Gaslight Digest Wednesday, June 30 1999 Volume 01 : Number 079


In this issue:


   RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins
   RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins
   RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins
   Today in History - June 25
   Chat: Ghosts, God, & Science
   Re: Ghosts, God, & Violins
   RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins
   RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins
   Re: Chat: Ghosts, God, & Science
   Anyone watching
   RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins
   Anyone watching
   The Count of Monte Cristo
   Holmes and pawning
   Re: The Count of Monte Cristo
   Re: Holmes and pawning
   Re: Holmes and pawning
   Re: Games with Love and Death/and Carroll on Freud
   Today in History - June 28
   Today in History - June 29
   CFP: Villainy in Detective Fiction/Film (Collection - 07/31;2000/03)
   Re:  Today in History - June 29
   Re:  Today in History - June 29
   An episode in the life of Hawthorne
   Today in History - June 30

-----------------------------THE POSTS-----------------------------

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 09:53:12 -0500
From: Mattingly Conner <muse(at)iland.net>
Subject: RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins

I cannot hold back from jumping in to speak up for that much maligned
intelligence of the heart and the human soul, just to allow that perhaps we
don't know half of what is happening at any given moment, that our experience
is a sampling of events filled in by assumption.

Empiricism is a great tool.  It's great for taking things apart.  The problem
comes in fitting the model back together, which seems to be the task of our
age, when philosophy and physics marry once again.  When physics is sounding
like an old mystic.  We know how to work heaps of spells in the cauldron now,
all right.  However, we still know nothing about the cauldron itself, and
even less about the Sorcerer who owns it.  Yet we all spring from and return
to this one thing.  Please don't trash wonder.  It's one of the best things
about being human.  Newton serves well for the rubber band target practice we
do from moment to moment.  That's a little board game, that 'reality' that
separates body from soul, 2 foot by 2 foot, with little plastic pieces and
the great variable of the die.... all of it folding neatly into a square box.
Heraclitus knew that 2,500 years ago.

Yet the parts and particulars we perceive dance in strange ways, stranger
than we even suspect, I suspect. Really, reality is an illusion of substance
cast over vast empty space -- we do know that much, having been inside of
atoms for quite awhile now.  Harmonic resonance casting its spell.  What a
grand illusion, our reality, a wily creature sprung from the loins of Light.

When I say time and space are properties of matter, I mean that literally.
Beyond what Newton is assumed to say (actually, he was a mystic too... a
magus who was just working a few tricks in the cauldron by observing the
master).  More like what Kant actually meant and not just what a lot of
English philosophers who needed a teaching job at the uni said he said.  None
of those concepts exist -- or more likely better to say functions, because
'exist' is an assumption -- independently.  Time -- I'm not speaking of the
function of measurement.  I'm speaking of the chain of change which is all we
experience of time -- the possibility of here to there, point to next point,
all of it illusion, yet we experience it as moving everybit as much as we
'experience moving' in space.  Mushy metaphysics is an honest appraisal of
intuitive suspicions.  Why shouldn't our thoughts and dreams -- which are
part of the thing as much as your foot and the last piece of toast you ate --
have some inkling of what they are and how they fit together, what they were
and what they will be?

I mean, we all came out of one thing.  Even our current mythological model of
science tells us that.  It was all a little accident, we might say.  An
imbalance of matter and antimatter after the first big blow up.  But it's
still one great chain, or maybe a handful of writing illusory wires, be it
thing or action or memory.  It still all fits back into one unimaginable box
in the top of the cosmic closet.  Mother will call us for dinner someday, and
we will fold it all up and have to lie about doing our homework in study
hall.  Then we will go downstairs, and see her beautiful miraculous face for
the first time and know it as our flesh and soul and all our dreams.  But
your feet are grounded in that very same printed paper gameboard.  Everything
is stuck together in there, and your walking from Park Place to Boardwalk is
mere supposition.  That gameboard to me is the playing field of archetype.

You really can't precipitate anything out of the whole, ultimately, except as
an idea. And that is illusion, too.  Slippery thing, a thought. It flashes
and then reverses its spin, sinking down like those goldfish...

What was I saying?

