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I shall be pleased to thank you for favoring us with this most poignant example; my heart doth flutter a few nanoseconds at the innocence of youth both present

I shall be pleased to thank you for favoring us with this most poignant example; my heart doth flutter a few nanoseconds at the innocence of youth both present and lost to short-form video. I exhale, with a touch of melancholy, but feel gratitude nonetheless.

idlewords 2y ago
Another fun format to read is military orders in the Revolutionary War/Napoleonic Wars era, how generals wrote (with a quill!) when actual bullets were whizzing around them. Even Civil War era orders still sound extraordinarily formal, and such orders from all eras are written in beautiful handwriting.
- billfruit 2y ago
  Where can one read those
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  I've read that Washington sent back, unopened, british letters which had been sent to him but without being addressed with all the proper military formalities. Was that his way of ensuring he didn't get labelled as an unlawful combatant? > such orders from all eras are written in beautiful handwriting the 1876 orders to bring ammunition sent at Greasy Grass ("Custer's Last Stand") are an obvious counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn#/media/File:William_W._Cooke's_%22Come_quick%22_message_to_Frederick_Benteen,_Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn,_June_25,_1876.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn#/... are you sure you haven't been looking at transcriptions? (as in the upper right of the example above)
082349872349872 2y ago
That the XVIII, with its love of symmetry: oft observed in contrast as well as in comparison, and with its love of ornament: ascending from initial observation; continuing through main example; and ending upon a final period, is well exemplified by Gibbon, who in this inimitable style filled not just one, nor yet three, but a full six volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), is a fact to which all must acquiesce, yet, even so, the "short-form" was also present during this era, perhaps most memorably in the tricolon, as brief as it was lacking in invention, with which Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, greeted Gibbon's second volume: "Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"
- billfruit 2y ago
  Also Macaulay in his 5 volumes of the History of England. Not to mention Carlyle, who elevates it to an even more lofty style that one wonders if he has not overcooked it.

idlewords 2y ago

Another fun format to read is military orders in the Revolutionary War/Napoleonic Wars era, how generals wrote (with a quill!) when actual bullets were whizzing around them. Even Civil War era orders still sound extraordinarily formal, and such orders from all eras are written in beautiful handwriting.

billfruit 2y ago
Where can one read those
082349872349872 2y ago
I've read that Washington sent back, unopened, british letters which had been sent to him but without being addressed with all the proper military formalities. Was that his way of ensuring he didn't get labelled as an unlawful combatant? > such orders from all eras are written in beautiful handwriting the 1876 orders to bring ammunition sent at Greasy Grass ("Custer's Last Stand") are an obvious counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn#/media/File:William_W._Cooke's_%22Come_quick%22_message_to_Frederick_Benteen,_Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn,_June_25,_1876.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn#/... are you sure you haven't been looking at transcriptions? (as in the upper right of the example above)

082349872349872 2y ago

That the XVIII, with its love of symmetry: oft observed in contrast as well as in comparison, and with its love of ornament: ascending from initial observation; continuing through main example; and ending upon a final period, is well exemplified by Gibbon, who in this inimitable style filled not just one, nor yet three, but a full six volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), is a fact to which all must acquiesce, yet, even so, the "short-form" was also present during this era, perhaps most memorably in the tricolon, as brief as it was lacking in invention, with which Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, greeted Gibbon's second volume: "Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"

billfruit 2y ago
Also Macaulay in his 5 volumes of the History of England. Not to mention Carlyle, who elevates it to an even more lofty style that one wonders if he has not overcooked it.