Another day with two cases in two years on the same day. Confused yet? Here we go.
June 7 1889: Arthur Pinner offered Hall Pycroft a job with Franco-Midland Hardware Company [STOC]
Well, I was sitting doing a smoke that very evening after I had been promised the appointment, when up came my landlady with a card which had `Arthur Pinner, financial agent,’ printed upon it. I had never heard the name before, and could not imagine what he wanted with me, but of course I asked her to show him up. In he walked – a middle-sized, dark-haired, dark-eyed, black-bearded man, with a touch of the sheeny about his nose. He had a brisk kind of way with him and spoke sharply, like a man that knew the value of time.
[The description of Pinner includes an offensive slang term for a Jewish person. I always disliked comments like that even if those descriptions were in common use at the time. -Chips]
June 7, 1900: Beppo destroyed the first bust of Napoleon. [SIXN]
“The first case reported was four days ago,” said he. “It was at the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road. The assistant had left the front shop for an instant when he heard a crash, and, hurrying in, found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments.
It’s always a strange feeling encountering certain words that way. I’m reading a mystery set in Atlanta just after the Civil War, and there’s a whole lot of language that is reflective of the time, place, and social standing of the speakers that still makes me rather squirmy to read!