state pair

[3556...@gmail.com]

Dear all,

Please tell me what "state pair" means in the following sentence. Thank you very much!

She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy,for they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for ''style'',not for service; she could have seen through apair of stove-lids as well.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Since she "sees" through them, they are probably a pair of eyeglasses.

A "state" thing is something that would be used on a state occasion.
Is "she" a Queen?

[Peter Moylan]

Was this written by a native speaker of English? The sentence doesn't
make much sense.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

[mrucb...@att.net]

Like anything totally out of context it may appear to make little sense, but it
it refers to 'spectacles' or glasses, as noted. The sentence is from a famous
work by Mark Twain, whose phrases may range from vernacular to humorous, or somewhere in-between, adding to the need for context to grasp the meaning.

[mrucb...@att.net]

Standard definition for state is not tied to a royal station or government
ceremony, although that is how it seems to be used most often...
"4. the style of living befitting a person of wealth and high rank: to travel in
state."

[Tony Cooper]

Confusingly, there are two meanings of "state" that could apply. They
could be glasses worn for a state occasion, in which case they'd be
fancy, or they could be glasses furnished by the state, in which case
they'd be very plain.

--
Tony Cooper - Orlando FL

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, April 5, 2014 12:56:12 PM UTC-4, Tony Cooper wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 08:54:51 -0700 (PDT), mrucb...@att.net wrote:
> >On Saturday, April 5, 2014 10:30:18 AM UTC-5, Peter Moylan wrote:
> >> On 06/04/14 00:51, 3556...@gmail.com wrote:

> >> > Please tell me what "state pair" means in the following sentence. Thank you very much!

[no, he didn't]

> >> > She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy,for they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for ''style'',not for service; she could have seen through apair of stove-lids as well.
>
> >> Was this written by a native speaker of English? The sentence doesn't
> >> make much sense.
>

> >Like anything totally out of context it may appear to make little sense, but it
> >it refers to 'spectacles' or glasses, as noted. The sentence is from a famous
> >work by Mark Twain, whose phrases may range from vernacular to humorous, or somewhere in-between, adding to the need for context to grasp the meaning.
>
> Confusingly, there are two meanings of "state" that could apply. They
> could be glasses worn for a state occasion, in which case they'd be
> fancy, or they could be glasses furnished by the state, in which case
> they'd be very plain.

Are you really unable to read for comprehension? "the pride of her heart,
and were built for 'style', not for service." The very antithesis of
"very plain." And now that we have been informed that the passage is
by Mark Twain, do you seriously maintain that in the 19th century,
eyeglasses were "furnished by the state"?

[Jerry Friedman]

In case it's not clear from the other responses, they were the glasses
she wore on special occasions (humorously exaggerated to state
occasions) because of their impressive appearance.

--
Jerry Friedman

[utksi...@gmail.com]

Is this line from THE ADVENTURES OF THE TOM SAWYER

[utksi...@gmail.com]

what is the meaning of stove lids in this line

[Harrison Hill]

On Monday, 13 March 2017 11:49:00 UTC, utksi...@gmail.com wrote:
> Is this line from THE ADVENTURES OF THE TOM SAWYER

The thread is three years old, but no matter "The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer" - and the first few paragraphs at that - so here we
have all the context:

Chapter I

‘TOM!’
No answer.
‘TOM!’
No answer.
‘What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!’
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked
over them about the room; then she put them up and
looked out under them. She seldom or never looked
THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were

her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for

‘style,’ not service — she could have seen through a pair
of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a
moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough
for the furniture to hear:
‘Well, I lay if I get hold of you I’ll —‘
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending
down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so
she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She
resurrected nothing but the cat.
‘I never did see the beat of that boy!’...

[Harrison Hill]

On Monday, 13 March 2017 11:51:07 UTC, utksi...@gmail.com wrote:
> what is the meaning of stove lids in this line

A heavy iron circular lid for a stove - black and impenetrable.
This is going to be a long read :) If I were you (and if I were me),
I'd let the words flow over me and not look for the exact
meaning of everything. This is one of the greatest books ever
written.

