The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [224]
2. Long Branch and Cape May: resorts along the New Jersey coast.
3. Castle Garden: immigration section of the New York City port.
4. straw bail: worthless bail bonds.
5. whiskey mill: a bar.
6. Martin Farquhar Tupper: British author (1810–89) famous for his didactic literature.
CHAPTER 36
1. Taine’s England: Notes on England (1872) by French historian Hippolyte Taine (1828–93).
2. cedar pencil: wood pencil made of red cedar.
3. George Francis Train: well-known American eccentric (1829–1904) infamous for provocative speeches and public demeanor.
4. a copy of “Venetian Life”: 1865 travel book by American author (and friend of Clemens and Warner) William Dean Howells (1837–1920).
5. T. S. Arthur: American author (1809–95) of sentimental, moralizing literature.
6. American Miscellany: monthly magazine established in 1865, self-described as featuring “entertaining literature.”
CHAPTER 37
1. spray of box: a small decorative stem from a boxwood shrub.
CHAPTER 38
1. something another: same as the saying “something or other.”
2. Japs: reference to the historic visit of a delegation from Japan to Washington, D.C., in 1872.
3. Alabama business: known also as “the Alabama claims.” In the years following the Civil War the United States government sought compensation from England for damages to Union merchant ships by marauding boats built in Great Britain for the Confederacy, such as the Alabama.
4. Gen. Sutler: most likely Benjamin F. Butler (1818–93), Civil War general, congressman, and Democratic governor of Massachusetts.
5. Santo Domingo: reference to the United States’ attempt to annex Santo Domingo in the 1870s.
CHAPTER 39
1. theories of the tyranny of marriage and of the freedom of marriage: an allusion to the philosophies of “free love” championed most aggressively in the 1870s by Victoria Clafin Woodhull (1838–1927).
CHAPTER 40
1. greenbacks: paper currency.
2. Boutwell’s: George S. Boutwell (1818–1905), Secretary of the Treasury under President Ulysses S. Grant.
CHAPTER 41
1. sauce-box: an individual who is rude, disrespectful.
2. Morrissey’s: one of several gambling houses run by John Morrissey (1831–78), who served in Congress from 1867 to 1871.
CHAPTER 45
1. Zurich, Freiburg, Creuzot and Sheffield Scientific: references to well-known institutions of technical education. Sheffield Scientific was established at Yale in 1861.
2. Young Hyson: name brand of an excellent Chinese green tea.
CHAPTER 46
1. Presidential Square: President’s Square, which encompasses the White House, Lafayette Square, and parts of the present-day Mall.
2. Evening Gram: the New York Evening Telegram, established in 1867 and famous for inaugurating the practice of regularly running articles about crimes.
3. woman’s rights agitations: reference to various nineteenth-century organizations that advocated the cause of equal rights for women.
CHAPTER 47
1. Centre Street: the New York City Jail, also known as “the Tombs.”
2. Delmonico’s: landmark New York restaurant.
3. Great Frauds: allusion to the infamous scandals of the Tweed political machine.
CHAPTER 48
1. Simon’s: Simon Cameron (1799–1889), U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.
2. Dobson’s Patent Pavement: at the time, cities across the country were experimenting with different methods of paving public streets and sidewalks.
CHAPTER 49
1. Mrs. Dr. Longstreet: Dr. Hanna Myers Longshore (1819–1901), well-known Quaker physician.
CHAPTER 50
1. Hingham: town located in Massachusetts situated on Boston Harbor.
CHAPTER 51
1. West Point cadetships: a scandal in 1870 involving members of the House of Representatives accused of selling appointments to military academies.
2. Mr. Fairoaks: Oakes Ames (1804–73), congressman from Massachusetts who was caught up in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s.
CHAPTER 59
1. General from Massachusetts: Benjamin Butler (1818–93), Massachusetts congressman who led the push to raise the salaries of elected federal officials in what became known as the “Salary Grab Act of 1873.”
TRANSLATIONS OF CHAPTER-HEAD MOTTOES6