 Corsages Appropriate for Women with Unbeautifully Modeled Throats and Shoulders, from What Dress Makes of Us by Dorothy Quigley. Corsages Appropriate for Women with Unbeautifully Modeled Throats and Shoulders Despite the traditional belief that a decalote corsage is a tyrannous necessity of evening dress, a woman not graciously endowed with a beautifully modeled throat and shoulders may, with perfect propriety, conceal her in felicitous lines from the derisive gaze of a critical public. Women are indebted to that gentle genius, la douce, for the suggestion that a veiled throat and bust may charmingly fulfill the requirements of evening dress, and also satisfy that sense of delicacy peculiar to some women who have not inherited from their great-great-grandmothers the certain knowledge that a low-necked gown is absolutely decorous. The woman who does not possess delicate personal charms commends herself to the beauty-loving by forebearing to expose her physical deficiencies. Unless it is because they are enslaved by custom, it is quite incomprehensible why some women will glaringly display gaunt proportions that signally lack the exquisite lines of firm and solid flesh. A throat like a ten-stringed instrument surmounting square shoulders that end in knobs that obtrude above unfilled hollows is an unpleasing vision that looms up conspicuously too often in opera-box and drawing-room. The unattractive exhibition, 61, is a familiar sight in the social world. How insufferably ugly such uncovered anatomy appears in the scenery of a rich and dainty music-room may be readily imagined by those who have been spared the unpleasing display. It is so obvious that shoulders like these should always be covered that it seems superfluous to remark that this type should never wear any sleeve that falls below the shoulder line. The sleeve falling off the shoulder was invented for the classic contour set forth in No. 62. Nor ribbons nor lace nor jewel are needed to enhance the perfect beauty of a fine slender white throat and the felicitous curves of sloping shoulders. One whose individual endowments are as meager as are those presented in No. 61 may improve her defects by adopting either style of corsage, shown in sketches No. 63 and 64. A woman's throat may lack a certain desirable roundness, and her shoulders may recede in awkward lines, and yet between these defective features the curves may have a not-unpleasing daintiness and delicacy in modeling that can be advantageously revealed. A modish velvet throatband, such as shown by No. 63, is one of the most graceful conceits of fashion. The two slim throat encircled by velvet, or ornamented with a jewel buckle or brooch, is effectively framed. The unsightly lines of the shoulders are covered, and just enough individual robustness is disclosed to suggest with becoming propriety the conventional decollete corsage. The princess of Wales is as constant to her velvet or pearl neckband as to her special style of coiffure. Her throat, in evening dress, never appears unadorned by one or the other of these beautiful bands that so cleverly concealed defects, and seem to bring out more richly the texture and coloring of handsome bare shoulders. Those who do not approve of the decollete style of dress, or whose ungraceful proportions might well be entirely concealed, can wear with appropriateness and benefit the corsage shown in No. 64. This has much in its favor for a slender body. The upper part of the waist may be of chiffon or crepe, which is beautifully, one might say benignly, translucent. It has an insinuating transparency that neither reveals nor conceals too much. The neckband of velvet or satin, full and soft, apparently enlarges the throat. The sleeves may be in whatever style in cut prevails. This costume carries perfectly into effect the requirements of evening dress, and may be worn with equal fitness to formal functions or to informal affairs. A coat sleeve of lace, crepe, or chiffon, be flounced at the wrist may be inserted under the short satin sleeves when the occasion does not require gloves. The soft white setting of thin textures around the throat and shoulders clears the complexion and brings into relief the pretty, delicate lines of a refined face. It is plain to be seen that the unattractive specimen of femininity, No. 65, with a long wrinkled neck and sharply lined face, is unbecomingly costumed in the V-shaped basket and corsage which apparently elongate her natural likeness. A charming and always fashionable yoke effect that she can wear to advantage is shown by No. 66. This style of corsage is equally effective for a too thin or a too muscular neck. The filling is of tulle. A square cut corsage is most becoming to the woman whose narrow shoulders have a consumptive droop. The angular cut apparently heightens the shoulders and decreases their too steeple-like inclination. The round cut, if it frames a full throat, is also an effective style for sloping shoulders. The V-shaped cut is most becoming to the short-necked woman whose aim should be to increase the length of her throat. It is not only the too thin neck that needs to be clothed with discrimination. Throats and shoulders that are too robust are improved by being covered. The arms and shoulders, however, are often the chief beauty of a fleshy woman, and it is to her advantage to give them as effective a setting as possible. As is obvious in No. 67, the stout woman apparently increases her breadth by wearing a flamboyant corsage and she hides the most exquisite lines of her arm with her sleeves. The princess style of gown in No. 68 gives her apparent length of waist. The modest lace flounce that falls in vertical folds decreases her formidable corsage. The knotted twist of silk reveals the full beauty of her arm. In dressing the throat there are a few rules to be remembered. A too long stem-like neck may be apparently shortened by a standing rough or a full soft band of velvet. The tight, plain band of velvet should never be worn by a woman with a very slim neck, as is plainly discernible in Sketch No. 69. The plain military collar emphasizes the thinness of the slender woman's throat, but the soft crushed fold of velvet apparently enlarges the pipe-like proportions of the thin woman's neck, as may be seen in Sketch No. 70. The tight-fitting collar should not be worn by the corpulent woman with a thick neck, as is shown by Sketch No. 71. The thickness of the throat of the woman pictured in No. 72 may seem due to the folds of the velvet, which gives a pleasing hint of a slender throat, a delusion not to be despised by the woman burdened with flesh. Despite all the sisterhood, stout, thin, long-throated, or short, should know the hour when the withering touch of age begins to shrink the soft round curves distinctive of the full sweet throat of healthful youth. No regretful vanity should be allowed to glamour their eyes to the fact that time has them by the throat, to put it melodramatically. The wise woman will not please herself with a fatal delusion. She will realize it is illusion she needs, yards of it, lace or velvet, or any beautifying texture that will conceal the deadly lines of age. End of Corsages Appropriate for Women with Unbeautifully Modeled Throats and Shoulders by Dorothy Quigley. Darwin on the Origin of Species, a book review from the July 1860 issue of The Atlantic by Asa Gray. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Novelties are enticing to most people. To us they are simply annoying. We cling to a long accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches—the Atlantic still affects the older type of nether garment—is sure to have hard-fitting places. Or even when no particular fault can be found with the article, it oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New notions and new styles worry us, till we get well used to them, which is only by slow degrees. Wherefore in Galileo's time we might have helped to proscribe, or to burn, had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation, even the great pioneer of inductive research. Although, when we had fairly recovered our composure, and had leisurely ex-cogitated the matter, we might have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one, after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn. Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed that the perusal of the new book on the origin of species by means of natural selection left an uncomfortable impression in spite of its plausible and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as many of our contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading in which we indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised dim forebodings. Investigations about the succession of species in time and their actual geographical distribution over the earth's surface were leading up from all sides and in various ways to the question of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence like Professor Owen's axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things, which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such irracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Forseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old views might last out our days, operae nul des lieuxes. Still, not to lag behind the rest of the world, we read the book in which the new theory is promulgated. We took it up like our neighbours, and as was natural, in a somewhat captious frame of mind. Well, we found no cause of quarrel with the first chapter. Here the author takes us directly to the barnyard and the kitchen garden. Like an honourable rural member of our general court, who sat silent until, near the close of a long session, a bill requiring all swine at large to where pokes was introduced, when he claimed the privilege of addressing the house on the proper ground that he had been brought up among the pigs and knew all about them. So we were brought up among cows and cabbages, and the lowing of cattle, the cackling of hens, and the cooing of pigeons were sounds native and pleasant to our ears. So variation under domestication dealt with familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced variation under nature which seemed likely enough. Then follows struggle for existence, a principle which we experimentally know to be true and cogent, bringing the comfortable assurance that man, even upon Leviathan Hobbes's theory of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all nature is at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more internecine, bringing in thousandfold confirmation and extension of the Malthusian doctrine, that population tends far to outrun means of subsistence throughout the animal and vegetable world, and has to be kept down by sharp preventive checks, so that not more