I'm off in my own little world again, working on a book that I may or may not do, but I'm having fun scoping it.

Today, I have been trying to track down the earliest use of "billy", in the sense of what we brew tea in.  I found three independent uses of the word in September to November 1858, and in one of those from NSW, the writer feels that he needs to explain the meaning, while the other two are in Victoria and go unexplained.  I think that may indicate where the word was first used.

You can see all three articles by going to the Trove URL I gave in my last piece, and looking for pieces tagged "billy", but you won't find this one, which I think is a little sad:

"CAUTION.-The public are hereby cautioned not to employ a Chinese Boy, named BILLY BILLIN, aged eleven year, who has absconded from St. Leonard's Family Hotel. North Shore. RICHARD HAWKINS."

SMH 9/3/1858.

One side of me says "I hope Hawkins is roasting in Hell for that," but sadly, he was a creature of his times, and we shouldn't really blame him.

I did some digging, but I can find no later trace of Billy, so probably he changed his name, and hopefully, found a less horrid way of life.

Here's the URL again: http://trove.nla.gov.au/

First, a note about "curtiosity": it is the key attribute of Rudyard Kipling's 'E;ephant's Child.  It isn't a typo.  The curtiosities were collected originally as possible epigraphs, and then as a possible book in their own right, but it all seemed too hard.  Most collections of "quotes" on the web lack the necessary details of chapter and verse and are commonly spurious.  You get my notes, so you know where they came from, and any agile mind will recognise the occasional traps laid for mindless plagiarists. Verb. sap.

Atoms move in the void and catching each other up jostle together, and some recoil in any direction that may chance, and others become entangled with one another in various degrees according to their shapes and sizes and positions and orders, and they come together and thus the coming into being of composite things is effected.

— Simplicius (c. 400 BC), De Caelo

To understand the very large, we must understand the very small.

— Democritus (470 - 380 BC)

The Atoms of Democritus

And Newton's Particles of Light

Are sands upon the Red sea shore

Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

— William Blake (1757 - 1827), Complete Blake (Oxford Paperback, 1974), page 418.

1.  From nothing comes nothing.  Nothing that exists can be destroyed.  All changes are due to the combination and separation of molecules.

2.  Nothing happens by chance.  Every occurrence has its cause from which it follows by necessity.

3.  The only existing things are atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion.

4.  The atoms are infinite in number and infinitely various in form; they strike together and the lateral motions and whirlings which thus arise are the beginnings of worlds.

5.  The varieties of all things depend upon the varieties of their atoms, in number, size, and aggregation.

6.  The soul consists of fine, smooth, round atoms like those of fire.  These are the most mobile of all.  They interpenetrate the whole body and in their motions the phenomena of life arise.

— Robert Andrews Millikan quotes these words of Democritus in his book The Electron, saying that they are from [Sir John] Tyndall.

When any body exists in the elastic state, its ultimate particles are separated from each other to a greater distance than in any other state; each particle occupies the centre of a comparatively large sphere, and supports its density by keeping all the rest, which by their gravity or otherwise, are disposed to encroach upon it, at a respectable distance.

Chemical analysis and synthesis go no further than to the separation of particles one from another, and to their reunion.  No new creation or destruction of matter is within the reach of the chemical agency.  We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen.  All the changes we can produce consist in separating particles that are in a state of cohesion or combination, and joining those that were previously at a distance.

— John Dalton, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, 1808.

They may say what they like.  Everything is organised matter.

— Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.

— Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902), Notebooks

The first support of the isotope theory among non-radioactive elements was given by the anomalous behaviour of the inactive gas neon, when analysed by Sir J. J. Thomson's method of positive rays . . . This peculiarity was that whereas all elements previously examined gave single, or apparently single, parabolas, that given by neon was definitely double.  The brighter curve corresponded roughly to an atomic weight of 20, the fainter companion to one of 22, the atomic weight of neon being 20.20.

— Francis Aston (1877 - 1945), address before the Royal Institution, 1921.

No one has ever seen, nor probably ever will see, an atom, but that does not deter the physicist from trying to draw a plan of it, with the aid of such clues to its structure as he has.

— Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906 - 1972), 'The Structure of the Nucleus', Scientific American Reader (1953), page 116.

In fact it may be logically impossible for anyone to be able to correctly visualize certain physical systems, such as atoms, because they contain features that simply do not exist in the world of our experience.

— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Penguin Books, 1990, p. 18.

There have been almost innumerable attempts to reduce the differences between atomic weights to regularity by contriving some formula which will express the numbers which represent the weights with all their irregularities.  Needless to say, such attempts have in no way been successful.

— Sir William Ramsay (1852 - 1916), address to the British Association, Toronto, 1897.

Recently, I posted a selection of newspaper fulminations about falling standards, some of them almost a hudred years old.

Here is another one, taken from Scientific American, March 8, 1862, page 146.  The introduction tells us that the piece was lifted from some other journal, and the context makes it clear the journal was British.

The Barbarism of Steel Pens.

I am aware, says a recent writer, that it may be very fairly said that if a man is green enough to be induced by any representations of seller or advertiser, to make his coffee with a windlass, and shave himself with a stone, the only verdict he can expect from an intelligent jury is "served him right;" but look at another invention, under the tyranny of which we all groan more or less, but which very few have the strength of mind to resist. Has not the curse of steel pens swept over the land until decent handwriting (sic!) is almost unknown? Do not ninety-nine persons in a hundred use steel pens, and has more than one out of the ninety-nine the effrontery to say he can write with them? Lord Palmerston was quite right—the handwriting of this generation is abominable; and as new improvements in steel pens go on, that of the next will be worse. The fine Roman hand of the last century has died out; the steel can’t do it. There is neither grace nor legibility in the angular scrawl that prevails now. Open any parish register of fifty years back, and see in what a fine legible hand, and scholar-like too in most cases, the parson of that day made his entries. Our present young parson, though he took a first-class at Oxford, and wears a most correct waistcoat, doesn’t do it, and couldn’t do it if his benefit of clergy depended on it.

The dropping of standards seems to be a perennial complaint!

 

 

Vikki North, a professional artist living in California drew this concept portrait of the main character in 'Paternity', my original Australian mystery novel being featured on my blog "Journeys in Creative Writing".

 

The character is Pip Holmes, a young Aussie journalist anxious to discover who her father was.  Pip's mother died without disclosing the secret.

 

Vikki had been following the story on my blog from week one and she says she became intrigued by Pip's character and drew the young woman following mind pictures she formed following her reading. The strange thing is that Vikki's portrait absolutely fits my idea of what my character would be in real life.    

 

Today I posted the final episode of my story and hope the ending receives as much  feedback as the other eighteen chapters did.  People from 29 countries have been dropping in on the site, with many supporting me with comments along the way. 

 

Greypath members may like to join them on Journeys in Creative Writing - see you on site! There are links to all episodes on the side bar of the blog, and there are many of my short stories and poems available as well.

 

Muffin (June Saville)