The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical

The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, subtitled A Cabinet for the Curious, is by Frank H. Stauffer. A short verse lists oddities and wonders, omens dire, mystic fire, and strange customs, cranks and freaks, with philosophy in streaks. A section headed Alliterations carried to Absurd Excess says that in the early part of the seventeenth century the fashion of hunting after alliterations was carried to an absurd excess.

A section headed Vacillating Newspapers gives the way the newspapers of Paris, under censorship of the press, in 1815, announced Bonaparte's departure from the Isle of Elba. Under Tenacity of Odors, Dr. Carpenter is quoted from his Comparative Physiology as stating that a grain of musk has been kept freely exposed to the air of a room, of which the door and window were constantly open, for ten years. The index lists entries such as, among others, the King of India's library, light from potatoes and the re-tailing of a lion.