In the late 19th century, as railroads transformed travel and social interactions, etiquette clashes in confined spaces like train compartments often sparked humorous tales that captured the public’s imagination. This short anecdote, originally from the Illustrated American and reprinted in a West Virginia newspaper, exemplifies the era’s lighthearted commentary on gender dynamics, smoking habits, and pet ownership. Titled “The Smoker’s Revenge,” it recounts a cheeky exchange between a cigar-loving gentleman and a dogmatic lady passenger, blending petty revenge with a dash of absurdity.
https://humblymybrain.substack.com/p/the-smokers-revenge-a-witty-1890
The American press during the 1790s played a role analogous to that of today’s electronic media, which, like today, was used as a vehicle to attack the principles and policies of the opposing political parties of the period. Since the dawn of a literate public actively engaged in government, politicians have both supported and cursed the effects of the press on the political process. The rapidly growing media of the late eighteenth century was seen as a necessary evil that could serve or destroy the evolution of the new federal government.
https://humblymybrain.substack.com/p/the-press-as-a-weapon-how-1790s-newspapers
The Old Testament’s first mention of polygamy appears not among the righteous, but in the violent lineage of Cain, through his descendant Lamech, who “took unto him two wives,” Adah and Zillah (Genesis 4:19). In the same brief passage, Lamech boasts to those wives of having slain two men—one “to my wounding,” and a young man “to my hurt”—while daring any avenger to face a vengeance “seventy and sevenfold” (Genesis 4:23-24). The canonical account leaves the circumstances of these killings ambiguous: accident, self-defense, or cold-blooded murder? Scripture alone offers no clarity. Yet when apocryphal witnesses are consulted, the portrait darkens dramatically, revealing Lamech not as a flawed but sympathetic figure, but as the Bible’s inaugural polygamist whose life bears only the rotten fruit of murder, secret oaths with Satan, and divine curse—fruit that exposes plural marriage’s origin as profoundly corrupt from its very root.
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