New in Literature
I dozed and dreamed away the hours till day-break. Sometimes I fancied myself seated in a roaring circle, roasting chestnuts at a blazing log: at others, that I had fallen into the Serpentine while skating, and that the Humane Society were piling upon me a Pelion, or rather a Vesuvius of blankets. I awoke a little refreshed. Alas! it was the twenty-fifth of the month—It was Christmas Day! Let the reader, if he possess the imagination of Milton, conceive my sensations.
They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these Bells had been baptized by bishops: so many centuries ago, that the register of their baptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew their names. They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells, and had had their silver mugs, no doubt, besides. But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the church tower. Not speechless, though. Far from it.
Here, morning, noon, and evening, my mother came to draw water from the muddy stream for our household use. Always, when my mother started for the river, I stopped my play to run along with her. She was only of medium height. Often she was sad and silent, at which times her full arched lips were compressed into hard and bitter lines, and shadows fell under her black eyes. Then I clung to her hand and begged to know what made the tears fall.
Truth is, my fine fellow of the distensible weskit, your annual gratitude is a sorry pretense, a veritable sham, a cloak, dear man, to cover your unhandsome gluttony; and when by chance you actually do take to your knees on one day in the year it is for physical relief and readier digestion of your bird. Nevertheless, there is truly a subtle but significant relation between the stuffing of the flesh and the gratitude of the spirit, as you shall see.
New in Myths & Fables
But before her words could reach him, the Chief swung his great club once more, and it fell upon the head of the invisible Wind, who, without a sound, dropped unconscious upon the ground. And because he was invisible, neither the Chief nor his daughter knew what had happened.
After that he took a pair of tongs, caught hold of the lady by the feet, flung her into the furnace, and burnt her up; nothing was left of her but her bare bones. When the buckets of milk were brought, he emptied them into a large tub, then he collected all the bones and flung them into the milk. Just fancy! At the end of about three minutes the lady emerged from the milk—alive, and young, and beautiful!
There was something so peculiarly fascinating in that old belief, that ‘once upon a time’ the world was less practical in its facts than now, less commonplace and humdrum, less subject to the inexorable laws of gravitation, optics, and the like. What dramas it has yielded! What poems, what dreams, what delights! But since the knowledge of our maturer years destroys all that, it is with a degree of satisfaction we can turn to the consolations of the fairy mythology. The beloved tales of old are ‘not true’—but at least they are not mere idle nonsense, and they have a good and sufficient reason for being in the world; we may continue to respect them.
The tradition says of Pali-uli, that it was a sacred, tabooed land; that a man must be righteous to attain it; if faulty or sinful he will not get there; if he looks behind he will not get there; if he prefers his family he will not enter Pali-uli.” “Among other adornments of the Polynesian Paradise, the Kalana-i-hau-ola, there grew the Ulu kapu a Kane, the breadfruit tabooed for Kane, and the ohia hemolele, the sacred apple-tree.
In the Shop
New in History
The Edda gives an ancient account of Balder, the sun-god, who was slain because of the jealousy of Loki. Loki knew that everything in nature except the mistletoe had promised not to injure the great god Balder. So he searched for the mistletoe until he found it growing on an oak-tree "on the eastern slope of Valhalla." He cut it off and returned to the place where the gods were amusing themselves by using Balder as a target, hurling stones and darts, and trying to strike him with their battle-axes. But all these weapons were harmless. Then Loki, giving the twig of mistletoe to the blind god, Höder, directed his hand and induced him to throw it. When the mistletoe struck Balder it pierced him through and through and he fell lifeless.
Captain John Smith already had lived an exciting life by the time he joined the Virginia-bound colonists at the age of 26. He had left England at 16 to become a soldier of fortune on the continent of Europe. He fought with the Austrians against the Turks, and once in single combat he cut off the heads of three Turkish champions. A Transylvanian prince rewarded him with a coat of arms for his deeds. Later he was captured and given as a present to the wife of a Turkish pasha, but he escaped and made his way back to England.
Life in the United States has changed beyond recognition from life in America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In thousands of ways people live differently. They work, they play, they eat, and they even sleep differently. Then, there was no station wagon in the garage to take the family to the beach or mountains over weekends and no telephone at hand to call a friend to ask how to do tomorrow’s algebra problem. Life was slower-paced than it is today, and was not complicated by the machines that have become masters as well as slaves of our society.
It is to be remarked that some of the most disturbed and disastrous epochs in our annals are those to which we have to go for records of the greatest exploits in gastronomy and lavish expenditure of public money on comparatively unprofitable objects. During the period from the accession of Rufus to the death of Henry III., and again under the rule of Richard II., the taste for magnificent parade and sumptuous entertainments almost reached its climax. The notion of improving the condition of the poor had not yet dawned on the mind of the governing class; to make the artizan and the operative self-supporting and self-respectful was a movement not merely unformulated, but a conception beyond the parturient faculty of a member of the Jacquerie.
In 1839 there was received at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, from Sumatra, a specimen of the Vampire Bat. He was rarely seen at the bottom of his cage, but suspended himself from the roof or bars of the cage, head downwards, his wings wrapped round his body; when spread, these wings extended nearly two feet. Although this specimen was the Vampire Bat to which so many bloodthirsty feats have been attributed, his appearance was by no means ferocious; he was active, yet docile, and the only peculiarity to favour belief in his blood-sucking propensity was his long pointed tongue.
New in Arts & Crafts
Thanksgiving leftovers don’t have to feel like an afterthought. Instead, take a page from Victor Hirtzler’s The Hotel St. Francis Cook Book and turn that leftover turkey into something elegant: the Dubney sandwich. Hirtzler, the celebrated chef of San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel in the early 20th century, had a talent for elevating simple ingredients into refined dishes. While the Dubney sandwich may not have been the centerpiece of one of his grand banquets, it reflects his dedication to culinary creativity.
Carème tells us that at grand balls and dinners he used to roast turkeys only for his soups and consommés, and he talks as volubly of two, four, and half-a-dozen fowls, as though they were had for eighteen pence a piece, instead of costing at the cheapest rate and time 5s. 6d. or 6s. a couple. A system of cookery so expensive as this can never become general in any country. Carème tells how he formed his consommés, and though doubtless they were better flavoured and presented a more golden appearance than the generality of consommés, yet, to use the language of Burke, “They were soon exhaled, and vanished hence—A short, sweet odour at a vast expense.”
This classic French potato-leek soup is named after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, an 18th-century agronomist who tirelessly championed the potato as a vital food source in France. While Potage Parmentier is often considered a humble soup, its creamy texture and subtly earthy flavors elevate it to timeless elegance.
This cookbook is more than a collection of recipes; it’s a historical document, marking a pivotal shift from imported British recipes to a distinctly American way of cooking. Simmons’ recipes are simple yet inventive, often based on readily available ingredients like cornmeal, pumpkin, and indigenous berries — foods that define the early American diet.
Infused alcohols have a long and storied past, dating back to ancient Rome, where herbs and spices were combined with wine to create medicinal and ritualistic beverages. Romans would steep ingredients like fennel, mint, and rosemary in their wines, believing that these additions brought both health benefits and enhanced flavor. Over time, this practice spread across Europe and into the early modern world.