This:

I fall back on intuition which is awhole lots smarter than reason -- the
'if-then' of it -- when looking at any reality. Intuition is just bigger in
its grasping and it doesn't feel sharp corners as threatening.  What are the
odds against anything happening?  I'm speaking in terms of since the
Singularity that spawned this particular round?  Reason shouts that the odds
against anything being at all is simply vast.  Monstrous on an absurd scale.
Yet we continue to stumble on and over.

And then we have these predictable little rituals where we know that if we
kick someone by planting our foot in their backside that they will holler.
Sort of Zen, that moment, when we are in control of the whole universe.  Our
will counts for something...  Our consciousness.  Does it come from us or
through us?  Both, when you know you are part of the whole.

The strangest part of all is that our thinking and problem solving is done
subliminally (19th C. favorite word for unconsciously) anyway.  Sure, you
initiate a session and you feed it consciously, but it isn't 'where' you
think.  No one has ever explained how that (sudden conveyance of a
realization) happens.  But it does happen.

To analyse something scientifically you are always talking about lysis and
taking apart: parts, parts, parts... but that doesn't begin to sound the
harmonics of the whole.  Don't turn your back on the vast universe when you
can take it for your soul.

The psyche is just as real as the pencil stuck behind your left ear. And that
is where my feet are planted, and any system that disregards wonder and
intuition is much too limited to move the plot of this vast epic along.

You are the spawn of the tides of an unimaginably great ocean that spans any
time and space.  Forget holy science, holy art, arguments of waves and
particles, the resonance of strings like anemones plucking out some
Pythagorean suspicion of structure.  Embrace mystery.  Kiss the moon.  She
will kiss you back.

Sorry to blurt.  But a dear friend just slipped beyond the veil and I feel
like going down in flames.
Very 19th Century, this 'Living Hard."

By my soul,
Deborah Mattingly Conner
muse(at)iland.net
http://www.iland.net/~muse
. . . ". . . . .the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its
universal human validity.  It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the
unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to
determine his fate down to the smallest detail.  At the same time objective,
nonpsychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype.
It not only seems so, it simply is so, that archetype fulfils itself not only
psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual. . . .
. "  ~CGJUNG  answer to job vii

" Science has been placing the cart before the horse in approaching
Consciousness as though it arose exclusively from matter - it did, but it was
directed by Consciousness to incarnate itself in Matter, the meaning of our
?Forgotten Truth.?"...~ Michelle Christides

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 10:07:09 -0500
From: Mattingly Conner <muse(at)iland.net>
Subject: RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins

Should add this:
My son Eric asks me who CARES about all this spiritual stuff, about reality
as illusion, the emptiness of atoms, the hidden substance the real thing.
Who cares?  I told him 2 things:

1) that all that caring is in him all the time anyway, just that it stays
unconscious until you make it conscious,

and

2) the more you bring it up into the light, the bigger your world is and the
bigger your reality IS... and that means the bigger your life is.

As a friend of a friend said, "My cup runneth over and I want more."

By my soul,
Deborah Mattingly Conner
muse(at)iland.net
http://www.iland.net/~muse
. . .  "What is the use of religion without mythos, since religion means, if
anything at all, precisely that function which links us back to the eternal
myth?"  CGJUNG

Then, burning, I awake
Sore tempted to partake
Of dreams that seek thy sight:
  Until, being greatly stirr'd,
  I turn to where I heard
That whisper of the night;
And there a breath of light
Shines like a silver star.
  The same is mine own soul,
  Which lures me to the goal
Of dreams that gaze afar.
~Urbiciani's Canzonetta, trans Dante Gabriel Rossetti

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 12:54:55 +0300
From: cbishop(at)interlog.com (Carroll Bishop)
Subject: RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins

Jeff WOULD be pleased to know he's being quoted.  I'll forward to
him.  Darlin', you can't change the world (I know, you ARE
changing the world, but AT EASE, you don't have the responsibility
to change all these scientific so-called persons and their ilk.
Elk.  Love  Carroll