[Harrison Hill]

I can imagine OCR stumbling badly over Mark Twain's vernacular
English, so here's a photographic rendering:

<https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/files/The_Adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer.pdf>

http://preview.tinyurl.com/hdj7jjh

[Peter T. Daniels]

I think you're confusing it with *Huckleberry Finn*. (Which, however,
begins by pointing out that you might not be able to follow it without you've
first read *Tom Sawyer*.)

[Peter Moylan]

I'm impressed that you knew what "this line" meant. I still haven't
worked out what "state pair" means. Perhaps there is something in Google
Groups that still hasn't reached my news server.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[musika]

We had that discussion some years ago.
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-GB#!searchin/alt.usage.english/state$20pair%7Csort:relevance/alt.usage.english/7o_vTpU4DCY/FSw-HfI1ils>

http://tinyurl.com/zcqjmc2

--
Ray
UK

[Don Phillipson]

<utksi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1a990b07-dd7d-4dbc...@googlegroups.com...

> Is this line from THE ADVENTURES OF THE TOM SAWYER

HH helpfully posted the relevant paragraph, about Tom's Aunt
Polly looking through her spectacles. This was her state pair,
i.e.ornamental rather than functional. The stove lid reference
confirms that she could not see well through these spectacles

The passage confused the OP because the event described
is American small-town social pretension, but the special
adjective "state" is borrowed from another context, mainly
royal or ceremonial. (English royalty owns several crowns
and several carriages, and by custom reserves the state
crown or state carriage for particular occasions.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

[Harrison Hill]

Having enjoyed Tom Sawyer so much, I was surprised that Huckleberry
Finn was even better. That was 40-50 years ago however, and before
I got anyway near Faulkner.

I would imagine both have been Bowdlerised to remove non-PC sections?
We had one black girl in our school in Surrey, England. In college in
Georgia there were none - after the only black girl there was driven
out - by her family in a car, and by the locals with threats. But I
would imagine for many of us in England, Tom Sawyer was the first
time we ever encountered a black person.

[charles]

In article <3e7f9c47-8a37-4e46...@googlegroups.com>,

bus conductor for Midland Red in the 1950s - for England
but in Scotland we had many visitors from West Africa to the hosue in thn
1950s - they were studing at the School of Tropical Medicine in Edinburgh.
Connecio - my father had spent most of WW2 in West Africa.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Monday, March 13, 2017 at 11:53:33 AM UTC-4, Harrison Hill wrote:
> On Monday, 13 March 2017 13:28:44 UTC, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Monday, March 13, 2017 at 8:06:05 AM UTC-4, Harrison Hill wrote:
> > > On Monday, 13 March 2017 11:51:07 UTC, utksi...@gmail.com wrote:

> > > > what is the meaning of stove lids in this line
> > > A heavy iron circular lid for a stove - black and impenetrable.
> > > This is going to be a long read :) If I were you (and if I were me),
> > > I'd let the words flow over me and not look for the exact
> > > meaning of everything. This is one of the greatest books ever
> > > written.
> > I think you're confusing it with *Huckleberry Finn*. (Which, however,
> > begins by pointing out that you might not be able to follow it without you've
> > first read *Tom Sawyer*.)
>
> Having enjoyed Tom Sawyer so much, I was surprised that Huckleberry
> Finn was even better. That was 40-50 years ago however, and before
> I got anyway near Faulkner.

*Tom Sawyer* and its two sequels, *Tom Sawyer Abroad* and *Tom Sawyer, Detective*,
are boys' books, approximate contemporaries of Alcott's *Little Women and its
sequels. *Huckleberry Finn* may have (but probably didn't) start out the same
but clearly did not end up suitable for children.

> I would imagine both have been Bowdlerised to remove non-PC sections?

Absolutely not.

Every year there are attempts to ban *HF* because of the N-word, which provides
far more worthy opportunities to discuss contextualization -- and, for that matter,
slavery -- than moans about "niggardly."

