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275 pages, ebook
First published July 17, 2025
They only gave him a hundred lashes and sent him back to his messmates with his tail between his legs. He was killed about a week later. Cannonball took his head off.OK, first of all a hundred lashes with a cat o' nine tails would probably have left him with exposed bone and I struggle to imagine him surviving; second, after 1750 floggings were limited to 12 lashes, though a nasty captain could get around that by citing multiple offenses, 12 lashes per, so I suppose that hundred lashes is a possibility but again, seems likely fatal.
“I’ve always found that the mind does its own thing,” Solomon said. “And there’s no profit to be had in beating yourself up about it.”"Does its own thing"? "Beating yourself up"? Pretty sure both of those idioms arose in my lifetime, which yes I'm old but not one of the immortal undead. The real problem with lapses like these isn't the anachronism in and of itself but the fact that the language with which people express themselves both reflects and is a product of the way they think about themselves -- so when Solomon speaks of "beating yourself up" he's not articulating, or thinking about, fruitless self-castigation the way a man of the early 1800s would.
"If I have your mind and body but not your heart and soul, I don't think I could bear that."