>Should add this:
>My son Eric asks me who CARES about all this spiritual stuff, about reality
>as illusion, the emptiness of atoms, the hidden substance the real thing.
>Who cares?  I told him 2 things:
>
>1) that all that caring is in him all the time anyway, just that it stays
>unconscious until you make it conscious,
>
>and
>
>2) the more you bring it up into the light, the bigger your world is and the
>bigger your reality IS... and that means the bigger your life is.
>
>As a friend of a friend said, "My cup runneth over and I want more."
>
>By my soul,
>Deborah Mattingly Conner
>muse(at)iland.net
>http://www.iland.net/~muse
>. . .  "What is the use of religion without mythos, since religion means, if
>anything at all, precisely that function which links us back to the eternal
>myth?"  CGJUNG
>
>Then, burning, I awake
>Sore tempted to partake
>Of dreams that seek thy sight:
>  Until, being greatly stirr'd,
>  I turn to where I heard
>That whisper of the night;
>And there a breath of light
>Shines like a silver star.
>  The same is mine own soul,
>  Which lures me to the goal
>Of dreams that gaze afar.
>~Urbiciani's Canzonetta, trans Dante Gabriel Rossetti

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 11:09:42 -0600
From: Jerry Carlson <gmc(at)libra.pvh.org>
Subject: Today in History - June 25

            1862
                   The Seven Days Campaign begins with a reconaissance in force 
at Oak Grove, Virginia.
            1864
                   Union troops besieging Petersburg, Virginia begin digging a 
mine tunnel
                   beneath Confederate lines.
            1868
                   The U.S. Congress passes legislation giving an eight-hour 
day to federal employees.
            1876
                   General George A. Custer and over 260 men of the Seventh 
Cavalry are killed by Sioux and
                   Cheyenne Indians at the Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn) River 
in Montana.
            1906
                   Harry Thaw shoots and kills Stanford White, a prominent 
architect, for an alleged
                   affair White had had with Thaw's wife, Florence Evelyn 
Nesbit.

       Brithdays
            1886
                   General Henry "Hap" Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air 
Force during
                   World War II.
            1887
                   George Abbott, American playwright, director and producer 
of  Three Men on a Horse,
                   Damn Yankees, and other plays.
            1900
                   Lord Louis Mountbatten, last British viceroy of India, later 
killed by an IRA bomb.
            1903
                   George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair], novelist, essayist and 
critic who wrote _Animal
                   Farm_ and _1984_ criticizing totalitarianism.

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 10:36:46 -0700
From: Deborah McMillion Nering <deborah(at)gloaming.com>
Subject: Chat: Ghosts, God, & Science

>Jyou don't have the responsibility
>to change all these scientific so-called persons and their ilk.

One can be perfectly rational and consider science the answer but still
maintain a glorious sense of wonder.  Why do people consistently consider
scientists to be cold rationalists.  All you have to do is read Carl Sagan
and discover what a sense of wonder he had.  Beauty in a microscopic slide
or downloads from the Hubble prove to me that magic is alive and wonder is
everywhere.   Just because we've been to the moon and know it's not green
cheese doesn't lessen it's beauty and make it a cold piece of stone
circling our world.  Just looking at the night sky lately and seeing the
dance of Mars and Spicus around the waxing moon has been a nightly thrill.
And the face or the rabbit is still a joy to see on full moon nights.

I've never met a science type who couldn't impart this sense of mystery and
wonder.  Be they botanist, astronomer, physicist, mathematician (and I am
surrounded by all of these) they would be greatly insulted that anyone
thought they didn't appreciate wonder and beauty at many levels.  I know an
atmospheric physicist who takes ballet and participates in the symphony.  I
know a mathemetician who longs to be out in the wilderness every chance he
can get.  I know a botanist who doesn't dissect flowers just in their
scientific categories but also if it will make a nice fairy ring.

I don't think anyone needs to change anyone.  You will have a sense of
wonder or not, whatever your philosophy, depending on who you are and what
you care about.  I think everyone here qualifies for that since we all like
this literature....

Deborah

Deborah McMillion
deborah(at)gloaming.com
http://www.gloaming.com/deborah.html

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 13:38:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: Re: Ghosts, God, & Violins

On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, R John Hayes wrote:

>
> I thought I'd jump into this conversation (with a certain delay, but
> Prima promised to return to the topic and, as far as I can see, hasn't).
> Allow me, for a moment, to come to the defence of science.

Thanks, John, for stepping up to the plate.  It is sad, indeed, that
science has to be defended when it has brought us so much--and especially
when people who live well as the result of scientific achievement prefer
to ignore or complain about it rather than celebrate it.  It is even
sadder when they turn to mumbo-jumbo that is in every way inferior to it
and not anywhere near as interesting.  This is a luxury they indulge in,
and a way (paradoxically) for them to feel superior to "mere" science.

