Born this day in 1855 Simeon Ford.

Here we go.

Fifteen minutes later: The internet is a dump.

Can’t find him anywhere in my crappy old books.

Two pages of Amazon results & nothing more? A dump, I say.

Daily Reading September 1

• At a Turkish Bath
• The Discomforts of Travel
• Boyhood in a New England Hotel

Did not care for the first. Second was okay. “Boyhood” begins:

I WAS raised in the State of Connecticut, but it was no fault of mine. My parents, before I reached the age of consent, experienced one of those sudden reverses of fortune which have always been so popular in my family, and we left our beautiful New York home, replete as it was with every luxury, including a large and variegated assortment of chattel mortgages, and moved up into Windham County, right in the center of the pie-belt and quite near the jumping-off place. It was a lovely, beautiful, quiet, peaceful, restful, healthful, desirable, bucolic hamlet, three miles from the cars and far, far from the madding throng, and where a man could use his knife for the purpose of transferring nourishment to his mouth without attracting undue attention. When I say it was quiet I but feebly describe it, but when I say it was healthful I am well within the mark. If a man died in that village under eighty years of age, they hung white crape on the door-bell and carved a little lamb on his tombstone. I left there twenty-five years ago to seek my fortune—which I’m still seeking—but the old people who were old then don’t seem any older now. Last summer, when I went up with my children, I noticed that the same old people were about as lively as ever, and the same old pink pop-corn balls and jack-knives were still in the show-case of the store which I used to think I’d buy when I got rich, but no longer seem to crave.

There are some good lines there, I think. But it begins to try too hard.

My room was in the third story, and its ceiling slanted down rapidly, so that sometimes in the night, when aroused by a rat bounding joyously around on the quilt, I would sit up suddenly and embed portions of my intellect in the rafters. 

In conclusion, I believe it safe to conclude 1) the internet is a dump, and 2) Simeon Ford lack of internet presence is understandable.

Stay well. Stay safe. Read something!