Coffee Break Collection 028 - Hobbies by Various

1 01 - Amateur Radio Handbook: Introduction by A. Frederick Collins 11:36

The Radio Amateur's Handbook, Introduction, by A. Frederick Collins. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Before delving into the mysteries of receiving and sending messages without wires, A word as to the history of the art and its present-day applications may be of service. While popular interest in the subject has gone forward by leaps and bounds within the last two or three years, it has been a matter of scientific experiment for more than a quarter of a century. The wireless telegraph was invented by William Marconi at Bologna, Italy, in 1896. And in his first experiments, he sent dot and dash signals to a distance of 200 or 300 feet.

The wireless telephone was invented by the author of this book at Narberth, Pennsylvania, in 1899, and in his first experiments, the human voice was transmitted to a distance of three blocks. The first vital experiments that led up to the invention of the wireless telegraph were made by Heinrich Hertz of Germany in 1888, when he showed that the spark of an induction coil set up electric oscillations in an open circuit, and that the energy of these waves was, in turn, sent out in the form of electric waves. He also showed how they could be received at a distance by means of a ring detector, which he called a resonator. In 1890, Edward Branly of France, showed that metal filings in a tube cohered when electric waves acted on them, and this device he termed a radio conductor.

This was improved upon by Sir Oliver Lodge, who called it a coherer. In 1895, Alexander Popov of Russia constructed a receiving set for the study of atmospheric electricity, and this arrangement was the earliest on record of the use of a detector connected with an aerial and the Earth. Marconi was the first to connect an aerial to one side of a spark gap and a ground to the other side of it. He used an induction coil to energize the spark gap and a telegraph key in the primary circuit to break up the current into signals. Adding a Morse register, which printed the dot and dash messages on a tape, to the pop-off receptor, he produced the first system for sending and receiving wireless telegraph messages.

After Marconi had shown the world how to telegraph without connecting wires, it would seem on first thought to be an easy matter to telephone without wires. But not so, for the electric spark sets up damped and periodic oscillations, and these cannot be used for transmitting speech. Instead, the oscillations must be of constant amplitude and continuous. That a direct current arc light transforms a part of its energy into electric oscillations, was shown by Firth and Rogers of England in 1893. The author was the first to connect an arc lamp with an aerial and a ground, and to use a microphone transmitter to modulate the sustained oscillations so set up. The receiving apparatus consisted of a variable contact known as a pillbox detector, which Sir Oliver Lodge had devised, and to this was connected an Erickson telephone receiver, then the most sensitive maid.

A later improvement for setting up sustained oscillations was the author's rotating oscillation arc. Since those memorable days of more than two decades ago, wonderful advances have been made in both of these methods of transmitting intelligence, and the end is as yet nowhere in sight. Twelve or fifteen years ago, the boys began to get fun out of listening in to what the ship and shore stations were sending, and further, they began to do a little sending on their own account. These youngsters, who caused the professional operators, many a pang, were the first wireless amateurs, and among them experts were developed who are foremost in the practice of the arc today. Away back there, the spark coil and the arc lamp were the only known means for setting up oscillations at the sending end, while the electrolytic and crystal detectors were the only available means for the amateur to receive them.

As it was next to impossible for Boyd to get a current having a high enough voltage for operating an oscillation arc-lamp, wireless telephony was out of the question for him, so he had to stick to the spark-coil transmitter, which needed only a battery current to energize it. And this, of course, limited him to sending more signals. As the electrolytic detector was cumbersome, and required a liquid, the crystal detector, which came into being shortly after, was just as sensitive and soon displace the former, even as this had displaced the coherer. A few years ahead of these amateurs, that is to say, in 1905, J. A. Fleming, of England, invented the vacuum-tube detector, but ten more years elapsed before it was perfected to a point where it could compete with the crystal detector.

Then its use became general, and workers everywhere sought to, and did, improve it. Further, they found that the vacuum-tube, The vacuum tube oscillator would not only act as a detector, but that if energized by a direct current of high voltage, it would set up sustained oscillations like the arc clamp, and the value of sustained oscillations for wireless telegraphy as well as wireless telephony had already been discovered. The fact that the vacuum tube oscillator requires no adjustment of its elements, that its initial cost is much less than the oscillation arc, besides other considerations, It's the reason that it popularized wireless telephony, and because continuous waves have many advantages over periodic oscillations, it's the reason the vacuum tube oscillator is replacing the spark coil as a wireless telegraph transmitter.

Moreover, by using a number of large tubes in parallel, powerful oscillations can be set up, and hence the waves sent out are radiated to enormous distances. While oscillator tubes were being experimented with in the research laboratories of the General Electric, the Westinghouse, the Radio Corporation of America, and other big companies, all the youthful amateurs in the country had learned that by using a vacuum tube as a detector, they could easily get messages 500 miles away. The use of these tubes as amplifiers also made it possible to employ a loudspeaker, so that a room, a hall, The boy amateur had only to let father and mother listen in, and they were duly impressed when he told them they were getting it from KDKA, the Pittsburgh station of the Westinghouse Company, for it was not Pittsburgh 500 miles away.

And so they, too, became enthusiastic wireless amateurs. This new interest of the grown-ups was at once met Not only by the manufacturers of apparatus with complete receiving and sending sets, but also by the big companies which began broadcasting regular programs consisting of music and talks on all sorts of interesting subjects. This is the wireless or radio as the average amateur knows it today, but it is by no means the limit of its possibilities. On the contrary, we are just beginning to realize what it may mean to the human race. The government is now utilizing it to send out weather, crop, and market reports. Foreign trade conditions are being reported. The Naval Observatory at Arlington is wirelessing time signals.

Department stores are beginning to issue programs and advertise by radio. Cities are also taking up such programs, and they will doubtless be included soon among the regular privileges of the taxpayers. Politicians address their constituents. Preachers reached the stay-at-homes. Great singers thrill thousands instead of hundreds. Soon it will be possible to hear the finest musical programs, entertainers, and orators without budging from one's easy chair. In the World War, wireless proved of an inestimable value. Airplanes, instead of flying aimlessly, kept in constant touch with headquarters. Bodies of troops moved alertly and intelligently. Ships at sea talked freely over hundreds of miles. Scouts reported.

Everywhere, its invisible aid was invoked. In time of peace, however, it has proved and will prove the greatest servant of mankind. Wireless messages now go daily from continent to continent, and soon will go around the world with the same facility. Ships in distress at sea can summon aid. Vessels everywhere get the day's news, even to baseball scores. Daily new tasks are being assigned this tireless wireless messenger. Messages have been sent and received by moving trains, the Lackawanna and the Rock Island Railroads being pioneers in this field. Messages have also been received by automobiles, and one inventor has successfully demonstrated a motor car controlled entirely by wireless. This method of communication is being employed more and more by newspapers.

It is also of great service in reporting forest fires. Colleges are beginning to take up the subject, some of the first being Tufts College, Hunter College, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia, which have regularly organized departments for students in wireless. Instead of the unwielding and formidable-looking apparatus of a short time ago, experimenters are now vying with each other in making small or novel equipment. Portable sets of all sorts are being fashioned from one which will go into an ordinary suitcase to one so small it will easily slip into a brownie camera. One receiver depicted in a newspaper was one inch square. Another was a ring for the finger, with a setting one inch by five-eighths of an inch and an umbrella as a ground.

Walking sets with receivers fastened to one's belt are also common. Daily, new novelties and marvels are announced. Meanwhile, the radio amateur to whom this book is addressed may have his share in the joys of wireless. To get all of these good things out of the ether, one does not need a rod or a gun, only a copper wire made fast at either end and a receiving set of some kind. If you are a sheer beginner, then you must be very careful in buying your apparatus. For since the great wave of popularity has washed wireless into the hearts of the people, numerous companies have sprung up, and some of these are selling the various kinds of junk. And how, you may ask, are you going to be able to know the good from the indifferent and bad sets?

By buying a make of a firm with an established reputation. I have given a few offhand at the end of this book. Obviously, there are many others of merit. So many, indeed, that it would be quite impossible to get them all in such a list. But these will serve as a guide until you can choose intelligently for yourself. F.C. End of the Radio Amateur's Handbook Introduction

2 02 - excerpt from The Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New by Walter Crane 15:41

Of the evolution of the illustrative and decorative impulse from the earliest times, and of the first period of decoratively illustrated books in the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Excerpt from The Decorative Illustration of Books, Old and New, by Walter Crane. There is a very remarkable apocalypse formerly belonging to the Carthusian house of Vendou between Lige and Aix by French artists of the early 14th century, which has a series of very fine imaginative and weird designs suggestive of Orchagna, Highly decorative in treatment, very full and frank in color, and firm in outline. The designs are in oblong panels, enclosed in linear colored borders at the head of each page, and occupying about two-thirds of it, the text being written in double columns beneath each miniature, with small illuminated initials.

The backgrounds of the design are diapered on grounds of dark green and red alternately. The imaginative force and expression conveyed by these designs, strictly formal and figurative, and controlled by the ornamental traditions of the time, is very remarkable. The illustrator and decorator are here still one. Queen Mary's Psalter, again, is interesting as giving instances of a very different and lighter treatment of figure designs. We find in this manuscript, together with illuminations in full colors and burnished gold, a series of pale-tinted illustrations in Bible history, drawn with a delicate pen-line. The method of the illuminators and miniaturists seems always to have been to draw their figures and ornaments clearly out first with a pen before coloring.

In the full-colored miniatures, the pen-lines are not visible, but in this manuscript they are preserved with the delicate tinted treatment. The designs I speak of are placed two on a page, occupying it entirely. They are enclosed in vermilion borders, terminated at each corner with a leaf. There is a very distinct and graceful feeling about the designs. The same hand appears to have added on the lower margins of the succeeding text pages a series of quaint figures, combats of grotesque animals, hunting, hawking, and fishing scenes, and games and sports, and finally, biblical subjects. Here again I think we may detect in the early illustrators a tendency to escape from the limitations of the book page, though only a tendency.

A fine ornamental page combining illumination with miniature is given in the epistle of Philippe de Comines to Richard, the second, at the end of the 14th century. The figures, interesting historically and as examples of costume, are relieved upon a diapered ground. The text is in double columns with square initials, and the page is lightened by open foliation branching out upon the margin from the straight spiny border strips, which on the inner side terminate in a dragon. As a specimen of early fifteenth-century work, both for illuminator, scribe, and miniaturist, it would be difficult to find a more exquisite book than the Bedford Hours. British Museum, dated 1422, said to be the work of French artists, though produced in England.

The calendar, which occupies the earlier pages, is remarkable for its small and very brilliant, and purely colored miniatures. Set like gems in a very fine, delicate, light, open, leafy border, bright with burnished gold trefoil leaves, which are characteristic of French illuminated books of this period. There is an elaborate full-page miniature containing the creation and fall, which breaks over the margin here and there. The thirteenth and fourteenth-century miniaturists frequently allowed their designs to break over the framework of their diapered grounds or panels in an effective way, which pleasantly varied the formality of framed-in subjects upon the page, especially where a flat margin of color between lines enclosed them, and some parts of the groups broke over the inner line while keeping within the limits of the outer one.

Very frequently, as in this manuscript, a general plan is followed throughout in the spacing of the pages, though the borders and miniatures in detail show almost endless variation. In such splendid works as this, we get the complete and harmonious cooperation and union between the illustrator and the decorator. The object of each is primarily to beautify his page, The Illuminator makes his borders and initial letters branch and bud, and put forth leaves and flowers, spreading luxuriantly up and down the margin of his vellum pages, beautiful even as the scribe left them, like a living growth, while the Miniaturist makes the letter itself the shrine of some delicate saint, or a vision of some act of mercy or martyrdom, while the careless world plays hide and seek.

Speak through the labyrinthine borders, as the seasons follow each other through the calendar, and the peasant plows and sows and reaps, and threshes out the corn, while gay knights, tourny in the lists, or, with ladies in their quaint attire, follow the spotted deer through the greenwood. In these beautiful liturgical books of the Middle Ages, as we see, the ornamental feeling developed with and combined the illustrative function so that almost any illuminated Psalter or Book of Hours will furnish not only lovely examples of floral decoration in borders and initials of endless fertility of invention, but also give us pictures of the life and manners of the times. In those of our own country, we can realize how full of color, quaint costume, and variety was life, when England was indeed merry, in spite of family feuds and tyrannous lords and kings, before her industrial transformation and the dispossession of her people.

