Futility Closet - 362-The Leatherman

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

In 1856, a mysterious man appeared on the roads of Connecticut and New York, dressed in leather, speaking to no one, and always on the move. He became famous for his circuits through the area, which ...he followed with remarkable regularity. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the Leatherman, whose real identity remains unknown. We'll also consider the orientation of churches and puzzle over some balky ponies. Intro: Western Poland contains a grove of 400 pine trees that appear to have been deliberately bent. In 1902 Montgomery Carmichael published the life story of an imaginary man. Image: The Leatherman, photographed on June 9, 1885, by James F. Rodgers at the Bradley Chidsey House, Branford, Ct. Sources for our feature: Dan W. DeLuca, ed., The Old Leather Man: Historical Accounts of a Connecticut and New York Legend, 2008. Robert Marchant, Westchester: History of an Iconic Suburb, 2018. Jim Reisler, Walk of Ages: Edward Payson Weston's Extraordinary 1909 Trek Across America, 2015. Kathleen L. Murray, Berlin, 2001. Clark Wissler, The Indians of Greater New York and the Lower Hudson, 1909. Dave Zucker, "Who Was Westchester’s Mysterious and Legendary Leatherman?" Westchester Magazine, March 24, 2021. Jon Campbell, "Mystery Man: Will Anyone Ever Know the Real Story Behind the Leatherman?" Village Voice, June 16, 2015. Steven R. Cooper, "Clues to the Past," Central States Archaeological Journal 58:3 (July 2011), 162-163. "Legend in Leather," Hudson Valley Magazine, March 11, 2010. Jim Fitzgerald, "Wanderer From 1800s Gets More Peaceful NY Grave," Associated Press, May 25, 2011. Dan Brechlin, "Leather Man Body May Yield Clues," [Meriden, Ct.] Record Journal, Jan. 3, 2011. "Would Leatherman Be Welcome Today?" New Haven Register, June 6, 2011. Pam McLoughlin, "Mystery Man," New Haven Register, Feb. 13, 2011. "Walker's Unusual Legend Is Told," Hartford Courant, Sept. 12, 2005. Steve Grant, "Final Journey Made to Resting Place of Legendary Wanderer," Hartford Courant, July 18, 1993. Steve Grant, "On the Road, Retracing the Leatherman's Path," Hartford Courant, June 20, 1993. Frances Phipps, "A Man Known by All, and by None," New York Times, Sept. 23, 1984. "The Leather Man," [Meriden, Ct.] Journal, July 19, 1886. "A Leather-Clad Hermit," Burlington [Vt.] Free Press, April 7, 1870. "Search For Clues Only Deepens 'Leatherman' Mystery," Morning Edition, National Public Radio, May 26, 2011. "Leatherman," Perception, WTIC-TV, Feb. 14, 1965. Listener mail: "Orientation of Churches," Wikipedia (accessed Oct. 10, 2021). Patrick Arneitz et al., "Orientation of Churches by Magnetic Compasses?" Geophysical Journal International 198:1 (2014), 1-7. "Brazil Nuts," ORAU Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity (accessed Oct. 10, 2021). "Natural Radioactivity in Food," EPA (accessed Oct. 14, 2021). "Brazil Nut," Wikipedia (accessed Oct. 16, 2021). G.V. Damiano, Hadhuch-Anti Hell-War: Monarchy's Victory; Constitution's Triumph; Tribute's Annihilation, 1922. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener James Venning. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 12,000 quirky curiosities from a crooked forest to a fictional biography. This is episode 362. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1856, a mysterious man appeared on the roads of Connecticut and New York, dressed in leather, speaking to no one, and always on the move.
Starting point is 00:00:36 He became famous for his circuits through the area, which he followed with remarkable regularity. In today's show, we'll describe the Leatherman, whose real identity remains unknown. We'll also consider the orientation of churches and puzzle over some balky ponies. And a quick programming note, we'll be taking the next two weeks off. There's a lot going on here right now, and we're taking some more time off to try to handle it and sort some things out.
