“A prophet, Hinnissy, is a man that foresees throuble. No wan wud listen a minyit to anny prophet that prophesized pleasant days. A successful weather prophet is wan that predicts thunder storms, hurrycanes an’ earthquakes; a good financial prophet is wan that predicts panics; a pollytickal prophet must look into th’ tea leaves an’ see th’ institutions iv th’ wurruld cracked wide open an’ th’ smiling not to say grinnin’, fields iv this counthry iv ours or somebody’s laid waste with fire and soord. Hogan’s that kind iv a prophet. I’m onhappy about to-day but cheerful about to-morrah. Hogan is th’ happyest man in th’ wurruld about to-day but to-morrah something is goin’ to happen. I hate to-day because to-morrah looks so good. He’s happy to-day because it is so pleasant compared with what to-morrah is goin’ to be. Says I: ‘Cheer up; well have a good time at th’ picnic next Saturdah’. Says he: ‘It will rain at th’ picnic.'” (Mr. Dooley Says)

“Did ye iver see a man as proud iv annything as Hogan is iv that kid iv his?” said Mr. Dooley.

“Wait till he’s had iliven,” said Mr. Hennessy.

“Oh, iv coorse,” said Mr. Dooley. “Ye have contimpt f’r an amachoor father that has on’y wan offspring. An ol’ profissyonal parent like ye, that’s practically done nawthin’ all ye’er life but be a father to helpless childher, don’t understand th’ emotions iv th’ author iv a limited edition. But Hogan don’t care. So far as I am able to judge fr’m what he says, his is th’ on’y perfect an’ complete child that has been projooced this cinchry. He looks on you th’ way Hinnery James wud look on Mary Jane Holmes.

“I wint around to see this here projidy th’ other day. Hogan met me at th’ dure. ‘Wipe off ye’er feet” says he ‘Why, says I. ‘Baby,’ says he. “Mickrobes,’ he says. He thin conducted me to a basin iv water, an’ insthructed me to wash me hands in a preparation iv carbolic acid. Whin I was thurly perfumed he inthrajooced me to a toothless ol’ gintleman who was settin’ up in a cradle atin’ his right foot. ‘Ain’t he fine? says Hogan. ‘Wondherful,’ says I. ‘Did ye iver see such an expressyon?” says he. ‘Niver,’ says I, ‘as Hiven is me judge, niver!’ ‘Look at his hair’, he says. ‘I will’, says I. ‘Ain’t his eyes beautiful?’ ‘They ar-re,’ I says. ‘Ar-re they glass or on’y imitation? says I. ‘An’ thim cunning little feet,’ says he. ‘On close inspiction,’ says I, ‘yes, they ar-re. They ar’re feet. Ye’er offspring don’t know it, though. He thinks that wan is a doughnut.’ ‘He’s not as old as he looks,’ says Hogan. ‘He cudden’t be,’ says I. ‘He looks old enough to be a Dimmycratic candydate f’r Vice-Prisidint. Why, he’s lost most iv his teeth,’ I says. ‘Go wan,’ says he; ‘he’s just gettin’ thim. He has two uppers an’ four lowers,’ he says. ‘If he had a few more he’d be a sleepin’-car,’ says I. ‘Does he speak?’ says I. ‘Sure,’ says Hogan ‘Say poppa,’ he says. “Gah”, says young Hogan. ‘Hear that?’ says Hogan; ‘that’s poppa. Say momma,’ says he. “Gah”, says th’ projidy. ‘That’s momma,’ says Hogan. “See, here’s Misther Dooley”, says he. “Blub”, says th’ phenomynon. ‘Look at that,’ says Hogan; ‘he knows ye,’ he says.