than one of a hundred or a thousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully and so sedulously provided for ever comes to anything under ordinary circumstances. So the lucky and the strong must prevail, and the weaker and ill-favored must perish. And then follows, as naturally as one sheep follows another, the chapter on natural selection, Darwin's Chivalde Bataille, which is very much the Napoleonic doctrine, that Providence favors the strongest battalions, that, since many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, those individuals and those variations which possess any advantage, however slight, over the rest, are in the long run sure to survive, to propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion or destruction of the weaker brethren. All this we pondered, and could not much object to. In fact, we began to contract a liking for a system which at the outset illustrates the advantages of good breeding, and which makes the most of every creature's best. Could we let bygones be bygones, and, beginning now, go on improving and diversifying for the future by natural selection? Could we even take up the theory at the introduction of the actually existing species? We should be well content, and so perhaps would most naturalists be. It is by no means difficult to believe that varieties are incipient or possible species, when we see what trouble naturalists, especially botanists, have to distinguish between them, one regarding as a true species, what another regards as a variety, when the progress of knowledge increases rather than diminishes the number of doubtful instances, and when there is less agreement than ever among naturalists as to what the basis is in nature upon which our idea of species reposes, or how the word is practically to be defined. Indeed, when we consider the endless disputes of naturalists and ethnologists over the human races, as to whether they belong to one species or to more, and if to more, whether to three, or five, or fifty, we can hardly help fancying that both may be right, or rather that the uni-humanitarians would have been right several thousand years ago, and the multi-humanitarians will be a few thousand years later, while at present the safe thing to say is that probably there is some truth on both sides. Natural selection, Darwin remarks, leads to divergence of character. For more living beings can be supported on the same area, the more they diverge in structure, habits, and constitution. A principle, which, by the way, is paralleled and illustrated by the diversification of human labour, and also leads to much extinction of intermediate or unimproved forms. Now, though this divergence may steadily tend to increase, yet this is evidently a slow process in nature, and liable to much counteraction wherever man does not interpose, and so not likely to work much harm for the future. And if natural selection, with artificial to help it, will produce better animals and better men than the present, and fit them better to the conditions of existence, why let it work, say we, to the top of its bent. There is still room enough for improvement. Only let us hope that it always works for good. If not, the divergent lines on Darwin's diagram of transmutation made easy ominously show what small deviations from the straight path may come to in the end. The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long vista of the past, that reveals anything alarming. Hear the lines converge as they recede into the geological ages, and point to conclusions which, upon the theory, are inevitable, but by no means welcome. The very first step backwards makes the negro and the hotentot our blood relations, not that reason or scripture objects to that, though pride may. The next suggests a closer association of our ancestors of the olden time with our poor relations of the Quadramanus family than we like to acknowledge. Fortunately, however, even if we must account for him scientifically, man with his two feet stands upon a foundation of his own. It links between the bi-mana and the Quadramanus are lacking altogether, so that, put the genealogy of the Brutes upon what footing you will, the forehanded races will not serve for our forerunners. At least, not until some monkey, live or fossil, is producible with great toes instead of thumbs upon his nether extremities, or until some lucky geologist turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in France or England, who is so busy napping the chucky stains and chipping out flint knives and arrow beads in the time of the drift very many ages ago, before the British Channel existed, says Lyell, and until these men of the olden times are shown to have worn their great toes in a divergent and thumb-like fashion. End note. Vidae, Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1859, and London Atheneum, Passime. It appears to be conceded that these kelts, or stone knives, are artificial productions, and of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rhinoceros, etc. That would be evidence indeed, but until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must needs believe in the separate and special creation of man, however it may have been with the lower animals and with plants. No doubt the full development and symmetry of Darwin's hypothesis strongly suggests the evolution of the human no less than the lower animal races out of some simple primordial animal, that all are equally lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited. But as the author speaks disrespectfully of spontaneous generation, and accepts a supernatural beginning of life on earth in some form or forms of being, which included potentially all that have since existed and are yet to be, he is thereby not warranted to extend his inferences beyond the evidence or the fair probability. There seems, as great likelihood, that one special origination should be followed by another upon fitting occasion, such as the introduction of man, as that one form should be transmuted into another upon fitting occasion, as, for instance, in the succession of species which differ from each other only in some details. To compare small things with great in a homely illustration, man alters from time to time his instruments or machines, as new circumstances or conditions may require, and his wit suggests. Minor alterations and improvements he adds to the machine he possesses. He adapts a new rig or a new rudder to an old boat, this answers to variation. If boats could engender, the variations would doubtless be propagated, like those of domestic cattle. In course of time, the old ones would be worn out or wrecked. The best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further improved upon. And so the primordial boat be developed into the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other species of watercraft, the very diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing the disappearance of many intermediate forms less adapted to any one particular purpose, wherefore these go slowly out of use and become extinct species. This is natural selection. Now let a great and important advance be made, like that of steam navigation. Here, though the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the wiser and therefore the actual way is to make a new vessel on a modified plan. This may answer to specific creation. Anyhow, the one does not necessarily exclude the other. Modern and natural selection may play their part, and so may specific creation also. Why not? This leads us to ask for the reasons which call for this new theory of transmutation. The beginning of things must needs lie in obscurity beyond the bounds of proof, though within those of conjecture or of analogical inference. Why not hold fast to the customary view that all species were directly, instead of indirectly, created after their respective kinds as we now behold them, and that, in a manner which, passing our comprehension, we intuitively refer to the supernatural? Why this continual striving after the unattained and dim, these anxious endeavors, especially of late years, by naturalists and philosophers of various schools and different tendencies, to penetrate what one of them calls the mystery of mysteries, the origin of species? To this, in general, sufficient answer may be found in the activity of the human intellect, the delirious yet divine desire to know, stimulated as it has been, by its own success in unveiling the laws and processes of inorganic nature, in the fact that the principal triumphs of our age in physical science have consisted in tracing connections where none were known before, in reducing heterogeneous phenomena to a common cause or origin, in a manner quite analogous to that of the reduction of supposed independently originated species to a common ultimate origin, thus, and in various other ways, largely and legitimately extending the domain of secondary causes. Surely, the scientific mind of an age which contemplates the solar system as evolved from a common, revolving fluid mass, which, through experimental research, has come to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and mechanical power, as varieties or derivative and convertible forms of one force, instead of independent species, which has brought the so-called elementary kinds of matter, such as the metals, into kindred groups, and raised the question whether the members of each group may not be mere varieties of one species, and which speculates steadily in the direction of the ultimate unity of matter, of a sort of prototype or simple element, which may be to the ordinary species of matter what the protozoa or component cells of an organism are to the higher sorts of animals and plants. The mind of such an age cannot be expected to let the old belief about species pass unquestioned. It will raise the question how the diverse sorts of plants and animals came to be as they are and where they are, and will allow that the whole inquiry transcends its powers only when all endeavors have failed. Granting the origin to be supernatural or miraculous even will not arrest the inquiry. All real origination, the philosophers will say, is supernatural. Their very question is whether we have yet gone back to the origin and can affirm that the present forms of plants and animals are the primordial, the miraculously created ones. And even if they admit that, they will still inquire into the order of the phenomena, into the form of the miracle. You might as well expect the child to grow up content with what it is told about the advent of its infant brother. Indeed, to learn that the newcomer is the gift of God far from lulling inquiry only stimulates speculation as to how the precious gift was bestowed. That questioning child is father to the man, is philosopher in short clothes. Since