[Ads-l] "giving a shove to time" -- helping to pass the time

[George Thompson]

            Lockport is situated sixty miles west of Rochester, twenty four
east of the Falls of Niagara, and about thirty one to the north east of
Buffalo.  ***  An event occurred here yesterday, which will serve to give
you some notion of the singular and novel appearance of the place. The Yard
in front of the Court House is full of large stumps, and among them is one,
which must be removed before the door stones could be placed. -- One of the
prisoners, who is waiting for his trial, for the purpose of giving a shove
to time, engaged to come forth from his cells loaded with irons, and remove
it.  His proposal has been accepted by the Keeper of the Jail, and at
different intervals during the last two days, the prisoner has been very
busily engaged in cutting off the stump.

            "Pilgrim's Letters [I]"  National Aegis (Worcester,
Massachusetts), January 12, 1825

-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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