Wednesday, August 14, 2013

In Your Nose

[John Mennes (1599-1671),] Wit restor'd in several Select poems not formerly publish't (London: R. Pollard, N. Brooks, and T. Dring, 1658), p. 172:
If a fart flye away where he makes his stay,
Can any man think or suppose?
For a fart cannot tell, when its out where to dwell,
Unlesse it be in your nose, unlesse it be in your nose boyes,
Unlesse it be in your nose.

For a fart cannot tell, when its out where to dwell
Unlesse it be in your nose.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

An 18th Century Allusion to Lighting Farts

[Thomas Bridges,] A Burlesque Translation of Homer, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (London: S. Hooper, 1770), p. 111:
I'th' int'rim, fond of mischief telling,
The rainbow-goddess flies to Helen:
Most modern farts I ever knew,
When set on fire burn only blue,
Or simple red, but when behind
This nimble goddess lets out wind,
You see not only reds and blues,
But all the colours painters use.

Friday, August 2, 2013

No Smoking

A.N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1990; rpt. 2002), pp. 5-6 (on Albert Lewis):
He was a master of the anecdote, a fund of improbable stories, many of which epitomized the tragicomedy of what it meant to be Irish. One of the more bizarre 'wheezes' (as he habitually termed these stories and observations) concerned an occasion when he was traveling in an old-fashioned train of the kind which had no corridor, so that the passengers were imprisoned in their compartments for as long as the train was moving. He was not alone in the compartment. He found himself opposite one other character, a respectable-looking farmer in a tweed suit whose agitated manner was to be explained by the demands of nature. When the train had rattled on for a further few miles, and showed no signs of stopping at a station where a lavatory might have been available, the gentleman pulled down his trousers, squatted on the floor of the railway carriage and defecated. When this operation was complete, and the gentleman, fully clothed, was once more seated opposite Albert Lewis, the smell in the compartment was so powerful as to be almost nauseating. To vary, if not to drown the odour, Albert Lewis got a pipe from his pocket and began to light it. But at that point the stranger opposite, who had not spoken one word during the entire journey, leaned forward and censoriously tapped a sign on the window which read NO SMOKING.