Behind attacks on science, however, is an agenda: the attempt to bring
Western civilization down.  Right now our civilization is suffering an
onslaught from within.  Every value is made to seem meaningless; every
achievement destructive, every design oppressive.  It is also very much to
the advantage of the attackers to say that all of society and its
institutions, and indeed human beings themselves, are not natural
expressions of the human condition but "constructs," for what can be
constructed can be unconstructed.  Science is a reminder that this is not
true.  Science discovers laws and sets limits.  And when it discovers
limitations imposed by ignorance, it uses laws to overcome them. It is in
the business of showing things as they are, not as the imaginations of
others want them to be.  Science teaches, or should teach, humility; but
this is the last value the attackers want to acknowledge.  Science also
values order and is most wonderful when it helps us see order in the
universe.  Its attackers are much more interested in chaos.

Science is our bulkhead against superstition, and indeed against
barbarism.  I say, Thank heaven for it!

Bob C.


_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Robert L. Champ
rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu
Editor, teacher, anglophile, human curiosity

Whatever things are pure, whatever things are
lovely, whatever things are of good report, if
there is any virtue and if there is anything
praiseworthy, meditate on these things
                                 Philippians 4:8

rchamp7927(at)aol.com       robertchamp(at)netscape.net
_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 13:35:25 -0500
From: Mattingly Conner <muse(at)iland.net>
Subject: RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins

Must this still be a matter of either or?  Truth: My late night ramblings are
inspired by Stephen Hawking, John Mathers, David Bohm, Alan Watts, Carl Jung,
Lewis Thomas, Rupert Sheldrake, and other scientists who feed our
understanding with their humility, generosity, and sense of wonder. Synthesis
is the challenge of our age.

With heart,
Deborah Mattingly Conner
muse(at)iland.net
http://www.iland.net/~muse
"...Where there is no vision, the people perish." ~Proverbs

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 11:49:18 -0700
From: Deborah McMillion Nering <deborah(at)gloaming.com>
Subject: RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins

>Must this still be a matter of either or?

I don't think so.
And I've never met a scientist who felt it should be.  I have more trouble
with those who find their teachings the sole answer to the universe and
have no tolerance for other paths.

Deborah


Deborah McMillion
deborah(at)gloaming.com
http://www.gloaming.com/deborah.html

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 12:13:09 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb(at)UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Chat: Ghosts, God, & Science

>>Jyou don't have the responsibility
>>to change all these scientific so-called persons and their ilk.
>
>One can be perfectly rational and consider science the answer but still
>maintain a glorious sense of wonder.  Why do people consistently consider
>scientists to be cold rationalists.  All you have to do is read Carl Sagan
>and discover what a sense of wonder he had.  Beauty in a microscopic slide
>or downloads from the Hubble prove to me that magic is alive and wonder is
>everywhere.   Just because we've been to the moon and know it's not green
>cheese doesn't lessen it's beauty and make it a cold piece of stone
>circling our world.  Just looking at the night sky lately and seeing the
>dance of Mars and Spicus around the waxing moon has been a nightly thrill.
>And the face or the rabbit is still a joy to see on full moon nights.
>
>I've never met a science type who couldn't impart this sense of mystery and
>wonder.  Be they botanist, astronomer, physicist, mathematician (and I am
>surrounded by all of these) they would be greatly insulted that anyone
>thought they didn't appreciate wonder and beauty at many levels.  I know an
>atmospheric physicist who takes ballet and participates in the symphony.  I
>know a mathemetician who longs to be out in the wilderness every chance he
>can get.  I know a botanist who doesn't dissect flowers just in their
>scientific categories but also if it will make a nice fairy ring.
>
>I don't think anyone needs to change anyone.  You will have a sense of
>wonder or not, whatever your philosophy, depending on who you are and what
>you care about.  I think everyone here qualifies for that since we all like
>this literature....
>
>Deborah
>
>Deborah McMillion
>deborah(at)gloaming.com
>http://www.gloaming.com/deborah.html

Wonderfully put, Deborah.  You said calmly and rationally what I might have
put far less temperately.  Now, please, could we stop discussing credulity
and skepticism and get back to art and society?

