Lucka 20

A good reason for marking favorite passages

in books is that this practice enables you to

remember more easily the significant sayings,

to refer to them quickly, and then in later years,

it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed

a trail. You have the pleasure of going over

the old ground, and recalling both the

intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.

ooooooooooooooooo William Lyon Phelps

Mrs William Morris in a blue dress, 1868, by D. G. Rossetti

0

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course - and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny cornet at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the lang expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handie of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs Cratchit left the room alone - too nervous to bear witnesses - to take the pudding up and bring it in. Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose – a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a launderes’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered – flushed, but smiling proudly – with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ingnited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck to the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to say so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle. These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed: 'A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!' Which all the family re-echoed.
CHARLES DICKENS, "A CHRISTMAS CAROL"

From "Child-Land Picture-Pages for the Little Ones"

by Oscar Pletsch & M. Rictor

THE GROCER.

Mr. Sweet, the grocer, is serving his customers.

James has just had some treacle, but he has

put his finger into the jug, and is sucking it. Naughty boy!

How grateful I am that I don't have to do any shopping beyond what is necessary to survive.
The snow and ice is gone and our driveway is passable again. Not knowing how long it will last I went shopping and managed get several errands done. Everybody in our small town seemed to be out today.
The last stop was at the library as they had mailed me and asked if I wanted some art books they were getting rid of. Of course, I wanted them. So I came home with three beautiful art books, one biography about the Swedish author August Strindberg and another about Selma Lagerlöf. The latter written by Elin Wägner, another Swedish author I admire.

Lucka 19

The books that help you most are those which
make you think that most. The hardest way of
learning is that of easy reading; but a great
book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of
thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

000000000000000000 Theodore Parker

ateljéinteriör, 1883, by kitty kielland, 1843-1914

SNOW

There is a line of poetry so familiar to me that I well might inadvertently think it mine, and be blamed for passing off as my own something not of my making; a line mixed so closely with the working of my mind that it comes back to me every winter whenever the transforming snowfall alters the ordinary aspect of fields and woods. I am not sure where it comes from, but I fancy it is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose poetical works I do not happen to possess, and it runs

The frolic architecture of the snow.

I am not sure either whether it is good poetry or not – a little precious, perhaps, a little whimsical – but it does convey something to me of the quaIity fresh snow gives to the landscape, something of the black-and-whiteness, the emphasized design of boundaries, the darkness of water, the toss of trees Frolic. Yes, it has an altering touch; nothing else is like it. Of course, to be beautiful, snow must be thick and fresh; the patchy days of thaw are Nature at her ugliest, when it is better to avert the eyes until everything is green and brown again.
The recent show was preceded by three days of something even more beautiful, something which the foot of man does not smirch, nor the ruts of his waggon wheels impair. The hoar frost is inviolable. Each twig and blade sparkled separately, as the big red sun came slowly overlaying the whiteness with a tinge of pink. The world was so crisp, you could almost hear it crackle. On every pane of the windows the frost had drawn patterns as exquisite as the veining of transparent leaves, no two alike, in a very low relief which one traced with the tip of a finger sending correspondent filaments of cold up the veining of one's arm. A thing to be noted during the days of hoar frost was the peculiar brilliant green of moss in woodland paths. It came through the whiteness with an almost vicious viridescence.

From "Country Notes in Wartime" by Vita Sackville-West. 1892-1962

Unrealistic dreams?

Oh my, I get exhausted from reading some blogs — baking, shopping, cleaning and decorating — where do people get their strength from. The old-fashion Christmas a lot of people dream of, took a stay-at-home-mom with several servants to put together.
Sometimes I wonder if most of us carry an inner picture of a Christmas that never has existed in the material world.

Lucka 18

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one
lives with another who shares the same books.