Starting point is 00:01:07 So we'll be back with a new episode on November 15th. On October 29th, 1874, the following item appeared in the Bristol, Connecticut press. A leather man was recently seen in our streets, dressed from head to foot in a cowhide suit. Every article of his gear, save his thick-soled sabots, which were rounded at the toes, was made of leather. One of the coldest nights of last winter he was seen under the mountain, sitting near a huge rock by a fire which he had kindled. This singular being, whose nationality is unknown, converses with no one and wanders forlornly, without a seeming motive or definite object in life.
Starting point is 00:01:51 This man had made his first appearance in 1856, walking country roads and railroad tracks in Connecticut and New York State and sleeping in caves, huts, and lean-tos. He wore a long leather coat that bore pockets both outside and in. His boots had soles of spruce three-quarters of an inch thick and leather tops attached with stitches of thick wire. His cap had a leather visor, and on his back he carried a leather pack. He walked with a tin pail in his hand, and in later years he leaned on a wooden staff. From 1856 to about 1882, this man traveled between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers, making occasional trips to the Berkshires in Massachusetts and possibly wandering as far as Canada. About 1883, he adopted a regular circuit that became
Starting point is 00:02:39 famous, traversing it about once a month until his death in 1889. Throughout his life, he was the subject of intense speculation. He rarely spoke, even to those who managed to gain his trust, and no one ever learned his identity or why he kept up his constant wandering. He stood 5'7 and weighed between 140 and 170 pounds. He had a high forehead, dark blue-gray eyes, black hair, and a short black beard. He seemed to understand both French and English, and he spent his nights in a series of rock shelters and shallow caves along his route, where he tanned leather, preserved meat, apples, nuts, and berries, and sometimes kept a small garden. He would pick up cigar and cigarette butts at railroad stations, post offices, and country
Starting point is 00:03:25 stores and collect their tobacco, either chewing it or smoking it in a crude pipe of his own making. He was never aggressive. He didn't steal, confront, or molest others, and he rarely said more than a word or two to anyone. If something were offered to him freely, he would sometimes take it, particularly if he was familiar with the person who offered it, but he insisted on providing his own shelter and he wouldn't accept money. Because nothing was known about him, he became known simply as the Leather Man. More than a hundred years after his death, he remains a favorite topic for student essays, and clippings about him still fill local scrapbooks and library files. At the time, various fanciful tales were told as to his identity. One said that he was a French shoemaker named Rudolf or Randolph Mosse. The story ran that he
Starting point is 00:04:12 had been married less than a year when his wife had eloped to America with another man. Mosse had sold his business and pursued the pair, and after a three-year search, traced his rival to New Haven, Connecticut, where he learned that his wife had died a few months earlier. He spent two distraught nights at her tomb, and then, having lost all ambition, he made himself a suit of leather and took to trudging over the course of her travels in Connecticut, the story said, a heartbroken wanderer with only one desire, to someday rest beside his wife. A more popular story said that he was Jules Bourglais, another Frenchman disappointed by love. In this case, he'd been a student who'd been sent to Paris
Starting point is 00:04:51 to complete his education. There he had met the beautiful daughter of a wealthy leather merchant. Her father had proposed to take him into his business for a year with the understanding that if he proved himself, he would have the daughter's hand. Otherwise, he must give up all hope and leave Paris forever. Hoping to enrich his employer, the young man had speculated aggressively in the French leather market and had been heavily invested when it crashed in 1857. The father had thrown him out, and he descended into madness and made his way to America, where he wandered Connecticut wearing leather clothing, apparently as a penance for his failure. We know that this second story is fiction because the editor of the newspaper in which it had appeared admitted as much after the Leatherman's death in 1889. Various other
Starting point is 00:05:36 identities have been claimed. The regular theme is that he'd once maintained a thriving business, but that misfortune and disappointment had ruined his mind and set him wandering, seeking for the loved and lost of his youth, according to a typical account. Dan DeLuca, the modern writer who has investigated the Leatherman most deeply, believes that he was most likely born in Canada around 1839 and says there's strong evidence that he was French-Canadian, but we don't know much more than that. The most immediately distinctive thing about him, and the source of his name, was his apparel. In 1877, a Litchfield Inquirer wrote, He has on shoes of leather, and his cap, coat, and pants are made of bootlegs curiously sewed with leather strings.
