Hpe, Lve, Valur and ?

"Black stared into his tankard, while the tavern clock ticked sixty times. ' I hate things with an O in their names, ' cried Black.  'That goes for clocks and parrots.'  He threw his tankard at the clock and broke it open, but there was nothing inside but works, no rubies, no emeralds, and no sapphires and no map.

Littlejack, the man with the map. (by Ronald Searle)

'The parrot's name is Magraw,' said Littlejack. ' There aint no O in that.'
…
Black stood up and smote the table with his fist. ' I'll get rid of O, in upper case and lower,' cried the man in black.  'I'll issue an edict.  All words in books or signs with an O in them shall have the O erased or painted out. We'll print new books and paint new signs without an O in them.'

And so the locksmith became a lcksmith, and the bootmaker a btmaker, and people whispered like conspirators when they said the names. Loves Labours Lost  and Mother Goose flattened out like a pricked balloon.  Books were bks and Robin Hood was Rbinhd.  Little Goody Two shoes lost her O's and so did Goldilocks, and the former became a whisper, and the latter sounded like a key jiggled in a clock.  It was impossible to read 'cockadoodledoo' aloud and parents gave up reading to their children, and some gave up reading altogether, and their search for the precious jewels went on."

Hope, Love, Valour and Freedom!  and a Happy New Year

The Wonderful O  James Thurber
© the estate of James Thurber,
Ronald Searle illustration for Penguin Books

'Where the remote Bermudas rise'

"Each time I went down I made a drawing: there was no need to wander about and search for a subject; wherever I looked there was something new to draw."

BERMUDA

Blue angel fish pass and repass in scores                           Three miles from the shore a ring of coral rises from deep water

The drawings printed on this and the eleven following pages are direct reproductions from the author's pencil sketches made on Xylonite while he was actually under water.

Blue Angels and Whales    Robert Gibbings

Henry Mill's patent

"The invention of the typewriter, or rather an attempt to invent one, belongs to the last year of Queen Anne's reign.  On January 7th, 1714, she granted a patent to one Henry Mill, later engineer to the New River Water Company  -- the company which Anne's great-grandfather had helped found  -- for  'An Artificial Machine or Method for Impressing or Transcribing Letters Single or Progressively one after another, as in Writing, whereby all Writing whatever may be Engrossed in Paper or Parchment  so Neat and Exact as not to be distinguished from print.' "

The Jacobeans at Home  Elizabeth Burton

Off the coast of Chile

"It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand.  I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition;  I listened, I looked round me, but I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground, to look farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one;  I could see no other impression but that one."

The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of Yorks, mariner  Daniel Defoe

[traditionally based on accounts of Andrew Selkirk's stay on Juan Fernandez]