I introduced a bill in the State Senate, looking to the enfranchising of all women in West Virginia, who could read the Declaration of Independence intelligibly and write a legible hand, and had actually paid tax the year previous to their proposing to vote.

But even this guarded bill had no friends but myself. But to show you and the public what advancements West Virginia has made during the last two years, I would state that I ran as the Republican Universal Suffrage candidate, in the 9th Senatorial district of our state (composed of a population of 40,000), against three other candidates, conservative, democrat and republican. My majority was 66, over the three others in the aggregate. My ticket was 79 ahead of the republican governor in my district. I introduced a resolution during the present session of our legislature, asking Congress to extend the right of suffrage to women.

Miss Anna E. Dickinson

Eight out of the twenty-two members of the Senate voted for it. This is quite encouraging—advancing from one to eight in two years. At this rate of progress, we may succeed by next winter. I give the following names of those who are in favor and voted for female suffrage in the Senate: Drummond, Doolittle, Humphreys, Hoke Wilson, Workman., Young and Farnsworth, President. The same Senators voted to invite Miss Anna E. Dickinson to lecture in the State House during her late visit to Wheeling.

I find that bachelors and young married men are more liberal toward Female Suffrage than old fogy married men. The four bachelors of the Senate all voted for Female Suffrage. Miss Dickinson’s late lecture in Wheeling has made quite a favorable impression. We hope that we shall be favored with her presence, and that of other liberal-minded women frequently. I hope Miss Dickinson will be able to canvass Missouri before the coming election. If we carry one state, then success is sure and speedy.

There is a period in human events, which, taken at its tide, leads on to fortune. That period dawned upon the female portion of mankind (after a lapse of more than five thousand years), in this the middle of the nineteenth century. The glorious sun of female liberty lighting up the grand empire of the American republic, rolling upwards and shining onwards will soon reach the zenith of perfect day, when superstition, proscription and wrong will give place to just reasoning, right and universal liberty. Oppression, fogyism, cruelty, and will melt away like frost before the summer sun.

–Samuel Young

Samuel Young of Pocahontas County, West Virginia was a universal suffrage supporting member of the West Virginia state senate for the 9th District from 1863-64 and 1867-70.

Source: The Revolution – March 4, 1869

The earliest book-shops were the monasteries. There, a person desirous of procuring any work might be pretty sure of a correct text, owing to the cares and precautions usually exercised. In time books came to be sold by laymen in shops through the city, but the direct vendors were only sellers on commission, 1-6d. to the shilling, the rector of college or university was the proprietor. By an oath did the rector secure the agent’s good faith and loyalty in all transactions of buying and selling:

“You swear that the books received by you shall be safely kept, exhibited and sold in good faith. You swear that you will not deny them nor conceal them, but that you will expose them at proper time and place. You swear that if you are consulted on the selling price of one or more books, you will give in good faith, reserving your proper commission, an estimation, i. e. , such a sum as you would voluntarily give on occasion. You swear that the price of the copy, and the name of the vendor (the person sworn), if required, shall be placed in some part of the book exposed for sale.”

The bookseller, after giving proofs of possessing sufficient learning, and procuring bail, was appointed to his office by a letter of the rector. One of these letters, dated in 1354, and still extant, gave the holder a a privilege to buy and sell books Parisius et albi . Even after the invention of printing the booksellers continued for a period to be bound to the universities.

The bail of a bookseller was about 50 livres Parisiis. Each of the four chief booksellers had to find bail for 200 livres. Many of the book-agents who flourished in the early part of the fourteenth century were found to be the reverse of good men and true, and new and more stringent regulations were made touching the good life and good fame and sufficient learning of these librarians, and insisting on the oaths to be taken and the bail to be perfected. Yet it seems not to have been easy for the men of commission to play the rogue. They gave notice at once to the rector when a MS. was sold, and it was to him or his treasurer the money was paid, deducting the agent’s fee.

One of the bookseller’s duties was to lend books to be transcribed, on receiving their value and the lending fee. If he considered the text not correct, he would send it to the university beforehand to have the needful emendation made.

Besides the sworn and bail-producing booksellers, there were some folk of little estimation who were allowed to keep stalls, but not to dispose of any work higher in value than ten sols. These folk of low degree were under the surveillance of four of the sworn men, and obliged to conduct their commerce in the open air nec sub tecto (nor under cover). These poor fellows must have been rather worse off than the stall-keepers of our day. MSS. works not exceeding five pence in value were not very remunerative, nor could the supply be very abundant. The sale of a work of any value was a ceremonious and imposing transaction; witness the following instrument, executed by Geoffri de Saint Leger, “librarian-clerk and qualified as such,” before solemn and public notaries in the year 1332, and still preserved in the College of Laon, in Paris:

“I, Geoffroi de Saint Leger, librarian-clerk, and qualified as such, acknowledged to have sold, ceded, quitted and transferred; sell, cede, quit and transfer, under forfeiture of all and each of my goods and imprisonment of my body, a book entitled ‘Speculum Historiale in Consuetudines Parisienses’ (Historical Picture of the Customs of the Parisians), divided and bound in four volumes, and covered with red leather, to the nobleman, Messire Gerard de Montagu, King’s Advocate in Parliament, in consideration of the sum of forty livres Parisis, wherewith said librarian remains content, and avows himself well paid.”