Heir boards of works and poor law guardians took the place of her monasteries and abbeys. Before, her streams were fouled with sewage, and her cities blackened with coal smoke—the smoke of the burning sacrifice to commercial competition and wholesale production for profit by means of machine power and machine labor, before she became the workshop and engine room of the world. These books, glowing with gold and color, tell of days when time was no object, and the pious artist and scribe could work quietly and lovingly to make a thing of beauty, with no fear of a publisher or a printer before his eyes, or the demands of world market. In the midst of our self-congratulation on the enormous increase of our resources for the rapid and cheap production of books, and the power of the printing-press, we should do well not to forget that if books of those benighted centuries of which I have been speaking were few comparatively, they were fit, though few, they were things of beauty, and joys for ever to their possessors.

A prayer-book was not only a prayer-book, but a picture-book, a shrine, a little mirror of the world, a sanctuary in a garden of flowers. One can well understand their preciousness apart from their religious use, and many have seen strange eventful histories, no doubt. The Earl of Shrewsbury lost his prayer-book, the Talbot prayer-book, and his life together on the battlefield at Castillon. About thirty miles from Bordeaux, in 1453. This book, as Mr. Quarritch states, was carried away by a Breton soldier, and was only rediscovered in Brittany a few years ago. It has been suggested that the large colored and illuminated initial letters in liturgical books had their origin as guides in taking up the different parts of the service, And, as I learned from Mr.

Micklethwaite in some of the Missals, where the Crucifixion is painted in an illuminated letter, a simple cross is placed below for the votary to kiss instead of the picture, as it was found in practice when only the picture was there, the tendency was to obliterate it by the recurrence of this form of devotion. As an example of the influence of naturalism, which had begun to make itself felt in art towards the end of the 15th century, we may cite The Romance of the Rose in the British Museum, which has two fine full-page miniatures with elaborate borderings, full of detail and colour, and which are also illustrative of costume. The text pages show the effect of double columns with small, highly finished miniatures, occupying the width of one column interspersed.

The style of work is akin to that of the celebrated Grimani Breviary, now in the Library of St. Mark's, Venice. The miniatures of which are said to have been painted by Memling. They are wonderfully rich in detail, and fine in workmanship, and are quite in the manner of the Flemish pictures of that period. We feel that the pictorial and illustrative power is gaining the ascendancy, and in its borders of highly wrought leaves, flowers, fruit, and insects, given in full relief with their cast shadows, wonderful as they are in themselves as pieces of work. It is evident to me, at least, that whatever graphic strength and richness of Chioscuro is gained, it is at the distinct cost of the beauty of pure decorative After the delicate arabesques of the earlier time, these borders look a little heavy, and however great their pictorial or imitative merits, they fail to satisfy the conditions of a page decoration so satisfactorily.

Perhaps the most sumptuous examples of book decoration of this period are to be found in Italy, in the celebrated choir-books in the Cathedral of Siena. They show a rare union of imaginative form, pictorial skill, and decorative sense in the miniaturist, united with all the Italian richness and grace in the treatment of early Renaissance ornament, and in its adaptation to the decoration of the book-page. These miniatures are the work of Giralamo da Cremona and Liberale da Verona. At least, these two are described as the most copious and indefatigable of the artists employed on the Corali. Payments were made to them for the work in 1468, and again in 1472 to 3, which fixes the date. I am not ignoring the possibility of a certain division of labor in the illuminated manuscript.

The work of the scribe, the illuminator, and the miniaturist are distinct enough, while equally important to the result. Mr. J. W. Bradley, who has compiled a dictionary of miniaturists, speaking of calligrapher, illuminator, and miniaturist, says, Each of these occupations is at times conjoined with either or both of the others, and when that is so in giving the craftsman his title, he decides by the period of his work. For instance, from the seventh to the tenth centuries he would call him calligrapher, Eleventh to Fifteenth centuries illuminator, Fifteenth to Sixteenth centuries miniaturist. Transcription he puts in another category as the work of the copyist scribe. But whatever division of labor there may or may not have been, there was no division in the harmony and unity of the effect.

If, in some cases, the more purely ornamental parts, such as the floral borders and initials, were the work of one artist, the text of another, and the miniatures of another, All I can say is that each worked together as brethren in unity, contributing to the beauty of a harmonious and organic whole. And if such division of labor can be ascertained to have been a fact, it goes to prove the importance of some cooperation in a work of art, and its magnificent possibilities. The illuminated manuscript books have this great distinction and advantage in respect of harmony of text and decoration, the text of the calligrapher always harmonizing with the designs of the illuminator. It being in like manner, all through the Middle Ages, a thing of growth and development, acquiring new characteristics, and undergoing processes of transformation less obvious, perhaps, but not less actual, than the changes in the style and characters of the devices and inventions which accompanied it.

The mere fact that every part of the work was due to the hand that manual skill and dexterity alone has produced the whole gives a distinction and a character to these manuscript books, which no press could possibly rival. The difficulty which besets the modern book decorator, illustrator, or designer of printer's ornaments, of getting type which will harmonize properly with his designs, did not exist with the medieval illuminator, who must always have been sure of balancing his designs by a body of text, not only beautiful in the form of its individual letters, but beautiful and rich in the effect of its mass on the page. which was only enhanced when the initials were relieved with color on gold, or beautiful pen-work which grew out of them like the mistletoe from the solid oak stem.

The very pitch of perfection which penmanship, or the art of the caligrapher, had reached in the fifteenth century, the calculated regularity and purgation of superfluities in the form of the letters, the squareness of their mass in the words, and approximation in length and height, seemed to suggest and naturally lead up to the idea of the movable type and the printed page. End of Evolution of the Illustrative and Decorative Impulse from the Earliest Times Excerpt from The Decorative Illustration of Books, Old and New, by Walter Crane, 19 o four.

3 03 - Birdie by Elizabeth Brightwen 8:48

Birdie by Elizabeth Brightwin. Coffee Break Collection 28 Hobbies. Birdie. Amongst all the different birds which are kept in cages, Either for their beauty or song, there is one which to my mind far excels all others, not only in its vocal powers, which are remarkable, but for its very unusual intelligence. I refer to the Virginian Nightingale. It is a handsome, crimson-plumaged bird, rather smaller than a starling, not unfrequently seen in bird-sellers' collections. But seen there to the worst possible advantage, for, being extremely shy and sensitive, and taking keen notice of everything around, the slightest voice or movement in the shop will make it flutter against the bars of its cage in an agony of fright, and it therefore looks a most unlikely bird to become an interesting pet.

But I will try to show what may be done by gentle kindness to overcome this natural timidity. This will be seen in the history of Birdie, my first Virginian nightingale, my daily companion for fourteen years.

He had belonged to a relative, and there is no way of tracing the age of the bird when first obtained. I can therefore only speak of those years in which he was in my possession. Bertie had been accustomed to live in a cage on a high shelf in the kitchen, well cared for, no doubt, but untamed and unnoticed. He led a lonely life, and was one of the wildest birds I ever met with. For many months his flutterings, when any one came near his cage, could not be calmed. But by always speaking to him when entering the room, and, if possible, giving him a few hemp seeds or any little dainty, he grew to endure one's presence. Then, later on, he would begin to greet one with a little clicking note, though still retreating to the furthest corner of the cage.

And a year or two passed by before he would take anything out of my hand. But this was attained by offering him his one irresistible temptation, that is, a lively spider. This he would seize and hold in his beak, while he hopped about the cage, clicking loudly with delight. After a time I began to let him out for an hour or two, first releasing him when he was molding and could not fly very easily. He learned to go back to his cage of his own accord, and was rewarded by always finding some favorite morsel there. Thus, by slow degrees, he lost all fear, and attached himself to me with a strength of affection that expressed itself in many endearing little ways. When called by name, he would always answer with a special chirp, and look up expectantly.

Either to receive something, or to be let out. His song was very similar to the English Nightingale, extremely liquid and melodious, with the same chuk-chuk, but more powerful and sustained. On my return to the room after a short absence he would greet me with delight, fluttering his outspread wings, and singing his sweetest song, looking intently at me, swaying his head from side to side, and whilst his ecstasy of song lasted, he would even refuse to notice his most favorite food, as if he must express his joy before appetite could be gratified. After a few years he seemed to adopt me as a kind of mate, for as spring came round he endeavored to construct a nest by stealing little twigs out of the grate and flying with them to a chosen retreat behind an ornamental scroll at the top of the looking-glass.

He spent a great deal of time fussing about this nest, which never came to anything, but he very obligingly attended to my supposed wants by picking up An occasional fly or piece of sugar, and, hovering before me on the wing, would endeavor to put it into my mouth, or, if he was in his cage, would mince up a spider or caterpillar with water, and then, with his beak full of the delicious compound, would call and chirp unceasingly, until I came near and made believe to taste it, and not till then would he be content to enjoy it himself. During an absence from home, Bertie once escaped out of doors, and was seen on the roof of the house singing in high glee. The servants called him. The cage was put out, but all to no purpose.

He evidently meant to have a real good time, and kept flying from one tree to another until he was a quarter of a mile from home. A faithful servant kept him in sight for three hours, by which time Hunger made him return to our garden, where he feasted on some raspberries, took a leisurely bath in a tub of water, and, at length, flew in at a bedroom window, where he was safely caged. I never knew a bird with so much intelligence, one might almost say reasoning power. He was once very thirsty after being out of his cage for many hours, and at luncheon He went to an empty silver spoon, and time after time pretended to drink, looking fixedly at me as if he felt sure I would know what he meant, and waited quietly till I put water into the spoon.

Another curious trait was his sense of humor. Whilst I was riding one day, he went up to a rose, which was at the far end of the table, and began pecking at the leaves. I told him not to do it. When, to my surprise, he immediately ran the whole length of the table and made a scolding noise up in my face, and then, just like a naughty child, went back and did it again. He would sometimes try to tease me away from my writing by taking hold of my pen and tucking at a corner of the paper, and whenever the terrible operation of cutting his claws had to be gone through, he quietly curled up his toes and held the scissors with his beak. So that it needed two people to circumvent his clever resistance.

He had wonderfully acute vision, which would let me know directly a hawk was in sight, though it might be but the merest speck in the sky. He once had a narrow escape, for a sparrow-hawk made a swoop at him in his cage, just outside the drawing-room window, and, had no one been at hand, would probably have dragged him through the bars. Whenever he saw a jay or magpie, a jackdaw or cat, his clicky note always reminded me of some enemy in sight. For many years, Bertie was my cherished pet. Never was there a closer friendship. As I passed his cage each night, I put my hand in to stroke his feathers, and was always greeted with a low, murmuring note of affection never heard in the daytime. It was with deep concern that I watched Bertie's declining strength.

There was no disease, only weakness, and at last appetite failed. But even then, he would take whatever I offered him, and hold it in his beak as if to show that, even to the last, he would try to please me as far as he could. But he wanted nothing but the quiet rest Which came at length, and dear little Bertie, is now only a cherished memory of true friendship. End of Bertie.

4 04 - A-Birding Among the New Jersey Pines by Creswell J. Hunt 5:55

A Birding Among the New Jersey Pines by Creswell J. Hunt. Coffee Break Collection 28. Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Colleen McMahon. A Birding Among the New Jersey Pines. It was on the morning of May 31st, 1905 that three of us started from Medford, New Jersey, with horse, wagon, and camp equipage for a trip through the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Medford is situated at the edge of the Pine Barren region. This part of the Pine Barrens, lying in Burlington and Ocean Counties, is one of the wildest sections to be found in the eastern states. Cranberry Raising is about the only industry.

And the few houses to be seen are to be found in the vicinity of the cranberry bogs, but they are indeed few and very far between. Charcoal burning was carried on in some places, but this now seems to be mostly obsolete. A person lost in this section may wander about for days without meeting a trace of civilization. The roads are rarely used and are nothing more than mere sand trails through the woods. Before the advent of the seashore railroads, these roads were the only means of reaching the coast. And now the ruins of one-time prosperous inns may be seen. In fact, almost all the oysters used in Philadelphia were at one time hauled over the Chatsworth-Tuckerton Road. We traveled this road for a number of miles, and when returning over it two days later, our old wheel tracks were yet to be seen, nothing else having traversed it in the meantime.

From Medford, our route lay nearly southeast through the wildest part of the Barrens. Here are extensive forests of pitch pines, Pinus rigida, interspersed here and there with cedar swamps. These swamps are an almost impenetrable tangle of white cedar, red maple, pepperbush, magnolia, and holly. Here is to be found the greatest number of birds, though they are never wanting among the pines, and although not plentiful a species, they are numerous as individuals. The water of the streams is of a dark color, stained from the decaying vegetation. Along the roadsides waved the feathery plumes of the turkey beard, and the mountain and sheep laurels were rich with bloom. At the edges of the swamps grew the pitcher plant, and that other interesting insect-eater, the little sundew, carpeted the ground in damp places.

