Roscommon Loaf.
Ingredients.—One pound of wholemeal flour, quarter of a pound of household flour, one ounce and a half of butter or dripping, half a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, one teaspoonful of salt, sour milk to mix.
Method.—Mix the flour, salt and soda well in a basin, rub in the dripping, mix to a rather soft dough with the sour milk; make into a flat loaf, score across with a knife, and bake in a good oven one hour and a half.
“FIVE O’CLOCK TEA.”
(Picture by A. E. Artigue.)
[WANTED: A LITTLE MORE IMAGINATION.]
By JAMES and NANETTE MASON.
Do you think we are going to advocate that all of us should retire to dreamland to pass a drowsy existence there with the creations of our fancy? Who thinks that is mistaken. It is not possible to put everything in the title, otherwise we might have made this one run, “Wanted: a little more imagination for those who, at the right times, have not enough, and a little less for those who, on all possible occasions, have too much.” But it is the “too little” which is of most importance for the purposes of ordinary life, and that is why the title stands above as it does. Our first business is to be practical and to speak of imagination as an aid in the work and conduct and duty of every day.
Of all powers possessed by our minds this is perhaps the most wonderful—the power of making pictures inside our heads, seeing there what eyes know nothing of and what outside ourselves has really no existence. It gives an importance—a glory even—to the most obscure and solitary lives. Possessed of a vivid and healthy imagination, a girl may live very much alone and yet be full of company, entertaining a ghostly good society that in some respects is even an improvement on that frequented by her less isolated friends.
Everything is the better for being shone on by its magic light—even love. Imagination, someone says, is to love what gas is to the balloon—that which raises it from the earth! It is, as we all know, the test of genius; but it is found, too, in ordinary people as a useful servant. Indeed, take imagination altogether out of our inner life and we would be very poor creatures.
However, as we have said, we have sometimes not enough. This happens, for example, when we fail to look at things in a spirit of kindliness, and give utterance to criticism on other folk, hard, harsh, and unreasonable.
Matter-of-fact minds usually fail to realise that all are not alike and that allowance—and a wide allowance too—should be made for differences both in thought and action. For this reason we find them often wanting in sympathy and sometimes even cruel.
This the imaginative seldom are. “Put yourself in her place” is their golden rule—the best rule that was ever devised for enabling us to go through the world adding daily to the happiness of it.
Only have a little more imagination and you will be tolerant and kindly and ready to make excuses not only for those you love, which is easy, but for those you dislike, which, as everyone knows, is a much harder matter. The “little more” will make Kate shut her mouth again the next time it flies open to let out a rude, abrupt, or unreasonable word. It will make Eliza pay that little account she has been owing for the last six months without a thought in all that time of the dressmaker needing the money. It will make Maggie give up grumbling that Beatrice writes to her so seldom, as if Beatrice has the leisure,—she the eldest of a great bunch of sisters and her mother an invalid. It will make Eva cut her visit short next time she calls on Alice, so leaving hard-worked Alice to get through her school tasks for the morrow without sitting up to all hours of the night. In fact, what will it not do in the way of giving smoothness to the wheels of life?
Imagination is a first-rate faculty by which to obtain a look at ourselves, and when we get a little more of it, it is like turning up the gas to get a clearer view. We see ourselves then as others see us, and a pretty exhibition it sometimes is. If a girl is vain, frivolous, whimsical, selfish, vulgar, mean, she in this way gets to know it. There is thus always hope for the imaginative—they can realise what they are, and, without self-knowledge, what chance of reformation is there for anybody?
Our friend Josephine, for example, came to us the other day, keen on being an authoress; but Josephine, it is clear, has next to no imagination. With only a few grains of it, she would have seen that becoming an authoress is for her impossible, because what she wants is publishers’ and editors’ cheques and what she does not want is trouble.
A well-trained imagination—not one inclined to run riot; no, certainly not that sort of a one—is of great assistance in enabling us rightly to sum up people and things. Our critical faculties are worth little and only lead us into mischief and mistakes without it. Possessed of only a “little more,” not a few of us would often be saved from being misled by appearances and enabled to steer clear of the troubles that come from drawing wrong inferences. The world is a difficult enough world to live in, for things are but seldom what they seem, and some art, like this one we are talking about, is needed by which we can illuminate life and get at the real essence of all that interests us.
Another use of imagination is in the reading of books, and on this subject no one has written better than the late Professor Blackie, who held very decided opinions about the importance of having the imaginative faculty properly trained.
“As there are many persons,” he says, “who seem to walk through life with their eyes open seeing nothing, so there are others who read through books, and perhaps even cram themselves with facts, without carrying away any living pictures of significant story which might arouse the fancy in an hour of leisure or gird them with endurance in a moment of difficulty.
