suspense [was: "aspire to"]

[George Thompson]

“The Capt. Dying------ [The Remainder of this Melancholy Relation will be
continued, in our Next]”

So, the cliff-hanger was invented as early as 1739?

GAT


On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 2:02 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

>  At 1/20/2014 12:35 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> "Random House...Kryptonite...Oxford...!! Getting...weaker!!!  If I
> could only --"
>
> END OF PT. I !!!!!
>
> Next Month: "Fortress of Solitude!"
>
>
> Not bad for keeping us in suspense; I can hear the suspiration (or was
> that "aspiration"?).  In 1739 the first part of a two-part article on a
> newsworthy shipwreck off Nova Scotia (in which the ship owner's wife was
> widowed, carried off by Indians, and then rescued by the French, and was
> supposed to have had about 1600 pounds sterling in gold, silver, and jewels
> that was taken by the Indians) ended with:
>
> “The Capt. Dying------ [The Remainder of this Melancholy Relation will be
> continued, in our Next]”
>
> (The woman carried off and then rescued was actually a piratical
> murderess, who was being transported to America for previous felonies.)
>
> Joel
> ------------------------------------------------------------ The American
> Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org




-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org