In one of his portraits of the convivial octogenarian turf journalist Colonel John R. Stingo, A. J. Liebling writes, Like most people of pronounced seniority he reads the obituary pages with attention, and had a morning of quiet triumph last winter when two insurance shamans, a past president of the Actuarial Society of America and the vice-president of a major company, died on the same day, aged sixty-two and fifty-four respectively. 'I bet they avoided excitement, late hours, high blood pressure, tasty food and intoxicating liquors and had themselves periodically examined with stethoscopes, fluoroscopes, spectroscopes and high-powered lenses,' the Colonel said. 'The result was inevitable and to be expected, the result of morbid preoccupation. The anxious fielder drops the ball.' Most antiquarian booksellers of my acquaintance shun morbi... [more The Perils of a Morbid Preoccupation.]

The stretch from 1833 up through early 1834 was a pretty good run for the Chester County (Penna.) Cabinet of Natural Science. The museum published its seventh report in April 1834, and while its pages note some of the natural phenomena sprung upon the community in the previous year—like the “copious 'meteoric shower'” observed on the night of November 12, 1833—the report also devotes a good chunk of space to what museum annual reports have continued to do up through the present day: thanking its donors. The Chester County (Penna.) Cabinet of Natural Science by the spring of 1834 could boast that it possessed the head and bill of an albatross (with the jawbone of a dolphin thrown in for good measure) given to them by Captain Thomas Dixey, while Philip Sharpless had made a gift of his small collection of lead and iron musket balls g... [more Articles of Great Value in Small Compass]

The Library Company of Philadelphia, “America's oldest cultural institution,” traces its history back to the good offices of Benjamin Franklin, who was instrumental in establishing the Library Company in 1731. The Library Company has a storied history of course—it served as the first Library to Congress, was for years the largest public library in the United States, and today houses a first-rate collection with a number of notable strengths. It also seems to inspire a certain amount of devotion. I recently paid a visit to the Library Company and as we waited in the lobby to meet with the Curator of Printed Books, Rachel D'Agostino, I noticed the attractive and--to my untrained eye--evidently funerary marble slab over next to the reception desk. Rachel later explained that this slab in fact marks the graves of library benefactors Jam... [more Friends of the Library]