“Ask yourself, therefore, always when you read a chapter of any notable book, not what you saw printed on a grey page, but what you see pictured in the glowing gallery of your imagination. Have your fancy always vivid and full of body and colour. Count yourself not to know a fact when you know that it took place, but then only when you see it as it did take place.”
These words form as valuable a note on the art of reading as we are likely to meet with for many a day.
To train the imagination adequately, the Professor points out, it is not enough that pictures be made to float pleasantly before the fancy—that is merely the amusement of the lazy. We should call upon our imagination to take a firm grasp of the shadows as they arise, and not be content till we see them with our minds almost as clear, distinct, and life-like as we might have done with our eyes.
For the culture of the imagination, works of fiction are no doubt of great service, but the most useful exercise of this faculty is when it buckles itself to realities.
“There is no need,” says the Professor, “of going to romances for pictures of human character and fortune calculated to please the fancy and to elevate the imagination. The life of Alexander the Great, of Martin Luther, of Gustavus Adolphus, or any of those notable characters on the great stage of the world who incarnate the history which they create, is for this purpose of more educational value than the best novel that ever was written or even the best poetry. Not all minds delight in poetry; but all minds are impressed and elevated by an imposing and a striking fact. To exercise the imagination on the lives of great and good men brings with it a double gain; for by this exercise we learn at a single stroke, and in the most effective way, both what was done, and what ought to be done.”
What is true of the value of imagination to the student of books is equally true of its importance to all who devote attention to music and art. Without imagination, the pursuit of either is little better than a waste of time, and the more of it we bring to their culture, the more successful we shall be. Let girls, then, and their parents and teachers, look to it and do what they can to encourage this most spiritual of all our faculties, the very life of artistic effort, and a magician to whom everything is possible.
A great and good use of imagination is to reproduce to us our past lives. It is something more than memory. Memory says I was at such a place on a certain day, but imagination brings up the place—the Highland loch, it may be, in the glory of an autumn morning, the purple heather on the hills, the steamer at the pier, the hotel overlooking the steamer, the young man in the coffee-room smiling to the landlord’s daughter, the taste of the fresh salmon, the very smell of the burned oat-cake.
“All that is past,” says Bacon, “is as a dream,” and by imagination we can dream it all over again. And the recollection is sometimes better than the reality, just as in moonlight our village looks more lovely than in sunshine. Sentiment whispers then in our ear, and a halo is thrown over the unsightly and disagreeable.
An additional charm too is that many a problem which may have puzzled us when things actually happened, is solved before we begin to look back. The relationship of people, lovers and lasses, friends and foes, sharpers and simpletons, has been made plain; the foolish have got their deserts and the wise have got theirs; the envious have grown lean and the good-natured and kindly have become fat; the wasters have fallen to poverty and the industrious have risen to fortune.
Such changes as these give value and interest to our recollections when we wake the ghosts of the past and make them parade before us. We are able in a way which was impossible before to be actors, spectators, and enlightened critics—all three rolled in one.
Girls who have now but little short lives, with comparatively few incidents to recall, can hardly realise what a gratification this wandering over the enchanted ground of imagination imparts to mature years. If they did they would often be saying to themselves, How will this look in recollection? And such a thought would keep them from many a frivolity and many an error. But, short lives or long lives, let us go over our past often if for no other reason than that we may understand ourselves, not to speak of our gaining such knowledge as will enable us to steer a safe course through the perils of the future.
Speaking of the future reminds us that that is a great territory of the imaginative. By imagination girls are witches to foretell what is to happen the day after to-morrow.
Now we spend our time ill if we build castles in the air and trust to them as if they were substantial edifices. But, for all that, to let the imagination dwell on what is yet to come has its uses and may be a valuable help to conduct.
Castles in the air and dreams, too hopelessly extravagant ever to be realised have brightened many dull and monotonous lives, and for that reason alone, within bounds, are to be encouraged. Besides this there is an important gain resulting from our projecting the imagination into the future—we are thereby prepared for many events which now find us quite unprepared.
The grasshoppers were wanting in imagination who danced and sang all summer-time. They should have pictured to themselves the snow on the ground, the pools frozen over, and the wind whistling through the bare branches.
A well-to-do man once said to us, “I have all my life had a vision of a workhouse door open to receive me if I did not plod on, rising early and working hard. It is that which has made me saving and prosperous.”
A similar vision might work a change on some people we know. Bring your own self forward, Louisa, in the glittering hall of that imagination of yours, picturing yourself as old and disinclined for work, and see if ever after you will not be industrious, wise, and prudent.
“For age and want save while you may,
No morning sun lasts a whole day.”
A little more imagination may often be recommended to the good looking, not forgetting all who think themselves so. Perhaps we should rather say a little more of the right sort, for they indulge in flights of fancy enough when it is a matter of picturing those brought into captivity by their charms. They should leave considering their conquests and captives and make an effort to realise what they themselves will be, say, at fifty or sixty, if they live so long. The beauty and attractiveness of youth will then be over, and unless they have something else to recommend them, their place will be on one of the back seats of human life.