Starting point is 00:06:17 He asked for something to eat, and he has not refused, for all wish to examine his clothes while he is eating. not refused for all wish to examine his clothes while he is eating. He seems to have made his garments by cutting soft tanned leather from the tops of discarded boots and then sewing them together with long strips of calf leather, at least some of which he obtained from a tanner in Woodbury, Connecticut named Alexander Gordon. In 1881, the Woodbury Reporter noted that Gordon had offered to oil up the Leatherman's clothing, which had become dry and hard from exposure to the weather. That operation had used up two quarts of oil. Multiple sources say that the suit weighed 66 pounds, or 30 kilograms, which strikes me as a huge amount of weight for someone who walks 10 miles a day. How would they know how much his suit weighed?
Starting point is 00:07:01 I don't know for certain, but I have a guess. how much his suit weighed? I don't know for certain, but I have a guess. After he died, I'll come to this, they put his body on display briefly at the Undertakers and the suit was displayed separately.
Starting point is 00:07:10 So that at least would have been an opportunity to weigh it. Oh, I see. My first thought was that I can't possibly be right. That's just so much weight. But apparently... I don't know how heavy leather is
Starting point is 00:07:19 or I guess how thick it was or how much of it there was, but... Apparently it is. In his leather bag, he carried a tobacco pouch, pipes, an awl, and a frying pan. And in his pockets, he carried a hatchet and possibly some other tools. It's also said that he carried a prayer book in French and was thought to be Roman Catholic because he refused to eat meat on Friday. But I should add that it's terribly hard to tell which assertions about him
Starting point is 00:07:42 are known to be true and which are just rumor. The general outline of the route he followed is well known, though it varied somewhat over time. Chauncey L. Hotchkiss began keeping track of his travels in 1883, and he published his findings in the Hartford Globe two years later. At that time, he'd worked out that the Leatherman was traveling clockwise in a 366-mile circuit between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers and completing one lap every 34 days. Why he kept moving is not exactly clear. An 1885 report in the New Haven Evening Register says that each town he visited had one or more places that would give him food, but that these together typically served for only about two meals, so he had to keep moving. The
Starting point is 00:08:25 newspaper adds, there are few callings which we attend to with more unfailing punctuality than our stomachs, and as leathery has only that one calling, it is not to be wondered at that he attends strictly to it. Whatever the reason, his punctuality was remarkable. In March 1883, the New Haven Daily Palladium wrote, whatever his aim or purpose, he trudges along as if he had the most important business in the world to perform, and as if it was a matter of life and death that he should reach a certain destination at an appointed time. He is always going west when he passes here, and it is always in the early part of the day. He has usually gone 34 days, sometimes 35 in the winter season, and he has been known in fine weather to make the round trip in 33 days.