“Well, ye know, Hinnissy, wan iv th’ things that has made me popylar in th’ ward is that I make a bluff at adorin’ childher. Between you an’ me, ’d as lave salute a dish-rag as a recent infant, but I always do it. So I put on an allurin’ smile, an’ says I, ‘Well, little ol’ goozy goo, will he give his Dooleyums a kiss?’ At that minyit Hogan seized me be th’ collar an’ dhragged me away fr’m th’ cradle. ‘Wud ye kill me child?’ says he. ‘How?’ says I. ‘With a kiss’, says he. ‘Am I that bad?’ says I. ‘Don’t ye know that there ar-re mickrobes that can be thransmitted to an infant in a kiss?’ says he. ‘Well’, says I, with indignation, ‘I’m not proud iv mesilf as an antiseptic American’, I says, ‘but in an encounther between me an’ that there young cannibal,’ I says, ‘I’ll lave it to th’ board iv health who takes th’ biggest chance,’ I says, an’ we wint out, followed be a howl fr’m th’ projidy. ‘He’s singin’? says Hogan. ‘He has lost his notes,’ says I.

“Whin we got down-stairs Hogan give me a lecture on th’ bringin’ up iv childher. As though I needed it, me that’s been consulted on bringin’ up half th’ childher in Archey Road. ‘In th’ old days,’ says he, ‘childher was brought up catch-as-catch-can,’ he says. ‘But it’s diff’rent now. They’re as carefully watched as a geeranyum in a consarvatory’, he says. ‘I have a book here on th’ subjick,’ he says. ‘Here it is. Th’ first thing that shud be done f’r a child is to deprive it iv its parents. Th’ less th’ infant sees iv poppa an momma th’ betther fr him. If they ar-re so base as to want to look at th’ little darlin’ they shud first be examined be a competent physician to see that there is nawthin’ wrong with thim that they cud give th’ baby. They will thin take a bath iv sulphuric acid, an’ havin’ carefully, attired thimsilves in a sturlized rubber suit, they will approach within eight feet iv th’ objeck iv their ignoble affection an’ lave at wanst. In no case must they kiss, hug, or fondle their projiny. Manny diseases, such as lumbago, pain in th’ chest, premachoor baldness, senile decrepitude, which are privalent among adults, can be communicated to a child fr’m th’ parent. Besides, it is bad f’r th’ moral nature iv th’ infant. Affection f’r its parents is wan iv th’ mos’ dangerous symptoms iv rickets. Th’ parents may not be worthy iv th’ love iv a thurly sturlized child. An infant’s first jooty is to th’ docthor, to whom it owes its bein’ an’ stayin’. Childher ar-re imitative, an’ if they see much iv their parents they may grow up to look like thim. That wud be a great misfortune. If parents see their childher befure they enther Harvard they ar-re f’rbidden to teach thim foolish wurruds like “poppa ” an’ “momma.” At two a properly brought up child shud be able to articulate distinctly th’ wurrud “Docthor Bolt on th’ Care an’ Feedin’ iv Infants,” which is betther thin sayin’ “momma,” an’ more exact.

“’Gr-reat care shud be taken iv th’ infant’s food. Durin’ th’ first two years it shud have nawthin’ but milk. At three a little canary-bur-rd seed can be added. At five an egg ivry other Choosdah. At siven an orange. At twelve th’ child may ate a shredded biscuit. At forty th’ little tot may have stewed prunes. An’ so on. At no time, howiver, shud th’ child be stuffed with greengages, pork an’ beans, onions, Boston baked brown-bread, saleratus biscuit, or other food.

“’It’s wondherful’, says Hogan, ‘how they’ve got it rayjooced to a science. They can almost make a short baby long or a blond baby black be addin’ to or rayjoocin’ th’ amount iv protides an’ casens in th’ milk,’ he says. ‘Haven’t ye iver kissed ye’er young?’ says I. ‘Wanst in awhile,’ he says, ‘whin I’m thurly disinfected I go up an’ blow a kiss at him through th’ window,’ he says.

