tooth rings and taxidermy!

Thomas Phinney is trying to fund the development of fonts which revives classic American-Victorian art nouveau metal types by Hermann Ihlenburg: Columbus (1892), Columbus Initials (upright swash capitals), and the italic companion American Italic (1902).

it was perfectly acceptable for a gentleman to work obsessively at something, as long as a) he didn’t accept money for it, or b) if he did, he acted as if the money was an unfortunate and rather distasteful side effect and did everything he could to hide it. why does holmes remain in two rented rooms in baker street even though he becomes fantastically wealthy as a consulting detective? because he’s a gentleman, not some nasty grasping masher who’d buy a library of books by the leather-bound yardage. and the other great god the english worship is Fair Play. it shares many features with the previous item - playing fair doesn’t just mean following the rules of a game, it means being respectful, courteous, and even solicitous of an opponent. it means giving your opponent every chance to beat you, and accepting a win only if there seems no way to turn it aside. it certainly doesn’t mean having any nasty, pushing eagerness to beat someone else.

so, cheating at cards cut at the roots of what it meant to be a gentleman. moran has been exposed as someone who a) wants money badly enough to exert himself to get it, and b) gets it by abusing the trust and decency of the other players at the table.

Good video

Dating Advice from Dickens: A Collection of Victorian Vignettes from Brain Pickings (http://www.brainpickings.org)

Autumn, 1888. Erik Lehnsherr has returned to London, the same city where his mother was murdered almost two decades ago. Charles Xavier has abandoned upper crust society in favor of doing charity work in one of the city’s poorest districts. As an unlikely friendship begins to form between two very different men, a mysterious killer stalks women through Whitechapel, his crimes destined to live on in posterity. Tensions mount with each new victim, until the city is ready to boil over – with far reaching consequences for Erik, Charles, and possibly the world at large.

It is true that some kind of 'electrical treatment' featured among the more specialised services being offered for men in the covert and coded prostitution advertisements to be found in the racier periodicals of the day.