The Art of Tetman Callis

“Duty, as well as inclination, urges the Lay Preacher to sermonize, while others slumber. To read numerous volumes in the morning, and to observe various characters at noon, will leave but little time, except the night, to digest the one or speculate upon the other. The night, therefore, is often dedicated to composition, and while [...]

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“Why do classical economists believe that free trade is good for everyone?  Why does the amount of gold kept in the treasury not make much difference to a country’s wealth?  Why don’t better machines for making pins eliminate jobs for good, instead of making more jobs of another kind?  Why, for that matter, does it [...]

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“To better imagine zoo life, you might picture yourself living with your brother (if you are male) or sister (if you are female) in a department store’s window display that looks like a luxuriously furnished home.  Satin drapes shroud the French doors, white woolen upholstery encases the armchairs and the sofa, and a thick silk [...]

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“Of all the criticisms that have been passed upon the Declaration of Independence, the least to the point is that it is not original. The material was at hand, the argument had been elaborated, the conclusions had been drawn. For originality there was as little opportunity as there was need. What was required now was a [...]

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“King Dasaratha addressing his dearest wives said ‘I intend to perform a sacrifice in order to obtain sons. Therefore you also commence religious discipline.’ After listening to these excessively charming words, their lotus-like countenances endowed with brightness were resplendent like lotuses uncovered by ice.” — Valmiki Ramayana, Balakanda Sarga 8

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There was a time when I was writing everything in lower case.  Abandoning caps changed the way the words flowed together in a piece.  Every once in a while I still write a lower-case piece, but it’s mostly something I did in the mid-90s. Another thing I did in the mid-90s and still sometimes do [...]

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“No history of the American Revolution, or of the political literature to which it gave birth, would be complete without consideration of the loyalists. That independence was in fact the work of a minority, and that the methods by which the loyal majority was overawed and, in part, expelled were as high-handed and cruel as [...]

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“A few years ago, a group of economists looked at more than a hundred Fortune 500 firms, trying to figure out what predicted how much money the C.E.O. made.  Compensation, it turned out, was only weakly related to the size and profitability of the company.  What really mattered was how much money the members of [...]

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“Advertisements of merchandise in all the colonies throw a good deal of light on the customs of the time, and, incidentally, also on the popular taste in reading. We find that Peter Turner has ‘Superfine Scarlet Cloth, Hat Linings, Tatlers, Spectators, and Barclay’s Apology’; that Peter Harry imports ‘Head Flowers in Boxes, Laces and Edgings, Psalm-books, [...]

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“An old-time classification of the human faculties will serve to explain the development of American thought in the eighteenth century, a development which led to the overthrow of high Calvinism. As there were three divisions of the human mind—intellect, sensibility, and will, so were there three divisions among the enemies of orthodoxy. Those who followed the [...]

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“All theory is against the freedom of the will, all experience for it.” — Dr. Samuel Johnson

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“Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.” — John Cage (from “Searching for Silence,” by Alex Ross)

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