Starting point is 00:09:08 His coming can be calculated with almost as much certainty as that of an eclipse. He passed during the morning of March 6th and may be expected again about April 9th at 9 o'clock in the morning. He was so reliable that a number of residents along the route began to compile timetables. He was so reliable that a number of residents along the route began to compile timetables. In 1885, the Hartford Globe published a listing showing the month, day, and hour on which the Leatherman had passed the Forestville post office in the prior two years. It found that his appearances were predictable to within two hours. Quote, we have another table of his passage west, past Naugatuck Station. This varies a day or two, in one case three days, but since February he has made exact time, passing Naugatuck Station each 34th day. In 1889, the New Haven Evening Register
Starting point is 00:09:52 published a six-year timetable kept by S.A. Hale of Signal Tower No. 20 on the Naugatuck Junction Consolidated Road. Hale found that between 1883 and 1889, the shortest interval between the Leatherman's appearances had been 34 days and the longest had been 40, but that in 1884 and 5, he'd made 19 consecutive trips of 34 days each. In 1876, the Deep River New Era noted that the Leatherman had been seen to head south invariably on all his journeys through that Connecticut town. invariably on all his journeys through that Connecticut town. It added, We suppose there is but one Leatherman, and him a revolver. If not, then we conclude that there must be a large stock of them somewhere north of us, and also that by this time there must be a large lot of them south of us, for the Leatherman, or Leathermen as the case may be, have traveled south through deep river at intervals more or less frequent for the last twenty years or so. We trust there is but one, because
Starting point is 00:10:45 should so many Leathermen happen to concentrate in one place, it would be very confusing to the eye to pick out your own particular Leatherman. And besides, in a large quantity of Leathermen, there might possibly be a good deal too much of a leathery smell. Many men had been cast out of work in this period, and some had become homeless. In 1879, both Connecticut and New York passed so-called tramp laws that required these people to be imprisoned. But the leather man was never arrested. A writer in the Port Chester Journal wrote in February 1870, why he has chosen this solitary hermit life, we know not. His story may be a sad one, and if we knew it, we might sympathize with him in his loneliness. But as it
Starting point is 00:11:25 is, let us cast no shadows across his sunshine, but with kind words and acts may we soften his sorrow and make his burden no heavier for our coming in contact with him. I am confident from three years acquaintance that no one need fear him in property or person. Make him no trouble, and I am sure you will never regret it. It's interesting to me that he was one of many homeless people in this period and in that area, but he's the only one we're still talking about 130 years later. He was distinctive enough to be remembered, I suppose. Particularly as we know so little about him. He said almost nothing to anyone.
Starting point is 00:11:57 He was only known for his appearance and his habits, but he's picked out somehow. History just sort of selects certain people to remember. And then forgets all the others. Yeah. That is kind of almost arbitrary sometimes. Also, there's something about him that's endearing. I don't know even how to say this, but I found it even as I was researching him. People at the time, if you read all these newspaper stories, people are concerned about him and just looking out for his welfare.
Starting point is 00:12:19 But I just find even now, all these years later, I sort of find him appealing in a way that i can't possibly articulate because we don't know the first thing we don't know anything about his history for certain really we don't know anything about his personality or but he seems like a sympathetic character somehow yeah you find yourself anything you know hoping that he's okay and hoping that he'll keep succeeding and it's just hard to put your finger on what it is about him that sets him apart so much the leatherman became such a fixture in the area that he gave rise to a sort of illusion. People in their 70s said they remembered just such a man traveling the same course when they'd been children, and they said that he'd been old even then. The New York Times asked, how is it if the old people remember him as an old man when they were young,
Starting point is 00:13:02 that he is so young-looking now? Must it not be that he is a successor to the original Leather Man? If so, has he ever penetrated his predecessor's secret, or does he know aught of his final disposition? Another paper suggested that perhaps walking itself had preserved him. Whatever the case, he wasn't immortal. Though he was still on time as late as 1888, he was beginning to totter, and a cancerous growth was seen on his lip. That December in Middletown, the Humane Society arrested him and took him to a hospital, but within an hour he'd escaped. He was found dead in his cave on the George Dell Farm in Mount Pleasant, New York on March 24, 1889. It was determined that he'd died three days earlier of blood poisoning due to cancer.
