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“Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.”–Thomas Bulfinch
It’s not my fault. I receive little or no pleasure when I post pics of Bob. I’m forced by Bob’s admirers to post pics of the Bobster. And by the way, that’s thirty cents you owe me now, ten cents for each of your private (or faux British) spellings of “criminently” during the space of one month. As you know, I purchased the word from the OED when you misspelled it ten times in a row.
My mom had a copy Bulfinch’s on the shelf, and I did read it extensively.
I became interested in Greek mythology as a result.
I just downloaded Bulfinch’s onto my Kindle app, and it looks like it was hurriedly converted over.
Another book she had on the shelf was Grimms’ Fairytales, an English translation. Grimms’ actually has some very dark tales. They liked to scare the crap out of kids at one time. It introduced children to the dark side of human nature. Not that they don’t already know. They see it (or saw it?) in the unsupervised playgrounds they used to play in.
Maybe not a bad thing after all.
Agree about the quality of the Amazon conversion; I’ve run into that a lot with books that are not official “Kindle” books, but are done by aficionados of the original text, as best they can.
I had a copy of Grimms’ Fairytales too. And I also agree that seeing/thinking through those aspects of human nature was actually a good thing, and generally a snowflake-proofing tool.
One of my absolute favorites as a kid? Strewwelpeter. And things like The Dreadful Story of Harriet and the Matches. Here we go:
It should be noted that other stories, like that of the “Inky Boys,” although they would probably be mocked for ‘white privilege’ and viewed as inadequate by today’s SJW’s are, in fact, pleas for tolerance and kindness in the best way the folks at the time (mid-ninteenth century) knew how.
And … this is what Bulfinch was striving for. So many people did. Including me.
Interesting observation. I’ve often wondered why kids seem to learn that so easily.
I’ve mentioned how my mother came into my bedroom when I was five and gave me The Talk. About the midnight knock on the door, and how it could someday happen here in our country, too. I’ve always remembered that this talk took place when I was five, and it was definitely in a house we moved to when I was about four and a half (now that I’ve been able to look up some dates in my parents’ diaries and journals). And it wasn’t completely new news to me, as I used to listen to the political talk between my grandfather and mother. My best guess is that the news about the execution of Beria is what provoked that little bedtime discussion. I was a few months past my fifth birthday when that happened, though didn’t know about Beria until I was quite a bit older. It couldn’t have been the news of Stalin’s death that brought it on, because we were still living in a different house when that event took place.
It has long stayed in my mind, so I guess that discussion did have some effect on me. I’ve had a number of thoughts about it, most of which I had almost from the beginning, though my memory might not be completely reliable as to when these thoughts first came to mind.
I thought I was rather young for such a discussion, but I was glad Mom included me in her concerns.
I had at least one bad dream about it, but I wouldn’t call it a nightmare. I never mentioned it to Mom, and it was not up to expectations of excitement anyway.
I took it in stride. I’m trying to think whether I already had any playground experiences that had informed me about human nature. None that I can remember specifically, but there may have been some.
I was also raised on Bible stories that were sometimes rather gruesome. Took them in stride.
Several years later, when we were supposed to be worried about nuclear bombs raining down on us, I took that in stride. I figured we had worse things to worry about, such as the midnight knock on the door. But then, I’m not aware that any of my classmates were quite as traumatized by the threat as we have been told we were. We took it seriously, as there were vivid depictions of what those things could do, but it wasn’t something that dominated our thoughts. It certainly didn’t dominate mine as much as the possibility of the midnight knock on the door coming to our country. But it seems I’ve always known about the dark side of human nature, and I don’t remember ever being surprised at the terrible things humans can do to other humans.
If there are people here or anywhere who do remember when they were first surprised by it, it might be interesting to hear about it. Maybe it would help me understand some points of view other than my own.
Kids are much more resilient than moderns give them credit for. I know this from my daughter’s experiences at Children’s Hospital and her transition from childhood to adulthood with a serious medical condition. It’s harder for her now that she’s maturing. I would say the same for kids we’ve observed at Children’s with serious medical conditions. They keep their spirits up when they’re younger despite all the hardship (darkness of the human condition). When they’re older, it’s harder to deal with the persistent gloom.