A censorred version was indeed published recently (unfortunately the copyright
had lapsed). It probably didn't do too well.

> We had one black girl in our school in Surrey, England. In college in
> Georgia there were none - after the only black girl there was driven
> out - by her family in a car, and by the locals with threats. But I
> would imagine for many of us in England, Tom Sawyer was the first
> time we ever encountered a black person.

So all those "niggers" who populate your popular culture -- Christie, Guinness
-- were purely theoretical? It seems things are different now.

[Harrison Hill]

I don't know what you mean by "Christie, Guinness". Guinness is
black stout, Christie a notorious murderer.

The big cities have always had mixed races. In the shires and
countryside it would have been (and probably still is) unusual.

A wiki link (Charles Bishop) to a man who "dun good" - from the
town I live in:

<http://www.kingstononline.co.uk/cesar-picton-1755-1836-from-senegal-to-kingston-on-thames/>

[Peter T. Daniels]

One of them wrote "Ten Little Niggers" or something like that, the other
made Ealing comedies.

[Tony Cooper]

It's been quite a while since I read the book, but there were no black
people populating Agatha's book. The title was a reference to a
nursery rhyme/song that we know as "Ten Little Indians" and the end
line of "...then there were none.".

In Ealing Studio's "Kind Hearts and Coronets", the "nigger" reference
is also to a nursery rhyme: "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe". One of the
characters Sir Alec played made that reference.

To the best of my knowledge, no black person was encountered in either
reference.




--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

[bert]

Younger people know the nursery rhyme as "Ten Little Indians".
Older people knew it as "Ten Little Nigger Boys".
--

[Tony Cooper]

I am an "older people", but have seen/heard the "Ten Little Niggers"
version only as a reference to an original version that was used
before my time.

[Cheryl]

No doubt its usage varied by both place as well as time. I picked up,
but was not allowed to repeat, the "nigger" version. I think the most
approved one was "monkeys", but "Indians" is also familiar.

--
Cheryl

[HVS]

Ditto. Unless 64 places me in the "younger people" group, I suspect
that pretty well all the "older people" who knew it as "Ten Little
Niggers" are no longer with us.

--
Cheers, Harvey
CanE (30 years) & BrE (34 years),
indiscriminately mixed

[Paul Wolff]

On Mon, 13 Mar 2017, HVS <use...@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> posted:

>> On Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:19:42 -0700 (PDT), bert
>> <bert.hu...@btinternet.com> wrote
>> >On Monday, 13 March 2017 20:22:43 UTC, Tony Cooper wrote:
>>
>> >Younger people know the nursery rhyme as "Ten Little Indians". Older
>> >people knew it as "Ten Little Nigger Boys".
>
>> I am an "older people", but have seen/heard the "Ten Little Niggers"
>> version only as a reference to an original version that was used
>> before my time.
>
>Ditto. Unless 64 places me in the "younger people" group, I suspect
>that pretty well all the "older people" who knew it as "Ten Little
>Niggers" are no longer with us.
>

From which I conclude that the rhyme was changed in Westpondia well
before it was changed in Eastpondia. Here in the Orient, I'd date the
change to the early 1960s, about 55 years ago.
--
Paul

[Tony Cooper]

I'd have to agree with that because I never saw or heard the "nigger"
version in Indiana, and Indiana was not a particularly advanced state
in racist sensitivity. It wasn't Deep South, and it wasn't Cicero,
Illinois, but it wasn't all that progressive.

[Mark Brader]

Bert Hutchings:

>>> Younger people know the nursery rhyme as "Ten Little Indians".
>>> Older people knew it as "Ten Little Nigger Boys".

Tony Cooper:

>> I am an "older people", but have seen/heard the "Ten Little Niggers"
>> version only as a reference to an original version that was used
>> before my time.

Cheryl Perkins:

> No doubt its usage varied by both place as well as time.

