Sidebar: Now with T-SHIRTS!

Even a year after the launch of this project, the posts about Mór Jókai's A Hungarian Nabob are still very popular...or at least as popular as anything I've put on here since. In honor of the primacy of place he holds in the legend of The 1899 Project, I have T-shirts.

(Preview image in lower quality.)

That's right, it's a handsome photographic portrait of Jókai himself (Hungarian statesman, novelist, poet, painter, and sculptor) paired with one of my trademark atrocious puns. How can you possibly go wrong? Or rather, how can you possibly go wronger? It's definitely a conversation starter, especially if you don't hang out with world literature majors. Regardless, if this looks like something you'd like on your shirt, coffee mug, or mousepad, follow the link to my CafePress shop. Who knows? We might start a trend!

Oh, and before any natives ask, I used the Western name order because that's the only way my lame pun would work. Cheers!

Superfluous nonsense: Lawyerin' in your spare time

The Rough Riders will be wrapping up later today, but before I call it a night, here's a fabulous tiny-print ad I found in an 1898 edition of McClure's Magazine that included another account of the Cuban campaign.

And in case you can't (or won't) read the image, for whatever reason:

Study Law at Home: Instruction by mail adapted to every one. Methods approved by leading educators Experienced and competent instructors. Takes spare time only. Three courses, preparatory, business, college. An opportunity to better your condition and prospects. Students and graduates everywhere. Eight years of success. Full particulars free. Sprague Correspondence School of Law, 248 Tel. Bldg., Detroit, Mich.

Nice to know that you get your toes wet in the complex, high-stakes lawyerin' world in your down time in the world of 1899, and since they've been in business eight years, you know they're not going anywhere (until Mr. Sprague's checks stop clearing). But would you, the modern sophisticate of the 21st century, feel comfortable with a lawyer holding a mail-order degree? Yeah, I know that's how Orly Taitz did it, but I'm assuming you're looking for one who isn't hilarious.

Why the hell is a cherub holding the book? Are we studying Valentine Law today?

Hammockuity: Poetry Suitable For TORTURE!

Here now, as threatened in one of my earliest posts, is the complete version of “Hammockuity” by J. Ashby-Sterry, partly because this is the last week of summer before Labor Day weekend, but mostly because I'm still smarting from book #3. Some people deal with pain by sublimating...I deal with mine by sharing.

If you swing in a hammock the Summer day through,
And you dream with profound assiduity,
A new phase of content it will give unto you,
Which philosophers call “hammockuity.”

All through the lazy afternoon
Beneath the sycamore,
I listen to the distant Lune,
Or slumber to its roar;
'Tis sweet to muse, to sleep or sing,
When talk is superfluity;
'Tis sweet beneath the trees to swing,
And practise hammockuity.

Forgotten here, I would forget
The destiny fate weaves,
The while I smoke a cigarette
To music of the leaves;
I wish my present lazy life
A lengthy continuity;
Away from trouble, care, and strife,
In happy hammockuity!

While others work, while others play,
Or love, or laugh, or weep;
I watch the smoke rights curl away,
And almost fall asleep!
I'd give up thoughts of future fame—
Despite such incongruity—
I'd forfeit riches, power, name,
For blissful hammockuity!

I hate the booming busy bee,
Who dares to wake me up—
I wonder if it's time for tea,
Or grateful cyder-cup?
I would I could, beneath the trees,
Repose in perpetuity,
And swing, and swing, and take mine ease,
In lasting hammockuity!

And I reiterate: Hammockuity. Ugh.

Book #4 is on the way, I promise. Just give me a moment to catch my breath...