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About Oregon City courier. (Oregon City, Or.) 1902-1919 | View Entire Issue (June 26, 1903)
OREGON CITY COURIER, FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1903, TITLE PAGE.S. ' They Wrc Unknown Until After tht Invention of Printing. The most surprising thing in the his tory of the title page is the fact that It was utterly unknown until a few years after the invention of printing. In the days before that great era, when all books were In manuscript, no scribe ever thought of prefacing his work v,ith a separate page or leaf devoted to i;;e title. V. hen printing took the place of writ ) ig, changes came gradually,- In many arly printed books there Svas still bc for handwork. Initial letters were h lor the "rubrisher," as he was called, to decorate and illuminate by band. As books multiplied this practice, of course, soon died out. Occasionally wealthy and luxurious book owner would employ a skillful illuminator to adorn the pages and margins of a print ed book just as in former days manu scripts had been illuminated. The manuscript practice of surround ing the text with an ornamental border was also often applied to early printed books. The introduction of the title page showed the same mingling of old and new. Printing was Invented about 1450, but no title page, properly so called. Is known before 1470. In the earliest ex-1 amples the title Is either, as in manu scripts, given in the first two or three lines of the first page, to be Immedi ately followed by the printed text, or Is simply, as it has been called, a la belthat Is, it consists of a very brief title at the top of a blank page. There was one curious exception. A ' "Kalendar" printed by Ratdolt at Ven ice in 1476 has a full title page In the modern style. This remarkable page consists of an introductory poem sur rounded on three sides by ornamental borders, with, at the bottom, the place of printing and date-"Venetlls, 1470" and the names of the printers. But tills is quite an exceptional in stance. Such a title page is hardly found again for twenty years ami did not become common till about 1520, more than forty years later. A particularly noticeable feature in many title pages of the sixteenth and arly seventeenth centuries Is the length of the descriptive titles. Con troversial pamphlets and books of trav el and adventure especially have titles which are extraordinarily long winded. The whole page is filled with small type, giving an analysis of the contents of book or pamphlet Then toward the end of the seven teenth century and through Its suc cessor came the reign of the bold and plain title page, and the plain title bas lasted until the present day. Persian Atnietes. Strong and skilled as western ath letes are, there are some respecta In Which the athletes of the east, and es pecially those of Persia, surpass them. Their skill is due to the fact that they do not rely on brute strength, but on adroitness, which - they bare ac quired after years of strenuous train ing. They know the function of every muscle in their bodies, and they are not regarded as experts until they are so well trained that they can perform With ease any feat which depends for success not only upon their strength,' but also upon the proper play of their muscles. They are not as bulky as some of the well known athletes of Europe and America, but, on the other hand, their bodies are wonderfully symmetrical, and nil their movements are most graceful. In wrestling and swinging clubs they especially excel, and, no matter how expert they may be, not'n day passes that they do not practice for several liours. Steadfast. Tupman-My watch is one of the theapest makes, but it hasn't varied a second In tho last three mouths. BuodgrassIt seems almost Incredi ble, doesn't it? Tupman Oh, I don't know about that. It stopped the first day I bought It and hnsu't gone since. The i Sl Shalt? Rope Bridge. In the wilds of South America many rope bridges exist, and in writing of them a traveler, who published through Messrs. Longmans "The Great Moun tains and Forests of South America," says: "There being no trees here, such bridges as were necessary were usual ly constructed of a couple of ropes Btretched across a chasm, upon which was spread a rough kind of matting made of pliant brushwood or a sort of rush. Such bridges swung about fear fully and cracked under the foot as if about to give way. Often I held my breath while panning such a bridge, momentarily expecting the rotten con trivance to part in the middle. There was plenty of evidence in the skeletons of horses and mules on the rocks be low that accidents not Infrequently oc curred, but I was assured that not many men were lost, which, of course, was an exceedingly comforting assur ance, especially aa I noticed that the guides were careful to see that either I or George was the first to cross these confounded structures. At one of these places we saw on the rocks 300 feet below the skull and bones of two men who had been lost about eight years before." Snakes Waste Little Time Eating:. A serpent will go for weeks, some times even for months, without feed ing. Then It may take three rabbits or ducks, one after the other, at a single meal and afterward become torpid while digestion proceeds. When, after a sufficient period of fasting, It gets disposed to eat and a rabbit happms to be Introduced Into Its cage, It may plainly be seen that the rabbit's pres ence Is quickly noticed by It. The snake will begin to move slowlv about till It has brought Its snout opposite the J rabbit's muzzle. Then, In an Instant, It will seize the rabbit's head In Its mouth, simultaneously colling Its pow-1 erful body around it and crushing it to death at once. The action Is so Instantaneous that it Is Impossible for the rabbit to suffer. Oertnlnlv It enn RiilTpr tin mnro thnn when killed by a poulterer. The snake ' does not Immediately uncoil Its folds, , but continues for a time to hold Its vie-1 thn tightly embraced, sometimes rock ing Itself gently to and fro. Then It slowly unwinds its huge body and once more takes the rabbit's head in its mouth and swallows it. Superstitions About Bread. In