KING DERBY

The genealogical record is exceedingly complicated and confusing, as “” has been in fact a name almost as popular as gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

1707

Elias Hasket Derby was born to Richard Derby and Martha Hasket. HDT WHAT? INDEX

KING DERBY ELIAS HASKET DERBY

1712

Abraham Redwood, the father, arrived on the North American continent. We don’t know whether he initially settled his family in Newport, in Salem, or somewhere between these two towns. However, we know that Friend Abraham Redwood, the son, would grow up in Newport on Rhode Island’s Aquidneck Island. As a young man may well have gotten his education in Philadelphia. Following the death of his father and his older siblings, he would come into immense wealth as the owner of the sugar plantation “Cassada Garden” in Antigua and its large population of slaves.

Richard Derby was born in Salem.

1739

August 16, Thursday (Old Style): Elias Hasket Derby was born to Richard Derby (1712-1783) and Mary Hodges in Salem.

1752

The Elias Hasket Derby who had been born in 1707 died.

1761

By this point John Jack, the former slave of Benjamin Barron in Concord, having purchased his freedom out of his deceased master’s estate, had also purchased out of this estate “four acres of plow land in the great or common field so-called.” Adjacent to this he also purchased two acres of another party, and eventually he 1 would possess a total of 8 /2 acres. His home was near Merriam’s Corner on a path close to the ridge.

Meanwhile, during this year and the next, a mammoth 3-story, 15-room Georgian Colonial house was being erected at what is now 168 Derby in Salem, the street which also would have in 1819 the Salem Custom House in which eventually would become the supervising Surveyor. This was being erected by Richard Derby for his son Elias Hasket Derby and bride Elizabeth Crowninshield (it is now the oldest surviving brick house in Salem). This Richard Derby who could afford such a wedding present had begun as a captain for the “codfish aristocrats.” It would be Richard’s son John Derby who would carry the first news to England of the fighting at Lexington and Concord between the army and the militia, aboard the Quero which would sail from Salem Harbor on April 26, 1775. This Elias Hasket

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ELIAS HASKET DERBY KING DERBY

Derby, who kept his eye on the shipping in the port and had one blue eye and one brown one, would come to be characterized both as King Derby and as the “father of American commerce with .” The most expensive in America, circa the turn of the 19th Century, would be the mansion of Peter Stuyvesant overlooking the Hudson River, and this codfish mansion in Salem, . These homes would each be listed on the special housing-taxation census of that time at over $30,000.00. Derby had built a large wharf and was trading not only with India but also with and . By Hawthorne’s day, this merchant would have been succeeded by others –Simon Forrester was the richest– but Salem trade would have for various reasons very much dwindled: there had been disputes with the British navy, the harbor had had silting problems not shared with or New-York, and of course there was a dearth of bulk commodity-transport connections with the interior.

THE SCARLET LETTER: In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf – but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her of firewood – at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass – here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of Uncle Sam’s government, is here established. Its front is ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later – oftener soon than late – is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.

What was the big difference between these two homeowners, John Jack and King Derby? Well, as a first approximation — one was poor and the other white.

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KING DERBY ELIAS HASKET DERBY

1763

December 28, Wednesday: Milan Cathedral accounts list Johann Christian Bach’s successor as organist, suggesting that Bach had resigned sometime in December.

Elias Hasket Derby was born to Elias Hasket Derby (1739-1812) and Elizabeth Crowninshield (1734-1798).

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ELIAS HASKET DERBY KING DERBY

1770

Elias Hasket Derby caused to be erected another larger Georgian mansion next door to his wedding-present mansion in Salem. He would never complete this 60-room house and it would come to be used it as a warehouse for the goods his Revolutionary-War privateers had taken for trading. (Although the house’s original design was by Samuel McIntire, today’s “Hawke House” design is the result of Benjamin Hawkes, who would acquire the McIntire house in 1800 and demolish it in 1815.)

KING DERBY

1796

September 1, Thursday: Elias Hasket Derby was born to John Derby and Sarah Barton in Salem.

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1798

March-May: William Wordsworth’s “Goody Blake and Harry Gill. A True Story,” describing how a person was seized for taking sticks from a hedge for fuel. Making reference to this sad incident in British history, Henry David Thoreau would extrapolate on our need for warmth:

WALDEN: It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even PEOPLE OF in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and WALDEN universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia “nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains.” In this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the wood-chopper. It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts; the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robinhood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.

