Readers of a National Magazine* were invited to send in articles that they would like to see in their favorite periodical. The editor specified, "literature that endures ~ those things that touch and pulsate with the best and noblest emotions and sentiment."

"It may be in that old school book in the attic," the announcement read. "It may be between the leaves of the family Bible; it may be in mother's scrap-book, yellow with age and hallowed by sacred memories."

The editor offered cash prizes totalling over $10,000. "Send me a clipping, a story, an anecdote, or a selection that has touched your heart~ those things that make us all kin; those things that endure ~ the classics of our own lives."

The announcement went on to say, "Heart throbs ~ yes, heart throbs of happiness, heart throbs of courage, heart throbs that make us feel better. Those things that appeal to you must appeal to others."

"Let us make a magazine that will speak the language of the heart as well as of the mind."

The articles poured in, along with touching cover-letters. Over 50,000 people responded. Award money was distributed and as a consequence of the "great apparent value of this unique collection, and a very large number of requests for their publication, the Heart Throbs were offered in a 480 page hardcover in 1905, Grosset & Dunlap. Chapple Publishing Company, Limited.

*National Magazine, Boston, Mass., 1904 - 1905. Editor: Joe Chapple.

With Valentine's Day Approaching...

Heart Throbs The Old Scrap Book, The Chapple Publishing Company, Ltd., Boston, Mass. 1905 GROSSET & DUNLAP, (Personal library ~ lwalker)

Tomorrow: The story of "Heart Throbs" Dble click on photo for larger image.

Naturalist Robert Bateman

Thought for Today:

"Back in 1967, when I prepared my first art show to mark the celebration of Canada's centennial year, I chose as subjects a series of human-made artifacts that had survived the previous hundred years. In Halton County just west of Toronto, where I then lived, such subjects were not difficult to find: old barns, Victorian farmhouses, wooden pumps and split-rail fences were there in abundance. Now, with the exception of an old chapel, everything I painted is gone."

Robert Bateman Natural Worlds, text by Rick Archbold, Wellfleet Press, 2005. Madison Press Ltd.

Robert Bateman, Canadian artist, naturalist (1930 - )

Photo: lwalker, Haldimand County

"Every Year the Snow Sets Me Dreaming..."

"Every year the snow sets me dreaming;......add logs to the stove and widen the draft. Sit in a chair looking south into blue twilight that arrives earlier every day -- as the sky flakes and densens [sic], as the first clear flakes float past the porch's wood to light on dirt of the driveway and on brown frozen grass or dry stalks of the flower border. They seem tentative and awkward at first, then in a hastening host a whole brief army falls, white militia paratrooping out of the close sky over various textures, making them one. Snow is white and gray, part and whole, infinitely various yet infinitely repetitious, soft and hard, frozen and melting, a creaking underfoot and a soundlessness. But first of all it is the reversion of many into one. It is substance, almost the idea of substance, that turns grass, driveway, hayfield, old garden, log pile...into the one white."

Donald Hall, Seasons At Eagle Pond, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

(To view larger image, please click on photo. Taken January 21, 2010.)

Note: The author appears to have invented some words; however, his imagery feels true ~ lw

"To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing, and in that profound sense everything he writes is autobiographical. He could not write it if he had not seen it and felt it deeply."

~ Robertson Davies (1913 - 1995) Canadian author, journalist, playwright, in a speech given at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. Nov. 26, 1989.

Robertson Davies The Merry Heart, Pendragon Ink [An enterprise set up by RD's wife and daughter to handle his work.] McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1996

Roads~ Less~ Travelled

Roads-Less-Travelled

Taken Friday, January 21 (To view larger image, dbl. click on photo.)

Smile for Today

"A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."*

This is not a rose, obviously. We just like it because it took years to blossom.It is what it is!

*Gertrude Stein, Sacred Emily, Geography and Plays, 1922.