then questions about the origin of species will be raised and have been raised, and since the theorisings, however different in particulars, all proceed upon the notion that one species of plant or animal is somehow derived from another, that the different sorts which now flourish are lineal or unlineal descendants of other and earlier sorts. It now concerns us to ask, what are the grounds in nature the admitted facts which suggest hypotheses of derivation in some shape or other, reasons there must be and plausible ones for the persistent recurrence of theories upon this genetic basis. A study of Darwin's book and a general glance at the present state of the natural sciences enable us to gather the following as perhaps the most suggestive and influential. We can only enumerate them here without much indication of their particular bearing. There is one, the general fact of variability, the patent fact that all species vary more or less, that domesticated plants and animals being in conditions favourable to the production and preservation of varieties are apt to vary widely, and that by interbreeding any variety may be fixed into a race, that is, into a variety which comes true from seed. Many such races, it is allowed, differ from each other in structure and appearance as widely as do many admitted species, and it is practically very difficult, perhaps impossible, to draw a clear line between races and species, witness the human races, for example. Wild species also vary, perhaps about as widely as those of domestication, though in different ways. Some of them appear to vary little, others moderately, others immoderately, to the great bewilderment of systematic botanists and zoologists, and their increasing disagreement as to whether various forms shall be held to the original species or marked varieties. Moreover, the degree to which the descendants of the same stock, varying in different directions, may at length diverge, is unknown. All we know is that varieties are themselves variable, and that very diverse forms have been induced from one stock. 2. Species of the same genus are not distinguished from each other by equal amounts of difference. There is diversity in this respect, analogous to that of the varieties of a polymorphous species, some of them slight, others extreme. And in large genera, the unequal resemblance shows itself in the clustering of the species around several types or central species, like satellites around their respective planets. Obviously suggestive this, of the hypothesis that they were satellites not thrown off by revolution, like the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and our own solitary moon, but gradually and peacefully detached by divergent variation. That such closely related species may be only varieties of higher grade, earlier origin, or more favoured evolution, is not a very violent supposition. Anyhow, it was a supposition sure to be made. 3. The actual geographical distribution of species upon the earth's surface tends to suggest the same notion. For as a general thing, all or most of the species of a peculiar genus or other type are grouped in the same country, or occupy continuous, proximate, or accessible areas. So well does this rule hold, so general is the implication that kindred species are or were associated geographically, that most trustworthy naturalists, quite free from hypotheses of transmutation, are constantly inferring former geographical continuity between parts of the world now widely disjoined, in order to account thereby for the generic similarities among their inhabitants. Yet no scientific explanation has been offered to account for the geographical association of kindred species except the hypothesis of a common origin. 4. Here the fact of the antiquity of creation, and in particular of the present kinds of the earth's inhabitants, or of a large part of them, comes in to rebut the objection that there has not been time enough for any marked diversification of living things through divergent variation, not time enough for varieties to have diverged into what we call species. So long as the existing species of plants and animals were thought to have originated a few thousand years ago and without predecessors, there was no room for a theory of derivation of one sort from another, nor time enough even to account for the establishment of the races which are generally believed to have diverged from a common stock. Not that five or six thousand years was a short allowance for this, but because some of our familiar domesticated varieties of grain, of fowls, and of other animals were pictured and mummified by the old Egyptians more than half that number of years ago, if not much earlier. Indeed, perhaps the strongest argument for the original plurality of human species was drawn from the identification of some of the present races of men upon these early historical monuments and records. But this very extension of the current chronology, if we may rely upon the archaeologists, removes the difficulty by opening up a longer vista. So does the discovery in Europe of remains and implements of prehistoric races of men to whom the use of metals was unknown, men of the Stone Age as the Scandinavian archaeologists designate them. And now axes and knives of flint evidently wrought by human skill are found in beds of the drift at Amiens, also in other places both in France and England, associated with the bones of extinct species of animals. These implements, indeed, were noticed twenty years ago. At a place in Suffolk they have been exhumed from time to time for more than a century. But the full confirmation, the recognition of the age of the deposit in which the implements occur, their abundance, and the appreciation of their bearings upon most interesting questions belong to the present time. To complete the connection of these primitive people with the fossil ages, the French geologists, we are told, have now found these axes in Picardy associated with remains of Elifus primigenius, rhinoceros trichorinus, equus fossilis, and an extinct species of boss. End note, see correspondence of Monsieur Nikles in American Journal of Science and Arts for March, 1860. In plain language these workers in flint lived in the time of the mammoth, of a rhinoceros now extinct, and along with horses and cattle unlike any now existing, specifically different, as naturalists say, from those with which man is now associated. Their connection with existing human races may perhaps be traced through the intervening people of the Stone Age, who were succeeded by the people of the Bronze Age, and these by workers in iron. End note, see Morlitt, some general views on archaeology, in American Journal of Science and Arts for January, 1860, translated from Bulletin de Insocite Vaudois, 1859. Now various evidence carries back the existence of many of the present lower species of animals, and probably of a larger number of plants, to the same drift period. All agree that this was very many thousand years ago. Agacy tells us that the same species of polyps, which are now building coral walls around the present peninsula of Florida, actually made that peninsula, and have been building there for centuries, which must be reckoned by thousands. Five. The overlapping of existing and extinct species, and the seemingly gradual transition of the life of the drift period into that of the present, may be turned to the same account. Mammoths, mastodons, and Irish Elks, now extinct, must have lived down to human if not almost to historic times. Perhaps the last Dodo did not long outlive his huge New Zealand kindred. The Auroch, once the companion of mammoths, still survives, but apparently owes his present and precarious existence to man's care. Now nothing that we know of forbids the hypothesis that some new species have been independently and supernaturally created within the period which other species have survived. It may even be believed that man was created in the days of the mammoth, became extinct, and was recreated at a later date. But why not say the same of the Auroch, contemporary both of the old man and of the new? Still it is more natural, if not inevitable, to infer that if the Aurochs of that olden time were the ancestors of the Aurochs of the Lithuanian forests, so likewise were the men of that age, if men they were, the ancestors of the present human races. Then whoever concludes that these primitive makers of rude flint axes and knives were the ancestors of the better workmen of the succeeding stone age, and these, again, of the succeeding artificers in brass and iron, will also be likely to suppose that the equus and boss of that time were the remote progenitors of our own horses and cattle. In all candor we must at least concede that such considerations suggest a genetic descent from the drift period down to the present, and allow time enough, if time is of any account, for variation and natural selection, to work out some appreciable results in the way of divergence into races, or even into so-called species. Whatever might have been thought when geological time was supposed to be separated from the present era by a clear line, it is certain that a gradual replacement of old forms by new ones is strongly suggestive of some mode of origination which may still be operative. When species, like individuals, were found to die out one by one, and apparently to come in one by one, a theory for what Owen sonorously calls the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things could not be far off. That all such theories should take the form of a derivation of the new from the old seems to be inevitable, perhaps from our inability to conceive of any other line of secondary causes in this connection. Owen himself is apparently in travail with some transmutation theory of his own conceiving, which may yet see the light, although Darwin's came first to the birth. Different as the two theories will probably be in particulars, they cannot fail to exhibit that fundamental resemblance in this respect which betokens a community of origin, a common foundation on the general facts and the obvious suggestions of modern science. Indeed, to turn the point of a taking simile directed against Darwin, the difference between the Darwinian and the Owenian hypotheses may, after all, be only that between homeopathic and heroic doses of the same drug. If theories of derivation could only stop here, content with explaining the diversification and succession of species between the tertiary period and the present time through natural agencies or secondary causes still in operation, we fancy they would not be generally or violently objected to by the savans of the present day. But it is hard, if not impossible, to find a stopping place. Some of the facts or accepted conclusions already