FRANÇOIS ANDRÉ MICHAUX Along these lines of “How much do we actually need?”, this happens to have been the year in which the new of America was becoming entangled in a struggle with its former ally, France, and in which in consequence the US Congress was levying a “Direct Tax” upon each American household for purposes of our national defense. An inventory was being taken of the nation’s housing to aid in assessing this tax, and it revealed that the most prosperous 10% of American households were living in structures that represented 50% of the private-residence structure value. Comparing that situation with 1970, we note that the statistic has declined from 50% to 30%. The conclusion we might reach from such a decline is that the difference in living standards, between the well-to-do and the not well-to-do, was more extreme then than it is now. The most expensive mansions in America, circa the turn of the 19th Century, were the mansion of Peter Stuyvesant overlooking the Hudson River and the 3-story, 15-room mansion of Elias Hasket Derby (King Derby) in Salem. These homes were each listed at over $30,000.00. We may be misled as to the adequacy of homes of that period, due to the fact that the less adequate ones have not survived, so we should keep in mind statistics such as that, in the country towns of Worcester County, only one home out of each three possessed a 2nd story. One home in four was listed as being worth less than $100.00. Only one home in ten was worth more than $700.00, with 6-7 rooms. Only one in a hundred was worth over $3,000.00, with 10-12 rooms.

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1799

September 8, Sunday: At Salem, Massachusetts, death of Elias Hasket Derby (born 1739), reputedly the richest man in these United States of America due to his gains as a shipowner and privateersman during the revolution. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER Derby would achieve recognition as “old King Derby.”

1800

July 7, Monday: Michele Felice Cornè arrived in Salem, Massachusetts from Naples aboard the Mount Vernon, Captain Elias Hasket Derby, Jr. During this year the Captain was selling off to Benjamin Hawkes the enormous Georgian mansion his wealthy father “King” Derby had caused to be erected next door to the son’s own wedding-present mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, because that enormous structure had never been fitted out for habitation but was instead used as merely a warehouse for the trade goods his Revolutionary-War privateers had been seizing (Cornè would reside with Derby at his wedding-present mansion in Salem and paint until 1806, and then relocate to Boston).

“King” Derby of Salem had died in the previous year, closing one blue eye and one brown. During the Revolution the father’s privateers had brought in almost 150 prizes. Here is the ranking of the 40 richest Americans of all time as compiled by American Heritage magazine. The conversions were made using a formula comparing the original value of wealth to the size of the US economy at the time and appeared in the magazine’s October 12, 1998 issue. I have highlighted those born before Henry Thoreau, so that you can perceive that “King” Derby had been the 11th richest American citizen to that point in our national trajectory:

Then Now 1 John D. Rockefeller 1839-1937 oil $900 million $190 billion

2 Andrew Carnegie 1835-1919 steel $250 million $100 billion

3 Cornelius Vanderbilt 1794-1877 shipping/railroads $105 million $96 billion

4 John Jacob Astor 1763-1848 real estate/fur trade $20 million $78 billion

5 William H. Gates III 1955- software $62 billion $62 billion

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Then Now 6 Stephen Girard 1750-1831 shipping/real estate $7.5 million $56 billion

7 A.T. Stewart 1803-1876 retail/real estate $50 million $47 billion

8 Frederick Weyerhaeuser 1834-1914 lumber $200 million $43 billion

9 Jay Gould 1836-1892 railroads $72 million $42 billion

10 Marshall Field 1834-1906 department stores $140 million $41 billion

11 Sam Walton 1918-1992 retail $28 billion $37 billion

12 Henry Ford 1863-1947 automobiles $1 billion $36 billion

13 Warren Buffett 1930- investing $34 billion $34 billion

14 Andrew W. Mellon 1855-1937 banking $350 million $32 billion

15 Richard B. Mellon 1858-1933 banking $350 million $32 billion

16 James G. Fair 1831-1894 mining $45 million $30 billion

17 William Weightman 1813-1904 chemicals $80 million $29 billion

18 Moses Taylor 1806-1882 banking $40 million $29 billion

19 Russel Sage 1816-1906 finance $100 million $29 billion

20 John Blair 1802-1899 railroads $60 million $29 billion

21 Cyrus Curtis 1850-1933 publishing $174 million $26 billion

22 Paul G. Allen 1953- software $25 billion $25 billion

23 John Pierpont Morgan 1837-1913 finance $119 million $25 billion

24 Edward Henry Harriman 1848-1909 railroads $100 million $25 million

25 Henry Huddleston Rogers 1840-1909 oil $100 million $25 million

26 Oliver Hazard Payne 1839-1917 oil $178 million $25 billion

27 Henry Clay Frick 1849-1919 steel $225 million $22 billion

28 Collis Potter Huntington 1821-1900 railroads $50 million $22 billion

29 Peter A. Widener 1834-1915 streetcars $100 million $21 billion

30 Nicholas Longworth 1782-1863 real estate $15 million $20 billion

31 Philip Danforth Armour 1832-1901 meatpacking $50 million $20 billion

32 James C. Flood 1826-1889 mining $30 million $20 billion

33 Mark Hopkins 1813-1878 railroads $20 million $20 billion

34 Edward Clark 1811-1882 sewing machines $25 million $18 billion

35 Leland Stanford 1824-1893 railroads $30 million $18 billion

36 Hetty Green 1834-1916 investing $100 million $17 billion

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Then Now 37 James J. Hill 1838-1916 railroads $100 million $17 billion

38 William Rockefeller 1841-1922 oil $150 million $17 billion

39 Elias Hasket Derby 1739-1799 shipping $800,000 $16 billion

40 Claus Spreckels 1828-1908 sugar $50 million $15 billion

1803

Elias Hasket Derby and Lucy Derby, twins, were born to Elias Hasket Derby (1766-1826) and Lucy Brown (1771-1829).

