Footnotes
[1] The last part of Chapter XXIII in this Gutenberg eText.—DP.
[2] See Handel’s compositions for the harpsichord, published by Litolf, p. 78.
[3] The myth above alluded to exists in Erewhon with changed names, and considerable modifications. I have taken the liberty of referring to the story as familiar to ourselves.
[4] What a safe word “relation” is; how little it predicates! yet it has overgrown “kinsman.”
[5] The root alluded to is not the potato of our own gardens, but a plant so near akin to it that I have ventured to translate it thus. Apropos of its intelligence, had the writer known Butler he would probably have said—
“He knows what’s what, and that’s as high,
As metaphysic wit can fly.”
[6] Since my return to England, I have been told that those who are conversant about machines use many terms concerning them which show that their vitality is here recognised, and that a collection of expressions in use among those who attend on steam engines would be no less startling than instructive. I am also informed, that almost all machines have their own tricks and idiosyncrasies; that they know their drivers and keepers; and that they will play pranks upon a stranger. It is my intention, on a future occasion, to bring together examples both of the expressions in common use among mechanicians, and of any extraordinary exhibitions of mechanical sagacity and eccentricity that I can meet with—not as believing in the Erewhonian Professor’s theory, but from the interest of the subject.