63. What public punishment was once in use in England for scolding women?
Women who made free use of their tongues were punished in an original way in old England. They were submitted to the correction of the ducking stool, a chair at the end of a plank which moved up and down over a river or pond—it was a sort of see-saw arrangement. The scold was fastened in the chair, the other end of the plank was lifted up, and down she went into the water, the number of immersions being in proportion to the vigour of her fiery tongue. It was an old institution: we find it mentioned in the Doomsday Survey. In the seventeenth century, the ducking stool was superseded, to a certain extent, by what was known as the branks. This was a scold’s bridle, the chief part of which entered the mouth and pressed upon the tongue, thus forming an effectual gag. “Ducking stools and branks, however,” one writer sadly remarks, “with all their terrors, seem to have been insufficient to frighten the shrews of former days out of their bad propensities.”
64. What was the origin of the phrase, “The wise fools of Gotham?”
A good number of competitors had been unable to discover how these Nottinghamshire worthies obtained their unenviable notoriety. According to tradition, King John once intended to pass through Gotham on his way to Nottingham, but the inhabitants prevented him, for some reason or other best known to themselves. The king, in a rage, sent some of his servants to inquire why they had been so uncivil, and the Gothamites, hearing of their approach, thought of an expedient to turn away the monarch’s displeasure—they pretended more stupidity than really belonged to them. When the messengers arrived they found some of the inhabitants endeavouring to drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts into a large barn to shade the wood from the sun, and lifting horses into lofts to eat hay; and others were engaged in building a hedge round a cuckoo which had perched in a bush. In short they were all employed in some ridiculous task or other, which convinced the king’s servants that Gotham was a village of fools—a reputation it has ever since maintained. Such is the story, but its truth is another matter. In one paper we find a good word for Gotham quoted from Fuller, to the effect that “Gotham doth breed as wise people as any which causelessly laugh at their simplicity.”
65. Is length of life greater now than it used to be?
The best answer to this question will be to quote some interesting statistics given by Mr. Holt Schooling, who takes for the basis of his statements the three official English life-tables (for 1838-1854, 1871-1880, and 1881-1890). These tables show an increase in the second period over the first of 1.44 years expectation of life at birth to every male, and 2.77 to every female; and in the third period over the first of 3.75 to every male, and 5.33 to every female. In other words, 3¾ years of life have been added on the average to every male child, and 5¹⁄₃ years to every female child. Thus the children born in any one year in England and Wales will in the mass live more than four million years longer than at the beginning of the period dealt with in these tables.
Girls who puzzled over such old examples as the Countess of Desmond, who is said to have died at 145, Thomas Parr, credited with 152, and Henry Jenkins, who is reported to have died at 169, should take note that the ages of these persons are generally allowed to have been much exaggerated, and that, even if the figures were authentic, it does not do, from a few isolated instances, to infer a general conclusion.
66. Of what literary work has it been said that it is “perhaps the only book about which the educated minority has come over to the opinion of the common people?”
The book was the Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan, and he who said it was Lord Macaulay. The general rule, Lord Macaulay points out, is that when the educated minority and the common people differ about the merit of a book, the opinion of the educated minority finally prevails. The Pilgrim’s Progress, of which the numerous early editions were evidently intended for the cottage and the servants’ hall, the paper, the printing, and the plates being all of the meanest description, furnishes a notable exception. A wonderful book! “One of the few books,” says Coleridge, “which may be read repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different pleasure.”
67. Who was the young Fellow of Oxford who, during the latter half of last century, eloped with a banker’s daughter, and came in the end to be Lord Chancellor of England?