referred to, and several others of a more general character which must be taken into the account, impel the theory onward with accumulated force—Virese, not to say virus—Aquirit-Undo. The theory hitches on wonderfully well to Lyell's uniformitarian theory in geology, that the thing that has been is the thing that is and shall be, that the natural operations now going on will account for all geological changes in a quiet and easy way only give the time enough, so connecting the present and the proximate with the farthest past by almost imperceptible gradations. A view which finds large and increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and of which Darwin's theory is the natural complement. So the Darwinian theory, once getting a foothold, marches boldly on, follows the supposed near ancestors of our present species farther and yet farther back into the dim past, and ends with an analogical inference which makes the whole world kin. As we said at the beginning, this upshot discomposes us. Several features of the theory have an uncanny look. They may prove to be innocent, but their first aspect is suspicious, and high authorities pronounce the whole thing to be positively mischievous. In this dilemma we are going to take advice. Following the bent of our prejudices, and hoping to fortify these by new and strong arguments, we are going now to read the principal reviews which undertake to demolish the theory, with what result our readers shall be duly informed. Meanwhile, we call attention to the fact that the Appletons have just brought out a second and revised edition of Mr. Darwin's book, with numerous corrections, important additions, and a preface all prepared by the author for this edition in advance of a new English edition. End of Darwin on the Origin of Species, by Asa Gray, read by Catherine Eastman. Now that the theosophical movement is becoming more widely known, there seems to be a danger less misconception should arise concerning it. Many people talk vaguely of theosophy with only the faintest, most meager idea of what theosophy really is, of its motives and designs. It is a fact that cannot be disputed that, at the present time, there is a growing revolt against what has been well-named, Churchianity. The priests have lost their power, their words are but idly listened to, and are practically disregarded. Christianity is acknowledged to be beautiful in theory, but utterly impossible in practice, and yet humanity must have religion, that binding force cannot be dispensed with. If it be granted that the various forms of religion at present extend, fail to satisfy this pressing need, the question that presents itself is, where shall we look for a substitute? Christianity, both Catholic and Anglican, has had its day. The dreary creed of the positivus will never satisfy struggling humanity. Those among us whose path is strewn with roses may be content to think that with death there comes annihilation, may feel no desire for justice and compensation hereafter, but the suffering, the sorrowful, cry out against the cruel hopelessness of such teachings. It is the part of religion to comfort and soothe, to elevate and ennoble, and when we are forced sadly, to own that no extant form of religion is able to satisfy us, where shall we look for help? I reply, to Theosophy, and if asked why I say, because it is wide, deep, grand, and all embracing. It is not a religion, but religion itself, the soul and pith of all religions. There is in Theosophy no formalism, no narrowness. All its conceptions are wide and lofty, and therefore, satisfying. Unlike Christianity it does not depend on written testimony. Theosophy is philosophical in its nature, and Theosophists believe and assert that there is no religion higher than truth. We do not say with the Christians, believe as we do, or you will be damned. We ask you to join us in the search for truth, which is higher, far higher than empty faith. Faith is a word often on the lips of a Christian, but if we look into this so-called faith, what do we find? In nine cases out of ten, nothing but credulity. To the man of stagnant mind belief is easy, and to all of us, of course, it is more comfortable to believe what we are told than to search for what is true. There is an Italian proverb which says, we believe what we can, not what we will. This is profoundly true. Many of us would willingly believe and honestly endeavor to do so, but doubts and misgiving crowd upon our minds, and we find ourselves submerged in agnosticism against our will. Theosophy steps forward and says, do not look outside for help, look into yourselves, cultivate your inner vision, increase your intuition. Some may ask, what is this intuition? I should call it the voice of God speaking to, and encouraging the human entity. There is in each one of us a spark of the divine, though in many of us, alas, it is obscured and clouded, existing only as a latent potentiality. Is it not a comforting and exalting thought, that each entity is spiritually a part of God, thrown off from the infinite, placed here for progress, to increase the spirituality by discipline, and finally, after successive reincarnations, to return to the infinite once it came? Let this divine spark, this hidden gem, shine about our path with a steady light, driving before it the phantoms of error, superstition, and bigotry. True knowledge can only be obtained through intuition, and those who earnestly cultivate this vision of the soul will find truth, and help, and guidance, in the battle of life. The greatest certainty to which the human intellect can attain is the certainty of intuition, the certainty of things which require no proof, because they are self-evident. Such intuitional certainty is that of our existence, and present feelings, thoughts, and volitions, the certainty of things directly perceived by several of our senses at once, and above all, the certainty of universal and necessary truths, such as that things which are equal to the same thing, are equal to each other, and that nothing can simultaneously both be and not be. The whole scheme of theosophy is, as I have said before, so large and grand, that those who go deeply into it, who really follow it, cannot but realize that their own individual troubles are small and insignificant. For example, if when trouble encompasses me, I turn for my sorrow, and contemplate the far greater misery of many around me, and further than that, of numbers whom I know not of, how can I selfishly dwell and brood upon my trials? Rather should the knowledge that there are but a few infinitesimal drops in the great sea of human misery make me resolve to endure bravely, and help others to endure? The true theosophist throws off sorrow. He refuses to dwell in an atmosphere of depression. He does not allow his mind to be engrossed by ephemeral cares. He has glorious hopes for the future of his race. How can he then suffer himself to be cast down by petty personal cares in the present? Frequently has the thought occurred to me when unhappy. What does it signify if this little ego of mine suffers? Many whom I know are happy. The happiness is not mine, it is true, but it is there. The happiness truly exists, though not for me. Progress, not happiness, is the law of this world, and theosophy holds out a helping hand to all who wish for progress. Theosophy appeals to the dissatisfied, to those who feel that their religion, with its forms and ceremonies, are not enough. It appeals to the active-minded, to those who long for knowledge for its own sake. It appeals to the solitary, to these it offers a spiritual brotherhood, whose members counsel and advise, and support each other. The members of this fraternity are of all classes, all creeds, all nationalities. The bigoted and the exclusive find no other great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute divine principle in nature. It denies deity no more than it does the sun. Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in nature, nor deity as the absolute and abstract Eos. It only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic religions, gods created by man in his own image and likeness. End of a general view of theosophy by ACW. Recording by Andrea Fiori. April 29, 1878. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The science is gained by mutual support. When, as a result of my first communications on the fermentations in 1857 and 1858, it appeared that the ferments, properly so called, are living beings, that the germs of microscopic organisms abound in the surface of all objects, in the air and in the water, that the theory of spontaneous generation is chimerical, that wines, beer, vinegar, the blood, urine, and all the fluids of the body undergo none of their usual changes in pure air, both medicine and surgery received fresh stimulation. A French physician, Dr. Daven, was fortunate in making the first application of these principles to medicine in 1863. Our researchers of last year left the etiology of the putrid disease or septicemia in a much less advanced condition than that of anthrax. We had demonstrated the probability that septicemia depends upon the presence and growth of a microscopic body, but the absolute proof of this important conclusion was not reached. To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way in the present state of science than to subject the microbe, the new and happy term introduced by M. Cedulo, to the method of cultivation out of the body. It may be noted that in 12 successive cultures, each one of only 10 cubic centimeters volume, the original drop will be diluted as if placed in a volume of fluid equal to the total volume of the earth. It is just this form of test to which M. Joubert and I subjected the anthrax bacteridium. Having cultivated it a great number of times in a sterile fluid, each culture being started with a minute drop from the proceeding, we then demonstrated that the product of the last culture was capable of further development and of acting in the animal tissues by producing anthrax with all its symptoms, such as, as we believe, the indisputable proof that anthrax is a bacterial disease. Our researchers concerning the septic vibrio had not so far been convincing, and it was to fill up this gap that we resumed our experiments. To this end, we attempted the cultivation of the septic vibrio from an animal dead of septicemia. It is worth noting that all of our first experiments failed, despite the variety of culture media we employed, urine, beer yeast water, meat water, etc. Our culture media were not sterile, but we found, most commonly, a microscopic organism showing no relationship to the septic vibrio and presenting the form, common enough elsewhere, of chains of extremely minute spherical granules possessed of no virulence whatever. This was an