Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-02-22
SOME FALLAcIEs OF FANCY.
Men Pick Up Strange Ideas and HOLD
on to Them.

Men Pick Up Strange Ideas and Hol'
on to Them.
Most children brought up in tn,
country believe that the trees max,
the wind. A leading citizen declares
the engineer had to steer the train t,
keep 1t on the track. A young writer
in his early childhood, believed tina
everything that went on In the worlt
around him was great theatrical per
formance, staged for his special ben
eft, says the New York Evening Post
These are what we call fallacies-
from the Latin verb fallere, to deceive
AS the psychologists tell us, they come
either by reasoning falsely from cor
rect premises, or reasoning correctly
from false premises. Most Of them
Especially children's, are by reasoning
falsely from correct premises. Chill.
dren are likely to have imagination
The imaginative person wants to ex.
plain the natural phenomena about
him in the most entertaining and at.
tractive way. The matter -of-fact per.
son, the hard-headed business man
seldom has any fallacies. What he
has are all decided by reasoning cor
rectly from wrong premises.
The world Is full Of fallacies, entire
ly apart from the great mass Of super
stitions, which in themselves form q
class. A little knowledge Is danger.
GUS thing, and a superficial knowledge
of the sciences will cause people to
believe that the earth Is cookie-shap-
ed (this fallacy Is fairly out Of date
now), or that orchids live on air, OF
that salamanders can really live In
fire. Other weird beliefs run parallel
course with the materia medica; fol
instance, that whooping cough can be
cured by letting a piebald horse
breathe on the child, or that measles
can be cured by taking the child
through three parishes in a day.
Weather Is the subject Of quantities
Of absurd theories, among which some
people rank first the idea that the gov
ernment forecasters can predict It
There is belief that mild weather fol-
lows a mild December-an unpleasant
augury, If true, for the present year
There were those firings of cannon and
exploding aerial bombs some years ago
to make rain fall on the thirsty farm
lands. We are even told now that cur
old pets, the equinoctial storms, are
but creatures Of the imagination.
History abounds in things which
never happened. Wellington never
said, up guards and at them" at the
battle of Waterloo. Dick Wilmington
never came to London with domestic
animal called cat. William Tell new
er shot the apple off his sons head,
and Horatius never defended the
bridge. The old story about Lady
Godiva has been absolutely disproved.
Mount Ararat was not a mountain, but
region, and Adam and Eve were new
er turned out of the Garden of Eden,
Cinderella is said to have worn glass
slippers to the famous ball at which
she made her reputation. In the old
eastern version, she wore fur slippers
The French translated 1t 'pantoufle
en- vair," and the English translators
mistook it for "pantoufle en- verre, u
which is pronounced the same.
It is harder to unlearn a thing than
to learn 1t. People who have always
slept with their windows shut and who
sew their children up in clothes for
the winter are almost beyond hope. A
Russian landlord of an apartment
house In good neighborhood uptown,
when his tenants complained to him
that the apartments were cold, and he
learned that they had their windows
open to sleep by said: "In Russia we
seal the windows up on October l and
don't open them again till May" Ten
ement mothers think green bananas
and strong tea are good for three
months-old babies, and you positively
cannot convince most Of them that
this is not so. (Well, fashions in baby
culture change from year to year. AT
least some of us pretend to think So
and there you have a -fallacy!
How can you expect the tenement
mother to stop feeding her baby beer
when the seventh edition Of Bringing
Up Little Ones" reverses half the feed
ing rules Of the sixth edition?)
That cats suck the breath out OF
sleeping babies Is an old absurdity that
dies hard. The human race Is intelli-
gent enough in this day and genera
tion to understand electric lights and
wireless, aeroplanes and automobiles;
but you still occasionally see in the
newspapers accounts of cats who have
killed babies by sucking their breath.
This is one way Of saying that the cat,
liking a warm place to lie, has jumped
ed into the baby's bed and suffocated
the occupant by lying on 1t. The av-
erage little baby is less in weight than
the average cat, and is scarcely cap
able Of driving cat away.
When a woman opens closet and a
moth flies out she thinks, as rule,
that the moth has been eating her
clothes. The case Is even on record
of young woman who, on being ask
ed what she had given a captive moth
to eat, said: "Oh, gave 1t bit of
old RAGS" OF course, the creature
does its eating in the grub stage, and
is harmless when 1t has become a fly
ing thing-save that it will produce
ravenous progeny.
The pendulum does not make the
clock go. 1t merely makes 1t go even
ly.
Steam is invisible. What we see
emerging from locomotives and the
tops of tall buildings is steam which
has begun to turn back into water.
Nails and teeth Of animals are not
poisonous themselves. A scratch or
bite from a dog or cat may prove so.
but only because some impurity or
germ has been deposited in the ugly
wound which results. When a SER
pent bites he discharges a special poi