{"id":100,"date":"2003-07-30T01:09:04","date_gmt":"2003-07-30T05:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2003\/07\/30\/because-you-asked\/"},"modified":"2003-07-30T01:09:04","modified_gmt":"2003-07-30T05:09:04","slug":"because-you-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2003\/07\/30\/because-you-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"Because You Asked"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Copiously weeping cats today. This first is from Heinrich Hoffman’s sadistic children’s book, “Struwwelpeter<\/a>” (c. 1845). It’s a very normative book – there’s some German word for this type of kinderbuch but I can’t remember it. This particular picture is from “Das Gar Traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug” or as Mark Twain translated it, “The Sad Tale of the Match-Box”. In which Paulinchen learns to her cost, too late, that matches are actually not fun at all. And she can’t even say the cats didn’t warn her.<\/p>\n

\n“Come quick!” they said. “O sire.
\nYour darling child’s afire!
\nMe-yow! Me-yo! Me-yow! Me-yo!
\nShe’s cinders, soot, and ashes, O!”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Twain’s translation is available wicked cheap as one of those cute little Reclam editions, #8983.
\n—–
\nThe unhappy critter below is one of Charles Robinson’s illustrations from Walter Jerrold’s 1903 “Big Book of Nursery Rhymes” – available these days as “Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes” from good ol’ Everyman’s Library.<\/p>\n

\nPussycat Mew jumped over a coal,
\nAnd in her petticoat burnt a big hole.
\nPoor Pussy’s weeping, she’ll have no more milk,
\nUntil her best petticoat’s mended with silk!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Robinson is better known for his illustrations of Stevenson’s “Child’s Garden of Verses”, and a lot of the “Mother Goose” illustrations delve into the same art nouveau vibe as the “Child’s Garden”. One Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. has set out an interesting life of Robinson here<\/a>, with pictures to look at.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copiously weeping cats today. This first is from Heinrich Hoffman’s sadistic children’s book, “Struwwelpeter” (c. 1845). It’s a very normative book – there’s some German word for this type of kinderbuch but I can’t remember it. This particular picture is from “Das Gar Traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug” or as Mark Twain translated it, “The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}