Yes. The original rhyme has "Indians"; the "Niggers" version is British.


As I wrote here in 1996:

I have here "The Agatha Christie Companion: The Complete Guide to
Agatha Christie's Life & Work" by Dennis Sanders and Len Lovallo
(1984, Avalon Books edition 1985, ISBN 0-517-47925-7), and the rest
of this posting is from information in that source, plus a few items
from Leonard Maltin's movie guidebook.

Apologies in advance to anyone who is offended, as I am myself,
by some of the usages that follow.

First, the rhyme. The original version of it was called "Ten Little
Indians"; it was written in 1868 by Septimus Winner of Philadelphia,
who also wrote under the pseudonym Alice Hawthorne and was also the
author of the 1864 song "Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?".
The first four lines are:

Ten little Injuns [sic] standin' in a line,
One toddled home and then there were nine;
Nine little Injuns swingin' on a gate,
One tumbled off and then there were eight.

Less than a year after this song had been published in London,
an adaptation of it was written for British music hall audiences
by Frank Green. This 1869 version was called "Ten Little Niggers"
and the first four lines are:

Ten little Nigger boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.

Nine little Nigger boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.

Green's version not only changes the ethnic group and the details
of what happened to each of the ten, but adds various British
place names.

The original publication of the book [i.e. the novel by Agatha
Christie] was in Britain in 1939, by Collins. It includes the
full Frank Green version of the rhyme and had the same title:
"Ten Little Niggers".

The first US edition, in 1940, was published by Dodd, Mead. They:

- Changed the setting from Nigger Island (shaped like "a man's
head ... with negroid lips") to Indian Island (shaped like
"a man's head -- an American Indian profile").

- Changed the title to "And Then There Were None".

- Substituted Indian for Nigger in the rhyme and throughout
the story.

Note that the story was built around the details of the Green
version of the rhyme, so substituting the original Winner version
would introduce further consistency problems. Sanders and Lovallo
aren't clear on this point, but I believe US editions merely replaced
Nigger by Indian within Green's version.

Subsequent US editions of the book have used two *more* titles: "Ten
Little Indians" and "The Nursery Rhyme Murders". The first of these
is familiar to me, but I've never seen a copy bearing the other title.
Sanders and Lovallo said that the title "And Then There Were None"
had returned to favor in the US at the time they were writing.


Christie, who wrote plays as well as books, adapted this one herself
for the stage. It opened in London in 1943 and in New York in 1944.
Again the title was "Ten Little Niggers" and "And Then There Were
None" in the two countries. The ending of the original book conformed
to Green's version of the rhyme; for the stage, she changed it in a
manner perhaps suggested by Winner's version. This change was then
carried over into at least three of the movie versions (I don't know
about the last one, which postdates Sanders and Lovallo).

The next version to appear was the 1945 film, directed by Rene Clair.
According to Sanders and Lovallo, the same two titles "And Then There
Were None" and "Ten Little Niggers" were used in the US and Britain
respectively. I have no confirmation from another source that "Ten
Little Niggers" was used for the film in Britain, though.

The three later, inferior films all came from the same producer, in 1966,
1974, and 1989 (Sanders and Lovallo give the first two dates are 1965 and
1975). The were all called "Ten Little Indians", and moved the location
successively from an island off the coast of Britain to the Alps, Iran,
and Africa. The IMDB says that the title "And Then There Were None" was
also used for the 1974 film.

The original title, "Ten Little Niggers", continued to be used for the
book in Britain at least up to the time of Sanders and Lovallo's book.
On at least one occasion, in 1966, there were protests against the title
when a new production of the play appeared; it was changed to "And Then
There Were None" for at least that production.

Searching a couple of library catalogs, I found several instances of
"Ten Little Indians" (including one for the play and one in Thai) and
more of "And Then There Were None". "Ten Little Niggers" also turned
up under that title, not only the original book but also in Spanish,
French, and Hungarian translations.


[Original signature retained on reposting for nostalgia value]
--
Mark Brader, m...@sq.com "Information! ... We want information!"
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto -- The Prisoner

My text in this article is in the public domain.

