Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1875 — Curious But Useless Fruits of Ingenuit. [ARTICLE]

Curious But Useless Fruits of Ingenuit.

It Is carious to notioe, m moot of us doubtless hove, how many skillful pen me* hare expended their labor, and perchance at the same time ruined their eywright, in an effort to crowd the greateat number of words into the smallest possible space. Several such instances are alluded to la a recent article in wwjwe^wi Peter Bale, some time Clerk of the Chancery, wrote the Lord's Prayer, the Greed, the Commandments, a couple of prayers, his own name and official position, with die date of the year, month and Omen’s reign, in such small characters mat he was able to inclose the paper bearing them in “ the head of a ris*." This odd piece of work Master Pater presented to Queen Elisabeth, togather with "an excellent spectacle, by him devised, for the easier reading thereof," wherewith the Queen read all that was written. Another adept at microscopic penmanship contrived to get the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the whole of the Commandments and his name within the compass of a silver penny; and a Liverpool rival wrote Goldsmith’s “Traveler, containing 488 lines, in a square of three and a half inches; the entire book of “ Malachi” in a sort of pyramid the size of an ordinary little finger ; while a circle threesixteenths of an inch in diameter gave him room enough for the Lord’s Prayer Pliny affirms the existence of a copy of the “Iliad”- which could be kept in a nutshell, which perhaps accounts for Prof. Schreiber taking the trouble to procure a stenographic copy of a German translation of Homer’s famous work, filling 600 pages, but yet so diminutive that a nutshell sufficed to hold it—an achievement surpassed by the Toledo printer’s edition of “ Don Quixote," occupying only fifty-one cigarette papers. It has been gravely recorded that an artist of the sixteenth century contrived to delineate a city on such a minute scale that a fly would cover the enure painting- We believe that story just as much as we believe in the Dutch woman’s landscape, the size of a grain of corn, in which those with eyes to see could plainly discern a mill with its sails bent, and the miller toiling up the stairs with a sack, a horse drawing a cart, and several persons trudging along the sountiyroad. Father Johan ness Baptlsto Ferrantus made twenty-five wooden cannon, all properly tarnished, for his peppercorn, and then was obliged to manufacture thirty wooden cups ere he could pronounce the casket full. Trade-scant’s Ark, as the museum of Charles I.’s gardener was called, boasted the possession of a peppercorn containing a set of chessmen. Hadrianus Junius saw at Mechlin a cherry-stone basket in which were fourteen pair of dice, the spot£, upon them easily discernible by the ordinarily good eye; and in the Dresden Museum may perhaps yet be seen a cherry-stone carved with 180 human faces, plainly distinguishable with the aid of a microscope. In 1845, continues the writer in Chamber*' Journal, admirers of little wonders could see plenty of such marvels in London. At one shop was exhibited a common Barcelona nutshell, holding a teatable, tea-board, a dozen cups and saucers, with sugar dish and slop basin, a bottle, a funnel, fifteen drinking glasses, five punch bowls, ten rummers, a pestle and mortar and two sets of ninepins—all of polished ivory, exqisitely fashioned, and to be easily seen without the help of “optic The ingenious artist, we are told, was a poor, poetical, penurious mortal, who, being, by the cruel destiny of the planets, driven to the laws of destruction, had hit upon the method of saving himself. His little exhibition was, however, outdone by a watchmaker named Boverich, dwelling near the New Exchange, hard by. For the charge of one shilling he showed his visitors half a cherry-stone, from which he took a quadrille table, twelve chairs with skeleton backs, a looking-glass, two dozen plates, six dishes, twelve spoons, a dozen knives and forks, two salts, and a lady and gentleman sitting down at a table and waited upon by a footman. Boverich also produced a camel that could pass through the eye of a middlesized needle, and a pair of steel scissors, warranted to cut a large horse hair, of such dimensions that six pairs might be wrapped in the wing of a fly. Then came a chain of 200 links, with a padlock and key, attached .to a flea, the lot weighing onc-third of a grain; a fourwheeled ivory chariot, which, with its driver and the flea serving for steed, weighed barely a grain; and a cranenecked carriage, with wheels turning properly upon their axles, carrying four passengers, two footmen, a coachman sitting on his box with a dog between his legs, driving six ivory horses, one of the leaders bearing a postilion, the whole affair so light that a single flea could set it moving. In 1871 the nobility, gentry and curious of all classes were invited to the Great Boom in Exeter ’Change to behold the result of twenty years’ close application —a piece of mechanism some four and a half feet square, representing a gentleman's country seat, with buildings, temples, alcoves, grottoes, summer houses, ponds and cascades, all complete, enlivened above by a hundred moving figures, employed in bricklaying, cupentering, plumbing, mason’s work, joining and turning. Deer ran about the perk, ladies promenaded the garden, round which a six-horse chariot, a pairhorsed phaeton and a one-horse chaise duly progressed, with attitudes and motions so natur d, if we may take the exhibitor’s word, that, although the figures were none of them more than two inches high* they appeared like life itself.