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Show Snapshots of Big Shots: This is uhat comes from reading boohs!) Edgar Allan Poe was a dollar-a-year-man too. ... He spent 10 years writing and rewriting "The Raven' and got 10 bucks for it. . . . The original manuscript sold the last time for $10,000. . . . Poe paid $3 a month rent for his honeymoon cottage cot-tage on Grand Concourse (in the Bronx), which is now a New York state historical shrine. If it hadn't been a grand neighborhood for dandelions he and his bride would have starved. Marconi, son of an Italian father and Irish mother, was 27 when he Invented radio, and ven then there were people who wanted to kill him. . . . These cranks said electrical waves were passing through their bodies, destroying their nerves and making it impossible for them to sleep. Barnum, who said "there's one born every minute," was one himself. He lost a fortune on a bear's grease hair tonic, was swindled out of another selling illustrated il-lustrated bibles, trimmed again on a fire extinguisher that wouldn't extinguish, went Into bankruptcy for half a million making alarm clocks. . . . Without With-out a dime to his name he wrote a lecture on "How to Make Money," grossing $1,000 a night. ... And that's how the famous Barnumism was born. Alexander Dumas, one-fourth Negro, whose book, "The Three Musketeers," was a best seller for almost 100 years, used to boast that he had more than 500 children and swore he would never marry. . . . He changed his mind when a smart sweetheart bought up all his debts and gave him a choice between marriage and jail. ... He wrote novels on blue paper, poetry on yellow, yel-low, articles on red, and nothing else would do. . . . He wrote mora than 1,200 volumes of plays, novels and histories, made over 5 million dollars and died broke, living of! the charity of his son. Woolworth started his five-and-dime stores on a capital of $300,- and his first three failed. Thirty years later he was able to pay $14,000,000 cash for the building bearing his name, then the world's highest office building. build-ing. George Gershwin sold his first song for $5; nine years later a Hollywood studio paid $50,000 just to use "Rhapsody in Blue," which he wrote in his spare time, in a single picture. Sir Isaac Newton was so absent-minded he once rammed his niece's fingers into his pipe. . . . Trying to fix himself a three-minute three-minute egg, he boiled his watch while watching the egg. . . . When he went to fetch anything he usually came back without it. . . . He was usually last in his class at school. . . . He was a woman hater and never married. mar-ried. . . . He always claimed he solved many of his mathematical mathemati-cal problems In his sleep. - Dr. Samuel Johnson continually distorted his face by violent grimaces. grim-aces. . . . When walking in the street he touched every post he passed and if he missed one he always al-ways returned. He always made a point of entering or leaving a door on a certain foot, but his biographer, biograph-er, Boswell, wasn't sure which one. Lord Byron was so emotional that once a theatrical performance put him into convulsions. ... In a fit of temper he threw his watch into the fire and hammered it to pieces with the poker. . . . He also fired a pistol in the bedroom of his wife, who left him after a year of marriage. mar-riage. ... So he went to Venice and bought a harem. Schiller liked to keep his feet in ice while working. ... He once 1 wrote a full and perfect description of the Swiss land and people although al-though he knew neither. . . . Coleridge, Cole-ridge, who wrote "Kubla Khan" under un-der the influence of an opiate, could remember only 54 lines when he sufficiently recovered to write. . Richelieu at times imagined himself to be a horse and neighed, trotted and jumped like one. . . . Beau Brummel, the fashion plate (who taught the Prince of Wales how to dress), died in rags in an insane asylum. Beethoven had a passion for moving and sometimes was paying pay-ing rent on two or three places at once, but Mozart, who died at 35, starved and frozen, never could pay rent on one. Chopin r rfed out on the biggest love of his '-fe because she didn't offer him a crair before she offered one to others i' the room. ... In his will he ordereti himself buried in white tie, dress shoes and silken knee breeches. |