“’Well,’ says I, ‘it may be all right,’ I says, ‘but if I cud have a son an’ heir without causin’ talk I bet ye I’d not apply f’r a permit fr’m th’ health boord fr him an’ me to come together. Parents was made befure childher, annyhow, an’ they have a prire claim to be considhered. Sure, it may be a good thing to bring thim up on a sanitary plan, but it seems to me they got along all right in th’ ol’ days whin number two had just larned to fall down-stairs at th’ time number three entered th’ wurruld. Maybe they were sthronger thin they ar-re now. Th’ docthor niver pretinded to see whether th’ milk was properly biled. He cudden’t very well. Th’ childher was allowed to set up at th’ table an’ have a good cup iv tay an’ a pickle at two. If there was more thin enough to go around, they got what nobody else wanted. They got plenty iv fresh air playin’ in alleys an’ vacant lots, an’ ivry wanst in a while they were allowed to go down an’ fall into th’ river. No attintion was paid to their dite. Th’ prisint race iv heroes who are now startlin’ th’ wurrould in finance, polytics, th’ arts an’ sciences, burglary, an’ lithrachoor, was brought up on wathermillon rinds, specked apples, raw onions stolen fr’m th’ grocer, an’ cocoa-nut-pie. Their nursery was th’ back yard. They larned to walk as soon as they were able, an’ if they got bow-legged ivrybody said they wud be sthrong men. As f’r annybody previntin’ a fond parent fr’m comin’ home Saturdah night an’ wallowin’ in his beaucheous child, th’ docthor that suggisted it wud have to move. No, sir,’ says I, ‘get as much amusemint as ye can out iv ye’er infant,’ says I. ‘Teach him to love ye now,’ I says, ‘before he knows. Afther a while he’ll get onto ye an’ it ll be too late?’”

“Ye know a lot about it,” said Mr. Hennessy.

“I do,” said Mr. Dooley, “Not bein’ an author, I’m a gr-reat critic.”

(Dissertations by Mr. Dooley)

“No one can approach to an understanding of the English institutions, or of others, which, being the growth of many centuries, exercise a wide sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them into two classes. In such constitutions there are two parts (not indeed separable with microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of division): first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the population — the dignified parts, if I may so call them; and next, the efficient parts — those by which it, in fact, works and rules. There are two great objects which every constitution must attain to be successful, which every old and celebrated one must have wonderfully achieved: every constitution must first gain authority, and then use authority; it must first win the loyalty and confidence of mankind, and then employ that homage in the work of government.” (Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution)

“An’ there ye ar-re. Th’ times has changed, an’ th’ kings lives in th’ sthreet with th’ rest iv us. It ‘ll be th’ death iv thim. No wan respects annybody they know. To be a king an’ get away with it, a man must keep out iv sight. Th’ minyit people know that a king talks like other people, that he has th’ same kind iv aches that we have, that his head is bald, that his back teeth are filled, that he dhrinks too much, that him an’ his wife don’t get along, an’ that whin they quarrel they don’t make a reg’lar declaration iv war, but jaw at each other like Mullarky an’ his spouse, their subjicks say: ‘Why, this here fellow is no betther thin th’ rest iv us. How comes he to have so good a job? Down with him?’ An’ down he comes.” (Dissertations by Mr. Dooley)

“Over forty years ago, a colleague and I drew up a plan by which his department, which was English and Comparative Literature, and mine, which was History would encourage Ph.D. candidates to offer as their dissertation the edition of an important work that was out of print, or in print but in need of editing. The plan was coupled with a proposal to the university press for the publication of these books, some possibly in paperback for class use. We were turned down, of course, on all sides, with indulgent smiles at our youthful idiocy. And being young, we gave up. We should have kept at it. The press came to favor the idea, but by then my colleague had retired, and I, being chief academic officer of the university, had no right to entertain or push ideas for academic use.” (Jacques Barzun, The Bibliophile of the Future, 1976)

“Who can behold the fanatical animation of Homenas, as he apostrophizes the sacred decretals, without being aware of the essential temperament that comes out in the hundred-and-one manifestations of philosophical absolutism that are forever rife among us?”