000000000000000000 Katherine Mansfield

Vänner, 1906-07, by Hanna Pauli (1864-1940)

CHAPTER. XIII – An Old Proverb with a New Meaning

It was half-past five when we boys got up the next morning. We were joined on the stairs by Felicity, yawning and rosy.
Oh, dear me, I overslept myself. Uncle Roger wanted breakfast at six. Well, I suppose the fire is on anyhow, for the Story Girl is up. I guess she got up early to knead the bread. She couldn't sleep all night for worrying over it.'
The fire was on, and a flushed and triumphant Story Girl was taking a loaf of bread from the oven.
Just look," she said proudly. "I have every bit of the bread baked. I got up at three, and it was lovely and light, so I just gave it a right good kneading and popped it into the oven. And it’s all done and out of the way. But the loaves don't seem quite as big as they should be," she added doubtfully.
"Sara Stanley!" Felicity flew across the kitchen. "Do you mean that you put the bread right into the oven after you kneaded it without leaving it to rise a second time?"
The Story Girl turned quite pale.
"Yes, I did," she faltered. "Oh, Felicity, wasn't it right?"
"You've ruined the bread," said Felicity flatly. "It's as heavy as a stone. I declare, Sara Stanley, I’d rather have a little common sense than be a great story teller."
Bitter indeed was the poor Story Girl's mortification.
"Don't tell Uncle Roger," she implored humbly.
"Oh, I won't tell him," promised Felicity amiably. "It's lucky there's enough old bread to do to-day. This will go to the hens. But it's an awful waste of good flour."
The Story Girl crept out with Felix and me to the morning orchard, while Dan and Peter went to do the barn to work.
"It isn't any use for me to try to Iearn to cook," she said.
"Never mind," I said consolingly. "You can tell splendid stories."
"But what good would that do a hungry boy?" wailed the Story Girl.
"Boys ain't always hungry," said Felix gravely. "There's times when they ain't."
"I don't believe it," said the Story Girl drearily.
"Besides," added Felix in the tone of one who says while there is life there is yet hope, you may learn to cook yet if you keep on trying."
"But Aunt Olivia won't let me waste the stuff. My only hope was to learn this week. But I suppose Felicity is so disgusted with me now that she won't give me any more lessons."
"I don't care," said Felix. "I like you better than Felicity, even if you can't cook. There's lots of folks can make bread. But there isn't many who can tell a story like you."
"But it's better to be useful than just interesting," sighed the Story Girl bitterly.
And Felicity, who was useful, would, in her secret soul, have given anything to be interesting. Which is the way of human nature.
"Company descended on us that afternoon. First came Aunt Janet's sister, Mrs. Patterson, with a daughter of sixteen years and a son of two. They were followed by a buggy-load of Markdale people; and finally, Mrs. Elder Frewen and her sister from Vancouver, with two small daughters of the latter arrived.
"It never rains but it pours," said Uncle Roger, as he went out to take their horse. But Felicity's foot was on her native heath. She had been baking all the afternoon, and, with a pantry weIl stocked with biscuits, cookies, cakes, and pies, she cared not if all Carlisie came to tea. Cecily set the table, and the Story Girl waited on it and washed all the dishes afterwards. But all the blushing honours fell to Felicity, who received so many compliments that her airs were quite unbearable for the rest of the week. She presided at the head of the table with as much grace and dignity as if she had been five times twelve years old and seemed to know by instinct just who took sugar and who took it not. She was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and was so pretty that I could hardly eat for looking at her – which is the highest compliment in a boy's power to pay.
"The Story Girl, on the contrary, was under eclipse. She was pale and lustreless from her disturbed night and early rising; and no opportunity offered to tell a melting tale. Nobody took any notice of her. It was Felicity's day.
