Domestic cookery. Meats, formed upon principles of economy and adapted to the use of private families / by Mrs. Rundell.

  • Maria Eliza Rundell
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Domestic cookery. Meats, formed upon principles of economy and adapted to the use of private families / by Mrs. Rundell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/168 page 2
    but I cannot help thinking that should this fly-leaf flutter down upon the frugal board at the right time, there may be many who would be willing to substitute a glass of water for a glass of beer once a week, in order to secure a Life of Nelson, Garibaldi, De Foe’s Plague of London, Scott’s Marmion, or Goethe’s Faust. Such a sacrifice would leave the body not one whit the poorer, and the mind richer for ever. The books about to be offered to the million are the best—those “ with- out which no gentleman’s library is complete.” Wai.ter Crane designs the cover—for the best art is worthy to adorn the best literature. “Do the people care for either?” You might as well ask, “ Do the people care for turtle soup ?” The answer is, “ Of course they do when they can get it.” There is no greater mistake than to try to write and publish down to the people. Give the people something to work up to. Tennyson says, “ We needs must love the highest when we see it.” Place the highest within everyone’s reach, and then there will be something for everyone to work up to. As I looked down the other day, from the upper deck of a large Atlantic steamer, at the crowd of steerage passengers, and marked how most of them were huddled together hour after hour doing nothing, others crowding round the bar where beer was being doled out, and just a few reading some greasy tract or newspaper, I thought, “ O for a stock of cheap books such as will be issued in ‘Koutledge’s World. Library’ !” No emigrant ship should be without a selection of them. As I sometimes steam out of London and notice the miles of neat small streets,-and think of those thousands of bread-winners hurrying home nightly to growing-up families, I feel inclined to say, “ Why should not each of you once a week bring home a threq^enny book in his pocket? You would have to save but a halfpenny a day to do it.” When I think of the long, gossiping, yawning, gambling hours of grooms, valets, coachmen, and cabmen ; the railway stations, conveniently provided with bookstalls, and crowded morning and evening v.'ith work- men’s trains—the winter evenings in thousands of villages, wayside cottages, and scattered hamlets—the brief, but not always well-spent '>• leisure of Factory hands in the north—the armies of commercial and un- commercial travellers with spare half hours—the shop assistants—the city offices with their hangers-on —the Board Schools—the village libraries— the Army and Navy—the barrack or the dockyard—again the vision of “Routledge’a World. Library” rises before me, and I say, “This, if not a complete cure for indolence and vice, may at least prove a powerful counter-charm.” Such, indeed, are but glimpses into the sea below the sea : its waters are at present unexplored—we seem to sound and sound and find their depths fathomless. “ Routledge’s World Library” will heave the _lcad once more !
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image