Ben Keene looks at Hinche, Haiti.

Michael Ravitch looks at The Declaration of Independences.

Lots of Friday link love!

Until the age of 50, Mencken was called “America’s Foremost Bachelor,” praised for being the patron saint of single men. When H. L. Mencken married Sara Powell Haardt in 1930, the press concluded that the author of “In Defense of Women” was probably in the most embarassing position of any fiancee in recent years. They were bent in trotting out the old quotes. How, reporters insisted with glee, will Mencken explain that he had once said “A man may be a fool and not know it –but not if he’s married.” Long before, he had defined love as “the delusion that one woman differs from another.” To these queries Mencken replied; “I formerly was not as wise as I am now….the wise man frequently revises his opinions. The fool, never.”

Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Thursday, 2 September

Johnson: Edinburgh
We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of learning, whose names want no advancement
from my commemoration, or with women of elegance, which perhaps disclaims a
pedant’s praise.
The
conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English; their
peculiarities wear fast […]

Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Wednesday, 1 September

Boswell: Thursday, 2 September.
I
had slept ill. Mr Johnson’s anger had affected me much. I considered that, without any bad intention,
I might suddenly forfeit his friendship. I was impatient to see him this
morning. I told him how uneasy he had made me by what he had said. He […]

Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Monday, 30 August 1773

Boswell: Wednesday, 1 September
We came to a rich green valley, comparatively speaking, and stopped at
Auchnashiel, a kind of rural village, a number of cottages being built
together, as we saw all along in the Highlands. We passed many many miles today
without seeing a house, but only […]

Continued from last week’s post: Johnson: ‘Loch Ness’
Boswell: Monday, 30 August 1773
This day we were to begin our equitation, as I said, for I would
needs make a word too. We might have taken a chaise to Fort Augustus. But we could not find horses after Inverness, so we resolved to begin here to ride. We
should […]

Continued from last week’s post: Johnson: ‘Inverness’
Johnson: ‘Loch Ness’
Near the way, by the water
side, we espied a cottage. This was the first Highland hut that I had seen; and
as our business was with life and manners, we were willing to visit it. To
enter a habitation without leave seems to be not considered here as […]

Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western
Islands of Scotland (1775); James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour
to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1773; ed. F. A. Pottle, 1961)

A young and enthusiastic James Boswell befriended Samuel Johnson (1709-84), England’s most famous man of letters, in London in 1763. Soon Boswell was urging Johnson to […]