After tea Mrs. Frewen and her sister wished to visit their father’s grave in the CarlisIe churchyard. It appeared that everybody wanted to go with them; but it was evident that somebody must stay home with Jimmy Patterson, who had just fallen sound asleep on the kitchen sofa. Dan finally voltinteered to look after him. He had a new Henty book which he wanted to finish, and that, he said, was better fun than a walk to the graveyard.
"I think we'll be back before he wakes," said Mrs. Patterson, and anyhow he is very good and won't be any trouble. Don't let him go outside, though. He has a cold now."
We went away, leaving Dan sitting on the door-sill reading, and Jimmy P. snoozing blissfully on the sofa. When we returned – Felix and the girls and I were ahead of the others – Dan was still sitting in precisely the same place and attitude; but there was no Jimmy in sight.
"Dan, where's the baby?" cried Felicity.
Dan looked around. His jaw fell in blank amazement. I never saw any one look as foolish as Dan at that moment.
"Good gracious, I don't know," he said helplessly.
"You've been so deep in that wretched book that he's got out, and dear knows where he is," cried Felicity distractedly.
"l wasn't," cried Dan. "He must be in the house. I've been sitting right across the door ever since you left, and he couldn't have got out unIess he crawled right over me. He must be in the house."
"He isn't in the kitchen," said Felicity, rushing about wildly, and he couldn't get into the other part of the house, for I shut the hall door tight, and no baby could open it – and it's shut tight yet. So are all the windows. He must have gone out of that door, Dan King, and it's your fault."
"He didn't go out of this door," reiterated Dan stubbornly. "I know that."
"Well, where is he, then? He isn't here. Did he melt into air?" demanded Felicity. "Oh, come and look for him, all of you. Don't stand round like ninnies. We must find him before his mother gets here. Dan King, you're an idiot!"
Dan was too frightened to resent this, at the time. However and wherever Jimmy had gone, he was gone, so much was certain. We tore about the house and yard like maniacs; looked into every likely and unlikely place. But Jimmy we could not find, any more than if he had indeed melted into air. Mrs. Patterson came, and we had not found him. Things were getting serious. Uncle Roger and Peter were summoned from the fields. Mrs. Patterson became hysterical, and was taken into the spare room with such remedies as could be suggested. Everybody blamed poor Dan. Cecily asked him what he would feel like if Jimmy was never, never found. The Story Girl had a recollection of some baby at Markdale who had wandered away like that –
"And they never found him till the next spring, and all they found was – his skeleton, with the grass growing through it, she whispered.
"This beats me" said Uncle Roger, when a fruitless hour had elapsed. "I do hope that baby hasn't wandered down to the swamp. It seems impossible he could walk so far; but I must go and see. Felicity, hand me my high boots out from the sofa, there’s a girl."
Felicity, pale and tearful, dropped on her knees and lifted the cretonne frill of the sofa. There, his head pillowed hardly on Uncle Roger's boots, lay Jimmy Patterson, still sound asleep!
"Well, I’ll be – jiggered" said Uncle Roger.
"I know he never went out of the door." cried Dan triumphantly. When the last buggy had driven away, Felicity set a batch of bread, and the rest of us sat around the back porch steps in the cat's light and ate cherries, shooting the stones at each other Cecily was in quest of information.
"What does "it never rains but it pours" mean?"
"Oh, it means if anything happens something else is sure happen," said the Story Girl. "I'll illustrate. There's Mrs. Murphy. She never had a proposal in her life till she was forty, and then she had three in the one week, and she was so flustered she took the wrong one and has been sorry ever since. Do you see what it means now?"
"Yes I guess so," said Cecily somewhat doubtfully. Later on we heard her imparting her newly acquired knowledge to Felicity in the pantry.
"'It never rains but it pours' means that nobody wants to marry you for ever so long, and then lots of people do."