Jack Kolb
Dept. of English, UCLA
kolb(at)ucla.edu

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 12:50:08 -0700
From: Deborah McMillion Nering <deborah(at)gloaming.com>
Subject: Anyone watching

The Bravo channel's "Count of Monte Cristo" with Gerard Depardieu?

a quick change of subject   ;)

I have been sans VCR this week and was unable to catch it.  I very much
enjoyed his "Cyrano" and wondered how true this was to Dumas' book?  So
many hours!

Deborah

Deborah McMillion
deborah(at)gloaming.com
http://www.gloaming.com/deborah.html

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 12:54:11 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb(at)UCLA.EDU>
Subject: RE: Ghosts, God, & Violins

>Must this still be a matter of either or?  Truth: My late night ramblings are
>inspired by Stephen Hawking, John Mathers, David Bohm, Alan Watts, Carl Jung,
>Lewis Thomas, Rupert Sheldrake, and other scientists who feed our
>understanding with their humility, generosity, and sense of wonder. Synthesis
>is the challenge of our age.
>
>With heart,
>Deborah Mattingly Conner
>muse(at)iland.net
>http://www.iland.net/~muse
>"...Where there is no vision, the people perish." ~Proverbs

See Edward O. Wilson's recent book, Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge.

Again, I urge us not to pursue this potentially divisive thread.

Jack Kolb
Dept. of English, UCLA
kolb(at)ucla.edu

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 17:03:06 +0300
From: cbishop(at)interlog.com (Carroll Bishop)
Subject: Anyone watching

Sorry if my meant-to-be-private message offended or annoyed
any elks scientific or otherwise.  I'm split-brained myself.

Carroll

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 13:55:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ginger Johnson <ferret(at)eskimo.com>
Subject: The Count of Monte Cristo

Bravo ran a four-part made for television adaptation of the famous Dumas
novel this last week.

I watched all four episodes and found it good and bad.  The good first.
Depardieu starred and did a fine, controlled job of it.  Sets and costumes
wonderful, atmosphere first rate, all the actors more than competent.  It
was fun seeing three Depardieus, father, daughter Julie (playing
Valentine) and son Guillaume in a bit part as the young Edmond Dantes.

Like many of us, naturally I turned to the novel, a new translation in
Penguin.  And oh my, what they did to the screenplay.  This after all was
not Hollywood, but a French production.  It's a very, very long book so
there were cuts and changes that one would expect.  But the worst changes
were these.  Haydee was reduced to a mere cameo, whose part as
love-interest was replaced by someone called Camille.  I'm not far enough
along in the book to know if she appears at all, but I suspect not.  It
ended with the Comte giving up all his money (how politicially correct)
and instead of running off with Haydee, going back to an equally
self-impoverished Mercedes.  What I couldn't figure out was why stick the
bogus ending on it at all?

I'd rather they stuck to the thorough-going Byronism that fills the novel.

The odd thing about the novel I hadn't realized is that it's not a period
piece at all.  Romantic, yes, but it is set fewer than ten years before it
was written, and is very contemporary to the events of 1838.

Anyone else see it?

Ginger Johnson


"It isn't the extravagances of life we regret, it's the economies."
                                          - Somerville and Ross

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 14:58:03 -0600
From: sdavies(at)MtRoyal.AB.CA
Subject: Holmes and pawning

 I'm helping a member of the Internet community find references to pawnbroking,
more specifically how the trade was carried out.  I am in the process of
etexting _Hagar of the pawnshop_, but have another reference to hand over.

  This is from a book I am etexting called _The technique of mystery_ (1913),
and in chapter ten of which the stories of Sherlock Holmes are discussed.  Casn
anyone tell which of Holmes' stories this is?

(QUOTE)
  "It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch, to
scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the case.
It is more handy than a label, as there is no risk of the number being lost or
transposed. There are no less than four such numbers visible to my lens on the
inside of this case. Inference that your brother was often at low water.
(End quote)

                                   Stephen D
                          mailto:SDavies(at)mtroyal.ab.ca

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 14:05:59 -0700
From: Deborah McMillion Nering <deborah(at)gloaming.com>
Subject: Re: The Count of Monte Cristo

>Bravo ran a four-part made for television adaptation of the famous Dumas
>novel this last week.