Some of the twenty-eight librarians of 1342 must have been slippery folk. Stringent laws, enforced more than a few times, were necessary to prevent them from over-charging their customers, or selling valuable works without giving notice to the rector. There was always a delay of four days in effecting a sale, in order to ascertain if the work were not needed by some members of the university.

In 1344, two years after the enacting of some stringent regulations on the librarians, the duty of marking the price on the fly-leaf, or some leaf, being particularly dwelt on, the “Philobiblion of Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham,” appeared in England. We present the eulogium of this most worthy predecessor of the Dibdins, the Hebers, and Roxburgh-dukes of modern times, on the literary treasures of old Lutetia:

“Oh, what a torrent of joy inundated our heart every time it was in our power to visit Paris, the Paradise of the world ( paradisum mundi, Parisius)! Too short was the time passed there for our immense love! There are the libraries, sweeter than all the perfumes of the world—there the parterres where bloom innumerable books—there the meadows of the academia, the promenades of the peripatetics, the heights of Parnassus, the portico of the Stoics, the reign of Aristotle, the arbiter of art as of science, the unique oracle of the most excellent doctrine of this sublunary world! There Ptolomey and Genxacher (?) measure by figure and number the epicycle and the eccentricity of the planets. There Paul reveals mysteries, Dionysius sets in order and distinguishes the hierarchies. There everything pertaining to grammar, invented by Cadmus and the Phoenicians, is represented in Latin letters by the Virgin Carmente. There, opening our treasures, unstringing our purses, we scatter our money, and the priceless books seem to cost only a little sand and dust.”

The good bishop had scattered his money to some purpose in Germany and Italy. His mode of proceeding may be guessed at from his favorite maxim: “Never hesitate at a price unless you suspect deceit, or reserve your money for a greater occasion. When the object is truth, purchase, but sell not.”

Collection: Frank Leslies Weekly
Publication: Frank Leslie’s Weekly
Date: SEPTEMBER 14, 1867
Title: The Book Trade of the Middle Ages

On March 16, 1827 Samuel E. Cornish (1795-1858) and John Brown Russwurm (1799-1851), both well-educated clergymen, began to edit and publish Freedom’s Journal in New York City. Although Freedom’s Journal lived a relatively short life, it is important in that it was the first American newspaper written by blacks for blacks.

From the beginning the editors felt, “… that a paper devoted to the dissemination of useful knowledge among our brethren, and to their moral and religious improvement, must meet with the cordial approbation of every friend to humanity…”

This poem appeared in the February 29, 1828 issue:

Punning

Caution to Youth of both sexes.
My little dears, who learn to read,
Pray early learn to shun
That very silly thing indeed
Which people call a pun.
Read Entick’s rules, and ’twill be found
How simple an offense
It is make the self-same sound
Afford a double sense.

For instance, ale may make you ail,
Your aunt an ant may kill,
You in a vale may buy a veil,
And Bill may pay the bill.
Or if to France your bark you steer,
At Dover it may be,
A peer appears upon the pier,
Who blind, still goes to sea.

Thus one might say, when to a treat,
God friends accept our greeting’
‘Tis meet that man who meet to eat
Should eat their meat when meeting
Brawn on the board’s no bore indeed,
Although from bore prepared;
Nor can the fowl on which we feed,
Foul feeding be declared.

Thus one ripe fruit may be a pear
And yet be pared, again,
And still be one, which seemeth rare
Until we do explain.
It therefore should be all your aim
To speak with simple care;
For who, however fond of game,
Would choose to swallow hair?

A fat man’s gait may make us smile,
Who has no gate to close!
The farmer sitting on his style,
No stylish person knows.
Perfumers men of scents must be;
Some Scilly men are bright;
A brown man oft deep read we see,
A black a wicked wight.

Most wealthy men good manors have,
However vulgar they;
And actors still the harder slave
The oftener they play.
So poets can’t the baize obtain
Unless their tailors choose;
While grooms and coachmen not in vain
Each evening seek the Mews.

The dyer, who by dying lives,
A dire life maintains;
The glazier, it is known, receives
His profits for his paines.
By gardeners thyme is tide, ’tis true,
When spring is in its prime;
But time or tide won’t wait for you
If you are tied to time

Then now you see, my little dears,
the way to make a pun;
A trick which you through coming years,
Should sedulously shun,
The fault admits of no defense;
For wheresoever ’tis found,
You sacrifice the sound for some,
The sense is never sound.

So let your word and actions too,
One single meaning prove,
And, just in all you say or do,
You’ll gain esteem and love.
In mirth and play no harm you’ll know,
When duty’s task is done;
But parents ne’er should let ye go
Unpunished for a pun.

– T. Hood

Original Photo Credit: Jeffrey Reed