Starting point is 00:13:44 The coroner estimated his age at 50 years. In place of a name, the death certificate said only that he was known as the Leather Man. His remains were displayed at White and Dorsey's undertaking rooms with his leather suit nearby. Presumably, this is when the suit was weighed. Then he was buried in the Potter's Field at Sparta Cemetery in Ossining, New York. The grave was marked at first with nothing more than a pipe. A stone and plaque were added in 1953, but these unfortunately identified him as Jules Bourglet
Starting point is 00:14:12 after the story of the disgraced leather investor that's now known to be false. That state of affairs wasn't corrected until 2011, when a new highway threatened to encroach on the grave and the Ossining Historical Society arranged to move the remains to another part of the cemetery. It was hoped that in the process, DNA testing might shed some light on the Leatherman's origins, but it turned out that the grave contained no visible remains of the body, only coffin nails. University of Connecticut archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni, who supervised the excavation, said that time and traffic over the shallow grave
Starting point is 00:14:45 site had destroyed both soft and hard tissue. So the nails and some soil from the grave were put into a new pine coffin, which was topped with wildflowers and lowered into the hillside well above the road, after a Presbyterian minister read the 23rd Psalm. A boulder now bears a plaque that says only, The Leather Man. Ossining Historical Society President Norman MacDonald said, The Leather Man was a mystery in life, and he's going to be a mystery in death. The New Haven Daily Palladium had written in March 1883, Whatever his secret is, it will die and be buried with its owner. Whatever malign influences have worked to create this strange individual life,
Starting point is 00:15:25 whether he suffers from hereditary curse or carries in his heart the terrible history of undiscovered crime, will never be known. It would no doubt be both interesting and instructive could one trace out the long line of evil influences which have combined in his own early career, as well as in the lives of those who came before him, and resulted finally in this strange, weird, sorrowful life, over which hangs the veil of silence and mystery. I have updates on a couple of older puzzles, and I think we can manage these without any spoilers. One of the puzzles in episode 353 asked how someone who was lost while hiking in the mountains was able to figure out which direction was which just by looking at a cabin.
Starting point is 00:16:19 Marcus Seltman sent in an email with the subject line, Lateral Thinking Puzzles, episode from 9 August. Hi, hey, from Sweden. I am listening to that episode right now and the first puzzle about the cabin. And I just have to tell you until the very end, I was sure that the cabin was a kind of chapel, which you often find in, for example, the Alps. And since churches are usually oriented with the entrance on the west and altar on the east, that'd tell you the cardinal directions. Not sure if this is the other version of the puzzle you talked about, but I find it a good alternative either way. And during the puzzle,
Starting point is 00:16:56 I was actually referring to a puzzle I'd gotten really stuck on in episode 17 when I'd neglected to check what was meant by cabin and thus made the fatal lateral thinking puzzle error of assuming it meant what I thought it meant. For those who don't happen to remember that puzzle from way back in 2014, in that case, it actually meant an airplane cabin. But as to Marcus's point, it turns out, unbeknownst to me, that there actually is something called orientation of churches with its own Wikipedia page. And this is the custom of Christian churches being designed with the altar at the east end of the church and the main entrance at the west. According to Wikipedia, many early churches
Starting point is 00:17:36 were designed in this way, and since the 8th century, most churches are oriented. Although I should warn people who now think that they can use this as a way to tell directions that the page also says, even in the many churches where the altar end is not actually to the east, terms such as east end, west door, north aisle are commonly used as if the church were oriented. Rules dictating the orientation of churches date back to the fourth century in Eastern Christianity, though many churches in Western Christianity were designed following a custom of the opposite arrangement, with the entrance to the East and the altar at the West End, which, as opposed to orientation, is called Occidentation. Occidentation was the rule for the early Roman churches, and although Roman churches began following the rule of orientation in the 8th or
Starting point is 00:18:25 9th century, Occidentation was found as late as the 11th century in areas that were under Frankish rule. The emphasis on the orientation of churches seems to have started waning after the 15th century, and many of the churches that even were supposedly oriented have a somewhat inexact orientation to the east for different reasons, such as practical considerations raised by other buildings or roads or other aspects of local topography. Also, while churches were supposed to be oriented to line up with the rising sun at the equinox, it seems that some churches might have been oriented to the sunrise on the feast day of the church's patron saint instead. I also wondered if there might not have been
Starting point is 00:19:05 issues caused by, as we discussed in episode 335, the date of the equinox being rather off in the old Julian calendar. This was fixed in the new Gregorian calendar, but countries didn't even start switching over to that until the late 16th century. And as we noted in the earlier episode, some didn't make that switch until the early 20th century. So if they were orienting churches based on the sunrise at the equinox, but had the date of that rather wrong, it seemed to me that that would also throw off the exact orientation. So overall, I suppose in an emergency situation where you have nothing to help guide you other than a church, you could try using this principle.
