Octoroon?

judahandmicahadded this on 10 Nov 2009

judahandmicahoriginally submitted this to Shobal Vail Clevenger Family Tree on 19 Oct 2009

According to Victor Robinson, in his book, "The Don Quixote of Psychiatry", published
in 1919, Mariana Knapp was a Southern girl, at school in the North when her
engagement to some other man was terminated because it was discovered that she
and her two sisters were octoroons. See page 37.

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Location http://www.archive.org/stream/donquixoteofpsyc00robiiala#page/37/mode/1up

Attached to • Mariana Mollie Knapp (1845 - 1910)

Wireless From Mars

judahandmicahadded this on 10 Nov 2009
judahandmicahoriginally submitted this to Shobal Vail Clevenger Family Tree on 9 Oct 2009

WIRELESS FROM MARS

The wireless telegraph operator merely took down the words as they came, with
no idea of their origin, or for whom they were intended. Some previous understanding
doubtless had been made as to a future communication which was now radiating to
stations other than the one intended,
And this was the message:
The planet you call Mars is a billion years old, of your length of years. About a
hundred million years ago we had passed through all the monkey stages of development
that earth folks are still experiencing, and began to see that our mountains were washing
down, our seas were drying up, and that sandy deserts were not only spreading over the
planetary surface, but rains were ceasing, the atmosphere was thinning and vegetation
was scarcer and more difficult to cultivate.
Many contending nations killed each other off, however, before the survivors
would listen to astronomers, geologists and other scientists as to what should be done to
prolong the lives of the miserable few who remained scattered over the surface wherever
an oasis permitted existence. Even then false teachers misled the people for their own
ends, as your politicians and sovereigns do with you.
Finally a remnant of survivors began a co-operative system of engineering
expedients to widen the oases upon which they lived, the seas having by this time entirely
disappeared, the hills being flattened, and the extremes of alternating temperatures killing
off everything animate, whether plant or animal, save in a few green spots here and there;
and in only one of these was there any intelligent plan for bettering conditions; the fittest
to survive in the other places up to that time being those exerting the most fraud or force.
But nature could not be controlled by such means, and when it was found out that
intelligence had increased possibilities in the one spot of expanding cultivation, it was
suggested that an expedition should set out to wrest the place from its inhabitants and
enslave them so the conquerors could enjoy the new land without working themselves.
But only a few families reached the destination, and they were in a sorry
condition appealing for help to those they meant to injure, as repentant miscreants do, till
the next chance they have for mischief.
By ages of training the owners of the last farms and factories were so different
from the race that had perished, the remnant of the portion which had taken refuge with
the intelligent workers became a serious problem to the good community. The old plan
would have been to slay them; isolate them by jailing or banish them; but recognizing
their common origin from remote monkeydom and being unable to transport them to
earth, where they would soon be riding in automobiles about Newport, buying up
legislatures and as New York bankers duping weak minded secretaries of the treasury
into handling over the national billions for gambling purposes. So the martians took up
the burden and started in for conversion, knowing that thousands of years must pass
before results were apparent. And a big thorn in the social body was this pariah set, for
eternally were they cooking up schemes for turmoil, wreckage, self aggrandizement, and
to subvert all plans of the community upon whose hospitality they lived. Eventually,
however, the malcontents grew up to the standards of the others and became more like
their hosts, with reversions here and there in hospitals and asylums.
Through dire necessity the planet was worked over into canal systems to bring the
water from the poles as the ice melted, guiding it to the hot equator whence it was
returned by parallel canals to melt more snow and to provide for navigation and irrigation
of widening oases with their vegetation.
In northern summer time the polar ice and snow partly melted flowed southward,
even beyond the equator. In the northern winter the south pole furnished water to the
southern set of canals connecting with the north system, the heated equator water
warming the temperate regions. The “white spots” above the equator are lagoons for
shunted ice to remain till melted and returned to the canals as water. Cold water runs
from poles to equator and beyond and back again in other canals as warmed water,
accounting for the doubling of canals so puzzling to you earthly observers.
We have engineering methods here you could not understand, as you have not
advanced in physics and chemistry enough to comprehend them. We are also vastly
stronger than the earth people, not only bodily but mentally, so that we know all that you
do and more you are incapable of knowing, though the entire secret lies in what a teacher
told you a couple of thousand years ago, whose words you repeat as the parrot does, with
no meaning conveyed to most of your brains, with no actual following of what he gave
up His life to teach, for you slew Him and still persecute His real followers, heaping
wealth upon the organizations that pretend reverence for His name and memory, while
mocking His teachings.
We people of Mars are of one mind, we see the truth as in a few million years you
will be able to do, and we know of no wealthy class, no wretchedly poor such as you
have, no rulers who while claiming to be public servants rob and enslave you.
We are happy with every breath we draw of the attenuated air we still breathe, but
now the time is approaching when the air being all used up, the water vanished from the
planet, life as we now live it will have ceased, to be followed by some foreword step in
the evolution of the universe, inevitable and best for all of us, yourselves as well as us
and the other planetarians in this solar system, all of us but a crop in the universal ocean.
Your world will pass through the same experiences, for you are younger than we
are, having been cast off from the sun much later than was Mars.
You will find that vicissitudes are your best friends and instructors that working
together for the common welfare will give you the only heaven you can have on earth;
that until you pass your monkey rapacity, vanity and treachery you will not even know
that you have a soul.
As the laws of nature could not be juggled with there ceased to be use for the
other professions than the medical in charge of laboratories and hospitals, and the
engineering to superintend vast public works. The planet being one vast system of united
co-operative workings.
1909
By Shobal Vail Clevenger (1843-1920)