1812

December 8, Tuesday: Elias Hasket Derby died in Salem, Massachusetts.

This year had been a year of heavy flooding in Alta California. It had been the year in which a Russian settlement had been begun, near Bodega Bay.1 The peak of the population of dusky “neophyte” serfs was reached at Mission San Juan Capistrano, with 1,361 Juaneño souls on the mission roster. Any baptized primitive who attempted to flee would of course be searched out by the Spanish soldiers and returned to the mission for punishment, as it was considered that baptism for such a one was equivalent to enlistment for a common soldier. Attempting to run away from one’s fields and one’s sustaining labor was equivalent to desertion, treason, and/or apostasy. “On a summer-like morning, Dec. 8, 1812, mass was being celebrated. What was that distant roar? Was it the sea? The tower tottered. ... Bells swayed, tolled, were silenced and crashed to the earth. With them fell two Indian bell ringers. The door had been twisted by the earthquake and could not be unlocked. Nearly forty neophytes were buried under the stone and mortar of the fallen tower.”2 This fault passes out to sea below Newport Beach, California but in the 1812 event, the effects had been felt strongly enough that the stone domes of the basilica fell in during morning mass, crushing 40 Native American worshipers.3 Six persons present for the ceremonies escaped with their lives, witness to the infinite mercy of the Deity. The proud belfry that had been visible for ten miles around had become a pile of rubble over a mass grave, and a ruin had been created which would become rated as the most picturesque, or at least the most utterly depicted, in the Sovereign State of California.

1. This settlement would eventually become known as Fort Ross.

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1824

Graduates from Harvard College in this year with the degree of Bachelor of Arts included the 21-year-old Salem heir Elias Hasket Derby (his “Calculation and Projection of a Lunar Eclipse” is still on file there ):

Graduated with Class of 1824 Died

Francis Amory, A.M. 1881

James Winthrop Andrews, A.M. 1842

David Hatch Barlow, A.M.; Div. S. 1829 1864

William Hazzard Wigg Barnwell 1863

Zephaniah Ames Bates 1842

John Francis Bingaman 1828

Edward Blake, A.M. 1873

Duncan Bradford 1887

George Washington Burnap; A.M.; Div. S. 1827; S.T.D. 1849 1859

Charles Henry Carter 1871

Samuel Adams Cooper, A.M. 1840

Phineas Miller Crane, A.M.; M.D. 1828

Benjamin Cutter; A.M.; M.D. 1827, Univ. Pa. 1857 1864

Elias Hasket Derby, A.M. 1880

2. In a similar earthquake in October 1987 the stone basilica of nearby Mission San Gabriel did not collapse but was rendered too dangerous for occupancy. This temblor of 1812 which destroyed the historic basilica is attributed to the Newport/Inglewood strike- slip fault, which is now known to run northwest to southeast along the California coast from the Cheviot Hills overlooking what has become Culver City down through the Baldwin Hills, the Rosecrans Hills, the Dominguez Hills, Signal Hill and Reservoir Hill overlooking what has become Long Beach, Alamitos Heights and Landing Hill behind what has become Seal Beach, through the coastside Bolsa Chica Mesa, Huntington Beach Mesa, and Newport Mesa behind what has become the hoity-toity residential communities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. This is the same fault which caused an earthquake of magnitude Richter 6.3 early in the morning of March 10, 1933, ten kilometers below the surface of the earth just offshore from Newport Beach, rupturing the shoreline for 25 kilometers. The 1933 quake killed only 120 people, in Long Beach CA, because like the recent Northridge CA quake it happened to occur very early in the morning; however, many of the school buildings in Long Beach collapsed and it was clear that thousands of children would have been crushed had the earthquake occurred during school hours. This 1933 event brought about the Field Act governing the seismic engineering of public school structures and the Riley Act governing the seismic engineering of buildings larger than two-family dwellings. The scenario which is now used in this area for planning allows for an earthquake of Richter 7.0 with 25 seconds of shaking causing surface displacements of one meter. It has been estimated that in such a scenario, worst case, there would be 23,000 dead and 91,000 hospitalized, with $69,000,000,000 in property damage (by way of contrast, only $2,400,000,000 was lost in the Orange County bankruptcy of 1995). This makes the Newport/Inglewood strike-slip zone potentially more dangerous to human life and property than the San Andreas strike-slip zone, and the most dangerous by far in the continental United States. The University of California – Irvine is 15 kilometers from this fault but most of its structures, with the exception of the Humanities Office Building (which is expected to crush people, as cracks have already been found) and the Main Library (to be renovated Summer 1996), have been rated as adequate for this planning event. It is anticipated that the primary disruption for the UCI community would be the demand on the services of the primary and secondary medical personnel of the Orange County area. 3. One person was extracted alive from the rubble.

