Book Of 1001 Questions

[Marie Ota]

Inpresenting this, the seventh book of the "1001 Question and Answer Series," we feel that a great want is partially met. It is evident, from the number of inquiries made for such a book, that the works devoted to the subject of Orthography are very limited.

We are also aware that the Authors of the different Grammars devote such a limited space to the subject of Orthoepy and technical Orthography, that both Teacher and Pupil turn away from the subject in disgust.

In preparing this list of questions and answers we have consulted the best authority of the present day, and believe we have gone over the ground in such a way that it will meet the approval of all interested.

The questions and answers on Reading we trust will add to the interest of the book, and only hope that it will be received with as gracious a welcome and hearty approval as the rest of the series.

Use a before all words beginning with a consonant sound, and use an before words beginning with a vowel sound, or with h mute, or h initial, if the accent is on any other syllable than the first.

1. The most skillful gauger I ever knew was a maligned cobbler, armed with a poniard, who drove a peddler's wagon, using a mullein stalk as an instrument of coercion to tyrannize over his pony shod with calks. He was a Galilean Sadducee, and he had a phthisicky catarrh, diphtheria, and the bilious intermittent erysipelas.

2. A certain sibyl, with the sobriquet of "Gypsy," went into ecstasies of cachinnation at seeing him measure a bushel of peas and separate saccharine tomatoes from a heap of peeled potatoes, without dyeing or singeing the ignitible queue which he wore, or becoming paralyzed with hemorrhage.

3. Lifting her eyes to the ceiling of the cupola of the capitol to conceal her unparalleled embarrassment, making him a rough courtesy, and not harrassing him with mystifying, rarefying, and stupefying innuendoes, she gave him a couch, a bouquet of lilies, mignonette, and fuchsias, a treatise on mnemonics, a copy of the Apocrypha in hieroglyphics, daguerreotypes of Mendelssohn and Kosciusko, a kaleidoscope, a dram-phial of ipecacuanha, a teaspoonful of naphtha for deleble purposes, a ferrule, a clarionet, some licorice, a surcingle, a carnelian of symmetrical proportions, a chronometer with a movable balance-wheel, a box of dominoes, and a catechism.

4. The gauger, who was also a trafficking rectifier and a parishioner of mine, preferring a woolen surtout (his choice was referrible to a vacillating, occasionally occurring idiosyncrasy), wofully uttered this apothegm: "Life is checkered; but schism, apostasy, heresy and villainy shall be punished." The sibyl apologizingly answered: "There is a ratable and allegeable difference between a conferrable ellipsis and a trisyllabic diresis." We replied in trochees, not impugning her suspicion.

1. One enervating morning, just after the rise of the sun, a youth bearing the cognomen of Galileo glided into his gondola over the legendary waters of the lethean Thames. He was accompanied by his allies and coadjutors, the dolorous Pepys and the erudite Cholmondeley, the most combative aristocrat extant, and an epicurean who, for learned vagaries and revolting discrepancies of character, would take precedence of the most erudite of all Areopagite literati.

2. These sacrilegious dramatis person were discussing in detail a suggestive and exhaustive address, delivered from the proscenium box of the Calisthenic Lyceum by a notable financier on obligatory hydropathy, as accessory to the irrevocable and irreparable doctrine of evolution, which had been vehemently panegyrized by a splenetic professor of acoustics, and simultaneously denounced by a complaisant opponent as an undemonstrated romance of the last decade, amenable to no reasoning, however allopathic, outside of its own lamentable environs.

3. These peremptory tripartite brethren arrived at Greenwich, wishing to aggrandize themselves by indulging in exemplary relaxation, indicatory of implacable detestation of integral tergiversation and exoteric intrigue. They fraternized with a phrenological harlequin who was a connoisseur in mezzotint and falconry. The piquant person was heaping contumely and scathing raillery on an amateur in jugular recitative, who held that the Pharaohs of Asia were conversant with his theory that morphine and quinine were exorcists of bronchitis.

4. Meanwhile, the leisurely Augustine of Cockburn drank from a tortoise-shell wassail cup to the health of an apotheosized recusant, who was his supererogatory patron, and an assistant recognizance in the immobile nomenclature of interstitial molecular phonics. The contents of the vase proving soporific, a stolid plebeian took from its cerements a heraldic violoncello, and, assisted by a plethoric diocesan from Pall Mall, who performed on a sonorous piano-forte, proceeded to wake the clangorous echoes of the Empyrean. They bade the prolyx Caucasian gentlemen not to misconstrue their inexorable demands, while they dined on acclimated anchovies and apricot truffles, and had for dessert a wiseacre's pharmacopoeia. Thus the truculent Pythagoreans had a novel repast fit for the gods.