[Katy Jennison]

That sounds about right. Either that or I'm several decades older than
I thought.

--
Katy Jennison

[Peter Moylan]

On 2017-Mar-14 16:32, Mark Brader wrote:
> Bert Hutchings:
>>>> Younger people know the nursery rhyme as "Ten Little Indians".
>>>> Older people knew it as "Ten Little Nigger Boys".
>
> Tony Cooper:
>>> I am an "older people", but have seen/heard the "Ten Little Niggers"
>>> version only as a reference to an original version that was used
>>> before my time.
>
> Cheryl Perkins:
>> No doubt its usage varied by both place as well as time.
>
> Yes. The original rhyme has "Indians"; the "Niggers" version is British.

British people of that time would have known a lot more about India than
about Africa. I suspect that, to them, "niggers" probably meant Indians.
The story of Little Black Sambo was about a South Indian boy.

[Peter Moylan]

Thanks. I failed to realise that this was a recycled thread.

[Janet]

In article <almarsoft.4811...@news.albasani.net>,
use...@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk says...

>
> > On Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:19:42 -0700 (PDT), bert
> > <bert.hu...@btinternet.com> wrote
> > >On Monday, 13 March 2017 20:22:43 UTC, Tony Cooper wrote:
> >
> > >Younger people know the nursery rhyme as "Ten Little Indians".
> > >Older people knew it as "Ten Little Nigger Boys".
>
> > I am an "older people", but have seen/heard the "Ten Little Niggers"
> > version only as a reference to an original version that was used
> > before my time.
>
> Ditto. Unless 64 places me in the "younger people" group, I suspect
> that pretty well all the "older people" who knew it as "Ten Little
> Niggers" are no longer with us.

Hardly! In Britain, it was published under that name until 1977,
and Agatha Christie had been a best selling author for decades,
available in paperback and libraries.

The nursery rhyme was also well known in Britain, and was the title
on a collection published in 1940.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None#Publication_and_b
ook_title_history

Janet

[Janet]

In article <gsaVR0C5...@wolff.co.uk>,
boun...@thiswontwork.wolff.co.uk says...

Nope, 1977 in UK


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None#Publication_and_b
ook_title_history



English language editions and titles

Christie, Agatha (November 1939). Ten Little Niggers. London:
Collins Crime Club. OCLC 152375426. Hardback, 256 pp. (First edition.)
Christie, Agatha (January 1940). And Then There Were None. New York:
Dodd, Mead. OCLC 1824276. Hardback, 264 pp. (First US edition.)
Christie, Agatha (1944). And then there were none. New York: Pocket
Books (Pocket number 261). Paperback, 173 pp.
Christie, Agatha (1947). Ten Little Niggers. London: Pan Books (Pan
number 4). Paperback, 190 pp.
Christie, Agatha (1958). Ten Little Niggers. London: Penguin Books
(Penguin number 1256). Paperback, 201 pp.
Christie, Agatha (1963). And Then There Were None. London: Fontana.
OCLC 12503435. Paperback, 190 pp. (The 1985 reprint was the first UK
publication of the novel under the title And Then There Were None.)[12]
Christie, Agatha (1964). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books.
OCLC 29462459. (First publication of novel as Ten Little Indians.)
Christie, Agatha (1964). And Then There Were None. New York:
Washington Square Press. Paperback, teacher's edition.
Christie, Agatha (1977). Ten Little Niggers (Greenway ed.). London:
Collins Crime Club. ISBN 0-00-231835-0. Collected works, Hardback, 252
pp. (Except for reprints of the 1963 Fontana paperback, this was one of
the last English-language publications of the novel under the title Ten
Little Niggers.)[13]
Christie, Agatha (1980). The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Ten Little
Niggers; Dumb Witness. Sydney: Lansdowne Press. ISBN 0-7018-1453-5.
(Late use of the original title in an Australian edition.)
Christie, Agatha (1986). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books.
ISBN 0-671-55222-8. (Last publication of novel under the title Ten
Little Indians.)