This should set them furnishing the inside of their heads as richly as Nature has done the outside. Beauty vanishes, but mental culture endures and is found attractive, and even charming, to the very end of the chapter. There are few sadder sights than that of a beauty in ruins with an untrained intellect and none more refreshing than that of a bright old wrinkled face, with a mind behind it stored with information and animated by shrewdness and good nature.
There is danger in all things, for all—yes, even the best—may be misused. Imagination is a friendly help to elevate, direct, and brighten our lives as we have seen, but that does not happen with the foolish. Instead of occupying this wondrous faculty with what is profitable and beautiful, they devote it to what is degrading and mean, and thus become a great deal worse with imagination than they would be without it.
And, even where its subjects are not positively objectionable, imagination sometimes wastes its energy on whimsicalities and runs riot in the broad fields of extravagance and nonsense. Of such a nature was the fertile fancy of an old friend of ours who, to the end of her days, showed great reverence for dogs and cats because she believed them animated by the souls of her ancestors.
A very silly use of imagination is to picture to ourselves suspicions, dangers and misfortunes. Some of us have a great deal of ability in this line, and endure torments daily over evils that never arrive.
“Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you” is a safe rule, and only a stupid girl will set her imagination working so as to make herself miserable. Caroline, we fear, is of the stupid class—no doubt, Caroline, it is on this occasion only—or she would at once get rid of the dreadful thought she imparted to us last Tuesday that the letters sent to her by her sweetheart were detained at the post office and read. As if the postmistress, even in her country place, had not something better to do!
Another danger of the imagination is that we are apt to take refuge in it against the duties of real life. In real life there is friction, and there is nothing of that in dreamland. We can make that pleasant country to suit ourselves, without irritation, without contradiction, without mishaps, everything coming just right. Our business, however, in the world is not to dream but to act, for which reason this great gift of imagination must be kept in its proper place. It is a good servant, but, by foolish indulgence, may become a very bad master.
But, after making all allowances for dangers—those we have named and others that might be stated—the fact remains that to the greater number of us a little more imagination would not come amiss. It would make our lives richer, and happier, more useful, more kindly, more sensible. It is only a “little more” that is wanted. That any of us are entirely destitute of it is improbable. To be “dry sticks” is not common for girls.
[AN EMBROIDERED BABY’S CARRIAGE COVERLID OF HOUSE FLANNEL.]
I was recently asked by a lady friend to design her a simple piece of embroidery for her child’s pram. The chief thing was, that the design was not to be elaborate, as there was very little time to work it.
The illustration here given is the design I made, but it has a very different appearance in black and white to what it had when worked in two tones of blue worsted on house flannel. Still, those readers who do embroidery will know what allowances to make.
I sketched the design right away in charcoal, and anyone at all accustomed to using a pencil will have no difficulty in doing this. Divide your material in half, and then draw a line in the middle horizontally, and others above and below this. These lines will guide you in getting both sides fairly alike, for, so long as the principal lines are symmetrical, it is enough. I found you can easily sketch in vine charcoal (that is the fine kind) on flannel and it easily dusts off afterwards.
The whole of the forms were produced in outline, and to show the sort of stitch, I have given a leaf full size. The ground is soon covered in this way, and it hasn’t a cheap look either. The fault many embroiderers make in carrying out a design is that they miss the “swing” of the lines, get broken-backed curves and clumsy-looking details. To obviate this you ought to keep looking at your work as a whole. Dwelling too long on any part of the design is likely to upset the balance of the whole.
It is obvious that in the design given the stems are the first features to be worked, as the leaves and flowers merely grow from them and are of secondary importance. It will add to the grace of the design to get the lower part of the stems gradually thicker, say two strands wide towards the base, just as in nature we find a plant gradually thickening as it nears the root.
It will be noticed that a separate border is designed for the piece at the top which turns over. The coverlid should have a worked edging, and to get this even a few niches should be spaced out and drawn on a piece of tracing paper and then pricked over with a coarse needle.
All you have to do is to rub a little crushed charcoal, tied up in a piece of coarse linen or muslin, on the reverse side, when the powdered charcoal will pass through the holes leaving an impression which can be worked over at once.
Where a border is distinctly geometrical, it should be done evenly, and the eye is not quite correct enough if left to itself, and much of the workmanlike look of the whole would be marred if this edging were badly done. The right initial or name can be added or left out if desired. In the latter case put in a flower and a leaf or two.
Those readers who have never worked on house flannel will find it a pleasant material, and for portières and short curtains very excellent both in effect and for wear.
[A DREAM OF FAIR SERVICE.]
By C. A. MACIRONE.