Tidbits of Times Past

Broad Grins; Comprising, With New Additional Tales in Verse, Those Formerly Publish’d Under the Title “My Night-Gown and Slippers.”, by George Colman, the Younger. Published 1839.

When I started Post-processing this, I didn’t think much of the verses. They do have their charms, however, even though they are a bit salacious.

Bookp(h)ile

Assimilative Memory or, How to Attend and Never Forget, by Prof. A. Loisette. Published 1899, ©1896.

This is one of the last projects that the late Laura Wisewell post-processed. She is missed.

Bookp(h)ile

“Ruskin,” it says in the introduction to The Crown of Wild Olive which my little friend reads at school, “is certainly one of the greatest masters of English prose.” That has often been declared. But is he? Or is our tribute to Ruskin only a show of gratitude to one who revealed to us the unpleasant character of our national habits when contrasted with a standard for gentlemen? It ought not to have required much eloquence to convince us that Widnes is unlovely; the smell of it should have been enough. It is curious that we needed festoons of chromatic sentences to warn us that cruelty to children, even when profit can be made of it, is not right. But I fear some people really enjoy remorseful sobbing. It is half the fun of doing wrong. Yet I would ask in humility–for it is a fearful thing to doubt Ruskin, the literary divinity of so many right-thinking people–whether English children who are learning the right way to use their language, and the noblest ideas to express, should run the risk of having Ruskin’s example set before them by soft-hearted teachers? I think that a parent who knew a child of his, on a certain day, was to take the example of Ruskin as a prose stylist on the subject of war, would do well, on moral and aesthetic grounds, to keep his child away from school on that day to practise a little roller-skating.

From the essay “Ruskin” in Waiting for Daylight, by H. M. Tomlinson. New York: Knopf, 1922.

The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse, by Thornton W. Burgess, Illustrated by Harrison Cady. Published 1915 (1944).

This is another project I picked up randomly. The illustrations turned out quite well, I especially like the top hat on the grumpy owl.

Children’s Book Week is this month, there will be plenty of new Children’s books posted to PG in the coming days.

To The Illustrator

In grateful acknowledgment of his amiable condescension in lending his exquisitely delicate art to the embellishment of these poor verses from his sincerest admirer

The Author

From: The Bashful Earthquake & Other Fables and Verses by Oliver Herford with many pictures by the Author (Scribner’s 1898).

Pussy Makes a Pet of the Rat and Is a Mother to It

It is related in the San Francisco Chronicle that, four miles from Farmington, in California, resides a well-to-do rancher named Morrow. He has a little 4-year-old son, Vernie, who usually has about everything he takes a fancy to. Among the things he fancies an which he has is a large, matronly cat that has been brought up to make due provisions for herself and her progeny. Jet is this cat’s name and jet her color. Jet and Vernie are great friends, and they are frequently seen roaming around the premises together when Jet’s time is not taken up with her own private affairs. Jet has always borne the reputation of being “sure death” to any rats or ground squirrels. A short time ago, in exploring the barns, granaries, and barn yard, Vernie came upon a nest of young rats, which he immediately took up an carried to the house, and placed carefully in a drawer in his mother’s sewing machine. Mrs. Morrow objected to the nest of rats being in the drawer, and took them out to drown them, when Vernie insisted he must keep one, and begged so hard for it that his mother gave it to him. In a short time he laid it down and forgot about it. Then Jet came along and took up the young rat and carried it to her bed as a companion for her one kitten and a solace to her own mind. Strange as it may appear, the young rat made himself at home, derived his sustenance from the same source as the kitten, received the same maternal attention from Jet, who seemed to forget that she was nursing her legitimate prey, to the great delight of Vernie and the surprise of the older heads about the neighborhood. This strange state of affairs continued for two or three weeks, when the baby rat strayed from Jet’s protection, and met his death at the claws of another cat not so merciful as Jet. Strange as this may appear, it is a fact, and can be verified by several persons who witnessed this peculiar and happy family.

Three Things, by Elinor Glyn. Published 1915.

I post-processed this book pretty much at random — I was looking for something easy to do and there it was…

Elinor Glyn invented the It girl. In this small book of essays she discusses love, sex, marriage (and divorce) and motherhood.

When winter’s snows promise to make hazards too hazardous for indulgence in golf playing, the old and interesting game of billiards will amuse the house-bound. Now the occasional woman has played billiards, for many years, and played it well; but it was not until Lord Dunraven’s pretty daughter, Lady Aileen Wyndham-Quin, came over this year, to see her father race his handsome yacht, that billiards came suddenly into great social favor. Lady Aileen, it appears, used her cue not only with uncommon facility, but proved how exceedingly graceful a slender woman can appear when in evening dress she pockets her balls or smashes her opponent’s most careful combinations. The English girl’s exhibitions of prowess not only set her feminine friends in America seriously thinking, but valorously practicing on the baize-covered tables, until the majority of even callow debutants know something more than how to prettily chalk their cues. After many of the smartest autumn dinners the women quickly wandered down, from coffee, small talk, and satin-hung drawing-room, to the big leather-upholstered basement billiard-room, where the men found them, pink of cheek and bright of eye, over a game of sufficient strength to command even masculine respect and a desire to engage therein.–Demorest Magazine.