Thanks, Ginger, for the review.  Since we often rail at Hollywood's changes
(and sometimes the BBC) this makes for an interesting counterpoint.  I only
remember the old 70's version with...er...Richard Chamberlain?  And if I
remember right, Tony Curtis???  Or am I confusing two versions?

I haven't read this book since college so I've completely forgotten the
ending but I don't remember it being happy (...didn't Mercedes die?).

One of our housemates quirks, bless his heart, is forgetting the ending
every time to all of the Sherlock Holmes episodes.  He says this is good
since he gets to be surprised every time anew.  But no fair if the ending
isn't the real one!

Deborah

Deborah McMillion
deborah(at)gloaming.com
http://www.gloaming.com/deborah.html

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 15:15:07 -0600 (MDT)
From: "p.h.wood" <woodph(at)freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>
Subject: Re: Holmes and pawning

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999 sdavies(at)MtRoyal.AB.CA wrote:
>  I'm helping a member of the Internet community find references to 
pawnbroking,
> more specifically how the trade was carried out.  I am in the process of
> etexting _Hagar of the pawnshop_, but have another reference to hand over.
>   This is from a book I am etexting called _The technique of mystery_ (1913),
> and in chapter ten of which the stories of Sherlock Holmes are discussed.  
Casn
> anyone tell which of Holmes' stories this is?
> (QUOTE)
>   "It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch, to
> scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the case.
> It is more handy than a label, as there is no risk of the number being lost or
> transposed. There are no less than four such numbers visible to my lens on the
> inside of this case. Inference that your brother was often at low water.
> (End quote)
>
>                                    Stephen D
>                           mailto:SDavies(at)mtroyal.ab.ca


The Sign of (the) Four, Ch. 1
No charge - professional courtesy!
Peter Wood

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 18:29:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Donna Goldthwaite <dgold(at)javanet.com>
Subject: Re: Holmes and pawning

Hi Stephen,


>  This is from a book I am etexting called _The technique of mystery_ (1913),
>and in chapter ten of which the stories of Sherlock Holmes are discussed.
>Casn
>anyone tell which of Holmes' stories this is?
>
>(QUOTE)
>  "It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch, to
>scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the case.
>It is more handy than a label, as there is no risk of the number being lost or
>transposed. There are no less than four such numbers visible to my lens on the
>inside of this case. Inference that your brother was often at low water.
>(End quote)


 This is from _The Sign of Four_, Chapter 1


 Something I should have known but didn't; not to worry, there's a Sherlock
Holmes Concordance on the web. Why am I not surprised?

http://www.dataflight.com/cgitest.htm

Concordance Search Results

 Search: "pawnbrokers AND watch AND scratch" in 68 records.
     Located 1 records with 24 hits in 0.15000 seconds.


       The Sign of Four (1 of 1)


Best,

Donna Goldthwaite
dgold(at)javanet.com

===0===



Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 20:08:33 +0300
From: cbishop(at)interlog.com (Carroll Bishop)
Subject: Re: Games with Love and Death/and Carroll on Freud

Mac said:

> It was really quite good although terribly
>fattening in a coffee and chocolate sort of way.

Ah Vienna, coffee mit schlage (?), Sachertorte, and didn't
the croissant arrive there via Turkey or somewhere to the east?

>. And I wonder what the brillant Lou Andreas-Salome so greatly
>loved by Nietzsche, Rilke, Schnitzler and of course Freud would have to say
>about the "unembarrassed" mind of Freud.

SchadenFreud? Irvin Yalom who wrote LYING ON THE COUCH wrote an
earlier novel about Nietszsche and Freud and Lou and all.

Carroll Bishop (cbishop(at)interlog.com)

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Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 12:14:47 -0600
From: Jerry Carlson <gmc(at)libra.pvh.org>
Subject: Today in History - June 28

            1839
                   Cinque, originally Senghbe, along with other Africans, is 
kidnapped and sold into
                   slavery in Cuba. They later revolted and took over the slave 
ship Amistad.
            1862
                   The Seven Day's Battles continue at Garnett's and Golding's 
farms.
            1863
                   General Meade replaces General Hooker as commander of the 
Army of the Potomac.
            1874
                   The Freedmen's Bank, founded to assist former American 
slaves, closes.
            1884
                   Congress declares Labor Day a legal holiday.
            1902
                   Congress passes the Spooner bill, which authorizes a canal 
to be built across the isthmus
                   of Panama.
            1911
                   Samuel J. Battle becomes the first African-American 
policeman in New York City.
            1914
                   Austria's Archduke Francis Ferdinand is assassinated at 
Sarajevo, Serbia,
                   sparking World War I.
            1919
                   Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles, under protest.