After leaving Medford, we passed through Bear Swamp. Here the apologetic song of the blue-winged warbler greeted us, and scarlet tanagers, wood thrushes, tufted titmice, and red-eyed vireos were numerous. These species grew more and more scarce as we got deeper into the Barrens. In the pine woods, the pine warbler was the most abundant species, while wood peewees, Carolina chickadees, kingbirds, crows, turkey vultures, downy woodpeckers, and an occasional flicker were to be seen. In the lower growths, mostly scrub oaks and huckleberry bushes, chewinks, oven birds, and prairie warblers were abundant. We camped the first night at Speedwell. This oasis in the desert, consisting of half a dozen buildings, now all unoccupied, and a couple of fenced-in fields, owes its origin to the existence of the iron ore, which was at one time extracted from the nearby bog.

Here we found barn swallows, orchard orioles, indigo birds, and purple martins. In the neighboring cedar swamp were white-eyed vireos, wood thrushes, Carolina chickadees, and Maryland yellowthroats. From the cedars hung great festoons of the Usnia moss, and here the Perula warblers were to be found, although we saw none. The great horned owl also finds here a congenial home. All evening long, and into the early morning, the whippoorwills kept up such a din as to make sleep well-nigh impossible, and in spite of the earliness of the season, the mosquitoes were rather troublesome. On the second day, we crossed what is known as the plains. As far as one can see, there is nothing but a stunted forest of miniature pitch pines and scrub oaks only three feet high.

Here, brown thrashers and Maryland yellowthroats were abundant, as also were chewinks, field sparrows, and prairie warblers. It is interesting to note that the Maryland yellowthroat, that little bird which we always associate with the vicinity of water, should be so much at home here miles from the nearest watercourse. One actually wonders where these birds find enough water to drink. I had asked this question when my friend pointed to a dead leaf lying upon the ground, filled with water from the last rain. Did this solve the problem? It was on these plains that the heath hen, now extinct but for a few found upon the island of Martha's Vineyard, once abounded. At the end of the second day, we reached Stafford's Forge, a little settlement some three miles north of West Creek.

We had traveled 22 miles that day, and had not seen a trace of civilization. We spent June 2nd at Stafford's Forge. We were now within four miles of the coast marshes, and here we met old friends in the robin, bluebird, barn swallow, chimney swift, bobwhite, and red-winged blackbird, while purple martins and whippoorwills were abundant. Along the west of Kunk Creek were large cranberry bogs. Here we saw several green herons, and in the woods at the head of the bogs the bald eagle still nests. The next two days were spent in the homeward journey, arriving at Medford about noon of June 4th, a ruffed grouse being the only species seen that we had not previously listed. We had practically crossed the state and felt well repaid for our 84-mile trip.

5 05 - Casey At The Bat, by Earnest Lawrence Thayer 3:58

CASEY AT THE BAT by Ernest Lawrence Thayer. Coffee Break Collection, Twenty-Eight. Hobbies. It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville Nine that day, the scores to two to four with but an inning left to play. So when Cooney died at second and Burroughs did the same, a pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of the game. A straggling few got up to go, leaving there the rest. With that hope which springs eternal within the human breast. For they thought, if only Casey could get a whack at that, they'd put up even money now with Casey at the bat. But Flynn preceded Casey, and likewise so did Blake. And the former was a puddin', and the latter was a fake. So on that stricken multitude a death-like silence sat, for there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single to the wonderment of all, and the much despised Blakey tore the cover off the ball, and when the dust had lifted, and they saw what had occurred, there was Blakey safe at second, and Flynn a hug in third. Then from the gladdened multitude went up a joyous yell. It rumbled in the mountain tops, it rattled in the dell. It struck upon the hillside, and rebounded on the flat. For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat. There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place. There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face. And when responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat. No stranger in the crowd could doubt was Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt. Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt. Then, while the New York pitcher ground the ball into his hip, defiance gleamed in Casey's eye. A sneer curled Casey's lip. And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air, and Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there. Close by the sturdy batsman, the ball unheeded sped. "'That ain't my style,' said Casey. "'Strike one,' the umpire said." From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar, like the beating of great storm-waves on a stern and distant shore. "'Kill him! Kill the umpire!' shouted someone on the stand. "'And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised a hand.' With the smile of Christian charity, great Casey's visage shone.

He stilled the rising tumult. He bade the game go on. He signaled to Sir Timothy, Once more, the spheroid flew, but Casey still ignored it, and the Empire said, strike two. Fraud, cried the maddened thousands, and Echo answered, fraud. But one scornful look from Casey, and the audience was awed. They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain, and they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again. The sneer has gone from Casey's lip. His teeth are clenched in hate. He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate. And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, and now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow. Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright.

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light. And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout. But there is no joy in Mudville. Mighty Casey, has struck out.

6 06 - The Choice of a Boat by A.J. Kenealy 8:36

The Choice of a Boat by A.J. Kennealy. Coffee Break Collection 28, Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Colleen McMahon. The Choice of a Boat. If any ambitious would-be mariner, Old or young, hailing from anywhere, were to ask me what sort of a boat I would recommend him to build or buy, I would answer him frankly that an able catboat with a centerboard and stationary ballast would, in my judgment, be best. I would advise him to shun the sandbaggers, not that one cannot enjoy an immense amount of exciting sport in one of them, but because they seem to me to be only fit for racing, and I will tell you why.

A man, when he goes on a quiet cruise, doesn't want to be bothered by having to shift heavy bags of sand every time the boat goes about. It is too much like hard work, and by the time your day's fun is finished, you feel stiff in the joints. I have other arguments against the use of shifting ballast, but do not think any other save the one mentioned is necessary. This point disposed of, let us confirm. Of what shall the stationary ballast for our able cat boat consist? Outside lead is of course the best, but its first cost is a serious matter. A cast iron foss, keel, or shoe answers admirably and is moderate in price. Some persons object to it, claiming that it rusts and corrodes, that its fastenings decay the wooden keel to which it is bolted, and that its weight strains a boat and soon causes her to become leaky.

There is of course some truth in these charges. But if the boat is built by a mechanic and not an imposter, none of these disadvantages will exist, and the cast iron keel will prove to be both efficient and economical. But if, by straining a point, lead can be afforded, procure it by all means and have it bolted on outside. It neither tarnishes nor corrodes, and as it does not deteriorate, its marketable value is always the same. Racing yachts have, however, been known to sell for less than their lead ballast cost. But such instances are rare. It should be borne in mind that the lower down the lead is placed, the less quantity required, and the greater its efficiency. There are always a number of second-hand cat boats in the market for sale at a reasonable rate, and an advertisement will bring plenty of replies.

But for a Tyra to purchase a boat haphazard is a mistake on general principles. It is like a sailor buying a horse. Get some honest shipwright or boatbuilder to examine. Say, some half-dozen boats whose dimensions suit you and whose prices are about what you think you can afford. There are certain portions of a cat boat that are subject to violent strains when the craft is underway. The step of the mast and the centerboard trunk are parts that require the vigilant eye of an expert. Human nature is prone to temptation, and paint and putty are used quite often to conceal many important defects in a craft advertised for sale. The keen eye of a mechanic who has served his time to a boatbuilder will soon detect all deficiencies of this kind, will ferret out rotten timbers, and under his advice and counsel, you may succeed in picking up at a bargain some sound, seaworthy, and serviceable craft in which you can enjoy yourself to your heart's content.

But if some rotten hole is foisted on you by an unscrupulous person, you will be apt to kick yourself round the block. For she will be always in need of repairs, and in the end, when she is finally condemned, you will find on figuring up the cost that it would have been money in your pocket if you had built a new boat. The principal boat builders of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts are men of high character, who take a pride in their work, which is thoroughly first class, and whose prices are strictly moderate. Any one of these will construct a capital boat of good model and fair speed. I am an old crank and a bigot in many things appertaining to boats in the sea, but I hope that any reader of this who is going to build a pleasure craft will follow my advice, at least in this instance.

Let her be copper-fastened above and below the waterline. Don't use a single galvanized nail or bolt in her construction. See that the fastenings are clenched on a roof, not simply turned down. Don't spoil the ship for a paltry haporth of tar. Many builders, for the sake of economy, use galvanized iron throughout, and will take a solemn affidavit that it is quite as good as copper. But in the innermost cockles of their hearts, they know they are wrong. Others, more conscientious, use copper fastenings below the waterline and galvanized iron above. But copper throughout is my cry, and so will I ever maintain while I am on this side of the sticks. Sometimes one may pick up a good serviceable boat at a navy yard sale.

Uncle Sam's boats are a fair design and well-built. They are often condemned because they are what is called nail-sick, a defect which can be easily remedied. Occasionally, a steamship's lifeboat can be bought for a trifle, and if it be fitted with a false keel with an iron shoe on it, will prove thoroughly seaworthy and a moderately good sailor. Mr. E. F. Knight, the English barrister and author of The Cruise of the Falcon, tells how he bought a lifeboat condemned by the Peninsular and Oriental Company. She was thirty feet long with a beam of eight feet, very strong, being built of double skins of teak, and like all the lifeboats used by that company, an excellent sea boat. This craft he timbered and decked, rigged her as a catch, and crossed the North Sea in her, going as far as Copenhagen and back, and encountering plenty of bad weather during the adventurous voyage.

Mr. Knight is a believer in the pointed or lifeboat stern for a small vessel. He was caught in a northwest gale in the Gulf of Heligoland. In the above-mentioned craft, and had to sail sixty miles before a high and dangerous sea. His boat showed no tendency to broach two, but rushed straight ahead across the steep sea in a fashion that gave us confidence and astonished us. Had she the ordinary yacht's stern to present to those following masses of water, instead of a graceful wedge offering little resistance, we should have had a very uncomfortable time of it. Many men dislike a pointed stern and consider it ugly. However that may be, it behaves handsomely, and we should certainly recommend any amateur building a sailboat for coasting purposes to give her the lifeboat stern.

Mr. Knight fitted his boat with leeboards, which no doubt served their purpose admirably. I should, however, favor a false keel and an iron shoe as being more efficient and less unsightly. I should not advise the purchaser of a condemned lifeboat to have her fitted with a centerboard. The cost would be high, and unless the job was done in a first-class manner by a man experienced at this sort of work, it would be very unsatisfactory. A nail-sick, clencher-built boat should be hauled up on the beach and filled with water. Every leak should be marked on the outside with chalk or white paint. After all the leaks have been discovered, run the water out of her and dry her thoroughly. Next, examine every nail and try the lands or joinings of the planks with the blade of a very thin knife.

Any rivets which have worked loose may be taken out and replaced with nails and roofs of a larger size. Through the chief parts of the bottom, it may be necessary to put an additional nail between every two originally driven. Many of the old nails, which are only a little slack, should be hardened at their clench by a few taps from inside, one hand holding a dolly against the head of the nail on the outside. Melt a pound of pitch in a gallon of boiling North Carolina tar and give her bottom a good coat inside. There are various methods of making a boat unsinkable. Cork is sometimes used, but it takes up too much room and is not so buoyant as air. Copper or zinc cases, made to fit under the thwarts and in various odd corners, have been fitted in boats, but their cost is high.

Amateurs have used powder flasks and cracker cans with their covers soldered on, cigar boxes covered with duck and painted, bladders inflated with air, etc., etc. A boat displacing one ton will take about 40 cubic feet of air to make her unsinkable.

7 07 - Collecting Playing Cards by Charles William Taussig 7:57

Collecting Playing Cards by Charles William Tanzig. Coffee Break Collection 28. Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. Collecting Playing Cards. Card playing, although most generally indulged in, is not a suitable hobby for the average person. Unless it be combined with something else. The man whose sole hobby is card-playing is inclined to become narrow and circumscribed in his habits of diversion. Let it be understood that card-playing is an interesting and diverting hobby, but many persons become so interested in playing cards that they have neither time nor inclination for any other diversion.

These people require a hobby to take them from cards. For the same reason that some people require a hobby to wean them away from overindulgence in business. For the person with a genuine and intense interest in card-playing, there is no happier hobby than collecting old playing cards. Invented for an insane king. We will be accused by card-players of being unkind when we state that cards were invented about the year 1392 to amuse Charles VI the insane king of France. They perhaps will refute the statement and claim that cards were known in Belgium in 1379, and that a Swiss monk, Johannes, stated in a manuscript, now in the British Museum, that the game of cards was introduced into Switzerland in 1377.

Others will claim that they were originated in Venice, and some will say Italy. We, however, like to believe that the game was invented for the insane King of France. Tarrows. The pack used in Venice at the beginning of the 15th century consisted of 78 cards, of which 56 were numerals and 22 were emblematic. The numerals consisted of four suits, each consisting of four court cards, the King, Queen, Chevalier, and Valet, and ten cards numbered from one upwards. The emblematic cards were handed down from much more remote times, and were probably a survival of cards originally used for divination, a practice not uncommon today. Such a pack of cards was called a pack of tarots, because they were tarot, or marked with diagonal crossings on the back.

The emblematic cards were higher in value than the others, and were called trumps. Later, the emblematic cards were abandoned, And the pack was reduced to 52 cards by eliminating one of the court cards. The suits of the French, Spanish, and Italian cards consisted of swords, cups, batons, and money. The Old English cards of the 15th century, as well as the German and some modern Portuguese cards, had suits consisting of hearts, bells, acorns, and leaves. Early French cards. The French cards of the 16th century, with their cur, treflet, piquet, and carreau, became the modern heart, club, spade, and diamond. The spade is derived, in form, from the German sign of the leaf, and in name from the Italian spada, which name was given to their corresponding suit, swords.

The form of the club is derived from the German acorn, and the name is the translation from the Italian. The German heart is still used without change, and the diamond is the alteration of the bell. Cards designed with woodcuts Although the early cards were stenciled and extremely crude in design, the engraver soon gave some attention to the possibilities of artistic representation on cards. Arthur Hayden says, Italian, French, and German masters did not disdain to employ their genius to illustrate the pack of cards. In consequence, there are some fine designs, beloved by collectors and exceedingly rare. Some woodcuts after the designs in the style of Lucas Crenat are of particular beauty, depicting acorns and leaves with chevaliers in contemporary costume.

About 1510, Erhard Schoen is known to have engraved a pack of cards with suits of flowers, pomegranates, leaves, and roses, and a portion of this pack is attributed to Hans Siebald Baham. But for delightful designs, those of Joost Amen of the 16th century claim recognition by reason of their strong and virile line. They were engraved on wood and published at Nuremberg in 1588. There is some reason to suppose that these cards were not put to the common use of play. but remained unpublished as cards, being the dream pack of the designer. The suits are books, printers, inking balls, wine cups, displaying fine goldsmiths designs, and goblets of glass or fails. The suits are unusual, and possibly this acted detrimentally to their practical adoption.

No cards have been found with these actual designs. Cards in the 17th and 18th centuries. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, playing cards were embellished with cartoons, satirizing political, historical, and social events. The French cards, depicting historical events, continued until the early part of the nineteenth century. During the French Revolution, many interesting variations were made to the king and queen in the playing-card pack, to satisfy the republican spirit of the time. In 1806, there appeared Cata's Card Almanac, which contained illustrations of fanciful designs for cards. This almanac continued for a few years. In the 19th century, cards were published containing advertisements, also depicting the prevailing fashions.

These cards are interesting to students of costume. Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer has made the collecting of old playing cards One of her pet hobbies, she has gathered together some rare and beautiful specimens from various corners of the globe, and has made them the subject of many interesting chapters in her authoritative books. Americana. Collecting playing cards may be added to the many interests of the general collector of Americana. In the United States, there are some fascinating historical cards. One pack commemorates the War of 1848 with Mexico, and in place of the Kings appear the generals of that war. On the aces are views of well-known country places. One is the headquarters of General Washington at Newburgh.

Another is Highwood, the residence of Mr. James Gore King on the Hudson River at Weehawken, opposite 42nd Street, New York. There is a pack of cards of 1863. Picturing the battle between the Monitor and the Meramech. The court cards are soldiers in the uniform of the day, such as zuavis, etc. Modern cards are the result of gradual evolution of these earlier varieties.

8 08 - Coursing the Prongbuck by Theodore Roosevelt 13:24

Coursing the Prong Book by Theodore Roosevelt. Coffee Break Collection 28. Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in August 2020. Coursing the Prong Book. Published in 1901 in American Big Game Hunting.

The prong buck is the most characteristic and distinctive of American game animals. Zoologically speaking, its position is unique. It is the only hollow-horned ruminant which sheds its horns. We speak of it as an antelope, and it does, of course, represent on our prairies the antelopes of the old world, and is a distant relative of theirs, but it stands apart from all other horned animals. Its position in the natural world is almost as lonely as that of the giraffe. The chase of the prong-buck has always been to me very attractive, but especially so when carried on by coursing it with greyhounds. Any man who has lived much in the cow-country, and has wandered about a good deal over the Great Plains, is of course familiar with this gallant little beast, and has probably had to rely upon it very frequently for a supply of fresh meat.

On my ranch, it has always been the animal which yielded us most of the fresh meat we had in the spring and summer. Of course, at such times, we killed only bucks, and even these only when we positively needed the flesh. In all its ways and habits, the prong-buck differs as much from deer and elk as from goat and sheep. Now that the buffalo has gone, it is the only game really at home on the wide plains. It is a striking-looking little creature, with its big bulging eyes, single-pronged horns, and the sharply contrasted coloration of its coat. This coat, by the way, being composed of curiously coarse and brittle hair. In marked contrast to deer, antelope never seek to elude observation. All they care for is to be able to see themselves.

As they have good noses and wonderful eyes, and as they live by preference where there is little or no cover, shots at them are usually obtained only at far longer range than is the case with other game. And yet, as they are easily seen, and often stand looking at the hunter just barely within very long rifle range, they are always tempting their pursuer to the expenditure of cartridges. More shots are wasted at antelope than at any other game. They would be even harder to secure were it not that they are subject to fits of panic, folly, or excessive curiosity, which occasionally put them fairly at the mercy of the rifle-bearing hunter. Prong-bugs are very fast runners indeed, even faster than deer.

They vary greatly in speed, however, precisely as is the case with deer. In fact, I think that the average hunter makes altogether too little account of this individual variation among different animals of the same kind. Under the same conditions, different deer and antelope vary in speed and wariness, exactly as bears and cougars vary in cunning and ferocity. When in perfect condition, a full-grown buck, antelope, from its size and strength, is faster and more enduring than an old doe. But a fat buck, before the rut has begun, will often be pulled down by a couple of good greyhounds much more speedily than a flying yearling or two-year-old doe. Under favorable circumstances, when the antelope was jumped nearby, I have seen one overhauled and seized by a single first-class greyhound.

And on the other hand, I have more than once seen a pronghorn run away from a whole pack of just as good dogs. With a fair start and on good ground, a thoroughbred horse, even though handicapped by the weight of a rider, will run down an antelope, but this is a feat which should rarely be attempted, because such a race, even when carried to a successful issue, is productive of the utmost distress to the steed. Ordinary horses will sometimes run down an antelope, which is slower than the average. I had on my ranch an undersized old Indian pony named White Eye, which, when it was fairly roused, showed a remarkable turn of speed and had great endurance. One morning, on the round-up, when for some reason we did not work the cattle, I actually ran down an antelope in Fairchase on this old pony.

It was a nursing-doe, and I came over the crest of the hill between forty and fifty yards away from it. As it wheeled to start back, the old Cayuse pricked up his ears with great interest, and the minute I gave him a sign was after it like a shot. Whether, being a cow-pony, he started to run it just as if it were a calf or a yearling trying to break out of the herd, or whether he was overcome by dim reminiscences of buffalo hunting in his Indian youth, I know not. At any rate, after the doe he went, and in a minute or two I found I was drawing up to it. I had a revolver, but of course I did not wish to kill her, and so got my rope ready to try to take her alive. She ran frantically, but the old pony, bending level to the ground, kept up his racing lope and closed right in beside her.

As I came up, she fairly bleated. An expert with the rope would have captured her with the utmost ease, but I missed, sending the coil across her shoulders. She again gave an agonized bleat, or bark, and wheeled around like a shot. The cow pony stopped almost, but not quite as fast, and she got a slight start, and it was some little time before I overhauled her again. When I did, I repeated the performance, and this time when she wheeled, she succeeded in getting on some ground where I could not follow, and I was thrown out. I have done a good deal of coursing with greyhounds at one time or another, but always with scratch packs. The average frontiersman seems to have an inveterate and rooted objection to a dog with pure blood.

If he gets a greyhound, his first thought is to cross it with something else, whether a bull, mastiff, or a setter, or a foxhound. There are a few men who keep leashes of greyhounds of pureblood, bred and trained to antelope coursing, and who do their coursing scientifically, carrying the dogs out to the hunting grounds in wagons and exercising every care in the sport. But these men are rare. The average man who dwells where antelope are sufficiently abundant to make coursing a success simply follows the pursuit at odd moments with whatever long-legged dogs he and his neighbors happen to have, and his methods of coursing are apt to be as rough as his outfit. My own coursing has been precisely of this character.

At different times I have had on my ranch one or two high-class greyhounds and Scotch-deer hounds, with which we have coursed deer and antelope, as well as jackrabbits, foxes, and coyotes, and we have usually had with them one or two ordinary hounds and various half-breed dogs. I must add, however, that some of the latter were very good. I can recall in particular one fawn-colored beast, a cross between a greyhound and a foxhound, which ran nearly as fast as the former, though it occasionally yelped in shrill tones. It could also trail well and was thoroughly game. On one occasion it ran down and killed a coyote, single-handed. On going out with these dogs, I rarely chose a day when I was actually in need of fresh meat.

If this was the case, I usually went alone with the rival, but if one or two other men were at the ranch and we wanted a morning's fun, we would often summon the dogs, mount our horses, and go trooping out to the antelope ground. As there was a good deer country between the ranch bottom and the plains where we found the prong buck, it not infrequently happened that we had a chase after blacktail or whitetail on the way. Moreover, when we got out to the ground before sighting antelope, it not infrequently happened that the dogs would jump a jackrabbit or a fox, and away the whole set would go after it, streaking through the short grass, sometimes catching their prey in a few hundred yards and sometimes having to run a mile or so.

In consequence, by the time we reached the regular hunting ground, the dogs were apt to have lost a good deal of their freshness. We would get them in behind the horses and creep cautiously along, trying to find some solitary pronged buck in a suitable place where we could bring up the dogs from behind a hillock and give them a fair start after it. Usually we failed to get the dogs near enough for a good start, and in most cases their chases after unwounded prong-buck resulted in the quarry running clean away from them. Thus the odds were greatly against them, but on the other hand we helped them wherever possible with the rifle. We often rode well scattered out, and if one of us put up an antelope, or had a chance at one when driven by the dogs, he would always fire, and the pack were saved from the ill effects of total discouragement by so often getting these wounded beasts.

It was astonishing to see how fast an antelope with a broken leg can run. If such a beast had a good start, And especially if the dogs were tired, it would often lead them a hard chase, and the dogs would be utterly exhausted after it had been killed, so that we would have to let them lie where they were for a long time before trying to lead them down to some stream bed. If possible, we carried water for them in canteens. There were red-letter days, however, in which our dogs fairly ran down and killed antelope, days when the weather was cool and when it happened that we got our dogs out to the ground without their being tired by previous runs, and found our quarry soon and in favorable places for slipping the hounds.

I remember one such chase in particular. We had at the time a mixed pack, in which there was only one dog of my own, the others being contributed from various sources. It included two greyhounds, a rough-coated deerhound, a foxhound, and the fawn-coloured cross-bred mentioned above. We rode out in the early morning, the dogs trotting behind us, and, coming to a low tract of rolling hills just at the edge of the great prairie, we separated and rode over the crest of the nearest ridge. Just as we topped it, a fine buck leaped up from a hollow a hundred yards off and turned to look at us for a moment. All the dogs were instantly spinning toward him down the grassy slope. He apparently saw those at the right and, turning, raced away from us in a diagonal line, so that the left-hand greyhound, which ran cunningly and tried to cut him off, was very soon almost alongside.

He saw her, however—she was a very fast bitch—just in time, and wheeling, altered his course to the right. As he reached the edge of the prairie, this alteration nearly brought him in contact with the cross-bred, which had obtained a rather poor start on the extreme right of the line. Around went the buck again, evidently panic-struck and puzzled to the last degree, and started straight off across the prairie, the dogs literally at his heels, and we urging our horses with whip and spur, but a couple of hundred yards behind. For half a mile the pace was tremendous, when one of the greyhounds made a spring at his ear, but, failing to make good his hold, was thrown off. However, it halted the buck for a moment and made him turn quarter round, and in a second the deer-hound had seized him by the flank and thrown him, and all the dogs piled on top, never allowing him to rise.

Later in the day we again put up a buck not far off. At first it went slowly, and the dogs hauled up on it, but when they got pretty close it seemed to see them, and letting itself out went clean away from them almost without effort. Once or twice we came upon bands of antelope, and the hounds would immediately take after them. I was always rather sorry for this, however, because the frightened animals, as is generally the case when beasts are in a herd, seemed to impede one another, and the chase usually ended by the dogs seizing a doe, for it was, of course, impossible to direct them to any particular beast. It will be seen that with us coursing was a homely sport. Nevertheless, we had very good fun, and I shall always have enjoyable memories of the rapid gallops across the prairie on the trail of the Flying Prong-Buck.

End of Coursing the Prong-Buck

9 09 - Feeding Birds in Summer and Winter by Elizabeth Brightwen 8:17

Feeding Birds in Summer and Winter by Elizabeth Brightwyn. Coffee Break Collection 28 Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Michele Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in May, 2020.

