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But Virginia in 1864 was no place for the genteel and mild mannered. And although it is never quite possible to pinpoint what causes the eruption of madness in a man, there is a least some circumstantial suggestion in this case that it was an event, or a coincidence of events, that finally did unhinge Doctor Minor and pitch him over the edge into what in those unforgiving times was regarded as total lunacy.
the history of a nation contemplated from one point of view, and the wrong ways into which a language has wandered…may be nearly as instructive as the right ones.”
He was mad, and for that, we have reason to be glad. A truly savage irony, on which it is discomfiting to dwell.
He might have been mad, but like Doctor Johnson’s dictionary elephant, he had been “extremely long lifed.”
Other dictionaries in other languages took longer to make; but none was greater, grander, or had more authority than this. The greatest effort since the invention of printing. The longest sensational serial ever written.
