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250 NEW THINGS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
«^- Of Course Some Old Things Are Good: ...
hard and acid , and as it were glazed with age , the flaky crust turned to crumbly ruins , CTyptogamie or aearic : are they not veritable
gastronomic fairies turned to witches and warlocks by time ? Old buns are of the same family , specially Bath buns , which fade the soonest ;
old fruit follow the same lead , old vegetables limping after ; old flowers are nature ' s fineries , torn , splashed , and battered ; and
antique mushrooms , mackerel , muffins , and oysters cannot have a hand held up in their favor . No one knows better than a cook what a
ghost old age is in this working world ! A new walk is a pleasure . We soon get tired of the same lanes
and fields , excepting in mountainous districts , where the varying lights and shadows of themselves create novelty . A new walk has
more than once been a godsend to a household , gloomy perhaps , and on the verge of worse than gloomstranded and famished by
, home monotony . That new country walk inspirited them all again , and reconciled the discordant elements . If they had gone by the
dusty old road which they all knew so well by weary heart , of a surety would Anna and Emma-, Jane and Mary , have quarrelled
half the way and _s _^ _llked the remaining half . But the new walk through the wood and up the green corn-fieldand across the
hay-, field , with all the fresh-mown hay flung like golden threads across the sunlight , drove off the threatened danger . It had been a little
diversity in their sadly unvarying lives ; and without diversity we should die , as , when we have too little of it , we simply pine and
languish mournfully . New walks then are small enchantments , meek enhancements of poor human life , pleasant little flowers
growing by the day ' s way-side , and if they only prevent Anna and Emma , Jane and Mary , from squabbling and sulking , may be counted
among the blessings of a not surcharged humanity . A new book , an uncut book , of which one has read no review ,
and the title of which is epigrammatic and taking , is that nothing think you ? Try it on a rainy day in the distant country , where
the library groans _Tbeneath respectable folios , a fashion when your great-grandmother was a belle , with nothing younger than your
mother ' s age upon the shelves . Try the pleasures of a new book then , wet from the press , and gorgeous in its new coat , and should
it prove to be the sorriest trash under the printer's heaven it has had a prophetic though no actual value , and hearts have blessed if
brains have not garnered . What is the charm of travelling ? What makes us cheerfully submit to dirt , _hunger , discomfort ,
extortion , fleas , mosquitoes , malaria , and the passport system , jf it be not novelty ? What sends us yawning tnrough picture
galleries , and into exhibitions , but the hope of something new , exciting , interesting ? What sends us yawning back again ,
swearing at the swindle , but the want of novelty or freshness in the thing ? People want novelty . It is the very soul of society , the
life of the outside world : it is an instinct , a necessity , one of the
main leverages of civilization , one of the primary needs of man
250 New Things.
250 NEW THINGS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1859, page 250, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061859/page/34/
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