The Next to Godliness
The proverb “Cleanliness is next to godliness” first made its appearance in “Beraitha” as the last Mishna of Sota, chapter ix. Mishna (instruction) is a word applied by the Jews to the oral law, which is divided into six parts. The Jewish Talmud is a commentary on the Mishna. The references to that are: Talmud Jerus, Skakalim, chapter iii., page 6; Talmud babl. Ab. Sarah, page 20 b; Jalket, sh. Isaiah No. 263; and Alfassi ab; Sarah, ibid. loc. Here it reads as follows: “Phinehas ben Yair says, The doctrines of religion are resolved into (or are next to) carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness (equal to holiness),” etc., etc. No translation can render it exactly; it is literally “cleanliness next to (or akin to) godliness;” and this saying is older than the gospels.
Punchinello
The Punch and Judy idea is over two thousand years old. The Celestial Emperor Kao Tsu (206 B.C.) was shut up in the City of Peh-têng by an army of barbarous Huns. “With his Majesty was a statesman, Ch’ ên P’ing, who, happening to know that the wife of the besieging chieftain was a very jealous woman, devised a scheme. He caused the portrait of a very beautiful girl to be forwarded to her, with a message that if her husband would permit the emperor to go forth unharmed, the young lady should become his property. The chieftain’s wife never mentioned the portrait to her husband, but at once began to persuade him to raise the siege, which, in fact, he would have done forthwith had he not been privately informed of the picture and warned at the same time that the whole affair was simply a ruse. Thereupon he sent to say that it would be necessary for him first of all to have a glimpse of this beauty in the flesh; and later on he repaired by agreement to the foot of the city wall, where he beheld the young lady moving about and surrounded by a number of attendants. His suspicions being thus allayed, he gave orders to open a passage through his lines to the Emperor Kao Tsu and suite, who promptly made the best of their way out. At the same time the Hun chieftain entered the city and proceeded to the spot on the wall where the young lady was awaiting him, still surrounded by her handmaids; but on arriving there he found that the beauty and her attendants were simply a set of wooden puppets which had been dressed up for the occasion and were worked by a concealed arrangement of springs.
Workmen’s Strikes
Mrs. Oliphant, in “The Makers of Florence,” relates that in the course of the construction of the massive dome of the Duomo, of the many difficulties with which Brunelleschi had to contend, “the greatest was a strike of his workmen, of whom, however, there being no trades’ unions in those days, the imperious maestro made short work.”
The Standing Egg
The well-known trick of Columbus in making an egg stand on end during a dispute after his return from his first voyage was anticipated by Brunelleschi, the architect of the magnificent dome of the Duomo in Florence. During the heated controversy which preceded his selection over his competitors, “he proposed,” according to Vasari’s amusing account, “to all the masters, foreigners, and compatriots, that he who could make an egg stand upright on a piece of smooth marble should be appointed to build the cupola, since in doing that his genius would be made manifest. They took an egg accordingly, and all those masters did their best to make it stand upright, but none discovered the method of doing so. Wherefore Filipo (Brunelleschi), being told that he might make it stand himself, took it daintily into his hand, gave the end of it a blow on the plane of the marble, and made it stand upright. Beholding this the artists loudly protested, exclaiming that they could all have done the same, but Filipo replied, laughingly, that they might also know how to construct the cupola if they had seen the model and design.”
This was in the year 1420, fifteen years before Columbus was born.