Janet

[Paul Wolff]

On Tue, 14 Mar 2017, Janet <nob...@home.com> posted:
>In article <gsaVR0C5...@wolff.co.uk>,

>> On Mon, 13 Mar 2017, HVS <use...@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> posted:
>> >> On Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:19:42 -0700 (PDT), bert
>> >> <bert.hu...@btinternet.com> wrote
>> >> >On Monday, 13 March 2017 20:22:43 UTC, Tony Cooper wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >Younger people know the nursery rhyme as "Ten Little Indians". Older
>> >> >people knew it as "Ten Little Nigger Boys".
>> >
>> >> I am an "older people", but have seen/heard the "Ten Little Niggers"
>> >> version only as a reference to an original version that was used
>> >> before my time.
>> >
>> >Ditto. Unless 64 places me in the "younger people" group, I suspect
>> >that pretty well all the "older people" who knew it as "Ten Little
>> >Niggers" are no longer with us.
>> >
>> From which I conclude that the rhyme was changed in Westpondia well
>> before it was changed in Eastpondia. Here in the Orient, I'd date the
>> change to the early 1960s, about 55 years ago.
>
> Nope, 1977 in UK

For the book title. I was trying to date the accepted change in the
nursery rhyme. I wouldn't expect the book title to be changed in advance
of that, but to have lagged by quite a few years.

--
Paul

[Mark Brader]

Mark Brader:

>> Yes. The original rhyme has "Indians"; the "Niggers" version is British.

Peter Moylan:

> British people of that time would have known a lot more about India than
> about Africa. I suspect that, to them, "niggers" probably meant Indians.

Indians maybe, but not... er... Indians. Anyway, the rhyme doesn't contain
anything to point to one or the other interpretation.

In Christie's original version of the novel, it apparently didn't mean
Indian Indians: Nigger Island in the novel has that name because part
of it is shaped like "a man's head ... with negroid lips". (When the
book was changed for American publication, that bit became "an American
Indian profile", so at least we know for sure what "Indians" meant.)
--
Mark Brader | "...it's always easier to see the mud when it's
Toronto | coming toward your side rather than from your side."
m...@vex.net | --Mike Kruger

[HVS]

On 14 Mar 2017, Mark Brader wrote

> Mark Brader:

>>> Yes. The original rhyme has "Indians"; the "Niggers" version is British.
>
> Peter Moylan:
>> British people of that time would have known a lot more about India than
>> about Africa. I suspect that, to them, "niggers" probably meant Indians.
>
> Indians maybe, but not... er... Indians. Anyway, the rhyme doesn't contain
> anything to point to one or the other interpretation.

-snip-

As a side issue, I wonder where the "other" nursery-rhyme song fits in here -
"One little, two little, three little Indians/Four little, five little, six
little Indidans" (and so on).

I assume it's later than the "Ten little Indians standing in a line" , but
I'm not sure if they're actually related in any way -- you certainly can't
sing them to the same tune.

--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng (30yrs) and BrEng (34yrs), indiscriminately mixed

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, March 14, 2017 at 1:32:20 AM UTC-4, Mark Brader wrote:

> The first US edition, in 1940, was published by Dodd, Mead. They:
>
> - Changed the setting from Nigger Island (shaped like "a man's
> head ... with negroid lips") to Indian Island (shaped like
> "a man's head -- an American Indian profile").

Which was in everyone's pocket, the obverse of the Buffalo Nickel.
Because of the ban of depicting living persons on US currency (and postage
stamps), the Indian image was created from three different models (the man
whose nose and forehead were used appeared on *I've Got a Secret* nearly
forty years later -- by which time we were using Jefferson nickels anyway).