      Birthdays
           1873
                   Alexis Carrel, French surgeon and biologist, winner of a 
Nobel Prize for his
                   development of a blood vessel suture technique.  He also 
worked with Charles
                   Lindbergh to develop an artificial heart.

===0===



Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 12:10:35 -0600
From: Jerry Carlson <gmc(at)libra.pvh.org>
Subject: Today in History - June 29

            1804
                   Privates John Collins and Hugh Hall of the Lewis and Clark 
Expedition are found
                   guilty by a court martial of getting drunk on duty. Collins 
is sentenced to receive
                   100 lashes on his back and Hall 50.
            1862
                   While retreating from Richmond, Union forces resist pursuit 
at Savage's Station.
            1880
                   France annexes Tahiti.
            1888
                   Professor Frederick Treves performs the first appendectomy 
in England.
            1903
                   The British government officially protests Belgian 
atrocities in the Congo.
            1905
                   Riots erupt in ports throughout Russia. l
            1917
                   The Ukraine proclaims its independence from Russia.

       Born on June 29
            1858
                   George Washington Goethals, builder of the Panama Canal
            1861
                   William James Mayo, cofounder of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota
            1865
                   William E. Borah, Republican senator from Idaho, who 
supported the League of
                   Nations.
            1886
                   James Van Der Zee, African-American photographer

===0===



Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 19:56:55 +0100
From: Stacy Gillis <stacy.gillis(at)ukonline.co.uk>
Subject: CFP: Villainy in Detective Fiction/Film (Collection - 07/31;2000/03)

Professor Moriarty, Dr. No, Bridget O'Shaughnessy, Blofeld, Count Fosco, Fu
Manchu, Keyser Soz?, S.P.E.C.T.R.E., Cruella de Vil, Jaws - from Britain to
America, from novel to film, from thug to mastermind, these villains are
often more interesting than their heroic opponents.  The relationship
between the villain and the hero(ine) is often the crux of the entire
story.  But what makes a villain?  What is villainous activity?  How have
villains changed over the past two centuries?

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

? Gender and villainy
? Vicarious appeal of villains
? Villains capturing the public imagination
? Villainy as a reflection of changing social mores
? Relationship between hero and villain
? the difference between villain and hero
? Villain as Other
? Villains as plot devices
? Poweful versus weak villains
? How society deals with villains
? Victims and villains
? Faceless organizations as villains
? Masterminds versus thugs
? Sensation fiction villains
? Villains and violence
? Villains and fate


We are soliciting abstracts for a collection focusing on Villainy in
Detective Fiction/Film.   Abstracts of 500 words, as well as a brief c.v.,
must be submitted by the end of July, 1999.  Final drafts (25 pp., MLA
format) must be submitted by March 2000.    The full proposal is available
upon request.

Please send abstracts and queries to:

Stacy Gillis/ Philippa Gates
School of English
Queen's Building
University of Exeter
Exeter, Devon
EX4 4QH
United Kingdom

E-mail:   stacy.gillis(at)ukonline.co.uk
 p.c.gates(at)exeter.ac.uk

 ---------------------------
 Stacy Gillis
 stacy.gillis(at)ukonline.co.uk
 http://web.ukonline.co.uk/stacy.gillis/index.htm

===0===



Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 17:20:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Zozie(at)aol.com
Subject: Re:  Today in History - June 29

My source says:  Born today,  in 1893... Helen Elna Hokinson, cartoonist,
whose hefty, middle-aged clubwomen cavorted in their own endearing,
less-than-liberated way through the pages of *The New Yorker*, a publication
Ms Hokinson rarely read but from which she earned enormous income.

best
phoebe

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Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 18:32:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: LoracLegid(at)aol.com
Subject: Re:  Today in History - June 29

145 years ago today Charlotte Bronte married Arthur Bell Nicholls June 29,
1854.

