From Wendi Capehart:
Micawber's rule:
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result
happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty
pounds ought six, result misery."
David Copperfield, by Dickens.
Harold Skimpole is from Bleak House (also by Dickens). He has: "two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! . . . He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of society, was to let him live. That wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only - let Harold Skimpole live!"
Summary of CM's ideas about math:
"I think CM's point is that in her day, children were told they needed to know math for this reason or that reason - and yet, adults do and have and continue to do quite well without a knowlege of those math issues, so we need to give them a better reason, and that reason is that math is a worthy subject for its own sake."
~ Wendi Capehart