1. 21:26 26th Mar 2010

    notes: 11

    tags: travel1907slavery!

    Of course we bought all sorts of curios before sailing, embroidered turbans, sarongs, jabuls, handsome krises, chow-covers of beautifully coloured straw, and hats of every variety, while one day, as an experiment in shopping, I bargained for a Moro slave, a handsome, black-eyed boy, but as he could not be purchased for less than ten dollars gold, I informed his owner that he was too expensive. - Florence Kimball Russel, A Woman’s Journey through the Philippines, On a cable ship that linked together the strange lands seen en route (1907) [full text]

    Of course we bought all sorts of curios before sailing, embroidered turbans, sarongs, jabuls, handsome krises, chow-covers of beautifully coloured straw, and hats of every variety, while one day, as an experiment in shopping, I bargained for a Moro slave, a handsome, black-eyed boy, but as he could not be purchased for less than ten dollars gold, I informed his owner that he was too expensive.

    - Florence Kimball Russel, A Woman’s Journey through the Philippines, On a cable ship that linked together the strange lands seen en route (1907) [full text]

     

  2. 00:11 2nd Feb 2010

    notes: 1

    tags: 1918!ye olde sexism

    A man does not wish to be one among a corporation of men owning a woman any more than he desires to be owner of a sixth part of an automobile. Not because there is anything more intrinsically wrong in purchasing one-sixth than six-sixths, but because, in a world where the ownership of private property is the greatest of all good things, individual ownership denotes respectability, comfort, ability to buy outright. Hence we have monogamy for wives and mistresses in general, and polygamy for men.

    - Roscoe Burdett Tobias and Mary E. Marcy, Women As Sex Vendors or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic Status of Woman) (1918) [full text]

     

  3. 14:37 30th Jan 2010

    notes: 1

    tags: 1893bangsfictionlanguage!

    image: download

    “Well, what can you expect of a Cuban, anyhow?” queried the Idiot. “The Cuban, like the Spaniard or the Italian or the African, hasn’t the vigor which is necessary for the proper comprehension and rendering of Wagner’s music. He is by nature slow and indolent. If it were easier for a Spaniard to hop than to walk, he’d hop, and rest his other leg. I’ve known Italians whose diet was entirely confined to liquids, because they were too tired to masticate solids. It is the ease with which it can be absorbed that makes macaroni the favorite dish of the Italians, and the fondness of all Latin races for wines is entirely due, I think, to the fact that wine can be swallowed without chewing. This indolence affects also their language. The Italian and the Spaniard speak the language that comes easy—that is soft and dreamy; while the Germans and Russians, stronger, more energetic, indulge in a speech that even to us, who are people of an average amount of energy, is sometimes appalling in the severity of the strain it puts upon the tongue.” - John Kendrick Bangs, Coffee and Repartee (1893) [full text]

    “Well, what can you expect of a Cuban, anyhow?” queried the Idiot. “The Cuban, like the Spaniard or the Italian or the African, hasn’t the vigor which is necessary for the proper comprehension and rendering of Wagner’s music. He is by nature slow and indolent. If it were easier for a Spaniard to hop than to walk, he’d hop, and rest his other leg. I’ve known Italians whose diet was entirely confined to liquids, because they were too tired to masticate solids. It is the ease with which it can be absorbed that makes macaroni the favorite dish of the Italians, and the fondness of all Latin races for wines is entirely due, I think, to the fact that wine can be swallowed without chewing. This indolence affects also their language. The Italian and the Spaniard speak the language that comes easy—that is soft and dreamy; while the Germans and Russians, stronger, more energetic, indulge in a speech that even to us, who are people of an average amount of energy, is sometimes appalling in the severity of the strain it puts upon the tongue.”

    - John Kendrick Bangs, Coffee and Repartee (1893) [full text]