Carol Digel
Darley Society
www.focdarley.com

===0===



Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 01:34:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: An episode in the life of Hawthorne

Not long ago we seemed to be veering off into a discussion of 19th-
century attitudes toward the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. While not
necessarily wanting to rouse that topic again, I did want to communicate a
reading adventure I had recently that relates to it. I was reading
in a memoir by Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
(think of Nathaniel Hawthorne naming his girl Rose!)wherein she tells the
story of a woman who was passionately involved in the authorship question,
to the point that it caused her considerable hardship.  Ms. Lathrop in
the passage below not only gives us a sense of what a vital topic this
seemed to be but also of what an extraordinarily kind man her father was.
Hawthorne was at this time the American consulate at Liverpool, a position
he held by virtue of his long friendship with then-President Franklin
Pierce.


        In the story of Hawthorne's life in England, there is nothing more
     characteristic, nothing more noble, than his care for those Americans
     who came to him for advice or aid. Besides numerous instances of
     generosity never heard of by the public, there was a notable one in
     the case of Miss Delia Bacon, casually mentioned in "Our Old Home,"
     under the head of "Recollections of a Gifted Woman."

        Without assuming any credit for his action in the case, or even
     mentioning his disinterested aid to one who had no other claim upon
     him than that she was a lonely and friendless countrywoman, he
     describes her patient labor in pursuit of what she devoutly believed
     to be the true secret of Shakespeare's identity.

        Whether her theories were wholly visionary or not, she had the
     courage of her convictions, opposed as they were to the settled
     belief of the rest of the world, and she lived and died a martyr to
     the truth of history, as she regarded it.

        When this singular woman had exhausted all her financial means,
     when her family and friends declined to assist her unless she would
     give up her chimerical pursuit and return to America, she--almost
     despairingly--appealed to Hawthorne; and he responded in a manner
     that displayed his nobleness of heart, by the way in which he aided
     the forlorn enthusiast in her direst need. It gives one a higher
     estimate of human nature to hear of such unselfishness, such
     unwearied patience, and such rare delicacy as were exhibited by
     Hawthorne in extending the moral and material aid which she was too
     proud to solicit.

        The interesting "Life of Delia Bacon," by Theodore Bacon,
     published in 1888, contains some twenty letters of Hawthorne--therein
     for the first time made public--which charmingly display, in the
     words of Mr. Bacon, "the noble generosity, the unwearying patience,
     the exquisite considerateness with which for two years he (Hawthorne)
     gave unstinted help, even of that material sort which she would not
     ask for, to this lonely countrywoman."

        In a postscript to one of these letters to Miss Bacon, Hawthorne
     writes, in almost apologetic terms: "You say nothing about the state
     of your funds. Pardon me for alluding to the subject, but you
     promised to apply to me in case of need. I am ready." Could an offer
     of assistance be more delicately expressed?

        If there were no other proof of Hawthorne's appreciative regard
     for the friendless, it shines forth brightly in these private
     letters.

 Bob C.


_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Robert L. Champ
rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu
Editor, teacher, anglophile, human curiosity

Whatever things are pure, whatever things are
lovely, whatever things are of good report, if
there is any virtue and if there is anything
praiseworthy, meditate on these things
                                 Philippians 4:8

rchamp7927(at)aol.com       robertchamp(at)netscape.net
_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

===0===



Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:57:48 -0600
From: Jerry Carlson <gmc(at)libra.pvh.org>
Subject: Today in History - June 30

            1862
                   Confederate failure to coordinate attacks allows the Union 
Army of the Potomac to
                   retreat thorough White Oak Swamp to Malvern Hill.
            1863
                   Union and Confederate cavalries meet at Hanover, 
Pennsylvania.
            1859
                   Charles Blondin walks across Niagara falls on a tightrope.
            1894
                   Korea declares its independence from China and asks for aid 
from the Japanese.
            1908
                   An explosion in Siberia knocks down trees in a 30-mile 
radius and strikes people
                   unconscious 40 miles away.  Scientists believe it was caused 
by a meteorite fragment .
            1912
                   Belgian workers strike to demand universal voting rights.
            1913
                   Fighting breaks out between Bulgaria and her former allies 
Spain and Greece, beginning
                   the Second Balkan War.
            1915
                   The Second Battle of Artois ends with the French failure to 
take Vimy Ridge.

     Birthdays
             1893
                   Harold Laski, political scientist , author of Authority in 
the Modern State and The American
                   President.
            1917
                   Lena Horne, American singer and actress

------------------------------

End of Gaslight Digest V1 #79
*****************************