Orts #726

Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1840:

What first suggested that necessity was grim, and made fate so fatal? The strongest is always the least violent. Necessity is a sort of Eastern cushion on which I recline. I contemplate its mild, inflexible countenance, as the haze in October days. When I am vexed I only ask to be left alone with it. Leave me to my fate. It is the bosom of time and the lap of eternity; since to be necessary is to be needful, it is only another name for inflexibility of good. How I welcome my grim fellow and aspire to be such a necessity as he! He is so flexible, and yields to me as the air to my body! I leap and dance in his midst, and play with his beard till he smiles. I greet thee, my elder brother, who with thy touch ennoblest all things. Must it be so, then it is good. Thou commendest even petty ills by thy countenance.

          [ed.note: I have no idea what any of this means. Can anybody help?]

July 12: Many famous people share this birthday, including Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau, 1817, Concord, Massachusetts); Anton Arensky (1861, Novgorod, Russia); Amedeo Modigliani (1884, Livorno, Italy); Buckminster Fuller (1895, Milton, Massachusetts); Pablo Neruda (born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, 1904, Parral, Chile); Milton Berle (1908, New York City); and Bill Cosby (1937, Philadelphia).

On July 12, 1543, King Henry VIII of England married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr.

On July 12, 1690, the armies of William III defeated those of the former James II in the Battle of the Boyne.