Newspaper Quotes About Menasha and a Fantastic Prophecy

In 1887, Mayor Lawson commissioned a book to showcase the commercial aspects of Menasha in order to entice business prospects to relocate to our fair city and set up shop here.  The book had many wood-cut drawings of factories, businesses, banks, schools, the new City Hall, and the picturesque scenary.  I mentioned this book several blog postings ago and today, I bring you selected quotes from the book, among them, one prophesying how Menasha will be 13 years hence in 1900 and a not-so-subtle dig at our neighbor to the south.

The last sentence about "...air boats propelled..." found me scratching my head.  But thank goodness for Google!  As it turns out, this is a reference to a book, published in 1871, entitled Vril: The Power of the Coming Race by Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.  This book was about a journey to an area under the surface of the Earth inhabited by an offshoot of the human race that mastered  a sort-of "universal energy" known as Vril,.  It was a very powerful influence on spiritually-inclined individuals in the late 19th and early 20th century and was a major precursor to the science-fiction genre.  I'm sure the great H.G. Wells was quite familiar with it.

And if that wasn't enough, Bulwer-Lytton was also the inspiration to Charles Schulz for all those Snoopy cartoons with him at the typewriter on top of his doghouse.  Sir Edward was responsible for that hackneyed phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night...."