Starting point is 00:19:47 But it sounds like it would help you a lot if you knew more about that specific church. It is a creative solution to that puzzle. Yeah, and definitely one I would not have thought of. The puzzle in episode 356 was about why someone had set off radiation alarms at work. Orion Sauter wrote, Hello, Closeteers. I just listened to this week's episode 356, and the puzzle immediately reminded me of a story I heard about the radioactivity of Brazil nuts. The nuts contain enough radium to be detectable over background levels, so my even less deadly answer to the puzzle is that the engineer was carrying some nuts in his pockets for a snack. Thanks as always for the work you put into the blog and podcast. And Orion sent a link to a page on the Oak Ridge Associated University's Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity site on Brazil nuts and their radioactivity,
Starting point is 00:20:33 which explains that these nuts do contain radium. The extensive root system of the Brazil nut trees can concentrate naturally occurring radioactive materials if they are present in the soil. And you can find even higher radium concentrations in the leaves and cork of the tree than you do in the nuts. It seems that the level of radioactivity of the nuts is not usually high enough to be detectable with simple radiation detectors, although more sophisticated measurements can detect higher activity levels in the powdered meat of the nuts compared to background levels. higher activity levels in the powdered meat of the nuts compared to background levels.
Starting point is 00:21:10 The Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity says that while the concentrations of radium vary between samples of Brazil nuts, overall they are 1,000 times higher than those in other foods. But studies have found that most of the radium ingested from Brazil nuts isn't retained in the body, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that the levels of natural radiation found in foods such as Brazil nuts don't warrant any special actions because of the extremely low levels present. So I don't think that anyone is warning against eating Brazil nuts, but it does make for an interesting alternative answer to the puzzle. It's funny, we just did a story on the show here just a couple weeks ago, I think. Yeah, just a few weeks ago. Involving radium and the health effects of ingesting that. Right. And I do want to stress that that was probably very different levels of radium than from eating some
Starting point is 00:21:55 Brazil nuts. Yeah, I went back and looked at my notes and Brazil nuts don't come up at all. They don't come up. In episode 351, Greg mentioned that he'd come across a reference to a very odd book published by G.V. Damiano in 1922 called Hadhook Anti-Hell War. The book was said to be fairly incomprehensible, and Greg said that he hadn't been able to find a copy to see it for himself. But both John Alvis and Eric A. Cohen came through with a link to a digitized copy of the book at a library at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Eric said, a while ago you mentioned this book. Well, I have a friend at Trinity College, also a fan of the show, and he has friends everywhere, including the college library. And here we are. And it is incomprehensible in this sort of endearing way.
Starting point is 00:22:42 Thank you, both of you, for sending that link. Uncomprehensible, in this sort of endearing way. Thank you, both of you, for sending that link. I've read or at least skimmed the book, and I think the description I was given of it was accurate, which is just very hard to tell what's going on. Starting with the cover, the title of the book on the cover is Hodhook Anti-Hell War, and anti-hell is hyphenated there,
Starting point is 00:23:00 which makes a good bit of sense. An anti-hell war is a war against hell. Don't ask me what a hodhook is. It's in the book, but I have no idea what it means. But by the time, even as you get as far as the title page, it's already changed. The punctuation has changed to hodhook hyphen anti-Hell hyphen war, which I can't make any sense of at all. So make of that what you will. It is, I think, generally about a war against Hell, but it's very hard to tell any of the specifics. A preface says,
Starting point is 00:23:26 Here I announce that God permitted his imperial militia to wage against his universal tribute. By his permission, I became constituted, allotted, and enlisted imperial militia. At my enlistment, I engaged into a terrible conflict that I smashed the entire opponent universal trenches until I attained the final victory. Which gives a flavor, I guess, for the language. The whole thing is like that. It reads like a translation of another translation or something like that. Yeah, you had mentioned in episode 351 that part of the problem, at least, might have been that English wasn't this person's first language.