impurity introduced, unknown to us, at the same time as the septic vibrio, and the germ undoubtedly passed from the intestines, always inflamed and distended in septicemic animals, into the abdominal fluids from which we took our original cultures of the septic vibrio. If this explanation of the contamination of our cultures was correct, we ought to find a pure culture of the septic vibrio in the heart's blood of an animal recently dead of septicemia. This was what happened, but a new difficulty presented itself. All our cultures remained sterile. Furthermore, this sterility was accompanied by loss in the culture media of the original virulence. It occurred to us that the septic vibrio might be an obligatory anaerobic, and that the sterility of our inoculated culture fluids might be due to the destruction of the septic vibrio by the atmospheric oxygen dissolved in the fluids. The academy may remember that I have previously demonstrated facts of this nature in regard to the vibrio of butyric fermentation, which not only lives without air, but is killed by the air. It was necessary, therefore, to attempt to cultivate the septic vibrio either in a vacuum or in the presence of inert gases such as carbonic acid. Results justified our attempt. The septic vibrio grew easily in a complete vacuum, and no less easily in the presence of pure carbonic acid. These results have a necessary corollary. If a fluid containing septic vibrios be exposed to pure air, the vibrios should be killed and all virulence should disappear. This is actually the case. If some drops of septic serum be spread horizontally in a tube and in a very thin layer, the fluid will become absolutely harmless in less than half a day, even if at first it was so virulent as to produce death upon the inoculation of the smallest portion of a drop. Furthermore, all the vibrios, which crowded the liquid as motile threads, are destroyed and disappear. After the action of the air, only fine amorphous granules can be found, unfit for culture, as well as for the transmission of any disease whatever. It might be said that the air burned the vibrios. If it is a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of the multiplication of these minute bodies, it is a consoling hope that science will not always remain powerless before such enemies. Since, for example, at the very beginning of the study, we find that simple exposure to air is sufficient at times to destroy them. But if oxygen destroys the vibrios, how can septicemia exist since atmospheric air is present everywhere? How can such facts be brought in accord with the germ theory? How can blood, exposed to air, become septic through the dust the air contains? All things are hidden, obscure and debatable, if the cause of the phenomena be unknown. But everything is clear if this cause be known. What we have just said is true, only of a septic fluid containing adult vibrios in active development by fission. Conditions are different when the vibrios are transformed into their germs, that is, into the glistening corpuscles first described and figured in my studies on silkworm disease in dealing with worms dead of the disease called flashery. Only the adult vibrios disappear, burn up, and lose their virulence in contact with air. The germ corpuscles under these conditions remain always ready for new cultures and for new inoculations. All this, however, does not do away with the difficulty of understanding how septic germs can exist on the surface of objects floating in the air and in water. Where can these corpuscles originate? Nothing is easier than the production of these germs in spite of the presence of air in contact with septic fluids. If abdominal cirrus exudate, containing septic vibrios actively growing by fission, be exposed to the air, as we suggested above, but with the precaution of giving a substantial thickness to the layer, even if only one centimeter be used, this curious phenomenon will appear in a few hours. The oxygen is absorbed in the upper layers of the fluid, as is indicated by the change of color. Here the vibrios are dead and disappear, in the deeper layers on the other hand. Towards the bottom of this centimeter of septic fluid, we supposed to be under observation, the vibrios continue to multiply by fission, protected from the action of oxygen, by those that have perished above them, little by little they pass over to the condition of germ corpuscles, with the gradual disappearance of the thread forms, so that instead of moving threads of varying length, sometimes greater than the field of the microscope, there is to be seen only a number of glittering points, lying free or surrounded by a scarcely perceptible amorphous mass. Footnote. In our note of July 16, 1877, it is stated that the septic vibrio is not destroyed by the oxygen of the air, nor by oxygen at high tension, but that under these conditions it is transformed into germ corpuscles. This is however an incorrect interpretation of the facts. The vibrio is destroyed by oxygen, and it is only where it is in a thick layer that it is transformed to germ corpuscles in the presence of oxygen, and that its virulence is preserved. End of footnote. Thus is formed, containing the latent germ life, no longer in danger from the destructive action of oxygen. Thus, I repeat, is formed the septic dust, and we are able to understand what has before seemed so obscure. We can see how putrescopal fluids can be inoculated by the dust of the air, and how it is that putrid diseases are permanent in the world. The Academy will permit me, before leaving these interesting results, to refer to one of their main theoretical consequences. At the very beginning of these researches, for they reveal an entirely new field, what must be insistently demanded? The absolute proof that there actually exist transmissible, contagious, infectious diseases of which the cause lies essentially and solely in the presence of microscopic organisms. The proof that for at least some diseases, the conception of spontaneous virulence must be forever abandoned, as well as the idea of contagion and an infectious element suddenly originating in the bodies of men or animals, and able to originate diseases which propagate themselves under identical forms. And all of those opinions are fatal to medical progress, which have given rise to the gratuitous hypotheses of spontaneous generation, of albumoid ferments, of hemi organisms, of archbiosis, and many other conceptions without the least basis in observation. What is to be sought for in this instance is the proof that along with our vibrio there does not exist an independent virulence belonging to the surrounding fluids or solids. In short, that the vibrio is not merely an epiphenomenon of the disease of which it is the obligatory accompaniment. What then do we see in the results that I have just brought out? A septic fluid, taken at the moment that the vibrios are not yet changed into germs, loses its virulence completely upon simple exposure to the air, but preserves this virulence, although exposed to air, on the simple condition of being in a thick layer for some hours. In the first case, the virulence once lost by exposure to air, the liquid is incapable of taking it on again upon cultivation, but in the second case, it preserves its virulence and can propagate even after exposure to air. It is impossible then to assert that there is a separate virulent substance, either fluid or solid, existing, apart from the adult vibrio or its germ, nor can it be supposed that there is a virus which loses its virulence at the moment that the adult vibrio dies, for such a substance should also lose its virulence when the vibrios, changed to germs, are exposed to the air. Since the virulence persists under these conditions, it can only be due to the germ corpuscles, the only thing present. There is only one possible hypothesis as to the existence of a virus in solution, and that is that such a substance, which was present in our experiment in non-fatal amounts, should be continuously furnished by the vibrio itself during its growth in the body of the living animal, but it is of little importance since the hypothesis opposes the forming and necessary existence of the vibrio. I hasten to touch upon another series of observations, which are even more deserving the attention of the surgeon than the proceeding. I desire to speak of the effects of our microbe of pus when associated with the septic vibrio. There is nothing more easy to superpose, as it were two distinct diseases, and to produce what might be called a septicemic purulent infection or a purulent septicemia. Whilst the micro-producing pus, when acting alone, gives rise to a thick pus, white or sometimes with a yellow or bluish tint, not putrid, diffused or enclosed by the so-called pyogenic membrane, not dangerous, especially if localized in cellular tissue, ready if the expression may be used for rapid resorption. On the other hand, the smallest abscess produced by this organism, when associated with the septic vibrio, takes on a thick gangrenous appearance, putrid, greenish and infiltrating the softened tissues. In this case, the microbe of pus carried, so to speak, by the septic vibrio accompanies it throughout the body. The highly inflamed muscular tissues, full of cirrus fluid, showing also globules of pus here and there, are like a kneading of the two organisms. By a similar procedure, the effects of the anthrax bacteridium and the microbe of pus may be combined, and the two diseases may be superposed, so as to obtain a purulent anthrax or an anthrochoid purulent infection. Care must be taken not to exaggerate the predominance of the new microbe over the bacteridium. If the microbe be associated with the latter in sufficient amount, it may crowd it out completely, prevent it from growing in the body at all. Anthrax does not appear, and the infection, entirely local, becomes merely an abscess whose cure is easy. The microbe producing pus and the septic vibrio, not both being anaerobes as we have demonstrated, it is evident that the latter will not much disturb its neighbor. Nutrient substances, fluid or solid, can scarcely be deficient in the tissues from such minute organisms. But the anthrax bacteridium is exclusively aerobic, and the proportion of oxygen is far from being equally distributed throughout the tissues. Enumerable conditions can diminish or exhaust the supply here and there. And since the microbe producing pus is also aerobic, it can be understood how, by using a quantity slightly greater than that of the bacteridium, it might easily deprive the latter of the oxygen necessary for it. But the explanation of the fact is of little importance. It is certain that under some conditions, the microbe we are speaking of entirely prevents the development of the