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Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son - toilet paper advice

My favorite quote from Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son* (wiki) (to his illegitimate son, that is; he (Chesterfield) was trying to raise him (the son) above his (the son's) lowly origins and inferior blood):
"I knew a gentleman, who was so good a manager of his time, that he would not even lose that small portion of it, which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina*: this was so much time fairly gained; and I recommend you to follow his example.

It is better than only doing what you cannot help doing at those moments; and it will made any book, which you shall read in that manner, very present in your mind. Books of science, and of a grave sort, must be read with continuity; but there are very many, and even very useful ones, which may be read with advantage by snatches, and unconnectedly; such are all the good Latin poets, except Virgil in his "Aeneid": and such are most of the modern poets, in which you will find many pieces worth reading, that will not take up above seven or eight minutes."
*Full text available at Gutenburg.

**Cloacina was the Roman goddess of sewers. She is named for cloaca, the Latin for sewer or drain. 

Remains of a shrine to her can still be today seen in the Forum in Rome, where she watched over the Cloaca Maxima or the Great Sewer. 

Pliny (the Elder) refers to the signa Cloacinae, two statues standing on the shrine. It was described and depicted in The Roman Forum: its History and its Monuments, written in 1909.

A short poem asking Cloacina to intercede in one's bathroom business is attributed to Lord Byron:
O Cloacina, Goddess of this place,
Look on thy suppliants with a smiling face.
Soft, yet cohesive let their offerings flow,
Not rashly swift nor insolently slow.

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