{...for our friends in Florida.}

[Photos: Railway Bridge Over Grand at Cayuga Feb.2016 lbw]

 

 

"Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles.  We had many devices to use as few as possible.  In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours;  she could do this in the dark, or by fire-light;  and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to 'keep blind-man's holiday'."

"String is my foible.  My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come.  I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.  How people can bring themselves to use Indian-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine.  To me an Indian-rubber ring is a precious treasure.  I have one which is not new;  one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago.  I have really tried to use it; but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.

"I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small economies ~ careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction--any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer's day, because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book;  of course, the corresponding pages at the other end came out as well; and this little unnecessary waster of paper (his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.  Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in;  the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again.  Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole instead of a half sheet of note-paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides..."

~ Elizabeth Gaskell, known as Mrs. Gaskell (1810 - 1865) English novelist. CRANFORD, Chatto & Windus Publishers, 1907.
[Photo miniature: Wikipedia.]

[Tomorrow: "String is my foible...Small pieces of butter grieve others."]

Haldimand County

 

 
 

[Photos:  February 17, 2016 lbw]

TOPIC:  Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932 - 1996) Dutch theologian, writer.

Quotations Henri Nouwen.

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."

Note:  Henri J.M. Nouwen is the topic of our Third Thursday readings this month.

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