‘When, ha! when [cries Homenas] shall this special gift of grace be bestowed on mankind, as to lay aside all other studies and concerns, to use you, to peruse you, to understand you, to know you by heart, to practice you, to incorporate you, to turn you into blood and incentre you into the deepest ventricles of their brains, the inmost marrow of their bones, the most intricate labyrinth of their arteries? Then, ha! then, and no sooner than then, nor otherwise than thus, shall the world be happy… Then, ha! then, no hail, frost, ice, snow, overflowing, or vis major; then, plenty of all earthly goods here below. Then, uninterrupted and eternal peace through the universe, an end of all wars, plunderings, drudgeries, robbing, assassinates (unless it be to destroy those cursed rebels, the heretics). Oh then, rejoicing, cheerfulness, jollity, solace, sports and delicious pleasures, over the face of the earth. Oh, what great learning, inestimable erudition and godlike precepts are knit, linked, rivetted and morticed in the divine chapters of these eternal decretals! Oh how wonderfully, if you read but one demi-canon, short paragraph, or single observation of these sacrosanct decretals — how wonderfully, I say, do you not perceive to kindle in your heart a furnace of divine love, charity towards your neighbour (provided he be no heretic), bold contempt of all casual and sublunary things, firm content in all your affections, and ecstatic elevation of soul even to the third heaven!’

“Might this not be the doctrinaire Marxian speaking, with a volume of Das Kapital in his hand; might it not be the doctrinaire free-trader, protectionist, prohibitionist, single-taxer; might it not be Mr. Henry Ford or Mr. Hoover, apostrophizing the doctrine of mass-production, and holding aloft the blue-prints and specifications of a completely industrialized society? ‘Then, ha! then, and no sooner than then, nor otherwise than thus, shall the world be happy’ — those words invariably recall us to ourselves, they bear us instantly across the field of every ephemeral, petty, and importunate absolutism, and give us a reviving vision of the victorious stretch of humanity that lies beyond it in an immeasurable future.” (Albert Jay Nock and C. R. Wilson, Francis Rabelais: The Man and His work, 1929)

“Speaking generally, American university-trustees and presidents regard buildings, endowments and student-population as the important thing, while on the Continent the professors are regarded as the important thing. A visiting German pundit the other day remarked this difference rather naively. ‘When Germans come to America’, he said, ‘you show them all over your buildings. When Americans visit our institutions, we introduce them to our professors’. We talked this over for quite a while, and decided that the Continental authorities had the common-sense view. After all, you can teach in a tent or a barn to as good purpose as in a palace, if you have the right kind of student-material and are the right kind of teacher; and failing these conditions, a palace is no help — you and your students are all dressed up, with nowhere to go, and hence nothing happens. Trustees and presidents who have a good eye for buildings, moreover, have a notoriously poor eye for men, and the Continental is right in seeing that men are all that count, for education is something that is communicated only by contagion, like measles. If you wish to catch measles, you have to go where measles is, maybe in a palace, maybe in a hovel, no matter — you’ll get it. But if there is nobody around who has measles, you won’t get it, palace or no palace, hovel or no hovel.” (Albert Jay Nock, A Journey into Rabelais’s France, 1934)

Available at: https://iwpbooks.me/books.

• Rabelais: The Man and His Work, 1929
• The Theory of Education in the United States, 1932
• A Journey Into Rabelais’s France, 1934
• A Journal of These Days, 1934
• Free Speech and Plain Language, 1937
• Henry George: An Essay, 1939
• Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, 1943
• Journal of Forgotten Days, 1948
• Letters from Albert Jay Nock, 1949

