Entries from September 2004 ↓

In spite of the latitude and Arctic current, Labrador is the home of much that is delicious in the berry world. Even the outlying islands furnish the curlew berry and bake apple in profusion, and upon the mainland, in the proper month, September, a veritable feast awaits one. Three varieties of blueberries, huckleberries, wild red currants, having a pungent, aromatic flavor, unequalled by the cultivated varieties; marsh berries, raspberries, tiny white capillaire tea berries, with a flavor like some rare perfume, and having just a faint suggestion of wintergreen; squash berries, pear berries, and curlew berries, the latter not so grateful as the others, but a prime favorite with the Eskimos, who prefer it to almost any other; and lastly, the typical Labrador fruit, which, excepting a few scattering plants in Canada and Newfoundland, is found, I believe, nowhere else outside of the peninsula–the gorgeous bake apple. These cover the entire coast from the St. Lawrence to Ungava. Their beautiful geranium-like leaves struggle with the reindeer moss upon the islands, carpet alike the low valleys and the highest hilltops, and even peep from the banks of everlasting snow. Only one berry grows upon each plant, but this one makes a most delicious mouthful. It is the size and form of a large dewberry, but the color is a bright crimson when half ripe and a golden yellow when matured. Its taste is sweetly acid, it is exceedingly juicy, and so delicate that it might be though impossible to preserve it. Yet the natives do preserve it with all its freshness and original flavor throughout the entire winter, merely by covering it with fresh water and heading up tightly in casks or barrels.

The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 1, by Ambrose Bierce, of course. Includes Ashes of the Beacon, The Land Beyond the Blow, For the Ahkoond, John Smith, Liberator and Bits of Autobiography (which is non-fiction).

• 3 tablespoons honey.
• 3/4 quart milk.
• 2 quarts flour.
• 1 yeast cake.
• 1/2 cup butter.
• 2 eggs.

Without fail, every year on Shrove Tuesday, or “Fast Nacht,” the day before the beginning of Lent, these cakes were made. Quite early in the morning, or the night before, the following sponge was set to rise: The lukewarm, scalded milk, mixed into a smooth batter with 1 quart of flour; add 1 Fleischman’s yeast cake, dissolved in a very little water. Beat well together, set in a warm place to rise over night, or several hours, and when light, add the following, which has been creamed together: eggs, butter and lard, a little flour and the honey. Beat well, and then add the balance of the flour, reserving a small quantity to flour the board later. Set to rise again, and when quite light roll out on a well-floured board, cut into circles with a doughnut cutter, cut holes in the centre of cakes, let rise, and then fry in deep fat; dust with pulverised sugar and cinnamon, if liked. These are regular German doughnuts, and are never very sweet. If liked sweeter, a little sugar may be added. From this batter Mary made 18 “fried cakes,” or “Fast Nacht Kuchen,” as the Germans call them. She also made from the same dough one dozen cinnamon buns and two Dutch cakes. The dough not being very sweet, she sprinkled rivels composed of sugar, flour and butter, generously over the top of the “Dutch cakes.” The dough for doughnuts, or fried cakes, should always have a little more flour added than dough for “Dutch cakes” or buns; baked in the oven. If too soft, they will absorb fat while frying.

“Some years ago, up at North Haven Island, on the Maine Coast,” said a New Yorker, “I came across a mystery that haunts me still. A bare rocky point juts out into the sea on one side of the island, and the first year that I visited the place there was a rude cabin on the rock. Having gone out there from curiosity one day, I found a man in shameful rags trying out the oil from the refuse of a fish-canning factory. When I came to examine the man his appearance astonished me. He was an extremely handsome, well-made Englishman of forty or thereabouts. His hands, soiled with the material he worked in, were small and well-shaped. When I tried to draw him into conversation, he first answered in monosyllables, and was almost sulky in his reserve. He gradually thawed, however, and I found that he spoke rare and beautiful English, and that of a well-bred and well-read man. Glancing into the door of his cabin, I could see perhaps a score of well-thumbed volumes in library binding. His reserve was such that I could not ask him about himself, but I left the island deeply interested in him.”

“I turned up at North Haven the next year, and one of the earliest things I did was to go out to the point in search of my acquaintance. The rock was bare again, and there was no trace of him and his cottage. I asked about him of some persons I met on the island, and here is what I learned: He had come to the place mysteriously some years before, having been dropped by a schooner. He found work at the fish cannery, but later quit the place, built his cabin on the rock, supplied himself with food chiefly by fishing, and obtained from the factory the privilege of trying oil from the refuse. From the products he obtained a little ready money for tobacco and other luxuries. At some between my two visits his cabin was discovered to be on fire late one night, and, hurrying down, his neighbors saw him amid the flames dead, with his throat cut. The fire had so seized upon the hut that his body could not be removed until it was nearly consumed. He was buried, and no solution of the mystery discovered. Life had evidently become insupportable to him, and he had taken the way of suicide as the easiest one out of misery.”

It has, for instance, been usually thought, by most actors, that after a gentleman has murdered his sovereign, and caused a similar peccadillo to be committed upon his dearest friend, he would be, in some degree, agitated, and put out of the even tenor of his way, when the ghost of Banquo appears at the banquet…. Mr. Graham indulges us with a new reading. He carefully places one foot somewhat in advance of the other, and puts his hands together with the utmost deliberation. Again, he says mildly–

“Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!”

in a tone which would well befit the situation, if the text ran thus:–

“Dear me, how singular! Pray go!”

“You wouldn’t have believed it possible to blow out a candle flame through a brickbat,” remarked a celebrated physicist, whose penchant is to give scientific research a practical bearing. “It can be done, however, and it illustrates the all-pervasive qualities of air. Most rooms are largely ventilated through their walls, and the brick and mortar are merely rudimentary lungs, which take in and throw out the atmosphere with little hinderance.

“You may try the experiment yourself. Place a candle on the other side of your brick and use two funnels, with the flaring ends on the opposite sides of the brickbat with the small end of one in line with your mouth an the small end of the other trained on the candle flame. The least breath will make the light flicker, and a hearty expiration will extinguish it altogether. Try it and see.”

A musician of this city has contrived an apparatus which he calls a “Pianautomaton,” and which is designed, as its name implies, for automatically playing upon a pianoforte any piece of music desired. The instrument is described externally as a box of the width and length of the keyboard to which it is clamped. Through a slot runs the piece of music which is to be played, and which has this peculiarity, that all the notes are perforated through the sheet. The box has a crank which sets in motion a magneto-electric apparatus and by its means a series of axial bars protruding below the box, strike the pianoforte keys and correctly perform the musical composition indicated by the holes in the paper. This contrivance rather belies its name in that music is ground out, as in the better known street instrument of humbler pretensions; but in another form, the apparatus is entirely self-acting, the insertion of the perforated paper causing a small lever to come in metallic contact, thus completing the electric current, the instrument then continuing to play until all the music paper has passed through the aperture, when the lever being no longer held up, the circuit is broken and the performance terminated.

The axial bars strike the key notes with four different degrees of strength, either with a legato or staccato touch, and with a suitable connection with the pedals, all degrees of musical expression are attainable. It is apparent that this instrument can be made to produce effects of execution which no living artist could think of attempting. For example, a chromatic scale in octaves, thirds, or tenths; or produce the effect as if four, six, eight, or more hands were performing. There is no hesitancy in “reading at sight,” and the variety of pieces need not be a limited repertoire, like a hand organ.

Some interesting experiments have been made on the visibility of the electric light at sea by the government of the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. The word “visible” in the report on the tests means visible on a dark night with a clear atmosphere. The result of the experience of the German committee was that a white light of one candle power was visible 1.4 miles on a dark, clear night, and one mile on a rainy night. The American tests resulted as follows: In very clear weather a light of one candle power was plainly visible at one nautical mile; one of three candle power at two miles; one of ten candle power was seen by the aid of a binocular at four miles; one of twenty-nine candle power faintly at five miles, and one of thirty-three candle power plainly at five miles. On an exceptionally clear night a white light of 3.2 candle power was readily distinguished at three miles; one of 5.6 candle power at four miles and one of 17.2 candle power at five miles. In the Dutch experiments the results were almost similar, but a 16 candle power light was plainly visible at five miles. For a green light the power required was two for one mile, fifteen for two miles, fifty-one for three miles and 106 for four miles. The result of tests with a red light were almost identical with those with green, but it was conclusively proved that a white light was by far the most easily seen.