From The Story-Girl (1910) by L. M. Montgomery

Lucka 17

The best of a book is not the thought

which it contains, but the thought which it

suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not

in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
0000000 Oliver Wendell Holmes

Reading by Lamplight,

Georg Clausen (1852-1944)

WINTER: MY SECRET

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today ; it froze, and blows, and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to every one who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave that truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.

Christina Rossetti
1830 - 1894

Lucka 16

I've never known any trouble that

an hour's reading didn't aussuage.

0000000 Charles de Secondat

Art and Literature, by Loren Entz

CHAPTER V WOOL AND WATER

She caught the shawl as she spoke, and looked about for the owner: in another moment the White Queen came running wildly through the wood, with both arms stretched out wide, as if she were flying, and Alice very civilly went to meet her with the shawl.
"I'm very glad I happened to be in the way," Alice said, as she helped her to put on her shawl again.
The White Queen only looked at her in a helpless frightened sort of way, and kept repeating something in a whisper to herself that sounded like, "Bread-and-butter, bread-and-butter," and Alice felt that if there was to be any conversation at all, she must manage it herself. So she began rather timidly: "Am I addressing the White Queen?"
"Well, yes, if you call that a-dressing," the Queen said. "It isn't my notion of the thing, at all." Alice thought it would never do to have an argument at the very beginning of their conversation, so she smiled and said, "If your Majesty will only tell me the right way to begin, I'll do it as well as I can."
"But I don't want it done at all!" groaned the poor Queen. "I've been a-dressing myself for the last two hours."
It would have been all the better, as it seemed to Alice, if only she had got some one else to dress her, she was so dreadfully untidy. "Every single thing's crooked," Alice thought to herself, "and she's all over pins! – May I put your shawl a little more straight for you ?" she added aloud.
"I don't know what's the matter with it!" the Queen said, in a melancholy voice. "It's out of temper, I think. I've pinned it here, and I've pinned it there, but there's no pleasing it !"
"It can't go straight, you know, if you pin it all on one side," Alice said, as she gently put it right for her; "and, dear me, what a state your hair is in!"
"The hair-brush has got entangled in it !" the Queen said with a sigh. "And I lost the comb yesterday."
Alice carefully released the brush, and did her best to get the hair into order. "Come, you look rather better now!" she said, after altering most of the pins. "But really you should have a lady's maid!"
"I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!", the Queen said. "Twopence a week, and jam every other day."
Alice couldnt' help laughing, as she said, "I don't want you to hire me – and I don't care for jam."
"It's very good jam," said the Queen.
"WeIl, I don't want any to-day, at any rate."
"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday-but never jam to-day."
"It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day,' " Alice objected.
"No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know." "I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing !"
"That's the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly, "it always makes one a little giddy at first – "
"Living backwards !" Alice repeated in great astonishment. "I never heard of such a thing !" " – but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways."
"I'm sure mine only works one way," Alice remarked. "I can't remember things before they happen."
"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked.
"What sort of things do you remember best ?" Alice ventured to ask.
"Oh, things that happened the week after next," the Queen replied in a careless tone. "For instance, now," she went on, sticking a large piece of pIaster on her finger as she spoke, "there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all."
"Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Alice.
"That would be all the better, wouldn't it ?" the Queen said, as she bound the pIaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon.
Alice felt there was no denying that. "Of course it would be all the better," she said: "but it wouldn't be all the better his being punished."
"You're wrong there, at any rate," said the Queen: "were you ever punished ?"
"Only for faults," said Alice.
"And you were all the better for it, I know !" the Queen said triumphantly.
"Yes, but then I had done the things I was punished for ," said Alice: "that makes all the difference."
"But if you hadn't done them." the Queen said, that would have been better still; better, and better, and better!" Her voice went higher with each "better," till it got quite to a squeak at last.
Alice was just beginning to say, "There's a mistake somewhere – " when the Queen began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence unfinished. "Oh, oh, oh !" shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to shake it off. "My finger's bleeding! O'h, oh, oh, oh !"
Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that Alice had to hold both her hands over her ears.
"What is the matter?" she said, as soon as there was a chance of making herself heard. "Have you pricked your finger ?"
"I haven't pricked it yet," the Queen said, "but I soon shall – oh, oh, oh!"
"When do you expect to do it ?" Alice asked, feeling very much inclined to laugh.
"When I fasten my shawl again," the poor Queen groaned out: "the brooch will come undone directly. Oh, oh!" As she said the words the brooch flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at it, and tried to clasp it again.
"Take care !" cried Alice. "You're holding it all crooked!" And she caught at the brooch; but it was too late: the pin had slipped, and the Queen had pricked her finger.
"That accounts for the bleeding, you see," she said to Alice with a smile. "Now you understand the way things happen here."
"But why don't you scream now ?" Alice asked holding her hands ready to put over her ears again. "Why, I've done all the screaming already," said the Queen. "What would be the good of having it all over again?"
By this time it was getting light. "The crow must have flown away, I think," said Alice: "I'm so glad it's gone. I thought it was the night coming on."
"I wish I could manage to be glad !" the Queen said. "Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!"
"Only it is so very lonely here!" Alice said in a melancholy voice; and at the thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.
"Oh, don't go on like that!" cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. "Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!"
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. "Can you keep from crying by considering things ?" she asked.
"That's the way it's done," the Queen said with great ,decision: "nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let's consider your age to begin with – how old are you?"
"I'm seven and a half exactly."
"You needn't say 'exactualIy'" the Queen remarked: "I can believe it without that. Now I'll give you something. to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day."
"I can't believe that !" said Alice.
"Can't you ?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!"
The brooch had come undone as she spoke, and a sudden gust of wind blew her shawl across a little brook. The Queen spread out her arms again, and went flying after it, and this time succeeded in catching it for herself. "I've got it !" she cried in a triumphant tone. "Now you shall see me pin it on again, all by myself!"
"Then I hope your finger is better now ?" Alice said very politely, as she crossed the little brook after the Queen.

From Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll