Pay no tension to the curses of a crotchety old geezer. Blue as the lack of ball room, yet a faithful geezer. We reserve the right, as we lead with our left, to mock, malign, mortify, minimize, mess with, and misundersestimate:
folks from the funny farm, nut cases, the feeble minded
she who for her heirs left a loft to be desired
he who left his creditors a pretty penny
the hardly boys when they met the milky maidens
It is but right, however, to mention in the first place the plants whose discoverers can be found, with their properties classified according to the kinds of disease for which they are a remedy. To reflect indeed on this makes one pity the lot of the human.
According to Valerius Maximus, Aeschylus (c. 455 BC), the eldest of the three great Athenian tragedians, was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny, in Book X of his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object.
In 1871, after he had already achieved success through his famous New York museum, P. T. Barnum entered into a partnership with two men from Wisconsin, who organized “P. T. Barnum’s Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome.” It offered several strange and curious attractions, borrowed from his museum, from which evolved another major feature of circuses — the sideshow. Its characteristic attractions included the giant, the fat lady, the thin man, the midget, the three-legged boy, and the armless wonder, as well as such other curiosities as the fire eater, the sword swallower, the snake enchantress, and the magician. Housed in its own tent, the sideshow typically was fronted by giant banners or panels illustrating the marvels offered inside. A unique and vital element of the sideshow was the barker, whose fog-horn voice and unceasing patter attracted the public to the show.
