catchpenny

The cautionary example of what not to do is Niagara Falls, which, as Henry James kvetched, had become “choked in the horribly vulgar shops and booths and catchpenny artifices.”

It didn’t take long for The New York Times to warn Albany Republicans against succumbing to “the catchpenny cry of local politicians on the subject of ‘Home Rule.’”

“The storage battery is, in my opinion, a catchpenny, a sensation, a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies,” wrote Thomas Edison in 1883.

Rather than teach a series of tricks and tips for momentary success in speaking, as any catchpenny sophist might, Aristotle sought to form a coherent view of why those tips and tricks worked.

The swift twilight of New York was almost upon him when he was next distracted from his thoughts by the crossing shouts of loud-voiced men bawling forth a catchpenny extra of a third-rate evening paper.