Another famous mixture of periods occurs in a picture of the Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico. In the foreground are a Dominican monk, a bishop with a crozier, a mitered abbot, and a man holding up a crucifix.
A PIN SCRATCH LED TO NELSON'S VICTORY.
DISCOVERY OF THE FRENCH FLEET.
The Noting of the Distress of a French
Maid by Sir John Acton Had a
Strange Result.
The good points of pins have been generally appreciated, but never did a pin point to a greater result than the one that made possible Nelson's great victory of the Nile on August 1 and 2, 1798.
It was at this fight that Nelson, with his usual intrepidity, forced a passage with half of his fleet of fifteen vessels between a small island, near Aboukir in Egypt, and the French line of battle, while the other half attacked the enemy in front, completely defeating the French fleet and capturing or sinking thirteen of its seventeen ships.
The part that the pin played in the story came about in this way:
Sir John Acton, then commander-in-chief of the land and sea forces of Naples, happened to be in his wife's dressing-room at the moment she was preparing for dinner.
Lady Acton's French maid was also in the room, and was so startled at receiving a letter from her brother, a sailor in the French navy, whom she had believed to be dead, that she ran a pin into her mistress's flesh.
Apologizing for her carelessness, the maid stated the cause of her surprise. With carefully suppressed eagerness Sir John Acton offered to read the letter while the maid continued her duties. The maid gladly consented.