Grace before Meat"Let me cook the dinners of a nation, and I shall not care who makes its laws." Women, if they did but know it, might well thus paraphrase a famous saying. Proper dinners mean so much—good blood, good health, good judgment, good conduct. The fact makes tragic a truth too little regarded; namely, that while bad cooking can ruin the very best of raw foodstuffs, all the arts of... more...

PREFACE As in the case of "The Bases of Design," to which this is intended to form a companion volume, the substance of the following chapters on Line and Form originally formed a series of lectures delivered to the students of the Manchester Municipal School of Art. There is no pretension to an exhaustive treatment of a subject it would be difficult enough to exhaust, and it is dealt with in a... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum." (Faust.) There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great man condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The condemnation is a double one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man himself, who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last... more...

COME LASSES AND LADS Come Lasses and Lads, get leave of your Dads, And away to the May-pole hey: For every heHas got him a she,with a minstrel standing by. ForWillyhas gotten hisJill,And Johnnyhas got hisJone,To jigg it, jigg it, jigg it, jigg it,Jigg it up and down. "Strike up," saysWatt; "Agreed," saysKate,"And I prithee, Fiddler, play;""Content," saysHodge, and so... more...

PREFACE Just as a little child holds out its hands to catch the sunbeams, to feel and to grasp what, so its eyes tell it, is actually there, so, down through the ages, men have stretched out their hands in eager endeavour to know their God. And because only through the human was the divine knowable, the old peoples of the earth made gods of their heroes and not unfrequently endowed these gods with as... more...

CHAPTER 1 On the morning the radar reported something odd out in space, Lockley awoke at about twenty minutes to eight. That was usual. He'd slept in a sleeping bag on a mountain-flank with other mountains all around. That was not unprecedented. He was there to make a base line measurement for a detailed map of the Boulder Lake National Park, whose facilities were now being built. Measuring a base... more...

a few preliminary remarks Alexandre Dumas, père, after writing five hundred novels, says, "I wish to close my literary career with a book on cooking." And in the hundred pages or so of preface—or perhaps overture would be the better word, since in it a group of literary men, while contributing recondite recipes, flourish trumpets in every key—to his huge volume he says, "I wish to be... more...

TEA Tastes differ as to which of the many kinds of tea is the best, and yet the general use of English Breakfast and Oolong warrants the recommending of these two teas as standard. The Chinese have taught us the correct idea of tea drinking; to have it always freshly made, with the water boiling, and to steep the leaves at table. The tea table can be easily equipped now with a boiler in silver or... more...

THE TELL-TALE."How all occasions do inform against me!"Shakspeare.ROSAMOND EVERING was one of those indiscreet mischievous girls who are in the daily practice of repeating every thing they see and hear; particularly all the unpleasant remarks, and unfavourable opinions that happen to be unguardedly expressed in their presence. She did not content herself with relating only as much as she... more...

Mrs. Eustace Greyne (pronounced Green) wrinkled her forehead—that noble, that startling forehead which had been written about in the newspapers of two hemispheres—laid down her American Squeezer pen, and sighed. It was an autumn day, nipping and melancholy, full of the rustle of dying leaves and the faint sound of muffin bells, and Belgrave Square looked sad even to the great female novelist who... more...