bacteridium. Summarizing, it appears from the preceding facts that it is possible to produce at will purulent infections with no elements of putrescence, putrescent purulent infections, anthrochoid purulent infections, and finally combinations of these types of lesions, varying according to the proportions of the mixtures of the specific organisms made to act on the living tissues. These are the principal facts I have to communicate to the academy and in the names of my collaborators, M. Joubert and Chamberlain. Some weeks ago, session of the 11th of March last, a member of the section of medicine and surgery, M. C. Joubert, after long meditation on the lessons of a brilliant career, did not hesitate to assert that the successes as well as the failures of surgery find a rational explanation in the principles upon which the germ theory is based, and that this theory would found a new surgery. Already begun by a celebrated English surgeon, Dr. Lister, who was among the first to understand its fertility. With no professional authority, but with the conviction of a trained experimenter, I venture here to repeat the words of an eminent golfrere, and of the germ theory and its applications to medicine and surgery by Louis Pasteur. The History of Insects by Anonymous This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of Insects by Anonymous Insects are so-called from a separation in the middle of their bodies, seemingly cut into two parts, and joined together by a small ligature, as we see in wasps and common flies. However small and contemptible this class of beings may appear at first thought, yet when we come to reflect and carefully investigate, we shall be struck with wonder and astonishment, and shall discover that the smallest knot that buzzes in the meadow is as much a subject of admiration as the largest elephant that ranges the forest, or the most huge whale that plows the deep. And when we consider the least creatures that we can imagine, merits of which are too small to be discovered without the help of glasses, and that each of their bodies is made up of different organs or parts by which they receive or retain nourishment, with the power of action, how natural the exclamation. O Lord, how manifold are thy works, and wisdom hast thou made them all. Under these considerations, that they are the work of the same great, good, and almighty hands that formed us, and that they are all capable of feeling pleasure and pain, surely every little child, as well as older person, ought to carefully avoid every kind of cruelty to any kind of creature great or small. The Supreme Court of Judicature at Athens, punished boy, for putting out the eyes of a poor bird, and parents and masters should never overlook an instance of cruelty to anything that has life, however minute and seemingly contemptible the object may be. I would not enter on my list of friends, though graced with polished manners and fine sense, yet wanting sensibility the man who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. The flea. This very troublesome little animal multiplies very fast among old rags, dirt, strong, litter, hogs, cats, or dogs, sleep, and end the hair and bristles of these creatures. Therefore, as a means of avoiding such unwelcome neighbors, in the spring the cleanly fanners grapes the rubbish about his wood pile, and around his house and barn, and removes it to his field, where it also repays him by manuring his lands. They abound in warm countries, particularly in the southern parts of France and Italy. When examined by a microscope, the flea is a pleasant object. The body is curiously adorned with a suit of polished armor, neatly jointed, and beset with a great number of sharp pens, almost like the quills of porcupine. It has a small head, large eyes, two horns, or feelers, which proceed from the head, and four long legs from the breasts. They are very hairy and long, and have several joints, which fold as if it were one within another. The grasshopper. Grasshoppers are too common to need description, as they abound almost wherever there is green grass. One summer only is their period of life. They are hatched in the spring and die in the fall, previous to which they deposit their eggs in the earth, which the genial warmth of the next season brings to life. They are food for many of the feathered race, the dragonfly. Of these flies, which are caled by many, spindles are of various species. They all have two large eyes covering the whole surface of the head. They fly very swiftly and prey upon the wing, clearing the air of innumerable little flies. The great live above water, but the smaller are common among edges and about gardens. The scorpion. This is one of the largest of all the insect tribe. It is met with in different countries, and of various sizes, from two to three inches, nearly a foot in length. It somewhat resembles a lobster, and casts its skin as the lobster does its shell. Scorpions are common in hot countries. They are very bold and watchful. When anything approaches, they erect their tails, and stand ready to inflict the direful sting. In some parts of Italy and France, they are among the greatest pests that plague mankind. They are very numerous, and are most common in olden houses, in drier decayed walls, and among furniture, and so much that is tended with much danger to remove the same. Their sting is generally a very deadly poison, though not in all cases, owing to a difference of malignity of different animals or some other cause. In the time of the children of Israel, scorpions were a plague in Egypt and Canon, as appears in the Sacred Writings, Cedodinronomy, Volume 3, Chapter 15, and other patches, the Honey Bee. This is an extraordinary, curious, and remarkably industrious little insect, to which mankind are indebted for one of the most palatable and wholesome sweets which nature affords, and which was one of the choice articles with which the promised land was said to abound. In every hive of bees, there are three kinds, the queen, the drones, and the laborers. Of these, last, there are by far the greatest number, and as cold weather approaches, they drive from the hives and destroy the drones that are not labored in summer and will not let them eat in winter. If bees are examined through a glass hive, all appears firstly confusion, but on a more careful inspection, every animal is found regularly employed. It is very delightful when the maple and other trees are in bloom, or the clover in the meadow, to be abroad and hear their busy hum. Quote, Brisk is the busy bee among learning. Lowers, employ thy youthful sunshine hours. The elephant beetle is the largest of its kind, hitherto known, and is found in South America, particularly in Guinea, around the rivers Suriname and Orinoco. It is of a black color, and the whole body is covered with a shell, full as thick and strong as that of a small crab. There is one preserved in the museum that measures more than six inches. Of butterflies, there are many kinds. How wonderful is the various changes of this class of insects. The butterflies lay their eggs, and from these hatch out worms, or caterpillars, which change their skin several times, and finally become oral air, chrysalis, or silkworms, out of which come the beautiful butterflies. End of The History of Insects by Anonymous Suffering leads to perfection through successive stages of knowledge, not knowledge from books, but knowledge of life. And each step in knowledge means that some form of suffering has been transmuted and transcended. A particular kind of pain, experienced innumerable times, at last leads to knowledge of the cause of that pain. And when the cause is discovered, removed, and not again entertained, the pain is forever transcended. This principle is applicable both to physical pain, which is caused by disease, and to mental suffering, caused by wrong thinking. When the cause of a disease is known, it can be avoided, and the disease in its pain can never attack us. The cause of certain forms of disease is known, and the prudent avoid the cause, and so escape the disease. The causes of many bodily disorders, however, still await discovery, and until such discovery is affected, the disorders will continue. In all forms of mental suffering, the cause can be more readily discovered, and when discovered, removed and avoided, because the mind comes more under our immediate control. We cannot eliminate the bodily sensation of pain. The pain caused by direct injury to the body is different from that caused by disease. Thus a perfect man, perfect in both mind and health, would feel pain from a cut or wound, just as an imperfect man would, and it is necessary for the protection of his body that he should do so. But his bodily pain would be modified by his attitude of mind towards it. It would not cause him any mental suffering, and he would retain his happiness and peace of mind. The imperfect man would, however, become disturbed mentally, would be aroused to fear, or agitation, or anger, and would so add mental pain to physical, so that even the physical pain would appear greater. Not one of the great teachers has taught men how to overcome bodily pain or annul the bodily sensation of pain. This is highly significant in view of the fact that certain schools of thought aim at this end. This studying and striving to render one's body insensible to pain is no new thing. It was taught in practice in the East, thousands of years ago, and is known in India as hatha yoga, or physical yoga. If accounts speak truly, there are still yogis in India who can cut and wound their bodies, and not experience pain. And while this is an accomplishment of its kind, it is a bad one, and is no indication of spiritual advancement. Indeed, this hatha yoga was condemned as black yoga, or false yoga, by the great teachers of India, who declared that it led to bodily disease and spiritual ignorance, and not to health and truth. The practice taught by the spiritually enlightened was, and is, known as raja yoga, meaning kingly yoga. This kingly, or true yoga, consists in impurifying the heart, and gaining control of the mind, and the method is embodied in their precepts. The precepts of Jesus outline this practice with great clearness. It is clear, then, that we should not strive to become insensible to physical pain, first because it is unnatural, and second, because we should thereby deprive ourselves of the warning and protection to our body which such pain affords. But we should endeavor to heal the pain, when caused by injury, or find and remove the cause, when it is the result of disease. Nor should we try to render ourselves insensible to mental pain, by any process of hardening. Unnatural as this is, it can be done successfully up to a certain point. Just as insensibility to physical pain can be accomplished