Feeding Birds in Summer and Winter. On wintry mornings, when leaf and twig are decked with hoar-frost, and the ground is hard and dry, affording no food for the birds, it is a piteous sight to see them cowering under the evergreens with ruffled feathers, evidently starving and miserable, quietly waiting for the death that must overtake many of them, unless we come to their rescue. It is one of my delights to feed the small feathered fowls through all the winter months, and I only wish all my readers could enjoy with me the lovely scenes of happy bird life to be witnessed through the French window opposite my writing table. These gatherings of birds are the result of many years of persistent kindness and thought for the welfare of my bird pets.

Their tameness cannot be attained all at once. It takes time to establish confidence. It needs thought about the kinds of food required by various species of birds, regularity in feeding, and quiet gentleness of manner to avoid frightening any new and timid visitors. Doubtless there are very many lovers of birds who share this pleasure with me, but for those who may not happen to know how to attract the feathered tribes, I will go a little into detail. This being a large garden near game preserves, and surrounded by a wide, furze-covered common, I have been able to attract and tame the ordinary wild pheasants by putting out Indian corn, buckwheat, and raisins, till now they come to the doorstep and look up with their brilliant red-ringed eyes, and feed calmly whilst I watch them.

It is a really beautiful sight to see three or four cock-birds, with their golden-bronze plumage glistening like polished metal as the morning sun rests upon them, and as many of their more sober-colored mates feasting on the dainties they find prepared for them. As a rule, they are very amicable, and feed together like barn-door fowls. When satisfied, the brown hens run swiftly away to cover, while the cocks, with greater confidence, walk quietly away. in stately fashion, or remain under the trees. Wood-pigeons are usually very shy and wary birds, yet these also come, six and eight at a time, and feed at my window, Indian corn, and peas being their specialities. I have large quantities of beech nuts and acorns collected every autumn, and thus I can scatter this food also for pigeons and squirrels all through the winter.

Jays, jackdaws, rooks, and magpies also approve of acorns and beechnuts, so it is doing a real kindness to tribes of birds to reserve this food for them until their other stores are exhausted. And we can thus bring them within our view and study their interesting ways, their modes of feeding, and, I fear I must add, their squabbles also, for hungry birds are very pugnacious. Blackbirds and thrushes are very fond of sultana raisins. They also like split groats and brown breadcrumbs, as also do starlings, and, I believe, most of the smaller birds. Fat, in any shape or form, will attract the various species of titmites to the window. I always keep a small Normandy basket full of suet and ham fat hanging on a nail at the window.

It is a great rendezvous for these charming little pets, and it is also supplied with Barcelona nuts for nuthatches, who fully appreciate them and carry them off to the nearest tree with rugged bark into which they fix the nuts, and then hammer at the shell till they can extract the contents. In very hard frosts, I used always to put out a pan of water, as I feared the birds suffered from thirst and needed this help. One day, however, I was comforted to see some starlings, after a good meal of groats, run off to the grass plot and eagerly peck at the hoarfrost, which, while it exists, thus supplies the lack of water. Bewick says linets are so named for their fondness for linseed, and I think most of the finches like it.

The green finch is soon attracted by hemp seed, and all the smaller birds by canary seed. I hope this paper may induce many kind hands to minister to the needs of our feathered friends during the winter months. It is sad to think of their dying for lack of the food we can so easily afford them, and they will be sure to repay us by their sweet songs and confiding tameness when summer days return. One is apt to think that winter is the only time when birds need our help in bounty, but there is almost as much real distress after a long drought in summer, especially amongst the insect-eating birds. I was led to think of this by the pathetic way in which a hen-blackbird came to the French window of my room early in June last, and stood patiently waiting and clicking time after time, in trouble of some kind, I knew, and, supposing it might be food, I threw out a plentiful supply of soaked brown bread.

At once the poor bird went to it, Devouring ravenously for her own needs, and then filling her beak as full as it would hold, she flew off with a supply for her young brood. Then came thrushes, robins, sparrows, a whole bevy of feathered folk all doing the same thing, carrying the provisions in every direction for unseen families at starvation point. And I began to realize that the month of continued sunshine in which we had rejoiced had brought great distress upon the birds, By drying up the lawns so that no worms could be found, and as it was early in the year but few insects were to be had, so that just when each pair of birds had a clamorous brood to provide for, the food supply had fallen short.

Now I understood the pathos of the hen-blackbird's appeal. Her dark eyes and note of distress were trying to say to me, I know you care for us. You seemed so kind last winter. When we were without food, you fed us and saved our lives. But now I am in far deeper distress. My children are crying for food. The grass is dried up, and the ground so hard that I cannot find a single worm. I am thin and worn with hunger myself. Do help me and my little And we will sing you sweet songs in return to cheer you when wintry days come back again. Does she understand? I've said all this several times before, but I thought I would make one last appeal before my children die. Yes, she has left the room. I will wait.

Ah, here it is, just the soft food that will suit my little ones. How they will rejoice, and all want to be fed at once. I hope my friend can understand that I am thanking her with all my heart." Love has a universal language. and can interpret through varied signs, and thus I quite believe the mother-bird's heart wished to express itself. Ever since that day I have been careful in nesting time to supply suitable and varied food for the families of young birds in times of drought. For it seems mournful to think of their dying from want in the season of flowers and green leaves, when nature is to us so attractive, and rendered all the more so by their sweet songs.

End of Feeding Birds in Summer and Winter by Elizabeth Brightwyn

10 10 - Flying Kites by Anonymous, from "The Mastery of Air" 6:09

Flying Kites by Anonymous. Coffee Break Collection 28. Hobbies. Flying Kites.

Who has not flown a kite, and rejoiced to feel the pull on the string as the wind got a fair hold on it? Surely at some time or another every reader of this book has had the satisfaction of standing with his back to the wind and paying out string to the last inch. What a disappointment when this point is reached, and the kite can go no higher. Like a good many other toys, kites have been put to a useful purpose by grown-up men, and if the boys in past years had not adopted them as a pastime, it may well be doubted whether the aeroplanes of the present day would ever have been invented. If you want to understand aeroplanes, you cannot do better than try to understand kites, and as everyone nowadays needs to take an intelligent interest in his surroundings, You will not object to a little hard thinking of this sort.

Moreover, when once a difficult problem is understood, there is as much satisfaction as in winning a race. First, then, notice that there is a pull on the string, and that this pull is one of the forces that keep the kite in the air. Secondly, since every body has weight, and weight as a force of attraction between the body and the earth. There is a force acting downwards. Thirdly, there is the force produced by the wind blowing upon the kite's surface, and these are all the forces concerned in maintaining the kite aloft. Now the weight is constant, and can be found once and for all before the kite is sent up. The tension in the string can be measured by first ascertaining how much an inch of rubber cord is stretched by different weights, and then inserting the cord in the string and noting the increase in length.

But the force of the wind you cannot measure. However, this does not matter, because any calculation that could be based on it would be of very little value. Let us concentrate our attention on the pull on the string. If you haul in the string, what happens? The kite moves toward you and rises. If you pay out string, the kite moves away from you and falls. The pull on the string may therefore be regarded as consisting of two parts, one acting upwards against the weight, and the other acting horizontally against the wind. The first is called lift, and the second drift. As the weight is the same all the time, every change in the force of the wind has to be met by taking in or paying out string, that is, by increasing or decreasing the tension in it.

Suppose now the force of the wind increases. The string becomes tighter. Part of the tension in it is given up to preventing the kite from being blown away, and part, now greater than the weight, lifts the kite higher. If the strength of the wind decreases, the string becomes slacker, and that part of the force in it which has previously been equal to the weight now becomes less, and the kite falls. All these effects are complicated by the fact that the kite can change its inclination to the wind, and the use of the tail is to give it such an angle that the greatest amount of lift is secured. If the tail is too light, the lower end of the kite rises, and the wind glides by instead of supporting it.

If the kite is vertical, the drift is at its greatest value, and the lift at its lowest. As the lower end rises, the drift decreases while the lift increases, though when a certain angle is passed, the lift begins to decrease again. A very little experience will show that a large kite takes a good deal more holding than a small one. A wind of a certain velocity, twenty, thirty, or forty miles an hour, exerts a definite pressure on a square inch, and the larger the surface upon which it acts, the greater is the amount of lift obtainable. On this account, box-kites, which were invented by an Australian named Lawrence Hargrave in 1884, are much more effective for their size than those of the ordinary form.

In a wind of a definite strength, they will rise more freely, and they will go up more easily in a lighter wind. A large kite, especially one of the box form, will easily lift a man, And the British Army made many experiments with a view to using them instead of balloons for scouting. The late S. F. Cody, the famous aviator, was a great believer in their use, and held an official position in the Royal Aircraft Factory in connection with them. On one occasion he crossed the channel from Calais to Dover in a small boat drawn through the water by a man-lifting kite. At high altitudes, the wind is much steadier than near the ground. Everybody knows that the chief trouble in kite-flying is to get the thing to go up.

When once it is up, it stays there as long as the wind holds and the string is not hauled in.

11 11 - The Gentle Art of Quilting by Clara B. Miller, article from Good Housekeeping magazine, August, 1896 5:32

The Gentle Art of Quilting by Clara B. Miller. Article in Good Housekeeping Magazine, August 1896. Coffee Break Collection, 28. Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Boutros. The gentle art of quilting. Coverlets, whose perfect white showed like an April daisy on the grass. The silk and velvet confections, with their ruffles of lace and linings of satin, are the evolutionized quilts of our grandmothers. Just as the gilded and upholstered chair of today stands for the splint-bottom of colonial days, In the rural districts, patchwork still beguiles the leisure hours of the good housewife and her daughters, and such terms as the Rising Star, Fence Row, Rose of Sharon, suggest different geometrical designs of colored calicoes on a white ground.

Many old ladies take pleasure in piecing quilts of fine woolen and silk for the beds of their grandchildren. And they delight to look over the quilts that they have pieced when their eyes were bright, and they need not call on the little ones to thread grandma's needle. Listening to their aged prattle that has grown strangely childlike, we hear of dames and damsels who once wore the frocks like the pieces in the quilts, And if one is sufficiently interested to lead the dear old ladies on, sometimes a choice bit of romance is unfolded with the quilts, told in the speaker's quaint style, which vividly recalls those days of long ago, when hope was young in hearts long since turned to dust. As Grandmother smooths her wrinkled fingers over the faded and worn patchwork made before she was married, many tender memories and affections come to her mind.

The faded patchwork is to her what the faded roses, the package of letters tied with blue ribbon, love's own color, is to the belle of today. It leads to the dreamland of might have been. I recollect, as a child, seeing a young lady busily sewing away, piecing quilt after quilt. I wondered why, like Oliver Twist, she was always wanting more, when her mother had all that was needed. But it was whispered to me that she was going to be married, and the quilts were a part of her setting out. In the good old days we hear so much about, the more quilts, the finer the quilting, and the smaller the pieces, the more capable the girl. In regard to the art exhibited in the form and color combinations of the quilts of the past, there cannot much be said that is favorable.

Some combine colors in the sharpest contrast, red and green, blue and yellow. Whether it is that our ancestors lacked an artistic taste, it is hard to say, but certainly they did not show it in their quilts. There is something attractive to every true woman at some time in her life about making quilts. It may be the tufted comfortables of cheesecloth, which are so pretty and so quickly made, or one for the baby's crib of dainty bits of silk lined with silk of a solid shade, or the combinations of woolen fabric that, in their rich coloring, reminds one of autumn leaves. The fancy may not strike her until she becomes a grandmother, old and infirm. The hours are a task to get through, but with her work-basket by her side, filled to overflowing with scraps, she passes away the time with her quilt-blocks, and feels she is yet of some use in this work-a-day world of ours.

Quilt-making of the most practical kind is to a great extent confined to the wives and daughters of the rural districts. The work enters into their social life, to the extent that when the quilt is ready to be quilted, the young women of the neighborhood are invited to spend the day, and their nimble fingers keep busy as their tongues as they ply the small stitches with speed and neatness. A good dinner is prepared to refresh the busy ones, and at night the beaux appear in time for supper, and to take the quilt out of the frame. A social time, sometimes a dance, follows. One good mother has a coverlet in white and navy blue, which she values very highly because her mother wove it. The woof is of woolen, and the warp of cotton.