5. On the subsidence of the feast they alternated between soft languors and isolated scenes of squalor, which followed a [pg 95] mechanist's reconnaissance of the imagery of Uranus, the legend of whose incognito related to a poniard wound in the abdomen received while cutting a swath in the interests of telegraphy and posthumous photography. Meantime an unctuous orthoepist applied a homeopathic restorative to the retina of an objurgatory spaniel (named Daniel) and tried to perfect the construction of a behemoth which had got mired in pygmean slough, while listening to the elegiac soughing of the prehistoric wind.

1. Geoffrey, surnamed Winthrop, sat in the depot at Chicago, waiting for his train and reading the Tribune, when a squadron of street Arabs (incomparable for squalor) thronged from a neighboring alley, uttering hideous cries, accompanied by inimitable gestures of heinous exultation, as they tortured a humble black-and-tan dog.

6. "You can buy licorice and share with the indecorous coadjutors of your condemnable cruelty," said Winthrop, paying the price and taking the dog from the child. Then catching up his valise and umbrella he hastened to his train. Winthrop satisfied himself that his sleek protege was not wounded, and then cleaned the cement from the pretty collar, and read these words; "Leicester. Licensed, No. 1880."

8. Among the other passengers was a magazine contributor, writing vagaries of Indian literature, also two physicians, a somber, irrevocable, irrefragable allopathist, and a genial homeopathist, who made a specialty of bronchitis. Two peremptory attorneys from the Legislature of Iowa were discussing the politics of the epoch and the details of national finance, while a wan, dolorous person, wearing concave glasses, alternately ate troches and almonds for a sedative, and sought condolence in a high, lamentable treble from a lethargic and somewhat deaf and enervate comrade not yet acclimated.

9. Near three exemplary brethren (probably sinecurists) sat a group of humorous youths; and a jocose sailor (lately from Asia) in a blouse waist and tarpaulin hat was amusing his patriotic, juvenile listeners by relating a series of the most extraordinary legends extant, suggested by the contents of the knapsack which he was calmly and leisurely arranging in a pyramidal form on a three-legged stool. Above swung figured placards, with museum and lyceum advertisements, too verbose to be misconstrued.

10. A mature matron of medium height, and her comely daughter, soon entered the car, and took seats in front of Winthrop (who recalled having seen them on Tuesday, in February, in the parquet of a theater). The young lady had recently made her debut into society at a musical soiree at her aunt's. She had an exquisite bouquet of flowers that exhaled sweet perfume. She said to her parent, "Mamma, shall we ever find my lost Leicester?"

12. The explanation that he had been stolen was scarcely necessary, for Leicester, just awakening, vehemently expressed his inexplicable joy by buoyantly vibrating between the two like the sounding lever used in telegraphy (for to neither of them would he show partiality), till, succumbing to ennui, he purported to take a recess, and sat on his haunches, complaisantly contemplating his friends. It was truly an interesting picture.

13. They reached their destination ere the sun was beneath the horizon. Often during the summer Winthrop gallantly rowed from the quay, with the naive and blithe Beatrice in her jaunty yachting suit, but no coquetry shone from the depths of her azure eyes. Little Less, their jocund confidante and courier (and who was as sagacious as a spaniel), always attended them on these occasions, and whene'er they rambled through the woodland paths. While the band played strains from Beethoven Mendelssohn, Bach and others, they promenaded the long corridors of the hotel. And one evening, as Beatrice lighted the gas by the etagere in her charming boudoir in their suite of rooms, there glistened brilliantly a valuable solitaire diamond on her finger.

1. A sacrilegious son of Belial, who suffered from bronchitis and diphtheria, and had taken much morphine and quinine, having exhausted his finances, in order to make good the deficit, resolved to ally himself to a complaisant, lenient, docile, young woman of the Caucasian race. Buying a calliope, a coral necklace, an illustrated magazine, and a falcon [pg 98] from Asia, he took a suite of rooms, whose acoustic properties were excellent, and engaged a Malay as his coadjutor.

2. Being of an epicurean disposition, he threw the culinary department of his hotel into confusion by ordering for his dinner vermicelli soup, a bologna sausage, anchovies, calf's brains fried, and half a gooseberry pie. For the resulting dyspepsia he took acetic and tartaric acid, according to allopathy, and when his aunt, a fair matron of six decades, called, he was tyrannic and combative, and laughed like a brigand until she was obliged to succumb to his contumacy.

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