Brittany when a housewife begins to knead dough she makes a cross with her right hand, the left being placed In the trough. If a cat enters the room, it is believed the bread will not rise. It Is supposed that certain women can cause the dough to multiply Itself. On the coast of the channel the dough is adjured to imitate the leaven, the mil ler and the baker and to rise. The oven Is a sacred object and con nected wtth crowds of superstitions. The oven Is dedicated, with ceremo nies. In certain places In Brittany the wood Is watered with blessed water. Bread must not be cooked on certain days, as on Holy Friday or during the night of All Saints, when the ghosts would eat It The Introduction of Forks. Forks are articles of such common household necessity to us that we hard ly realize that there was a time, and not so long ago either, when forks were entirely unknown. A knife was used at the tnhlo to cut up food, but the food so cut was afterward conveyed by the fingers to the mouth. Rich and poor alike were accustomed to this method and so thought It perfectly correct. It was about the year 1(100 and In the reign of James 1. when forks were first Introduced Into Kngland. This "piece of refinement." we are told, was de rived from the Italians. I.iterur) Diseases. Many occupations have diseases which are more or less Incidental to them, and literature Is not exempt. The two most prevalent literary maladies are writer's cramp nnd swelled head. Tho unfortunate thing about writer's cramp is that It is never cured. The unfortunnto thing about swelled bead Is thut It never kills. Exchange. World s Regulator Nearly ten million Elgin watches act as one great pendulum in regu lating the hours of business, travel ' and pleasure the world over. Every EiLiism IVaich 4 Is made of the finest materials by the most skilled hands. Always look for the watch word 1 ' "Klin," engraved on the works - of the world's best watches. Send for fret booklet about watches. ' ILfilN NATIONAL WATCH CO., Elfla. IK. Reed Enjoyed It. Thomas B. Reed was once the victim of a printer' j error the unusual aptness of which, after the first flush of indig nation had subsided, appealed so strong ly to his sense of the comic thut he never failed to refer to the matter with the keenest gusto whenever he met the man whom he, with the utmost mock solemnity, always held responsible for it. The late Colonel John A. Cockerill's handwriting In Ihe heat of composition was sometimes liable to lose itself in an almost Interminable tangle, deci pherable only with the greatest difficul ty. On one occasion he undertook to say that "any one can see Tom Reed has the' face of an honest man," but was horrified when he opened his paper the following morning and found that the types made him say that "any one can see Tom UeeU lias a face like a harvest moon." Wonder of the Unman Heart. The workings of the human heart have been computed by a celebrated physiologist, and he has demonstrated that it is equal to the lifting of 120 tons in twenty-four hours. Presuming that the blood Is thrown out of the heart at each pulsation In the propor tion of sixty-nine Btrokes of nine feet, the mileage of the blood through the body might be taken at 207 yards per minute, seveii miles per hour, 108 miles per day, 01,320 miles per year, or 5,150,000 miles In a lifetime of eighty four years. In the same period of time the heart must beat 2,809,770,000 times Sadiron and Tailor's Goose. A "sadiron" Is the style in which the common fiatlron is spoken of In print, says the Syracuse Herald. "Sad" is an old English synonym for heavy, and Spenser wrote, "More sad than lump of lead." A "sadiron" was a heavy iron and long ago was applied to the fiatlron now In common domestic use. The tailor's "goose" was so called because the handle bears a fanciful resem blance to the neck of a goose. This name because It had a reason for be lntr still survives. K.-pent Worahlp In India. Serpent worship, once very widely diffused, survives in India. Sometimes when Hindoos find a cobra in some crevice in the wali of their house it will often be reverenced, fed and pro pitiated, and if fear or the death of some one bitten by it induces them to remove it they will handle it tenderly and let it loose In some field. When Hindoos are bitten, they have far more confidence in their magic spell or "muntra" than In any medicine, even if they do not scruple to make use of medical aid. Fill the I'l.-ice Well. Where one man Is called to be a hero on some great scale 10,000 men are called to be courteous, gentle, patient. There are conspicuous virtues which make reputation, and there are quiet virtues,, the virtues of private life, which make character. It Is not every man's duty to fill a large place, but it is every man's duty to fill his own place well. Christian Evangelist A Narrow Marg-ln. John Stuart Mill was once dining with two brilliant French talkers who were given to monologue. One had possession of the field, and the other was watching him so Intently to strike In that Mill exclaimed aloud, "If he stops to breathe, he's gone." IleMpnn Nihilities. "Remember." said the serious citizen, "that wealth has Its responsibilities." "Yes," answered Mr. Cumrox. "So long as you are humble and obscure you can say 'I seen It' and 'I done it' and eat with your knife all you want to." Washington Star. Define. She Dear, you have crushed and al most suffocated me. What kind of a hug do you call that? ne That's a Metropolitan street rail way hug. New York Life. Falmbuth Is probably the oldest port in England. It was used by the Phoeni cians at least 2..r0U years ago. If a better 5c. cigar wast possible, it would still be a RLCRUIT. No better cigar can be produced at the price. SOLD EVERYWHERE. . Save HIP jjgfll AVegc table Preparationfor As similating theToodandReguta ting the Stomachs andBowels of Promotes DIgestion,Ckerful ness andHest.Contains neither Opium.Morphine nor Mineral. Not Narcotic. PumJo Smi Mxjennm JioulU Arftr -Anitt Sefd Ji-ppermtnt - Him Sad - Aperfect Remedy for Constipa tion, Sour Stomach.Diarrhoea, Worms .Convulsions Jeverish ness and Loss OF SLEEP. 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