Ten Thousand Wonderful Things: Comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric and extraordinary in all ages and nations
History
Ten Thousand Wonderful Things: Comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric and extraordinary in all ages and nations
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Folklore
The Talmudists relate that Abraham, in travelling to Egypt, brought
with him a chest. At the custom-house the officers exacted the duties.
Abraham would have readily paid them, but desired they would not open
the chest. They first insisted on the duties for clothes, which Abraham
consented to pay; but then they thought by his ready acquiescence that
it might be gold. Abraham consents to pay for gold. They now suspect
it might be silk. Abraham was willing to pay for silk, or more costly
pearls--in short, he consented to pay as if the chest contained the
most valuable of things. It was then they resolved to open and examine
the chest; and, behold, as soon as the chest was opened, that great
lustre of human beauty broke out which made such a noise in the land
of Egypt--it was Sarah herself! The jealous Abraham, to conceal her
beauty, had locked her up in this chest.
AGES OF CELEBRATED MEN.
Hippocrates, the greatest physician the world has ever seen, died at
the age of one hundred and nine, in the island of Cos, his native
country. Galen, the most illustrious of his successors, reached the
age of one hundred and four. The three sages of Greece, Solon, Thales,
and Pittacus, lived for a century. The gay Democritus outlived them
by two years. Zeno wanted only two years of a century when he died.
Diogenes ten years more; and Plato died at the age of ninety-four,
when the eagle of Jupiter is said to have borne his soul to heaven.
Xenophon, the illustrious warrior and historian, lived ninety years.
Polemon and Epicharmus ninety-seven; Lycurgus eighty-five; Sophocles
more than a hundred. Gorgias entered his hundred and eighth year;
and Asclepiades, the physician, lived a century and a half. Juvenal
lived a hundred years; Pacuvius and Varro but one year less. Carneades
died at ninety; Galileo at sixty-eight; Cassini at ninety-eight; and
Newton at eighty-five. In the last century, Fontenelle expired in
his ninety-ninth year; Buffon in his eighty-first; Voltaire in his
eighty-fourth. In the present century, Prince Talleyrand, Goethe,
Rogers, and Niemcewicz are remarkable instances. The Cardinal du Belloy
lived nearly a century; and Marshal Moncey lately terminated a glorious
career at eighty-five.
EFFECT OF A NEW NOSE.
Van Helmont tells a story, of a person who applied to Taliacotius to
have his nose restored. This person, having a dread of an incision
being made in his own arm, for the purpose of removing enough skin
therefrom for a nose, got a labourer, who, for a remuneration, suffered
the skin for the nose to be taken from his arm. About thirteen months
after, the adscitious nose suddenly became cold, and, after a few days,
dropped off, in a state of putrefaction. The cause of this unexpected
occurrence having been investigated, it was discovered that, at the
same moment in which the nose grew cold, the labourer at Bologna
expired.
FRENCH DRESS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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