CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
You've heard the ocean in a seashell, but listening to a tiny typewriter offers descriptive (if grandiose) reports of seaside conditions. From Jugend, 1911.
Here we learn that books have souls and that the moment a work is published it appears in another world (either heavenly or hellish. Bad books are tormented in Hell.)
From Henry R. Cleveland, "De Diabolo," The American Monthly Magazine, 1836.
"'Equus Marinis,' from the 1536 edition of Von Cube's 'Ortus Sanitatis," reproduced in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1915.