Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... APPENDIX B IN the recently published " Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch" [by his son, Vincent Y. Bowditch, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1902] appears the following letter [vol. ii. p. 315]: -- TO MRS. GEORGE L. STEARNS. May 9, 1887. Dear Mrs. Stearns, -- I forgot to leave with you the riddle 1 found in a book of autographs made chiefly between the years 1610 and 1630. The riddle has the date of 1742, and is signed by one Fulda, at that time the possessor of the precious heirlooms of the family Von Olnhausen; and which had been carefully kept and transmitted to sons of that name for one hundred and thirty-two years. The Von Olnhausens dated their origin from a gallant Crusader, Heinrich Olnhausen, who in 1388 had been made " Knight of the Golden Spur" at Jerusalem. The autographs collected by one of his descendants (an earnest student, between 1610 and 1630) of all the great personages (nobility with their illuminated coats of arms, professors 1 A M O R E S. 6. Sex fuge, 5. Quinque tene, 4. Quatuor fac, Reliqua (RES) tibi sequcntur. of many universities, pastors of churches, great physicians, and lettered young companions) were in two volumes, and by marriage had come into Fulda's hands. He, with a true instinct, felt that they ought to be in the hands of his young relative, the male descendant of the Von Olnhausens. Therefore in 1742 he transferred them to John Frederick Olnhausen, telling him that he hoped that these precious relics of the good youth of 1610 would stimulate his loving descendants to behave as heroically as his predecessors had done, and he gave the enclosed riddle, which as I have before stated I forgot to leave. To finish my story, I ought to tell you how they came into my possession. Some few years...