A hand-loom was used, and it is a marvel how she managed to make the design so perfect. The right and wrong side show up differently, like an ingrained carpet, but both are pretty. I recall some other coverlets woven in red and white, and red and blue, which were marvels of skill, made by the same hands long since turned to dust. The coverlets have also outlived their usefulness, but are preserved for old association's sake, and as examples of homemade weaving. End of The Gentle Art of Quilting

12 12 - Home Dressmaking from Armour's Monthly Cook Book October 1913 edited by Mary Jane McClure 2:43

Home Dressmaking from Armour's Monthly Cookbook. Edited by Mary Jane McClure. Coffee Break Collection 28. Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Home Dressmaking. This is an age of good, ready-made clothes, and it is also an age of clever, amateur dressmaking. With excellent patterns which may be easily handled, there is no reason why the woman who can sew should not make her own clothes, and have smart clothes at a reasonable price—that is, provided she has the time to give to sewing. Before starting a dress, even before buying, make a tour of the shops and see for yourself what is being worn with a keen eye for the little details, which lift a gown from the homemade to the professional class.

If you live far from town and cannot go to the shops, look through the magazines which make a feature of dress, and study what is best suited to your particular style and requirements. Study materials, and buy economically, which means paying a little more if necessary, rather than have shoddy goods. Good patterns are essential, and these usually have full directions as to the manner of using. It is a very good plan to have a pattern drafted to your own measure, but if you have not this, take some finished garment, which is satisfactory, unless there is someone at hand to take the measures that a person cannot very well take for herself. and measure the lengths in different places such as front, back and under lengths on a blouse, and the width across both back and front where it is broadest.

Write these down and proceed to take the same measures on the pattern to be used. In taking measures, be sure to take a correct position, or it will be impossible to get correct measures, and you cannot hope for success if this, the initial step, is taken wrongly. For instance, stand erect. With the chest raised and the abdomen held in, and you will find in taking the width measures across to where the arms and body join the armhole will be straight and even-looking, instead of pointing in and out in places. Make sure of your measures before starting to apply your pattern to the cloth. A careful study of this will save many irreparable mistakes later. End of Home Dressmaking

13 13 - Mrs. Washington's Eternal Knitting by Fanny Fern 4:28

Mrs. Washington's Eternal Knitting Mrs.

Washington's Eternal Knitting There are many-sided men and women, and there are men and women that are one-sided, both in brains and body. There are men of business who have no surplus left after attending to their business. There are women who have no surplus left after attending to their kettles and pans and their mending-basket. On the other hand, there are men whom business does not wholly absorb, who are interested intelligently, And actively, too, in every great question of the day and hour. There are women who order their houses discreetly, tastefully and economically, and can yet converse elegantly and with knowledge with the most cultured persons of both sexes. This is a preface to some little remarks of mine on an article lately written by a gentleman in one of our magazines, on the wife of General Cherry Tree, Washington.

This writer says that Mrs. Washington's knitting was never out of her hands, that when callers came the click of her needles was always an accompaniment to her conversation, that she deemed it a privilege to attend to the details of housekeeping, and regarded the days when her official position required her presence in the drawing-room as lost. Now she is a specimen of what I should call a one-sided woman. I am glad she was an accomplished housekeeper, and, better still, was not above attending to her duty there. It was splendid in her high position that she should set so good an example in this regard. But it was not good to keep her needles clicking when callers came, as if to say, "'You are an intruder, and I can ill endure your presence.' This, I maintain, was neither necessary nor polite, It was not good that she could consider her drawing-room days as lost, and not perceive that they might be turned to account in elevating, as an intelligent woman can, the tone of the society she moved in.

That she took the contrary view of it shows, to my thinking, that she was not truly an intelligent woman. I believe her duty, As the wife of an American president lay there quite as much as in looking over her household economies. But that was then, and this is now. In those days, one-sided men and women were plenty, and many-sided men and women rare. We can point to-day to many glorious examples of the latter. Thank heaven! It was once considered a disgrace to a woman to know enough to spell correctly, and if, in addition to committing this indiscretion, she happened to disgrace herself by a knowledge of French or Latin, let her never speak of it, lest it should destroy her chances of marriage.

The idea is losing ground that a woman's mentality perils Puddings and shirt buttons. There had been too many shining, tasteful houses, and well-ordered tables presided over by cultivated women, for any man nowadays to drag up that old fogeyism, without raising a laugh for himself. When I read this article about Mrs. Washington, who, I admit, was excellent as far as she went, I called the writer to an account. He replied, Oh, I knew you'd pitch into me, Fanny, and not liking to disappoint him, I have. End of Mrs. Washington's Eternal Knitting.

14 14 - Old English Embroidery by Emily Leigh Lowes 7:05

Old English Embroidery from Chats on Old Lace and Needlework by Emily Lee Lowes Coffee Break Collection 28 Hobbies This is A.

Old English Embroidery, from Chats on Old Lace and Needlework.

While the subject of lace-making has been treated as almost cosmopolitan, that of embroidery in this volume must be regarded as purely national. I purposely refrain from introducing the embroideries of other countries, other than mentioning the ancient civilizations which shared the initial attempts to decorate garments, hangings, etc., of which we really know very little, and shall confine myself to the needlework of this country, more especially, as it is the one art and craft of which England may be unfeignedly proud. It is assumed that needlecraft was the pioneer art of the whole world, that the early attempts to decorate textiles by embroideries of colored silks, and the elaborate use of gold and silver threadwork first suggested painting, sculpture, and goldsmith's work.

Certainly, early Egyptian paintings imitated embroideries, And we have good ground for supposing that stained glass was a direct copy of the old ecclesiastical figures, or ancient church basements. The Neolithic remains found in Britain show that at a very early period the art of making linen cloth was understood. Fragments of cloth, both of linen and wool, have been discovered in a British barrow in Yorkshire. And early bone-needles found at different parts of the country are plentiful in our museums. There is no doubt that we owe much of our civilization to the visit of the Phoenicians, those strange people, who appear to have carried all the arts and crafts of ancient Babylon and Assyria to the wonder isles of the Greek archipelago, to Egypt, to southern Spain, and to Cornwall and Devonshire.

These people, dwelling on the maritime border of Palestine, were the great traders of their age, and while coming to this country, then in a state of wildest barbarism, for tin, left in exchange a knowledge of the arts and appliances of civilization hitherto not understood. The Roman invasion, Forty Five B.C., brought not only knowledge of craftsmanship, but also Christianity. St. Augustine, to whom the conversion of the Britons is credited, carried with him a banner embroidered with the image of Christ. After the Romans had left the country, and it had become invaded by the Celts and the Danes, and had again been taken possession of by the Saxons, a period of not only rest but advancement arrived, and we see early in the seventh century the country prosperous and settled.

Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, wrote a poem in which he speaks of the tapestry weaving and the embroidery which the women of England occupied their lives. The earliest specimen of embroidery known to have been executed in England is that of the stole and maniple of St. Cuthbert, which is now treasured at Durham Cathedral. These were worked by Elfled, the Queen of Edward the Elder, Alfred the Great's son. She worked them for Bishop Frid Heston in 9 o 5 a. D. Her son, Athelstan, after her death, visited the shrine of St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-street, and in an inventory of the rich gifts which he left there, there is recorded one stole with a maniple, amongst other articles. These very embroideries were removed from the actual body of St.

Cuthbert in 1827. They are described by an eye-witness as being of woven gold with spaces left vacant for needlework embroideries. Exquisitely embroidered figures are in niches or clouds. The whole effect is described as being that of a fine illumined manuscript of the ninth century, and indescribably beautiful. Another great prelate St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, designed embroideries for the execution of pious ladies of his diocese.

Emma, Queen of Ethelred the Unready, and afterwards of Canute, designed and embroidered many church vestments and altar cloths, and Editha, wife of Edward the Confessor, embroidered the King's coronation mantle. The great and monumental Bayou Tapestry, which is miscalled, as it is, embroidery, was the work of Queen Matilda, who, like Penelope, wove the mighty deeds of her husband and king in an immense embroidery. This piece of needlecraft comes upon us as a shock, rather than an admiration, after the exquisite embroideries worked by and for the church. It is interesting, however, as a valuable historic document showing the manners and customs of the time. The canvas is two hundred and twenty-seven feet long and twenty inches wide, and shows events of English history, from the accession of Edward the Confessor to the defeat of Harold at Hastings.

It is extremely crude. No attempt is made at shading. The figures being worked in flat stitch, in colored wools, on linen canvas. Certainly, it is one of the quaintest and most primitive attempts of working pictures by needlecraft. The evidence of the costumes, the armor, etc., are supposed to tell us that this tapestry was worked many years after the conquest. But it can be traced by documentary evidence as having been seen in Bayeux Cathedral as far back as 1476. In the time of Napoleon I, it was removed from the cathedral, and was actually used as a covering for a transport wagon. Finally, however, it was exhibited in the Musee Napoleon in 1803, and was afterwards returned to Bayeux. In 1840, it was restored and relined, and is now in the Htel de V at Bayou.

End of Old English Embroidery Chats on Old Lace and Needlework by Emily Lee Lowes

15 15 - Poultry for Beginners by Eric Wood 13:33

Poultry for Beginners by Eric Wood. Coffee Break Collection 28. Hobbies.

Poultry for beginners. Both in a villa garden and in the country, Poultry can be made very profitable by the boy fancier. The chief source of profit is, of course, the eggs laid by the birds, but it should also be remembered that many a good dinner may be reared. Quite one of the latest methods of keeping hens is to shut them up in a closed-in house. This plan is called the intensive system, and one may keep many birds in quite a small house. From the hen's point of view, it is almost a drawing-room existence, and it has proved itself to be exceedingly successful. Later in this chapter, a design is given for a suitable intensive house, as well as for other houses with outdoor runs. But there are separate types of birds for the different systems, and it will be well if we look at some of the breeds that are available.

Broadly, We can divide hens into two main classes, the heavy and the light. In the former class, we have the Orpingtons, white, black, spangled and buff, Rhode Island Reds, Brahmas, very large, Plymouth Rocks, Wyandots, and Sussex. All the birds of this type require an open-air run and as much space as possible. Boy fanciers, making a beginning with poultry, would be well advised to go in for Anconas. They are pretty little birds, with black and white plumage and yellow legs. Splendid layers, their eggs are quite large in size and white. When poultry keeping in an intensive house, the floor should be covered to a depth of six inches with litter. This stuff may be composed of chopped straw, cedar wood litter, peat moss litter, dry leaves, sifted bonfire and household ashes, road sweepings, if they are gritty, etc.

The great point is not to have the litter too heavy, for you will want the birds to be scratching in it all day long. Most fanciers place in their intensive houses a fresh supply of litter in September, allowing it to remain until March, when it can be dug into the garden as an exceedingly rich fertilizer. This litter never smells, because it is always dust-dry. When it is taken out in the spring and used in the garden, fresh litter must be supplied unless the birds are going to spend the summer out-of-doors. The chief object of the intensive system is to encourage the production of eggs in winter time by keeping the birds always warm and dry. Their grain food is buried in the litter, and they obtain sufficient exercise by scratching to find it.

Another plan is to hang a cabbage from the ceiling by a string just above the heads of the birds, so that they have to jump to peck it. Apart from this, Feeding poultry on the intensive system is much the same as feeding them under other conditions. As with most domestic creatures, change of diet is always welcomed. According to the season of the year, there are available for the feeding of poultry grain and meal of various kinds, such as one buys at the corn shop, In addition, there is the vitally important green food for birds that are not kept on a grass run, in addition to all sorts of garden and household waste. As a matter of fact, the few fowls likely to be kept by a boy or girl fancier can be largely fed upon house and garden scraps.

Let us see what there will be available. In the first place, there are potato peelings and very small potatoes not fit for cooking. There are the parings from other vegetables as well as those from fruit. There are crusts of toast and bread, the scrapings of pie-dishes, the scraps left on the plate after a meal, and the little meaty tidbits that remain over after cooking. Instead of these things being thrown into the ash-bin, they may be turned to good account when one keeps a few hens. By far, the best plan is to set aside an old saucepan in which these odds and ends may be collected. Then, at the end of the day, the saucepan may be placed on the kitchen range and allowed to simmer, care being taken, that sufficient water is first provided.

In the morning, the contents of the saucepan should again be heated, and then mixed with the little barley meal or scraps. to which double the quantity of bran and clover meal has been added. The whole may then be stirred and served hot in an earthenware dish, the mash being not too sloppy. Such breakfast as this is the finest food of all for laying hens, except during the few hot months of the year when it may be dispensed with. In very cold weather, too, it is sometimes a good plan for a change to give the birds their hot meal last thing in the afternoon. As for meat scraps and the gravy produced from simmering bones, other than bacon bones, these are most beneficial. In fact, without a little meat in some form or other, laying hens can hardly be expected to do their duty in the winter, And some fanciers buy scraps of waste meat from the butcher once a week for the purpose.

