“Titles for Unwritten Articles, Essays, and Stories” — Samuel Butler

“Titles for Unwritten Articles, Essays, and Stories”

from Samuel Butler’s Note-Books

1. The Art of Quarrelling.
2. Christian Death-beds.
3. The Book of Babes and Sucklings.
4. Literary Struldbrugs.
5. The Life of the World to Come.
6. The Limits of Good Faith.
7. Art, Money and Religion.
8. The Third Class Excursion Train, or Steam-boat, as the Church of the Future.
9. The Utter Speculation involved in much of the good advice that is commonly given—as never to sell a reversion, etc.
10. Tracts for Children, warning them against the virtues of their elders.
11. Making Ready for Death as a Means of Prolonging Life.  An Essay concerning Human Misunderstanding.  So McCulloch [a fellow art-student at Heatherley’s, a very fine draughtsman] used to say that he drew a great many lines and saved the best of them.  Illusion, mistake, action taken in the dark—these are among the main sources of our progress.
12. The Elements of Immorality for the Use of Earnest Schoolmasters.
13. Family Prayers: A series of perfectly plain and sensible ones asking for what people really do want without any kind of humbug.
14. A Penitential Psalm as David would have written it if he had been reading Herbert Spencer.
15. A Few Little Crows which I have to pick with various people.
16. The Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity.
17. The Battle of the Prigs and Blackguards.
18. That Good may Come.
19. The Marriage of Inconvenience.
20. The Judicious Separation.
21. Fooling Around.
22. Higgledy-Piggledy.
23. The Diseases and Ordinary Causes of Mortality among Friendships.
24. The finding a lot of old photographs at Herculaneum or Thebes; and they should turn out to be of no interest.
25. On the points of resemblance and difference between the dropping off of leaves from a tree and the dropping off of guests from a dinner or a concert.
26. The Sense of Touch: An essay showing that all the senses resolve themselves ultimately into a sense of touch, and that eating is touch carried to the bitter end.  So there is but one sense—touch—and the amœba has it.  When I look upon the foraminifera I look upon myself.
27. The China Shepherdess with Lamb on public-house chimney-pieces in England as against the Virgin with Child in Italy.
28. For a Medical pamphlet: Cant as a means of Prolonging Life.
29. For an Art book: The Complete Pot-boiler; or what to paint and how to paint it, with illustrations reproduced from contemporary exhibitions and explanatory notes.
30. For a Picture: St. Francis preaching to Silenus.  Fra Angelico and Rubens might collaborate to produce this picture.
31. The Happy Mistress.  Fifteen mistresses apply for three cooks and the mistress who thought herself nobody is chosen by the beautiful and accomplished cook.
32. The Complete Drunkard.  He would not give money to sober people, he said they would only eat it and send their children to school with it.
33. The Contented Porpoise.  It knew it was to be stuffed and set up in a glass case after death, and looked forward to this as to a life of endless happiness.
34. The Flying Balance.  The ghost of an old cashier haunts a ledger, so that the books always refuse to balance by the sum of, say, £1.15.11.  No matter how many accountants are called in, year after year the same error always turns up; sometimes they think they have it right and it turns out there was a mistake, so the old error reappears.  At last a son and heir is born, and at some festivities the old cashier’s name is mentioned with honour.  This lays his ghost.  Next morning the books are found correct and remain so.
35. A Dialogue between Isaac and Ishmael on the night that Isaac came down from the mountain with his father.  The rebellious Ishmael tries to stir up Isaac, and that good young man explains the righteousness of the transaction—without much effect.
36. Bad Habits: on the dropping them gradually, as one leaves off requiring them, on the evolution principle.
37. A Story about a Freethinking Father who has an illegitimate son which he considers the proper thing; he finds this son taking to immoral ways, e.g. he turns Christian, becomes a clergyman and insists on marrying.
38. For a Ballad: Two sets of rooms in some alms-houses at Cobham near Gravesend have an inscription stating that they belong to “the Hundred of Hoo in the Isle of Grain.”  These words would make a lovely refrain for a ballad.
39. A story about a man who suffered from atrophy of the purse, or atrophy of the opinions; but whatever the disease some plausible Latin, or imitation-Latin name must be found for it and also some cure.
40. A Fairy Story modelled on the Ugly Duckling of Hans Andersen about a bumptious boy whom all the nice boys hated.  He finds out that he was really at last caressed by the Huxleys and Tyndalls as one of themselves.
41. A Collection of the letters of people who have committed suicide; and also of people who only threaten to do so.  The first may be got abundantly from reports of coroners’ inquests, the second would be harder to come by.
42. The Structure and Comparative Anatomy of Fads, Fancies and Theories; showing, moreover, that men and women exist only as the organs and tools of the ideas that dominate them; it is the fad that is alone living.
43. An Astronomical Speculation: Each fixed star has a separate god whose body is his own particular solar system, and these gods know each other, move about among each other as we do, laugh at each other and criticise one another’s work.  Write some of their discourses with and about one another.