Starting point is 00:24:03 So yeah, so you're fighting both against the language itself, and it's not clear whether the ideas behind it are coherent or not. It's very hard to make sense of. I think God wants Damiano to go to hell and either do battle there or write something. It's terribly unclear. The whole thing recalls Dante, though it's written in almost unintelligible prose. He writes, While I were journeying in a
Starting point is 00:24:25 forest, unaspecting for any event, from the right, heared a one voice calling alert. From such voice, I started to observe and to look for ever directions. He meets an old man who explains his task. Damiano says, I will inform thee that my name is Gaetano Damiano, born at 25th day of March, 1874 a.m., the day of the Annunciation. So Damiano is explicitly the hero, but that's the only time he mentions his identity, which makes it hard to understand. Having even read the thing, I still can't tell whether he thinks he actually did these things or whether it's some kind of allegory or fiction. I just can't tell. Anyway, at the vestibule of what I think is hell, there's an inscription that reads, I am of eternal duration,
Starting point is 00:25:12 and who shall enter here, he will not return. But after that, it's terribly hard to tell what's happening. I can tell you that the first circle of hell contains cows, the second contains buffalo, and the third contains a cave of counterfeit gold and three men with round feet. And after that, even I can't tell you what's going on. He has a sword, I know that, and he sort of vaguely does battle with a lot of intimidating things that aren't described very well. We're told that the final struggle lasts about an hour, after which the officers of hell flee into a governmental tenement, and then somehow he has to tame a horse, which he fights with a stick for an hour. When the horse is domesticated, his work is complete, and I guess he goes on to write this book.
Starting point is 00:25:56 But that's all I can tell you. It's all, and you can hear the bits of Dante in there, sort of translated twice. And you can hear the bits of Dante in there, sort of translated twice. But it's about 500 pages long, and I don't understand what he thought he was doing. I mean, it must have cost him a lot of effort to write. But even having read it, I don't understand what he was undertaking to do or what he thought people would get out of reading it. Well, we'll have a link to this rather unique book in the show notes for anyone who wants to see it for themselves. And Jack Doherty, professor and director of educational studies at Trinity College, asked if we could please give a shout out to Christina Blyer and her colleagues at the Watkinson Library,
Starting point is 00:26:38 as they're the ones who did the work to digitize and share the book online. So thank you, Christina and colleagues. And thank you to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate all your comments and follow-ups. So if you have any to send to us, please send those to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation and he's going to attempt to work out what's going. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation,
Starting point is 00:27:07 and he's going to attempt to work out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. We always make a good attempt. This puzzle comes from James Venning in Tasmania, Australia. He thoughtfully sent a few different versions of the puzzle, and this is one of them with some mild rewording by me. In 1902, a Christian mission came to Mount Kira, New South Wales, Australia. Soon after, the ponies who worked the local coal mine stopped working efficiently. Why? Wow, good puzzle. A Christian mission. 1902.
Starting point is 00:27:39 Yes. Okay. Now, you said the ponies stopped working efficiently yes what possible connection alright that's the lateral thinking part um is the geographical location particularly important
Starting point is 00:28:00 no except that there's a coal mine okay do I need to know more about specifically what the ponies were doing? No. They were just working at a coal mine? Yes. Presumably hauling coal or something? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:12 Working efficiently. Okay. Wow. All right. Christian mission. Were those... Okay. Sorry, you probably covered some of this.