in a degree, for as the latter ultimately leads to wreckage of the body, so the former leads to mental disaster, leads one further and further away from the truth, until at last he has to begin all over again. Nevertheless mental pain can be transcended, yet not by hardening the heart, but by softening it, by practicing oneself in all thoughts and deeds that are good and kind and just, until at last the cause of the mind's suffering is clearly seen and is removed and avoided. Once the cause of any particular kind of mental pain is seen, its elimination from the mind becomes comparatively easy. The thought which originated the deed, which produced the pain, is gradually reduced in strength and in the frequency of its recurrence, until it at last disappears entirely from the mind and life. And with each mental pain thus transcended, there is a great advance in knowledge, and it is divine knowledge which is accompanied with steadfastness, happiness, and power, lifting on able those fluctuations between happiness and misery in which the majority live. Thus the wise man sees that everything is good, even the presence of pain, and he uses that pain to enable him to reach higher regions of knowledge. Regarding his pain as a sure indication that he has done wrong somewhere, he searches for his mistake, and having found it, he ever avoids it. So when the crucible of pain is the dross of ignorance burned away from us, thus we are purified in the fire of knowledge. An Italian Dinner by Mrs. W. G. Waters This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. An Italian Dinner by Mrs. W. G. Waters from The Cooks to Cameron. Menu Number 29. Neapolitan Soup Ingredients Foul Potato Flour Eggs Bechamel Sauce Peas Asparagus Spinach Clear Soup Mix a quarter pound of force meat of fowl with a tablespoon of potato flour, a tablespoon of bechamel sauce, number three, and the yolk of an egg. Put this into a tube about the size round of an ordinary macaroni. Twenty minutes before serving, squirt the force meat into a sauce pan with boiling stock, and nip off the force meat as it comes through the pipe into pieces, about an inch and a half long. Let it simmer and add boiled peas and asparagus tips. If you like to have the fowl macaroni white and green, you can color half the force meat with a spoonful of spinach coloring. Serve in a good clear soup. Number 55. Ostrich a la Livornese Oysters Ingredients Oysters Parsley Shallot Anchovies Fennel pepper Breadcrumbs Cream Lemon Detach the oysters from their shells, and put them into china shells with their own liquor. Have ready a dessert spoonful of parsley, shallot, anchovy, and very little fennel. Add a tablespoon full of breadcrumbs and a little pepper, and mix the whole with a little cream. Put some of this mixture on each oyster, and then bake them in a moderate fire for a quarter of an hour. At the last minute, add a squeeze of lemon juice to each oyster, and serve on a folded napkin. Number 133. Pollo a la Oliva Chicken Ingredients Fowl Onions Celery Salt Parsley Carrots Butter Stock Olives Tomatoes Cut up half an onion, a stick of celery, a sprig of parsley, a carrot, and cook them all in a quarter pound of butter. Into this put a fowl, cut up, and let it act brown all over. Turn when necessary, and then baste it with boiling stock. Add four Spanish olives, cut up, and four others pounded in a mortar. Eight whole olives and three tablespoons full of tomato puree reduced, and when the fowl is well cooked, pour the sauce over it. Number 161. Cauliflower a la Parmigiana Ingredients Cauliflower Butter Parmesan Cheddar Espanyol Stock Boil a cauliflower in salted water, then saute it in butter. But be careful not to cook it too much. Take it off the fire, and screw grated Parmesan and cheddar over it, then put in a fireproof dish, and add a good spoonful of stock and one of Espanyol. Number one, and put it in the oven for 10 minutes. Number 188. Polenta Pasta Siatta Ingredients Polenta Butter Cheese Mushrooms Tomatoes Prepare a good polenta as above. Put it in layers in a fireproof dish, and add by degrees one and a half ounces of melted butter, two cooked mushrooms cut up, and two tablespoons full of grated cheese. If you like, you may add a good-sized tomato mashed up. Put the dish in the oven, and before serving, brown it over with salamander. Number 211. Bodino of Semolina Ingredients Semolina Milk Eggs Caster sugar Lemon Sultanas Rum Butter Cream Or Zavagioni Number 222. Boil one and a half pints of milk with four ounces of caster sugar, and gradually add five ounces of semolina. Boil for a quarter of an hour more, and stir continually with a wooden spoon. Then take the saucepan off the fire, and when it is cooled a little, add the yolks of six and the whites of two eggs, well beaten up. A little grated lemon peel, three quarters of an ounce of sultanas, and two small glasses of rum. Mix well so as to get it very smooth. Pour it into a buttered mold, and serve either hot or cold. If cold, put whipped cream flavored with stick vanilla around the dish. If hot, a Zavagioni. Number 222. Footnotes Number 1 refers to Espanol, or brown sauce. The chief ingredient of this useful sauce is good stock, to which add any remnants and bones of foul or game. Butter the bottom of a stew pan with at least two ounces of butter, and in it put slices of lean veal, ham, bacon, cuttings of beef, foul, or game trimmings. Three peppercorns, mushroom trimmings, a tomato, a carrot, and a turnip cut up. An onion stuck with two cloves, a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, parsley, and marjoram. Put the lid on the stew pan and braise well for 15 minutes. Then stir in a tablespoon of flour, and pour in a quarter pint of good boiling stock, and boil very gently for 15 minutes. Then strain through a tamas. Skim off all the grease, pour the sauce into an earthenware vessel, and let it get cold. If it is not rich enough, add a little lipig or glaze, pass through a sieve again before using. Number 3, beckamel sauce, ingredients, butter, ham, veal, carrots, shallot, celery, bay leaf, cloves, thyme, peppercorns, potato flour, cream, foul stock. Prepare a merripoix by mixing two ounces of butter, trimmings of lean veal and ham, a carrot, a shallot, a little celery, all cut into dice, a bay leaf, two cloves, four peppercorns, and a little thyme. Put this on a moderate fire so as not to let it color, and when all the moisture is absorbed, add a tablespoon full of potato flour, mix well, and gradually add equal quantities of cream and foul stock, and stir till it boils. Then let it simmer gently. Stir occasionally, and if it gets too thick, add more cream and white stock. After two hours, pass it twice slowly through a tamas so as to get the sauce very smooth. Number 187, polenta. Polenta is made of ground Indian corn, and may be used either as a separate dish or as a garnish for roast meat, pigeons, fowl, etc. It is made like porridge, gradually drop the meal with one hand into boiling stock or water, and stir continually with a wooden spoon with the other hand. In about a quarter of an hour it will be quite thick and smooth. Then add a little butter and grated parmesan, and one egg beaten up. Let it get cold, then put it in layers in a baking dish. Add a little butter to each layer, sprinkle with plenty of parmesan, and bake it for about an hour in a slow oven. Serve hot. Number 222, zavagione. Ingredients, eggs, sugar, marsala, maraschino, or other light colored liquor, sponge fingers. Zavagione is a kind of syllabub. It is made with marsala and maraschino, or marsala and yellow chartreuse. Wreck in the quantities as follows. For each person, the yolks of three eggs, one teaspoon full of castor sugar to each egg, and a wine glass of wine and liquor mixed. Whip up the yolks of the eggs with the sugar, then gradually add the wine. Put this in a bain-marie, and stir until it has thickened to the consistency of a custard. Take care, however, that it does not boil. Serve hot in custard glasses, and hand sponge fingers with it. End of an Italian dinner by Mrs. W. G. Waters from The Cooks to Cameron. Lucy Keys, A Story of Mount Wachuset by AP Marble. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Lucy Keys was the daughter of Robert Keys, who lived in the town of Princeton in Massachusetts, about the year 1755. At the age of two-and-a-half, or three years, she disappeared one night at sunset and was never afterwards heard of by her parents. Her father spent the greater part of his life in a fruitless search for her among the various tribes of Indians, and her mother lost her reason in the contemplation of the unknown fate which had befallen her little daughter. This is an account of the little girl's disappearance, and the elucidation of a mystery which, for three-quarters of a century, baffled all search. The story is derived from traditions in the neighborhood, from illusions to Lucy and the local histories, and from the dying statement of a chief actor in the tragedy. The fourth settler in the town was Robert Keys. It is well known that our ancestors had frequent trouble with the Indians and that white people were stolen to be either put to death or returned to their friends for a ransom. Lancaster had been burned seventy-five years before, and Mrs. Rowlandson, the minister's wife, was carried into captivity. She was taken to New Hampshire, and after wandering with her captors thirty days or more, she was returned to the foot of Mount Wachucet, and on a rock near the shore of Wachucet Lake where the chiefs held their councils. She was purchased of her captors by John Hoare, an ancestor of the distinguished Senator Hoare, for thirty dollars and silver, together with some trinkets and provisions. King Philip himself was present and opposed the release of Mrs. Rowlandson, but even his influence did not overcome the qubitity of the petty chief who held her. From the circumstance the rock is now known as Redemption Rock. It has been purchased by Senator Hoare, and its southern face now bears an appropriate inscription to commemorate the release and the courage and diplomacy of John Hoare. The inscription, quote, upon this rock, May 2nd, 1676, was made the agreement for the ransom of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson of Lancaster, between the Indians and John Hoare of Concord. King Philip was with the Indians, but refused his consent. It was on Pine Hill, a mile or two south of this rock, and at the eastern base of the mountain that Robert Keyes cut down the forest and made a home for his little family. The spot is picturesque and sightly. To the north, and seen through the clearing, nestles Lake Watruset, among its woody banks. While far in the horizon are seen the New Hampshire hills and beyond the blue summits of the White Mountains. To the east the landscape stretches