[Whiskers]

On 2017-03-13, HVS <use...@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:19:42 -0700 (PDT), bert
>> <bert.hu...@btinternet.com> wrote
>> >On Monday, 13 March 2017 20:22:43 UTC, Tony Cooper wrote:
>>
>> >Younger people know the nursery rhyme as "Ten Little Indians".
>> >Older people knew it as "Ten Little Nigger Boys".
>
>> I am an "older people", but have seen/heard the "Ten Little Niggers"
>> version only as a reference to an original version that was used
>> before my time.
>
> Ditto. Unless 64 places me in the "younger people" group, I suspect
> that pretty well all the "older people" who knew it as "Ten Little
> Niggers" are no longer with us.

I'm only a little older than that, but I learned the 'nigger boys'
version of the rhyme before I could read.

I think Wikipedia is correct, that Christie's book kept it's original
title in the UK until the 1985 edition, which was a reprint of the US
Fontana edition of 1963 titled 'And then there were none'. By then the
original title had been considered offensive for quite some time.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Wednesday, March 15, 2017 at 9:10:53 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:

> I think Wikipedia is correct, that Christie's book kept it's original
> title in the UK until the 1985 edition, which was a reprint of the US
> Fontana edition of 1963 titled 'And then there were none'. By then the
> original title had been considered offensive for quite some time.

Fontana isn't/wasn't a US imprint.

[binhol...@gmail.com]

Yes, by Mark Twain

[snide...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at 4:37:22 PM UTC-7, binhol...@gmail.com wrote:

> Yes, by Mark Twain

It took me a bit to find which message this was in reply to,
since Mr Moylan distracted me by using different format message IDs
within the one thread.

The first one is the pinger,
<URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/7o_vTpU4DCY/swf_jOy1PU4J>

And as a refresher, "state pair" is a particular pair of glasses,
worn on more formal occasions by Auntie (IIRC).

Ah, yes:
<URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/7o_vTpU4DCY/swf_jOy1PU4J>
(I don't think this was included in the earlier lives of this thread.)

/dps "before the fence was white-washed"

[Peter Moylan]

On 18/04/18 10:09, snide...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at 4:37:22 PM UTC-7, binhol...@gmail.com
> wrote:
>
>> Yes, by Mark Twain
>
> It took me a bit to find which message this was in reply to, since Mr
> Moylan distracted me by using different format message IDs within the
> one thread.

Can you remember which thread? I use the same news client fairly
consistently, although I did recently post one or maybe two articles via
Google Groups as a test. The news server used by GG differs from other
news servers in having hyphens in its message IDs, but I think that's
consistent with the standard.

[Snidely]

Peter Moylan is guilty of <pb6lt2$opc$1...@dont-email.me> as of 4/17/2018
10:42:54 PM

This very thread, 2014 vs 2017.

/dps

--
"What do you think of my cart, Miss Morland? A neat one, is not it?
Well hung: curricle-hung in fact. Come sit by me and we'll test the
springs."
(Speculative fiction by H.Lacedaemonian.)

[Peter Moylan]

On 18/04/18 16:59, Snidely wrote:
> Peter Moylan is guilty of <pb6lt2$opc$1...@dont-email.me> as of
> 4/17/2018 10:42:54 PM
>> On 18/04/18 10:09, snide...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at 4:37:22 PM UTC-7,
>>> binhol...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, by Mark Twain
>>>
>>> It took me a bit to find which message this was in reply to,
>>> since Mr Moylan distracted me by using different format message
>>> IDs within the one thread.
>>
>> Can you remember which thread? I use the same news client fairly
>> consistently, although I did recently post one or maybe two
>> articles via Google Groups as a test. The news server used by GG
>> differs from other news servers in having hyphens in its message
>> IDs, but I think that's consistent with the standard.
>
> This very thread, 2014 vs 2017.

That called for a trip to Google Groups, and figuring out yet again how
to display the message headers. I think I now see what you mean.

In 2014 my ISP ran its own news server. (Or it gave the impression of
doing so. I think it used a feed from Giganews.) That feature was
dropped once the ISP no longer employed anyone who knew what a news
server was. Now I connect to Usenet with eternal-september.