I still spend Saturday mornings with Herr Gutenberg even if I haven't written about it in a while. I find so many lovely books - but instead of telling you about usually get lost in them.
One of my finds is a small book from 1847, "Susan and Edward or, A Visit to Fulton Market". I need to take a look at a map over NYC as the books begins:
Susan and Edward were two engaging little children. Their parents lived in Pearl-street, in the great city of New-York, where the houses stand close together like the rows of young peach or apple trees in a farmer's nursery. Some of the houses are two, some three, and others even four and five stories high, so that a skilful boy, with a good crossbow, could scarcely shoot an arrow over them. Pearl-street, in which they lived, is almost as crooked as the letter S, for it begins at the Battery, near Broadway, and ends in Broadway, opposite the Hospital.
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In the preface (written in 1831) you can learn where to find the Market Houses in New York. I wonder if any of them still exists.
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Another book for children is Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses. There are already several, at least five, editions of this book at Gutenberg, last year I compared some of the illustrations in the different editions. This edition from 1919 has illustrations by Maria L. Kirk.


PIRATE STORY

THREE of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,
Three of us aboard in the basket on the lea.
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,
Wary of the weather and steering by a star?
Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,
To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?

Hi! but here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea—
Cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar!
Quick, and we'll escape them, they're as mad as they can be,
The wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore.


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I don't know much about trees, but they fascinate me and I love them and could not pass "Getting Acquainted with the Trees" by J. Horace McFarland from 1904.

565656

Don't be in a hurry to choose your
friends

Fortune is the measure of intelligence

Friendship authorizes you to say
disagreeable things

Give us the luxuries of life

I always believed in life rather than
in books

It is pleasant to be foolish at the
right time

Truth is only safe when diluted

Quotes and Images From Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. is another book that I simply had to take a look at.

Lucka 9

A house is not a home unless it contains food
and fire for the mind as well as the body.

0000000000000000000000 Margaret Fuller

Fairy Tales (picture-books), by George Harcourt, 1868-1948

PICTURE-BOOKS IN WINTER

Summer fading, winter comes —
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait up on the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books

We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books?

00000000 Robert Louis Stevenson

Reading in the shadow

Sunday In Park by Anthony Watkins

I've spent the last days in the company of Jill Paton Walsh, reading her "The Bad Quarto" and "A Presumption of Death" — a new Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane mystery. I don't like thrillers or other books with too much action; so I enjoy this kind of books where milieu and characters are just as important, if not more, than the crime.
Most of the time I've been sitting in the shadow enjoying the lovely weather, the air is filled with bird's song and the fragrance from lilacs and lilies of the valley. Here on the 60th latitude we dare not miss out on this kind of weather.
Yesterday's Gutenberg find was five different editions of "A Child's Garden of Verses" — all five illustrated by different artists. I'm going to have a look at them now.