Into such headlong excesses our Eccentrics rarely stray and one of our objects in sketching their ways, is to show that with oddity of character may co-exist much goodness of heart and your strange fellow, though, according to the lexicographer, he be outlandish, odd, queer, and eccentric, may possess claims to our notice which the man who is ever studying the fitness of things would not so readily present. Their sayings and doings, it is true, may not rank as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the Strasburg pies among the dishes described in the Almanach des Gourmands but they possess attractions in proportion to the degree in which 'man favours wonders.' Swift has remarked, that 'a little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.' Into the latter extremes Eccentricity is occasionally apt to run, somewhat like certain fermenting liquors which cannot be checked in their acidifying courses. They may be odd company: yet, how often do we find eccentricity in the minds of persons of good understanding.
GENTLE READER, a few words before we introduce you to our MODERN ECCENTRICS. It remains both entertaining light reading and a source of biographical incident, sometimes rarely repeated on unusual people of the late 18th and early 19th century, from celebrities to recluses, religious notables to country astrologers, pop authors to tragedians.Īs Timbs lays out his purpose in his preface: If you dig the tune, pick up the single or the Album on Amazon, visit Eccentrics and Eccentricities was written by John Timbs and published first in two volumes by Richard Bentley in New Burlington Street, London, in 1866. Thanks to singer-songwriter Val Hovik for supplying the original song Liberty Shine off his Listen to Me Now Album.
Our guide on this journey is Richard Schwartz, author of the previous works Earthquake Exodus, 1906 Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley The Circle of Stones: An Investigation of the Circle of Stones in Stampede Valley, Sierra County, and, Berkeley 1900. Curtis gained worldwide fame - and as an immigrant himself, reached into his own pocket to illuminate the Statue of Liberty when the U.S. He did so by performing Jewish characters - for the first time - with dignity, humor, and emotional depth.īorn in 1849, M.B. Ap– This week, our time machine attends the Gilded Age performances of a man who heralded the Borscht Belt, Vaudeville, and paved the way for performers from Mel Brooks to Barbra Streisand and Jerry Seinfeld.
0 kommentar(er)
