A Small Mystery

This was published in 1875 in The Golden Treasury, which suggests it was written earlier but perhaps not too long before. But when? And who wrote it? Even the spellings vary from one source to the next, as spellings slowly juggled into their most comfortable place (the most recent and easily read is presented here).

Does that mean it was written much earlier? Or that the author affected an old-fashioned manner? Or perhaps it is evidence of a more localized manner of spelling, perhaps lowland Scots? Alas, that scoundrel Anonymous will never tell.

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The French 75

French 75One might define elegance as beautiful simplicity. An elegant solution, an elegant dress, these are brought about by insight and understanding of their subject, and exemplify doing more with less. Details are minimal, and the more significant for it, and the whole gives an ingenious pleasing quality.

And that is a reasonable way to think about the French 75 cocktail.

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On The Balcony

In front of the sombre mountains,
a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow
And between us and it, the thunder;
And down below in the green wheat,
the labourers stand like dark stumps,
still in the green wheat.
You are near to me, and naked feet
In their sandals, and through the
scent of the balcony’s naked timber
I distinguish the scent of your hair:
so now the limber
Lightning falls from heaven.
Adown the pale-green glacier river floats
A dark boat through the gloom—
and whither? The thunder roars
But still we have each other!
The naked lightnings in the heavens dither
And disappear—
what have we but each other?
The boat has gone.

 

(D. H. Lawrence)