“It seems to me,” said Sancho, “that the knights who did all these things were driven to them… but… why should you go crazy? What lady has rejected you…?
“That is exactly it,” replied Don Quixote, “that’s just how beautifully I’ve worked it all out – because for a knight errant to go crazy for good reason, how much is that worth? My idea is to become a lunatic for no reason at all…”

He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.”

Engineeer Husband has been reading Don Quixote aloud to the urchins, especially Karate Kid, in the evenings for some time now. KK says it’s a good story, but Don Quixote is being really stupid. I think they may have completed about a fourth of the book; they don’t read every night. At this rate, they ought to get to the end by the time KK gets to high school.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born on this date in 1547.

William Mickle, b.1735. Scots poet. I can identify with the theme of this poem, There’s Nae Luck about the House. Engineer Husband doesn’t have to travel too often, but when he is gone, there’s no luck about the house at all.

Rise, lass, and mak a clean fire side,
Put on the muckle pot,
Gie little Kate her button gown,
And Jock his Sunday coat;
And mak their shoon as black as slaes,
Their hose as white as snaw,
It’s a’ to please my ain gudeman,
For he’s been lang awa.
For there’s nae luck about the house,
There’s nae luck at a’,
There’s little pleasure in the house
When our gudeman’s awa.

Sir WIlliam Jones, b. 1746. Philoligist and student of Indian history.

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have spring from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit, and the old Persian might be added to this family, if this were the place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities of Persia.

Kate Douglas Wiggin, b. 1856, author and educator. She wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Birds’ Christmas Carol. Eldest Daughter always thought Rebecca compared rather unfavorably to L.M. Mongomery’s Anne of Green Gables, but I remember enjoying both books and both heroines.
Read Rebecca online.
Wiggin also wrote an autobiography, My Garden of Memories, and an adult novel, The Village Watchtower. I added both to The List last year, but I haven’t found copies of either one yet.

Edith Mary Pargeter, b. 1913. She wrote several fine historical fiction novels, including The Heaven Tree Trilogy about a thirteenth century family of British stonecarvers. Of course, Pargeter’s more famous series of books takes place a century before the Heaven Tree books, and she wrote them under a different name. If you’ve never read these and if you have a morbid taste for bones, you should go immediately to your nearest library and check one out. An excellent mystery.

Upton Sinclair, b. 1878, socialist author of The Jungle, a novel about the meat-packing industry that resulted in passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and The Meat Inspection Act (1906)).

Upton Sinclair, letter of resignation from the Socialist Party (September, 1917)

I have lived in Germany and know its language and literature, and the spirit and ideals of its rulers. Having given many years to a study of American capitalism. I am not blind to the defects of my own country; but, in spite of these defects, I assert that the difference between the ruling class of Germany and that of America is the difference between the seventeenth century and the twentieth.

No question can be settled by force, my pacifist friends all say. And this in a country in which a civil war was fought and the question of slavery and secession settled! I can speak with especial certainty of this question, because all my ancestors were Southerners and fought on the rebel side; I myself am living testimony to the fact that force can and does settle questions – when it is used with intelligence.

In the same way I say if Germany be allowed to win this war – then we in America shall have to drop every other activity and devote the next twenty or thirty years to preparing for a last-ditch defence of the democratic principle.

I wonder what Sinclair would say about the war in Iraq were he alive today? Also, just out of curiousity, did anyone else become a vegetarian for a week or two after reading The Jungle in high school? I would strongly suggest that you NOT read Sinclair’s muckraking classic if you are squeamish or if you wish to remain comfortable in your meat-eating habits. Then again, if you want cheap motivation for a healthier diet . . .

Miska Petersham was born Petrezselyem Mikaly in Torokszentmiklos, Hungary, on September 20, 1888. He moved to London in 1911, to the United States in 1912. He married Maud Fuller, and the husband and wife team wrote and illustrated books for children. They are most famous for writing and illustrating The Rooster Crows, a book of American songs, rhymes, and games in the tradition of Mother Goose, which won the 1946 Caldecott Medal. Maud was the daughter of a Baptist minister, and she and her Hungarian husband also wrote and illustrated many retellings of Bible stories. However, my favorite of their books is the one pictured above, The Box With Red Wheels.