So much for the morning meal, which should be given regularly at a fixed time, the earlier the better. Much the same rules may be followed with birds kept intensively and those in the open. For the mid-day meal, to be given about half-past twelve, there's nothing better than green food. According to season, the outside leaves of cabbages or lettuce, dandelions and other green weeds, lawn clippings and vegetable scraps from the house may be given. The afternoon meal should consist of grain, except on those occasions when, for a change, the mash is provided. There are many varieties of grain food, wheat, oats, barley, maize, and mixed poultry corn being the most common. Wheat, oats, and barley are all good, and may be fed at different periods for variation.

Maize is very heating, quite good in extremely cold weather, or for a hen that is sitting, but not advisable as a general rule in any quantity for laying birds. Mixed corn makes a pleasant change now and again, and it should only be bought from a reliable tradesman, for often mere rubbish is mingled with it. It will thus be seen that the birds require to be fed three times a day. On the question of water, the greatest care is necessary. In the depth of winter, it is an excellent plan to give the birds water from which the chill has been taken, and they must never be allowed to drink from a vessel partially frozen over. In the summer, the greatest point is to ensure a supply of clean, pure drinking water twice a day, and to keep it out of the sun's rays.

As to how much food to give the birds, no definite rule of quantity can be laid down. But it is usual for more food to be given than is necessary by the amateur, so that the bird only suffers from kindness. Fowls require just as much food as they will greedily devour at a meal, and no more. When food is lying about uncared for, For a quarter of an hour after the feeding time, one is giving too much. Bantams are splendid little fellows, and can be made most profitable. They require to be fed on much the same lines as hens, and are housed in the same way. The greatest profit is to be made by raising exhibition birds and showing them. But bantams lay quite well. A small egg. It is very acceptable, nevertheless, and as mother birds, the little hens are quite reliable.

There are a great many varieties of the bantam, among them the black and white rose combs, the seabrights, game and pekins. To see them in all their glory, however, one should visit a poultry show and make the acquaintance of the several breeds at close quarters. Ducks are exceedingly popular. A few may be kept in a run in a comparatively small garden, but these birds do best on an open grass range. It is not necessary, however, that they should have access to a pond or stream, and they thrive quite well without having the chance to swim. The most profitable variety of duck is the Indian renner. It produces more eggs than any other domesticated bird, sometimes more than 200 in a year. The best plan is to buy a setting of ducks eggs at the end of March, and arrange to borrow or buy a broody hen to hatch them.

It takes four weeks for the eggs to hatch after the hen begins to set. Runner ducks are white, buff, or colored, and they may be usually known by their erect carriage, rather like that of a penguin at first glance. Islesbury ducks are much larger birds, preferable to runners for table, but not such good layers. Geese should only be kept, for they may be given on open run over field or command. In these circumstances, they need but little feeding until the time comes to fatten them. The Imden and the Toulouse are the two best varieties. Turkeys also require a good deal of space in which to roam. But, in the opinion of some fanciers, they are more interesting than geese. The American Mammoth Bronze is the largest variety, but the White Austrian is a very showy bird.

Turkeys are fed in much the same way as fowls, except that when young they require a great deal more green food. They succeed best on light gravel soil, and do not prosper on ground composed of clay. Pigeons make very pretty pets, and by selling the young birds, quite a handsome profit may be made by keeping them. Very broadly, pigeons may be divided into two classes—those that fly long or short distances in competition with other pigeons, the racers among these birds, and those that stay about their home as pets. From the point of view of boys and girls, the greater interest will probably arise from The keeping of carrier and homer pigeons. These birds, when they have become thoroughly accustomed to their home, may be taken some distance away with the knowledge that they will return to their own loft.

The plan is, of course, to release them very carefully at first. Then, gradually as they become more used to their surroundings, they may have greater freedom and be taken farther away. The best way when starting to give a bird its liberty is to do so before feeding and to have a good meal on its return. Other types of pigeons merge into the fancy classes, such as fantails, jacobins, and many others. In most districts there are fancier's clubs that may be joined for small fees, and there is no better way of getting to know the points of birds Seeing that each society holds a show periodically. Pigeons are not, generally speaking, difficult to feed. A common plan is to have a receptacle known as a hopper, which one fills with a suitable mixture of peas and grain, so ready prepared by the corn man.

As the birds eat the food from the exit to this hopper, the grains fall and refill this saucer until the whole thing is empty. A better plan, though, is to feed at regular intervals twice a day, morning and evening, or late afternoon in the winter. Give the birds as much as they will eat at the meal, and never allow food to lie about that it may get soiled and stale, or worse still, serve to encourage rats. Fresh water for drinking is very important for pigeons, and in addition, in all but the most bitter weather, they will want Clean water in a roomy earthenware or zinc pail, or dish for the purpose of indulging in a morning bath. End of Poultry for Beginners

16 16 - The Hobby Rider by Jerome K. Jerome 16:59

The Hobby Writer by Jerome K. Jerome. Coffee Break Collection 28 Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by William Jones, Benita Springs, Florida. The Hobby Writer. Bump. Bump. Bump, bump. Bump. I sat up in bed and listened intently. It seemed to me as if someone with a muffled hammer were trying to knock bricks out of the wall. Burglars, I said to myself. One assumed as a matter of course that everything happening in this world after one a.m. is due to burglars. And I reflected What a curiously literal, but at the same time slow and cumbersome method of house-breaking they had adopted.

The bumping continued irregularly, yet uninterruptedly. My bed was by the window. I reached out my hand and drew aside a corner of the curtain. The sunlight streamed into the room. I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes past five. A most unbusinesslike hour for burglars, I thought. Why, it will be breakfast time before they get in. Suddenly there came a crash, and some substance striking against the blind fell upon the floor. I sprang out of bed and threw open the window. A red-haired young gentleman, scantily clad in a sweater and a pair of flannel trousers, stood on the lawn below me. Good morning. He said surely. Do you mind throwing me back my ball? What ball? I said. My tennis ball, he answered.

It must be somewhere in the room. It went clean through the window. I found the ball and threw it back to him. What are you doing? I asked. Playing tennis? No, he said. I'm just practicing against this side of the house. It improves your game wonderfully. "'It don't improve my night's rest,' I answered somewhat surly, I fear. "'I came down here for peace and quiet. Can't you do it in the daytime?' "'Daytime,' he laughed. "'Why, there's been daytime for the last two hours. Never mind. I'll go round to the other side.' He disappeared around the corner and set to work at the back, where he woke up the dog. I heard another window smash. Followed by a sound as of somebody getting up violently in a distant part of the house, and shortly afterwards I must have fallen asleep again.

I had come to spend a few weeks at a boarding establishment in Deal. He was the only other young man in the house, and I was naturally throwing a good deal upon his society. He was a pleasant, genial young fellow. But he would have been better company had he been a little less enthusiastic as regards tennis. He played tennis ten hours a day on the average. He got up romantic parties to play it by moonlight, when half his time was generally taken up in separating his opponents, and godless parties to play it on Sundays. On wet days I have seen him practicing services by himself in a Macintosh and galoshes. He had been spending the winter with his people at Tangiers, and I asked him how he liked the place.

Oh, a beast of a whole, he replied. There is not a court anywhere in the town. We tried plain on the roof, but the martyr thought it dangerous. Switzerland he had been delighted with. He counseled me next time I went to stay at Zermatt. There is a capital court at Zermatt, he said. You might almost fancy yourself at Wimbledon. A mutual acquaintance whom I subsequently met told me that at the top of the Jungfrau he had said to him, his eyes fixed the while on a small snow plateau enclosed by precipices a few hundred feet below them, By Jove, that wouldn't make half a bad little tennis court, that bit of flat down there. Have to be careful you didn't run back too far. When he was not playing tennis, or practicing tennis, or reading about tennis, he was talking about tennis.

Wrenshaw was a prominent figure in the tennis world at that time, and he mentioned Wrenshaw until there grew up within my soul a dark desire to kill Wrenshaw in a quiet unostentatious way, and bury him. One drenching afternoon he taught tennis-to-be for three hours on end, referring to Renshaw, so far as I kept count, four thousand nine hundred and thirteen times. After tea he drew up his chair to the window beside me, and commenced. Have you ever noticed how Renshaw—I said, suppose someone took a gun, someone who could aim very straight, and went out and shot Renshaw till he was quite dead. Would you tennis players drop him and talk about somebody else?" Oh, but who would shoot Renshaw? he said indignantly.

Never mind, I said. Suppose someone did. Well, then there would be his brother, he replied. I had forgotten that. "'Well, we won't argue about how many of them there are,' I said. "'Suppose someone killed the lot. Would we hear less of Renshaw?' "'Never,' he replied emphatically. "'Renshaw will always be a name wherever tennis is spoken of.' I dread to think what the result might have been had his answer been other than it was. The next year he dropped tennis completely and became an ardent amateur photographer. Whereupon all his friends implored him to return to tennis, and sought to interest him in talk about services and returns and follies, and in anecdotes concerning Renshaw. But he would not heed them.

Whatever he saw, wherever he went, he took. He took his friends and made them his enemies. He took babies and brought despair to fond mother's hearts. He took young wives and cast a shadow on the home. Once there was a young man who loved not wisely, so his friends thought, but the more they talked against her, the more he clung to her. Then a happy idea occurred to the father. He got Begley to photograph her in seven different positions. When her lover saw the first, he said, What an awful-looking thing! Who did it? When Begley showed him the second, he said, But, my dear fellow, it's not a bit like her. You've made her look an ugly old woman. At the third, he said, Whatever have you done to her feet?

They can't be that size, you know. It isn't in nature. At the fourth, he exclaimed, But heavens, man, look at the shape you've made her. Where on earth did you get the idea from? At the first glimpse of the fifth, he staggered. Great Scott! He cried with a shudder. What a ghastly expression you've got into it. It isn't human. Begley was growing offended, but the father who was standing by came to his defense. "'It's nothing to do with Begley,' exclaimed the old gentleman suavely. "'It can't be his fault. What is a photographer? Simply an instrument in the hands of science. He arranges his apparatus, and whatever is in front of it comes into it.' No, continued the old gentleman, laying a constrained hand on Begley, who was about to resume the exhibition.

Don't—don't show him the other two.

I was sorry for the poor girl, for I believe she really cared for the youngster. And as for her looks, they were quite up to the average. But some evil sprite seemed to have gotten into Begley's camera. It seized upon defects with the unerring instinct of a born critic, and dilated upon them to the obscuration of all virtues. A man with a pimple became a pimple with a man as background. People with strongly marked features became merely adjuncts to their own noses. One man in the neighborhood had, undetected, worn a wig for fourteen years. Begley's camera discovered the fraud in an instant, and so completely exposed it that the man's friends wondered afterwards how the fact could ever have escaped them.

The Thing seemed to take a pleasure in showing humanity at its very worst. Babies usually came out with an expression of low cunning. Most young girls had to take their choice of appearing either as simpering idiots or embryo vixens. To mild old ladies it generally gave a look of aggressive cynicism. Our vicar, as excellent an old gentleman as ever breathed, vaguely presented to us as a beetle-browed savage of a peculiarly low type of intellect. While upon the leading solicitor of the town he bestowed an expression of such thinly veiled hypocrisy that few who saw the photograph cared ever again to trust him with their affairs. As regards myself, I should perhaps make no comment. I am possibly a prejudiced party.

All I will say, therefore, is that if I in any way resemble Begley's photograph of me, then the critics are fully justified in everything they have at any time, anywhere, said of me, and more. Nor I maintain Though I make no pretense of possessing the figure of Apollo, is one of my legs twice the length of the other? And neither does it curve upwards. This I can prove. Begley allowed that an accident had occurred to the negative during the process of development, but this explanation does not appear on the picture, and I cannot help feeling that an injustice has been done me. His perspective seemed to be governed by no law, either human or divine. I have seen a photograph of his uncle and a windmill, judging from which I defy any unprejudiced person to say which is the bigger, the uncle or the mill.

On one occasion he created quite a scandal in the parish by exhibiting a well-known and eminently respectable maiden lady nursing a young man on her knee. The gentleman's face was indistinct, and he was dressed in a costume which, upon a man of his size—one would have estimated him as rising six foot four inches—appeared absurdly juvenile. He had one arm around her neck, and she was holding his other hand and smirking. I, knowing something of Begley's machine, willingly accepted the lady's explanation, Which was to the effect that the male in question was her nephew, aged eleven. But the uncharitable ridiculed this statement, and appearances were certainly against her. It was in the early days of the photographic craze, and an inexperienced world was rather pleased with the idea of being taken on the cheap.

The consequence was that nearly everyone for three miles round sat or stood or lint or laid to Begley at one time or another, with the result that a less conceited parish than ours, it would have been difficult to discover. No one who had once looked upon a photograph of himself taken by Begley ever again felt any pride in his personal appearance. The picture was invariably a revelation to him. Later, some evil-disposed person invented Kodaks. And Begley went everywhere, slung on to a thing that looked like an overgrown missionary box, and that bore a legend to the effect that, if Begley would pull the button, a shameless company would do the rest. Life became a misery to Begley's friends. Nobody dared to do anything for fear of being taken in the act.

