Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta
General
Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta
Literary curiosa; Literature -- Dictionaries
A third party, into whose hands such a cipher might fall, could not read
it, though he possessed a copy of the table and knew how to use it,
unless he knew the key-word. The chance of his guessing this is only one
in millions. And there is no such thing as interpreting it by any other
method, because there are no repetitions, and hence all comparison is at
fault. That is to say, in the same cipher, in one place a letter, as for
instance C may stand for one letter in the translation, and in another
place C may stand for quite a different letter. This is the only kind of
cryptograph we have ever seen which is absolutely safe.
The Reason Why.
WHY THE GERMANS EAT SAUER-KRAUT.
The reason why the most learned people on earth eat sauer-kraut may be
found in the following extract from a work entitled _Petri Andreæ
Matthioli Senensis medici commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis
de Materiâ Medica. Venetiis. ex officina Valgrisiana_ MDLXV. _Traduit de
Latin en Francais, par M. Antoine du Pinot. Lyon_, MDCLV. Preface, p.
13. ligne 30: “Finally, in order to omit nothing which can add to the
knowledge of simples, it must be noted that Nature, mother and producer
of all things, has created various simples, which have a sympathy or
natural antipathy to each other; which is a very considerable point in
this matter, and has no like as a mystery and secret. And thus it has
seemed to me good to hint a word about it, and principally of those
which are used in medicine. To commence, then, with the oak and the
olive; these two trees hate each other in such sort that, if you plant
one in the hole from which the other was dug, it will die there; and,
even if you plant one near the other, they will work each other’s death.
The cabbage and the vine do the like; for it has been seen that, if you
plant a cabbage at the foot of a vine, the vine will recoil and draw
itself away. And thus it is no marvel that the cabbage is very useful to
sober topers, and that the Germans eat it commonly in _a compost_ to
safeguard themselves from their wine.”
WHY PENNSYLVANIA WAS SETTLED.
Penn refused to pull his hat off
Before the king, and therefore sat off,
Another country to light pat on,
Where he might worship with his hat on.
HUGUENOTS.
They were so called because their first places of meeting in the city of
Tours (where Calvin’s opinions first prevailed) were cellars
under-ground, near Hugo’s Gate [Heb. XI. 38], whence the vulgar applied
this name to them.
ROYAL DEMISE.
How monarchs die is easily explained,
And thus upon the tomb it might be chisel’d;
As long as George the Fourth could reign, he reigned,
And then he mizzled.
BOSTON.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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