“7 December — Considered as a process, culture consists in an intensive learning and an intensive forgetting. Thus when a smart little Jewish boy from the East Side, or an alfalfa-fed girl from the great open spaces, comes to the college or university in search of culture, one should say, ‘Youngster, it is an affair of many years, many things, and much labour. You must learn much, and forget much, and the forgetting is as important as the learning’. Considered as a possession, culture might be described as the residuum left by a diligently forgotten learning. For example, someone tells you that Plato said so-and-so. You say, ‘I think not. What I have read of Plato and forgotten, and also of a great many other authors, likewise forgotten, has left the residual impression that Plato was extremely unlikely to have said anything of the kind’. Then you look it up, and find that you are right. But what would our modern schools think of a person who had this notion of culture? Oxford expresses somewhat this notion in a practical way, or did once express it, and therein largely lay the greatness of Oxford. I could never reconcile myself to the idea that the scientific school had any proper place in a university. A university implies faculties, and the function of a faculty is not the dissemination of useful knowledge, but the curatorship of useless knowledge; the kind of knowledge that, properly acquired and properly forgotten, leaves the residuum of culture. I have even had doubts about the position of the Faculty of Medicine in the traditional four faculties. I can see how it came to be included, and why in a sense it should be included still. Formerly it did not do much with the science of medicine, but mostly with its history and literature; and this was all very good, quite what a Faculty of Medicine should be doing now. For example, the Faculty of Medicine at Johns Hopkins ought not to be dealing out useful knowledge to medical students. Let a medical school do that. It ought to be winnowing and conserving the vast body of useless knowledge that has grown up around the profession. In short, it ought not to be making practitioners; it ought to be making practitioners like Pancoast and William Osler. Similarly, the Faculty of Law ought not to aim at turning out lawyers, but at turning out lawyers like Coleridge, Lord Penzance, or James Coolidge Carter. That seems to have been the more or less conscious aim of the medieval faculty; at least, its curriculum tended that way. Let us have all the science there is, let us have all the useful knowledge there is, but let us have them from the scientific schools, and leave the colleges and the universities free to employ themselves upon the enormous resources of useless knowledge, which are of such incalculable value, and are now so completely neglected that one could make out a pretty good case for the thesis that the world is perishing of inattention to the discipline of useless knowledge.” (Albert Jay Nock, A Journal of These Days, 1934)

“7 September — The worst thing I see about life at the present time is that whereas the ability to think has to be cultivated by practice, like the ability to dance or to play the violin, everything is against that practice. Speed is against it, commercial amusements, noise, the pressure of mechanical diversions, reading-habits, even studies, are all against it. Hence a whole race is being bred without the power to think, or even the disposition to think, and one can not wonder that public opinion, qua opinion, does not exist.” (Albert Jay Nock, A Journal of These Days, 1934)

“19 June — The day of the liberal and the constitutionalist seems to be over, and it is high time. The war made hay of liberalism, and our Constitution has been so consistently clapperclawed into the service of base purposes that popular superstition about its sanctity has evaporated. The political liberal is the most dangerous person in the world to be entrusted with power, for no one knows what he will do with it; and the worst of him is, that whatever he does, he will persuade himself that it was the divinely-appointed thing to be done, e.g., Mr. Wilson at the Peace Conference. The old-style, hard-baked Tory had character; you knew where he was; also you knew there were some things he would not do and could not be persuaded to do. The liberal has no character, only stubbornness; and there is nothing he will not do. Of all the crew of crooks that were herded at Versailles, the only one I had a grain of respect for was old Clémenceau. You could do business with Clémenceau; he was out for everything in sight, and made no bones of saying so. He also seemed to take a grim delight in showing up the shuffling piosities of his accomplices. I have known many political liberals in my lifetime, some very highly placed, and there is none of them whom I would willingly see again, either in this world or in the next.”

“20 June — I spent an hour yesterday in the Sunday crowd on Narragansett Pier beach, formerly a resort of the social elect, in the days when transportation was slow and costly. Now it is a sort of Coney Island for all of Providence, Pawtucket, etc., who can coax a decrepit automobile to carry them that far. On principle, I am glad of the change; the old régime had little to recommend it but its amenities, which were mostly superficial enough, but agreeable to share. The crowd that descends on Narragansett now is dreadful. Of all the masses of mankind, I think, the most ignoble and repulsive is the mass of the small bourgeois. In their progress from the proletariat they have left its solid virtues behind them, and carried with them nothing but its rapacity and hideousness; nor have they taken on anything from the upper bourgeois but his narrowness, timidity, and an exaggeration of his petty conventions. Mr. Jefferson says that some of his diplomatic colleagues ‘had learned nothing of diplomacy but its suspicions’. These people are like that, and they are almost all the people we have. More completely now than when Matthew Arnold said it, we are like England ‘with the Barbarians left out, and the Populace nearly so’.” (Albert Jay Nock, A Journal of These Days, 1934)