Starting point is 00:28:22 Was the Christian mission close to the coal mine? Must have been. No, it was like a Christian mission came to convert some of the people to Christianity. Right. So they showed up, and soon after that, some of the ponies stopped working efficiently. All right. That implies that some of the workers were converted to Christianity? Yes.
Starting point is 00:28:42 Were the ponies converted to Christianity? I don't know about the ponies. I have to ask everything. Okay. But yes, some of the workers were converted to Christianity. Alright, so the workers then, those workers, would have changed their behavior. Yes. In some way that ended up affecting the ponies.
Starting point is 00:28:59 Were the ponies actually working in the mine, do you know? I do not know, and it doesn't matter. They may not have been. They may not have been. All right. So the human's behavior changed. Yes. Because of their observation of the Christianity? Yes.
Starting point is 00:29:16 They started attending church or practicing? It's not that? It's not that. Observing the Sabbath? No. Did their hours change? No. I mean, is the Sabbath? No. Did their hours change? No. I mean, is that important?
Starting point is 00:29:26 No. All right. These were minors themselves? Yes. The men who worked with, obviously, with the ponies? Yes. Why would you? And something about their behavior changed in a way that made the ponies have trouble with their jobs.
Starting point is 00:29:47 Okay. So it's not just to be, yeah. So it's not just that they were using the ponies in a different way deliberately. They were trying to use them in the same way. Exactly the same way. But the ponies worked less efficiently. Yes. The ponies were not understanding the men as well anymore because of the men had changed
Starting point is 00:30:04 something. And so the ponies were not understanding their communications as well anymore because the men had changed something. And so the ponies were not understanding their communications as well because they were trained for commands and stuff. Verbal commands. Yes. Okay, so why would converting to Christianity change the commands you'd give to a pony?
Starting point is 00:30:18 I feel like we're making some progress here. Do I need to know specifically what the commands were? No. Literally? No. Do I need to know specifically what the commands were? No. Literally?
Starting point is 00:30:24 No. Okay, so these were the words... Would the workers involved here have said that their speech was impeded in some way? Not impeded, but changed. So this was deliberate. Not that they were trying to confuse the pony. Right, yes, they deliberately changed their speech after converting to Christianity. Did they change their language, the actual words they were saying? Some of them.
Starting point is 00:30:52 Like if it was, I don't know what you say to a pony in a coal mine, but if they decided later that that was blasphemous or something, see what I mean? Yeah. If they were using phrases that were now prescribed by their new religion, it would change the sound of what they were saying and the ponies would be... That's exactly it. James said, the answer is that the pit ponies working in the mines could no longer understand the men because they were no longer using profanities.
Starting point is 00:31:16 214 of the town folk had been converted to Christianity and without the swearing, the horses could not understand their commands. And he cites part of an article from the Illawarra Mercury, which is a local newspaper, from 26 February 1902, which says, The mission at Mount Kira is responsible for a vast amount of good. An old employee connected with the Mount Kira mine for the last 40 years avers that less swearing has taken place during the last few days than has ever been the case before.
Starting point is 00:31:41 The horses employed therein failed to understand their commands, they being unaccompanied with the usual emphasis. That's a great puzzle. And James says the same thing is said to have happened in Wales, not New South, but the real Wales in 1904. So thanks so much to James for sending that puzzle about surprising consequences.
Starting point is 00:31:59 We are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles. So if you have one for us to try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And just a reminder that we'll be off for two weeks. In the meantime, if you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of our show and check out some bonus content like outtakes, extra lateral thinking puzzles, more discussions on some of the stories and peaks behind the scenes of the show, please see our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futility closet,
Starting point is 00:32:30 or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also graze through Greg's omnium gatherum of over 12,000 beguiling bagatelles, browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the episode with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or feedback for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's outstanding brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back on November 15th.

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