Antiquarian Book Fair This Weekend

Posted by Dave

Just a reminder that the New York Antiquarian Book Fair started today, and tomorrow we'll be visiting and posting our thoughts on our Twitter feed - just follow @condensermag.

For a cool searchable database of sellers' wares, click here. It's where we discovered the intriguing-sounding 1621 tome The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is. With all the Kindes Causes Symptomes Prognosticks and several Cures of it...., available for a paltry $45,000 from Thomas A Goldwasser Rare Books. The text itself is available on Google Books here, but it's just not the same when read through a computer screen, is it?


For more info on the show, you can visit this site.

Aleister Crowley in Billboard Magazine

Posted by Dave

Today's post isn't even long enough to warrant transcription, so we'll simply include an image of the text. We're not sure why Crowley's obituary would have appeared in Billboard in the first place - perhaps just a careless misunderstanding regarding his use of the word "magician"? Who knows; maybe Crowley was sawing women in half on the Vegas Strip on the side.

Peacocks on the Strand

Posted by Dave

The classic bon mot mentioned in the excerpt below would be worth pointing out on its own merits, but even more so considering that it was spoken by a figure who frequent readers of this blog will recognize as the charismatic perpetrator of the infamous Berners Street Hoax. Taken from "Week-Day Living, a Book for Young Men and Women" (1882) by Samuel Pearson.

Image of Hook via Wikipedia

I HAVE sometimes wondered whether men or women were more vain in matters of dress. At certain periods of life it is quite common to see a young fellow strutting along the street as proud as any peacock. Theodore Hook met such a one in the Strand, and stopping him, asked with an impressive air, "Excuse me, sir, but are you any one in particular?" Such a question has often crossed my mind when I have sauntered along some fashionable lounge. The unexceptionable attire, from the crown of the hat to the sole of the patent leather boots, the band-box associations which clung round the whole get-up, the enormous outlay of starch suggested—these things would be startling if they were not ridiculous.

April Fool's Day

Posted by Dave

An appropriate post for April Fool's day, as well as an interesting reminder of the mostly forgotten Fast Day holiday that was once observed across New England - taken from "Curiosities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities" (1897) by William Shepard Walsh.

There is a story current that one April the governor, in the absence of his secretary, intrusted the drawing up of a Fast-Day proclamation to his messenger. The latter, being a bit of a wag, instead of penning a stately and pious document, wrote out the following:

"Having consulted my Council and learned that none of them has an engagement to dine on that day, and feeling fully assured that I shall receive no invitation to dine out until the high school graduating exercises begin and field strawberries get down to eight cents a quart, I do hereby appoint Thursday, the 17th day of April, as a day of public humiliation, fasting, and prayer. While the scoffers in our sister State are holding horse-races, playing base-ball, and gorging themselves with forbidden food, let us thank our stars that we know when we have enough, and feel grateful for the empty stomachs and clear heads we shall have the morning after. Though I am unable to say what the Council will do on that day, for myself I shall attend church if I can find a minister who will stay long enough to preach to me. Given in the Council chamber," etc.

The messenger, having made a rough draught, copied it on a new sheet in an engrossing clerk's handwriting, and took it to the governor, who signed it without reading a line. From here the messenger carried the proclamation down to the secretary of state, who tried to affix his signature, but could not do so on account of a bad pen. While he waited for a clerk to bring him a box of new pens he cast his eyes down the sheet, discovered the unusual phraseology, and read the document from beginning to end. Then he gave the messenger apiece of his mind, telling him it was bad enough to make light of Fast-Day, but when he began to trifle with the feelings of the chief magistrate, who was also commander-in-chiuf of the army, no State could endure such an outrage The messenger argued that it was nothing but an April joke, and the bigger the man it hit the better the joke was. This remark led the secretary to look at his calendar, and when he found it was April 1 he forgave the messenger, who retained his job through the administration.