[lit-ideas] Re: 3/6
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:44:03 -0500
EH:
In at Johns Hopkins.
John -- that's a good manly name. But Johns? What's with the sissy 's', I
ask you? Well, not only I, but Mark Twain himself had trouble with the
spelling:
"In 1888, just 12 years after the university was founded, Mark Twain wrote
about this university in a letter to a friend. He said:
A few months ago I was told that the Johns Hopkins University had given
me a degree. I naturally supposed this constituted me a Member of the
Faculty, and so I started in to help as I could there. I told them I
believed they were perfectly competent to run a college as far as the higher
branches of education are concerned, but what they needed was a little help
here and there from a practical commercial man. I said the public is
sensitive to little things, and they wouldn't have full confidence in a
college that didn't know how to spell the name 'John'. "
It turns out, according to Wiki that Johns was the surname of the
great-grandmother Margaret Johns who married Gerard Hopkins (not the Manley
one). They named their son Johns Hopkins and he named his son Johns Hopkins
and he founded the University and named it Johns Hopkins (in lieu of
children?). I had always assumed it was a possessive form, but no, there's
no Hopkin's University owned by John.
Anyone here live in Baltimore?
Good luck with that. In 63 years I've never met anyone who lives in
Baltimore -- or who would own up to it at least. But it is cheaper to fly
into Baltimore if you're going to DC. They have that going for them.
Johns Hopkins from my newly minted coign of vantage is mostly honored as a
medical school. However, medicine was once a branch of philosophy -- from
which we learned that the liver is the seat of the soul, and the womb is the
source of madness. So you'd be entering an ancient philosophical tradition
should you choose John's Hopkin's University.
Good luck and congrats,
Mike Geary
Memphis, TN
home of the Memphians
who aren't Egyptian
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