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George Bucknam Dorr, 1866 1876

Robert Brent Drane, 1825; A.M. 1841; S.T.D. Univ. N. C. 1844 1862

John Thomas Philip Dumont; A.M. 1852

Alexander Clarke Dunbar 1852

Stephen Elliott; A.M.; P.E. Bishop Ga.; Prof. Sacr. Lit. So. Car. 1866 Coll.

Edward Bliss Emerson, (I); A.M. 1834

Joseph William Faber; A.M. 1861

Benjamin Franklin Fisk 1832

Richard Fuller; S.T.D. 1853, Columbian (D.C.) 1844 1876

Lewis Glover; A.M. 1828 1839

John Mark Gourgas; A.M. 1862

John Henry Gray; A.M. 1850

John Grenough 1852

Alfred Greenwood, Andover Theol. Sem. 1827 1868

William Horton, Andover Theol. Sem. 1827; S.T.D. Hobart 1858 1863

Lucius Virgil Hubbard 1849

William Pitkin Huntington; M.D. 1835 1885

Asa Farnsworth Lawrence, Principal Groton (now Lawrence) Acad. 1873

Edmund Lewis LeBreton; A.M. 1849

Thomas Lowndes 1833

George Lunt 1885

William Perkins Matchett; A.M. 1834

Artemas Bowers Muzzey; A.M.; Div. S. 1828; S.T.D. Tufts 1890; Over- 1892 seer

William Newell; A.M.; Div. S. 1829; S.T.D. 1853; Memb. Mass. Hist. 1881 Soc.

Joseph Osgood; M.D. 1827 1876

John Cochran Park; A.M.; LL.B. 1827 1889

Samuel Parker 1882

Samuel Parker Parker; S.T.D., Union 1861 1880

William Edward Payne; A.M. 1838

Henry Coit Perkins; M.D. 1827; Fellow Am. Acad. 1873

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Edward Pickering 1876

William Pratt; A.M. 1828 1842

Benjamin James Prescott 1838

Samuel Cordes Prioleau; A.M. 1831

Charles Gideon Putnam; A.M.; M.D. 1827; Fellow Am. Acad. 1873

Daniel Clark Relf; A.M. 1876

David Roberts; A.M. 1879

George Thomas Sanders; A.m. 1856

Nathaniel Silsbee; A.M. 1862; Treasurer 1862 - 1876 1881

Calvin Stephen Smith 1838

Joseph Lewis Stackpole; A.M.; LL.B. 1828 1847

William Gordon Stearns; A.M.; LL.B. 1827 1872

Jeremiah Chaplin Stickney, 1825 1869

Caleb Morton Stimson; A.M.; LL.B. 1827 1860

Christopher Toppan Thayer; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1827 1880

Augustus Torry; M.D. 1827 1880

Charles Church Chandler Tucker 1836

Henry Samuel Tudor 1864

Stephen Palfrey Webb 1879

George Wheatland, A.M. 1893

William Wilson Wheelwright 1832

George Whitney; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1829 1842

William Augustus Whitwell; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1827 1865

Samuel Williams 1884

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Although a South Carolinian, the Stephen Elliott above was not the botany professor whose textbook was available to Henry Thoreau, as that botanist had graduated from Yale College. The above Harvard graduate was Stephen Elliott, Jr., the botanist’s son, who would become the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the Confederate States of America.

Dr. John Edwards Holbrook assisted in the organization of The Medical College of South Carolina, and became its Professor of Anatomy (the Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Infants was Thomas Grimball Prioleau, Professor of Chemistry was Edmund Ravenel, the Professor of the Institutes and Practice of Physic was Samuel Henry Dickson, the Professor of Botany and Natural History was Stephen Elliott (the Yale botanist

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father, not the Harvard bishop son), and the Professor of Materia Medica was Henry Rutledge Frost).

1839

November 14, Thursday: Lucy Brown Derby, wife of Elias Hasket Derby (1766-1826), died.

1840

December 3, Thursday: Elias Hasket Derby died in Medford, Massachusetts.

1861

January 22, Tuesday: Elias Hasket Derby died.

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR JANUARY 22]

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1880

Elias Hasket Derby died.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: December 11, 2013

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.

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