FishrushFishrushThank goodness it's during a time when appreciation is great - instatements deserving devoirs. Any time spent here is apprized and, at times, cherished. An adequate acknowledgement shouldn't be so elusive.
Should we meet in person, and in some small way, find a common interest; the pupils in our eyes might widen, just ever-so-slightly. Or, perhaps the widened would be replaced by a scowl of mistrust -- that formation on the superciliary ridge above the eyes. And, one of us might wonder why an annoying twitch is beginning to develop in a region on our body that tends to be publicly noticable. So, the apprehension and an evergrowing cloud of ambiguity lurks; a tad beneath the surface, but far from the heart of the relationship.
It's not really a relationship, is it?
(Not yet. Maybe not ever. After all, this is a network, something just a little fancier than a telephone in a society that embellishes and gloats in all the glory of the passage of a bill entitled "do not call me using your telephone".)
Properly worded welcomings are difficult to communicate in any society. Should you happen to be royality, say someone like a queen, then our not-so-chance encounter would dictate that we remember some basic protocols. I'd say something like, "welcome Your Grace", "Your Honour”, “Your Lordship” or “Your Ladyship” and when being presented to or taking leave of, the men would bow virtually (from the neck, not the waist) and women curtsy. The rule about not touching the Queen, a 19th Century development, would not apply today because we can't touch on the internet, can we?
And finally, if you are the Queen, you'd "receive some gifts (often quail or deer), hawks or caged song birds, hunting dogs, rare books, and homemade delicacies, such as honey and marmalade (never money!) in exchange for recent or future favors because this is the common practice in courtly society."
MR. PRESIDENT, your Royal Highnesses, my Lords and Gentlemen, I beg to acknowledge the toast with which you have done me the great honour of visiting, and at times, linking to my web site. I beg to acknowledge it on behalf of the brotherhood of literature, present and absent, not forgetting an illustrious wanderer from the fold, whose tardy return to it we all hail with delight, and who now sit before their computer monitors, or lately did sit within a few chairs of or on your left hand. I hope I may also claim to acknowledge the toast on behalf of the sisterhood of literature also, although that "better half of human nature," to which a very select few have rendered graceful tribute -- unworthily represented here, in the present state of its rights and wrongs, by the devouring monster, everybloggerman.
The future of all the arts, and many of the sciences, will soon bear witness that even the scroungiest of webloggers, even in their present oppressed condition, can attain to quite as great distinction, and can attain to quite as lofty names as bloggermen. Their emancipation (as I am given to understand) drawing very near, there is no saying how soon they may "push us from our stools" at these cubicles, or how soon our better half of human nature, standing in this place of mine, may eloquently depreciate mankind, addressing another better half of human nature.
And to the literary visitors, today (or tonight) desire me to offer congratulations on very interesting blogging exhibitions, in which risen excellence supremely asserts itself, and from which promise of a brilliant succession in time to come is not wanting. We naturally see with especial interest the writings and persons of great men historians, philosophers, poets, and novelists, vividly illustrated. And they hope that they may modestly claim to have rendered some little assistance towards the production of many of the pictures, music and some animations set to music in this magnificent gallery we call the internet. For without the patient labours of some among them unhistoric history might have long survived in this place, and but for the researches and wandering of others among them, the most preposterous countries, the most impossible peoples, and the absurdest superstitions, manners, and customs, might have usurped the places of truth. Nay, there is no knowing, Sirs, what unlikely portraits you yourself might have allogically and otherwise painted if you had been left, with your sitters, to idle pens, unchecked reckless rumours, inadequate blogging tools and undenounced lying malevolence.
I cannot forbear, before I lament, adverting to a sad theme (the many, many, many sad themes espoused on the net) to which your regally written blog entreaties make allusion, and to which the president referrs with the eloquence of genuine feeling. Since I first entered the public blog roll lists, a very young man indeed, it has been my constant fortune to number amongst my nearest and dearest friends members of the blogging world who have been its grace and pride. They have so dropped from my side one by one that I already, begin to feel like the Spanish monk of whom a few Wikis tell, who had grown to believe that the only realities around him were the pictures which previously loved; that all the moving life witnessed, or ever had seen, was a shadow and a dream.
For many years I attempted to become one of the few intimate friends and most constant companions of a select few blog buddies. Of a genius in their chosen art I will venture to say nothing here, but of their possessions, a prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect, I may confidently assert that they would have encouraged many of us, if we had been so minded. The gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to their generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of vocation, without one grain of self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to this ideal -- rest leaving a golden memory more pure from dross, or having devoted with a truer chivalry to the art goddess whom we worshipped -- welcome welcome welcome.
Many of the words justabove were the last public words of Charles Dickens.
Last Edited: October 31, 2003