Bellow on Steeplejacks

Someone who climbs and repairs steeples and chimneys.

"'Well, Your Highness,' I said, 'for you it should be easy. You have known these animals all your life. You are bred for this; you are a pro. If there's anything I love to see, it's a guy who's good at his work. Whether it's a rigger or steeplejack or window-washer or any person who has strong nerves and a skilled body... You had me worried when you started that skull dance, but after a minute of it, I would have backed you to my last dime.'"

Saul Bellow, Henderson The Rain King (1958).

Two Raging Tyrants

"So Jupiter, not wanting man's life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason--you could reckon the ratio as twenty-four to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions. Then he set up two raging tyrants in opposition to reason's solitary power: anger, which holds sway in the breast and so controls the heart, the very source of life, and lust, whose empire spreads far and wide, right down to the genitals. How far reason can prevail against the combined forces of these two the common life of man makes quite clear. She does the only thing she can, and shouts herself hoarse repeating formulas of virtue, while the other two bid her go hang herself and are increasingly noisy and offensive until at last their ruler is exhausted, gives up, and surrenders."

Erasmus, Praise of Folly (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].

Slaving in a Flour Mill

"Although I was nearly fainting with hunger and weariness, and in great need of refreshment, fear and my old curiosity made me neglect the food they gave me--there was no lack of it--to observe the life at that detestable mill with fascinated horror. Ye gods, what a pack of runts the poor creatures were who looked after us! Their skins were seamed all over with the marks of old floggings, as you could easily see through the holes in their ragged shirts that shaded rather than covered their scarred backs; but some wore only loin cloths. They had letters branded on their foreheads, and half-shaved heads and irons on their legs. Their complexions were frightfully yellow, their eyelids caked with the smoke of the baking ovens, their eyes so bleary and inflamed that they could hardly see out of them, and they were powdered like athletes in the arena, but with dirty flour, not dust."

Apuleius, The Golden Ass, 2nd Century A.D.

[translated by Robert Graves].

The Mississippi Steamboat Pilot

"If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no surprising thing, for I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since, and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is plain: a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth. Kings are but the hampered servants of parliament and the people; parliaments sit in chains forged by their constituency; the editor of a newspaper cannot be independent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by party and patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind; no clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth, regardless of his parish's opinions; writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the public. We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we 'modify' before we print. In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and worries and frets in servitude; but, in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none."

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883).

Light Horsemen

A light-armed cavalry soldier. Also a name for a particular group of thieves who worked on the Thames River.

"'Light Horsemen' would look out for a lighter having valuable goods on board, and at night, stealing up quietly, would cut her adrift: then following her, as she floated down with the tide, would by-and-by rescue her, and bring her back, claiming salvage."

The Daily News (1899).

The Soldier and the Lawyer

"Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer give ample oportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. If you have composed a bad opera you may persuade yourself that it is a good one; if you have carved a bad statue you can think yourself better than Michelangelo. But if you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have got him off."

--G. K. Chesterton.

Electo

The captain or leader chosen by a group of mutineers.

"The old souldiers, after the manner of seditions, created a Generall, whom they called the Electo."

Sir Robert Stapylton, Strada's The history of the Low-Countrey Warres (1650).