“This verse,” says a book on The Legibility of Type, “was written for and published in the Linotype Bulletin for March, 1915. It has since been reprinted (usually without proper credit) by almost every printing publication in the world.”
“Upon the whole we look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.”
Two magazine editors paw through the slush pile of submissions. “It was fearfully hot. All the world, excepting the editors, was at the sea-side. Chestnut Street was deserted, ice-creams at a premium; and in the utter stagnation of social intercourse and business duties, we were to amuse (?) ourselves with looking over manuscripts, which the hurry of the previous months had made it impossible for us to examine.”
“Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson belongs to a class of gentlemen with whom we have no patience whatever—the mystics for mysticism’s sake.”
“Ah! woe is me! never shall I smooth such a chin as that of his most gracious Majesty. Never shall I enjoy so fat an office, as the one I enjoyed, when removing the excrescences from the royal face. Would that I had attended to my own proper business, instead of spouting in political clubs, and urging measures of reform. But in an evil hour, I became a radical. I joined the party of Cobbett and Hunt.”
“I don’t want to read how a hen has two legs,
About time how he flies, and a beggar who begs,
Or a text with a chapter and
verse to’t;
I learn these in school and I say them to you,
I want to read nonsense a minute or two,
I’ll promise to act none the
worse for’t.”
“There was a time, strange as it may now seem, when a degree of diffidence enhanced merit; when modesty, so far from becoming an obstacle to advancement, recommended one to notice—a time when Impudence, which is now indispensable, was a stranger even in the fashionable world. One cannot look back to those days of darkness and ignorance without astonishment; nor reflect but with conscious pride and pleasure upon the rapid advances man has since made in improvement.”