away, diversified with lake and valley and woody slope, till it is lost to sight in the dimly distant line of the misty ocean. To the south is the dome-like knoll of Pine Hill, covered with evergreen trees. And on the west rises the steep aclivity of Mount Watruset, while between these two, maybe seen the hills, twenty miles away, that divide the waters of the Connecticut from the streams that supply the Nashua and the Merrimack. On a sunny afternoon in summer, Mr. Keyes and his boys were in the field some distance from the house, picking up logs and burning them with the stumps and brush to enlarge the farm. Around the house were fields of corn and flax and waving grain. The cows and sheep were browsing in the edge of the woods. Mrs. Keyes was spinning flax in front of the cabin door, seated on a low, homemade stool, upon the hard and smoothly swept ground. Withen, the neatly kept log cabin, had a rough floor, strewn with white sand. On one side of the single large room, there was a settee stuffed with shavings of birch bark, and a cat lay curled up and dozing in the sun, which streamed in through the open lattice that took the place of the window. Around the room were the rough tables and the benches, which used to serve as furniture in such primitive dwellings. Shelves and cupboards were fastened upon the wall. Dried apples and pumpkins, pieces of venison, and smoked ham hung upon poles at the top of the room. The wide fireplace and large open chimney stood at one side. The embers smoldered between the great and irons, ready to be kindled for preparing the evening meal. A loft, and reached by a ladder that rested against an opening, was the chamber where the family used to sleep. This was the happy home of Robert Keyes, where comfort and busy contentment reigned. On the afternoon in question, two older daughters were at play with little Lucy under the trellis of hop finds that shaded their mother from the sun. Those were not the days of carpets or of painted floors. Neat housewives would sprinkle the boards with clean white sand, and this, under the tread of feet, would scour the wood and then be swept away. The brooms were made by stripping the sapling birch and tying these strips in a bundle over the end of the stick, or by tying cedar or hemlock bows at the end of a pointed handle. Housekeepers were unacquainted with bottom brushes and corn brooms and sweeping machines. At their mother's call, the two older girls started with a bucket to go to the shore of the lake to fetch some sand for the floor. Little Lucy, thus left alone, soon tired of her play, and wandered away among the vines and the corn around the door, till she came to a path that led to the lake. She followed her sisters a long way behind them, and was never again seen by her friends. Soon the sun had disappeared behind the summit of the mountain, and the deepening shadows were beginning to creep toward the cabin. The mother had put away her spinning wheel, and the smoke was curling up from out of the wide-mouthed chimney in preparation of her supper. The farmer and his sons had left the field and gone to a little blacksmith's shop, a few rods down the hill, where he had mended a broken buck-scythe. The two girls had joined them there, and now they all came trooping together to the house. The boys and their father were washing their hands and faces from the sweat of the forge and the burnt logs. The mother was busy with her cooking. The girls had put away the bucket of sand and gone out to play when they missed Lucy and began searching for her among the hills of corn. Not finding her, they came back to the log cabin and told their mother. She thought the little girl must be nearer, and sent the sisters to look again, while she arranged the wooden plates and the pewter dippers and the iron knives and wooden spoons upon the table. The girls soon came back without finding Lucy, but the mother even then supposed that she had fallen asleep overcome by her play and the heat of the sun. She stepped to the door and called loudly for Lucy, and the family sat down to supper, expecting her every minute to walk in. She did not come, and hastily finishing their meal they all went to search the farm. Not finding Lucy, they became thoroughly alarmed. Adjoining Mr. Key's farm in between it and the foot of the mountain was the clearing of a Mr. Little John. He had no family. His farm was but little cultivated, and his cabin had not the air of home and comfort which Mrs. Key's had put into her hers. He was a hunter also, and he had a brace or two of dogs. Bear skins were tacked to the walls of his hut, to dry, and deer horns and fox skins still further showed the hunter. This man was of a morose and hermit-like nature. There was a mystery about his early history. He had come from the old world, where he had mingled in affairs of state, and once he had fled. Little children were afraid of him. He was quarrelsome, too, and before this time he had claimed a part of Mr. Key's land. As the two farmers could not agree on the boundary line, they had called in two of their neighbors, and a surveyor from Lancaster, to fix the boundary. These had decided in favor of Mr. Key's. The two neighbors had very little to do with each other after that, and the hermit became still more unsocial and morose. But in his distress Mr. Key's called upon this man for help, and Mr. Little John appeared to enter heartily into the search. The frequency of captures by the Indians at once led to the suspicion that they had stolen Lucy. Mr. Little John, as a hunter, assumed direction of the searching party. He sent the father and boys to follow the path towards the lake, the mother and daughters to go down the hill towards the east, while he went to the south and up the mountain. All hunted fast and far till late in the evening, when the gathering darkness had settled on the woods and hills, and then they turned their weary steps homeward. About this time all the members of the Key's families saw the light of a huge bonfire northwesterly from their house, and turned their steps towards the spot, for this was a signal that the lost was found. On reaching the place, however, they found Mr. Little John, but no Lucy. He said that the darkness prevented further search that night, and he had lighted the fire, in order, if possible, to attract the attention of the child, and also to bring together all the inhabitants around to institute a more thorough search in the morning. Afterwards, others came in, and when they heard the story, one of them proposed to give a shoe or an apron of Lucy's to one of the dogs, and let him follow the scent. But Mr. Little John said this would not do, for the dogs were fierce and used to hunting for prey only. They would tear the little girl in pieces if they were to find her. And Mrs. Keyes would not consent to have the dogs set on the track. Another proposed to hunt with torches. With this plan all fell in, and the party, now swelled to ten or fifteen, were divided into squads and sent to hunt, each in a different direction. All night they kept up the search. They called aloud for Lucy again and again, and in all directions. They scoured the woods for miles around. They hunted on the shore of the lake for the tracks of little feet. Behind rocks and trees, under logs and clumps of bushes, they peered. But no trace was to be seen. Nothing but darkness and gloomy night. Now and then the hoot of an owl would be mistaken for a child's cry, and hope would momentarily rise in the breast of a hunter, only to fall as the sound became more distinct. And thus the night dragged on. When morning came the various squads of hunters came back to the houses all with the same story of failure. They were weary with wakefulness and the heavy tramp. After a hasty meal they carefully searched the ground within two or three miles of the house. The whole day was spent in this, and at nightfall the party came back to the desolate house without hope. The mother, almost frantic, called for Lucy, and nothing but the echoes gave answer. One by one the neighbors went to their own homes and cares. The conviction forced itself upon the minds of all that Lucy had been captured by the Indians. Mr. Keyes and his boys hunted in the woods for days afterwards, till the only hope that Lucy was alive lay in her being captured. Otherwise she must have died from exposure or starvation. Sorrow and desolation now surrounded the cabin of Mr. Keyes. The sanded floor remained unswept. The trellis was broken by the wind. The vines hung straggling, the smooth spacious front of the door was cluttered. The mewing cat gave voice to the general gloom. Mrs. Keyes could not forget her grief. All day she worked listlessly, and as the shadows from the mountain crept towards the cottage she would stand in the doorway and call, Lucy, Lucy! For years the echoes daily sent back that sunset cry. A few months after the loss of little Lucy, a hunter returned from the region of Lake George. On hearing the story he reported that a white child had been seen in that neighborhood with the tribe of Indians, and the rumor reached the ears of Mr. Keyes. The autumn leaves had put on their dying robes of yellow and crimson and gold, when, leaving the rest of his harvest to be gathered by his sons, he went to Lake George. After great risks and many a hair-breath escape, he found a captive maiden, but she was many years older than Lucy, and she knew only the life of the Indians. He reached his home late in the winter. In the spring a friendly Indian reported that a white girl was held captive by a tribe on the St. Lawrence. And again, Mr. Keyes started in pursuit. Six months or more he spent in the search, but when he found the tribe and their captive, it was a black-eyed little girl that he saw, but Lucy's eyes were blue, and he traveled home. With each new rumor of a captive child among the Indian tribes in Maine or Connecticut, in New York or Canada, Mr. Keyes would start again on one of those sad pilgrimages. And he always came back disappointed and alone. Mr. Little John had now left his farm, and it was occupied by strangers. Meantime the boys had grown to be men. They no longer had any sympathy with the fruitless search. They made homes for themselves in the now farther remote frontier. And the girls had grown to womanhood and married. Old and poor and alone, for his wife had died and long ago ceased her plaintive evening call for her long-lost little Lucy. Mr. Keyes petitioned the great and general court for the grant of attractive public land which lay near his home. In this petition, now to be found in the archives of the state, he sets forth that he is poor in consequence of the prolonged search for his daughter and two feeble to maintain himself. End of Lucy Keyes, A Story of Mount Wachucet by AP Marble Read by Bologna Times