New in Literature
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.
The autumnal evening was cool, dark and gusty. Storm-clouds were gathering thickly overhead, and the ground beneath was covered with rustling leaves, which, blighted by the early frosts, lay helpless and dead at the roadside, or were made the sport of the wind. A solitary horseman was slowly plodding along the road but a few miles from the village of Salem. In truth he was so near to the famous Puritan village, that, through the hills and intervening tree-tops, he could have seen the spires of the churches had he raised his melancholy eyes from the ground.
The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets poured forth a wailing breath which at once hushed the merriment of the auditors, filling all with wonder and some with apprehension. The idea occurred to many that either the funeral procession of some great personage had halted in front of the province-house, or that a corpse in a velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin was about to be borne from the portal.
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
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.
Listen and obey!—You are forbidden to invent, to create. No more legends, no more new saints: we have had enough of them. You are forbidden to introduce new chants in your worship: inspiration is not allowed. The martyrs you would bring to light should stay modestly within their tombs, waiting to be recognised by the Church. The clergy, the monks are forbidden to grant the tonsure of civil freedom to husbandmen and serfs. Such is the narrow fearful spirit that fills the Church of the Carlovingian days.[4] She unsays her words, she gives herself the lie, she says to the children, “Be old!”
It was thought that the earth swarmed with millions of demons of both sexes, many of whom, like the human race, traced their lineage up to Adam, who after the fall was led astray by devils, assuming the forms of beautiful women to deceive him. These demons “increased and multiplied” among themselves with the most extraordinary rapidity. Their bodies were of the thin air, and they could pass through the hardest substances with the greatest ease. They had no fixed residence or abiding place, but were tossed to and fro in the immensity of space. When thrown together in great multitudes, they excited whirlwinds in the air and tempests in the waters, and took delight in destroying the beauty of nature and the monuments of the industry of man.
New in Arts & Crafts
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.
As the stem and branches to the leaves, flowers, and fruit of a tree, so is design to painting. In decoration one cannot exist without the other, as the beauty of a figure depends upon the well-built and well-proportioned skeleton and its mechanism. You cannot separate a house from its plan and foundations. So it is in decoration; often thought of lightly as something trivial and superficial, a merely aimless combination of curves and colours, or a mere réchauffé of the dead languages of art, but really demanding the best thought and capacity of a man; and in the range of its application it is not less comprehensive.