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Description from the author's book; "Fun in a Doctor's Life", a series of essays, thoughts and
autobiographical sketches.
Date

Location

Attached to • Shobal Vail Jr Clevenger (1843 - 1920)

Sources
judahandmicahadded this on 10 Nov 2009
judahandmicahoriginally submitted this to Shobal Vail Clevenger Family Tree on 8 Oct 2009

Name: Shobal Vail ClevengerBirth - Death: 1843-1920Source Citation: •

Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature: A Supplement. British and American
authors. Two volumes. By John Foster Kirk. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1891. (Alli
SUP) • Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Six volumes. Edited by
James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888- 1889.
(ApCAB) • Biographical Index to American Science. The seventeenth century to
1920. Compiled by Clark A. Elliott. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. (BiInAmS)
• A Dictionary of American Authors. Fifth edition, revised and enlarged. By Oscar
Fay Adams. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1904. Biographies are found in the
'Dictionary of American Authors' section which begins on page 1 and in the 'Supplement'
which begins on page 441. (DcAmAu) • Dictionary of American Biography.
Volumes 1-20. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928-1936. (DcAmB) •
Dictionary of American Medical Biography. Lives of eminent physicians of the United
States and Canada, from the earliest times. By Howard A. Kelly and Walter L. Burrage.
New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1928. (DcAmMeBi) • A Dictionary of North
American Authors Deceased before 1950. Compiled by W. Stewart Wallace. Toronto:
Ryerson Press, 1951. (DcNAA) • The National Cyclopaedia of American
Biography. Volume 5. New York: James T. White & Co., 1891. Use the Index to locate
biographies. (NatCAB 5) • The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of
Notable Americans. Brief biographies of authors, administrators, clergymen,
commanders, editors, engineers, jurists, merchants, officials, philanthropists, scientists,
statesmen, and others who are making American history. 10 volumes. Edited by Rossiter
Johnson. Boston: The Biographical Society, 1904. (TwCBDA) • Who Was Who in
America. A component volume of Who's Who in American History. Volume 4, 1961-
1968. Chicago: Marquis Who's Who, 1968. (WhAm 4)

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Description

Date

Location

Attached to • Shobal Vail Jr Clevenger (1843 -

1920)