He took an instantaneous photograph. Of his own father swearing at the gardener, and snapped his youngest sister and her lover at the exact moment of farewell at the garden gate. Nothing was sacred to him. He codecked his aunt's funeral from behind, and showed the chief mourner but one whispering a funny story into the ear of the third cousin as they stood behind their hats beside the grave. Public indignation was at its highest. When a newcomer to the neighborhood, a young fellow named Heinoth, suggested the getting together of a party for a summer's tour in Turkey. Everyone took up the idea with enthusiasm and recommended Begley as the party. We had great hopes from that tour. Our idea was that Begley would pull his button outside a harem or behind a sultana, and that a bashi bazook or a janissary would do the rest for us.

We were, however, partly doomed to disappointment. I say partly, because, although Begley returned alive, he came back entirely cured of his photographic craze. He said that every English-speaking man, woman, or child whom he met abroad had its camera with it, and that after a time the sight of a black cloth or the click of a button began to madden him. He told us that on the summit of Mount Tutra in the Carpathians, the English and American amateur photographers waiting to take the grand panorama were formed by the Hungarian police in a queue, two abreast, each with his or her camera under his or her arm, and that a man had to stand sometimes as long as three and a half hours before his turn came round.

He also told us that the beggars in Constantinople went about with placards hung around their necks, stating their charges for being photographed. One of these price lists he brought back with him as a sample. It ran. One snapshot back or front, two francs. One snapshot with expression, three francs. One snapshot surprised in quaint attitude, four francs. One snap shot while saying prayers, five francs. One snap shot while fighting, ten francs. He said that in some instances where a man had an exceptionally villainous cast of countenance, or was exceptionally deformed, as much as twenty francs were demanded and readily obtained. He abandoned photography and took to golf. He showed people how, by digging a hole here and putting a brick bed or two there, they could convert a tennis lawn into a miniature golf-link, and did it for them.

He persuaded elderly ladies and gentlemen that it was the mildest exercise going, and would drag them for miles over wet gorse and heather, and bring them home dead beat, coughing, and full of evil thoughts. The last time I saw him was in Switzerland, a few months ago. He appeared indifferent to the subject of golf, but talked much about West. We met by chance at Grindelwald, and agreed to climb the Fahorn together next morning. Halfway up we rested, and I strolled on a little way by myself to gain a view. Returning, I found him with a Cavendish in his hand and a pack of cards spread out before him on the grass, solving a problem. End of the Hobby Writer

17 17 - The Romance of Stamp Collecting by Edward J. Nankivell 5:59

The Romance of Stamp Collecting from Stamp Collecting as a Pastime by Edward J. Nankyvel Coffee Break Collection 28 Hobbies This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Patrick Wallace The Romance of Stamp Collecting The story of the development of stamp collecting, and of the trade that has sprung up with it, is full of romance. Our publisher's business, with its worldwide ramifications, was begun by young Gibbons putting a few sheets of stamps in his father's shop window. The father was a chemist, and it was intended that the lad should follow in his father's footsteps. But the stamps elbowed the drugs aside, and eventually yielded a fortune which enabled this pioneer of the stamp trade to retire and indulge his globetrotting propensities to the full.

He sold his business for £25,000, and still in the prime of life, retired to a snug little villa on the banks of the Thames.

The business was converted into a limited liability company, and the managing director may be said to be a product of the original business. For it was a present of a guinea packet of Stanley Gibbons's stamps that first whetted his appetite for stamp collecting, and eventually for stamp dealing. Mr. Gibbons had for a great many years conducted his business from his private house. The new broom changed all that, and opened out in fine premises in the Strand, W.C., where the company now occupy the whole of one house and the greater part of the adjoining premises. In every room, busy hands are at work all the day long, endeavoring to keep pace with a worldwide business which began with a few sheets in the corner of a chemist's shop window in the town of Plymouth.

And now, looking back on the humdrum days of the beginnings of the stamp trade, what opportunities do they not seem to have missed? Could they but have foreseen the present-day developments, a few unconsidered trifles, Valued at a few pence in those days, put away in a bottom drawer, would today net a fortune.

Young Gibbons, amongst his early purchases, bought from a couple of sailors at Plymouth for five pounds a sackful of triangular Cape of Good Hope stamps, a large proportion being the rare so-called woodblocks, with many of the errors described in the list of great rarities in another chapter. Those errors he disposed of at two shillings and sixpence each. They are now worth from sixty to seventy-five pounds each. And the ordinary woodblocks which were so plentifully represented in that sackful are now catalogued at from fifty shillings to nine pounds apiece. Strange as it may seem, those were the common stamps of those days, and they are the rarities of to-day. A well-known collection full of rare stamps of the value of from £5 to £50 has been largely formed by the fortunate possessor out of stamps for which he paid two shillings per dozen just a little over twenty years ago.

A leading collector once conceived the idea of scouring the little visited country towns of Spain for rare old Spanish stamps, and a most successful hunt he made of it. He secured most valuable and unsuspected halls of unused and used blocks and pairs of rare Portuguese. But before returning home he decided to treat himself to a trip to Morocco, and during that ill-fated extension of his tour he lost nearly the whole of his patient garnerings of rare Spanish stamps, for during an inland trip some very unphilatelic Bedouins swooped down on his escort in the desert. and carried off the whole of his baggage. He being some distance ahead of his escort, escaped, and brought home only a few samples of the grand things he had found and lost.

In all forms of collecting, the hunt for bargains adds zest to the game, and probably more so in stamps than in any other hobby, not even excepting old china. And as in other lines of collecting, the bargain hunter must be equipped with the expert knowledge of the specialist if he would sweep into his net at bargain prices the unsuspected gems to be found now and again in the philatelic mart.

Many a keen stamp collector turns his years of wide experience to good account as a bargain hunter.

And at least one innocent amateur is credited with netting a revenue which would make many a flourishing merchant Green with envy. Many a match has probably been due to stamp collecting. Not long ago we were told of a young lady who wrote to an official in a distant colony, for a few of the current stamps issued from his office. The stamps were forwarded, and a correspondence ensued. There was eventually an exchange of photographs, and finally the official applied for leave, returned home, and married his stamp collecting correspondent. Truly, the scope of the stamp collector for pleasure, for profit, and for romance is as wide as the most imaginative could desire.

End of The Romance of Stamp Collecting From Stamp Collecting as a Pastime by Edward J.

18 18 - Stamp Collecting as a Pastime by Edward J. Nankivell (1848 - 1909) 5:18

Stamp Collecting as a Pastime by Edward J. Nankivill. Coffey Break Collection 28. Javis. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anita Slema-Martinez. Stamp Collecting as a Pastime. According to the authorities, The central idea of a pastime is that it is so positively agreeable that it lets time slip by unnoticed, as to turn work into pastime. And recreation is described as that sort of play or agreeable occupation which refreshes the tired person, making him as good as new. Stamp collectors may fairly claim that their hobby serves the double purpose of a pastime and a recreation.

As a pastime, it certainly makes time pass most agreeably. For the true student of the postal issues of the world, it turns work into a pastime. As a recreation, it is of such an engrossing character that it may be relied upon to afford the pleasant diversion from business worries that so many tired mental workers need nowadays. For nearly half a century, it has maintained unbroken Its hold is one of the most popular of all forms of relaxation, and its popularity extends to all classes and to all countries. But this very devotion of stamp collectors to their hobby has puzzled and excited the uninitiated. The ordinary individual, especially the man who has no soul for a hobby of any kind, regards it as a passing fancy, a harmless craze, a fashion that must have its day and disappear sooner or later.

But the passing fancy has endured for nearly half a century. The harmless craze still serves its useful purpose, and the fashion has acquired such a permanence as to convince most people that it has come to stay. Of all pastimes, and of all the forms of recreation, not one can claim more lifelong devotees than this same stamp collecting. And where is another pastime with such international ramifications? In every civilized country, in every city, and in every town of any importance, the wide world over, thoughtful men and women are to be found formed into sociable groups or societies, quietly and pleasantly enjoying themselves in the harmless and enduring pursuit of stamp collecting. There must be some reason for this popularity, this devotion of all classes to a pursuit, this unbroken record of progress.

It cannot be satisfactorily accounted for as a passing fancy or fashion. It has too long stood the test of years to be so easily explained away. Fancies and fashions come and go, but stamp collecting flourishes from decade to decade. Princes and peers, merchants and members of Parliament, solicitors and barristers, schoolboys and octogenarians, All follow this postal-pied piper of Hamelin. Grave old plotters, gay young friskers, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, all bent upon the pursuit of this pleasure-yielding hobby. Why is it? Whence comes the fascination? To the unprejudiced inquirer, the reply is simple. To the leisured man, it affords a stimulating occupation With a spice of competition, to the busy professional man it yields the delight of a recreative change, to the studious and inexhaustible scope for profitable research, to the old the sociability of a pursuit popular with old and young alike, to the young A hobby prolific of novelty, and one, moreover, that harmonizes with school studies in historical and geographical directions, to the moneymaker, an opening for occasional speculation, and to all, a satisfying combination of a safe investment and a pleasure-yielding study.

Old postage stamps, bits of paper as they are contemptuously called by some people, They have no intrinsic value, but they are, nevertheless, rich in memories of history and of art. They link the past with the present. They mark the march of empires and the federation of states, the rise and fall of dynasties, and the peaceful extension of postal communication between the peoples of the world. And some day, in the distant future, They may celebrate even yet more important victories of peace. End of Stamp Collecting as a Pastime

19 19 - Tame Butterflies by Elizabeth Brightwen 6:17

Twenty-eight hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. TAME BUTTERFLIES In the century for June, 1883, Mr. Goss described a monument in which the sculptor had carved a child holding out her hand for butterflies to perch on. He went on to say that this was criticized as improbable, even by so exact an observer as the late Lord Tennyson. It may therefore be of some interest to record the following facts from my personal experience. One summer I watched the larvae of a swallow-tailed butterfly through their different stages, and reserved two chrysalides to develop into the perfect insect.

In due time, one of these fairy-like creatures came out. I placed it in a small Indian cage made of fine threads of bamboo. A carpet of soft moss and a vase of flowers in the center made a pleasant home for my tiny psyche. I found that she greatly enjoyed the repast of honey. When some was placed on a leaf within her reach, she would uncoil her long proboscis and draw up the sweet food with great apparent enjoyment. She was so tame that it became my habit, once or twice a day, to take her on my finger, and while I walked in the garden she would take short flights hither and thither, but was always content to mount upon my hand again. She would come on my finger of her own accord, and if the day was bright, would remain there as long as I had patience to carry her, with her wings outspread, basking in the sunbeams, which appeared to convey exquisite delight to the delicate little creature.

I never touched her beautiful wings. She never fluttered or showed any wish to escape, But lived three weeks of tranquil life in her tiny home, and then having, as I suppose, reached the limit of butterfly existence, she quietly ceased to live. On the day of her death, the other butterfly emerged, and lived for the same length of time. Both were equally tame, but the second showed more intelligence, for she discovered that by folding her wings together she could easily walk between the slender bars of the cage, and having done so she would fly to a window and remain there basking in the sun, folding and unfolding her wings with evident enjoyment until I presented my finger, when she would immediately step upon it, and be carried back to her cage.

The tameness of these butterflies I ascribed in great measure to the fact of their having been hatched from chrysolides, and having therefore never known the sweets of liberty. I often wondered if really wild specimens could be won by gentle kindness, and made happy in confinement, and one bright summer's day I resolved to try.

A painted lady had been seen in the garden the day before, and I soon caught sight of her making rapid flights from one bed of flowers to another. And when resting for a few minutes, folding and unfolding her wings on the gravel path, I crept slowly up to her with a drop of honey on my finger to try and make friends. But my lady was coy. She would and she wouldn't, and after letting me come within a few inches with my tempting repast, she floated away out of sight, and I feared she would not be willing to give me another chance. However, I waited quietly, and in a few minutes she alighted at a little distance. I again drew near very slowly, and again she sailed away. But the third time she gained confidence enough to reach out her proboscis and taste the honey, and finally crept upon my finger.

I very gently placed the light bamboo cage over her, and brought her indoors. She, all the while, entranced with the sweet food, remained quietly on my finger, and when satisfied crept upon a flower in the middle of the cage, and after a few flutterings round her cage, seemed content and folded her delicate wings to rest. Whilst engaged in her capture, I had observed a red admiral hovering over the dahlias, and thinking Cynthia, The former Latin name for the painted lady butterfly.

I tried my bledishments upon him. I had not much hope of success, for though a bold, fearless fellow, he is very wary, and his powerful wings bear him away in swift flight when alarmed. Many a circle did I make around that dahlia bed. Admiral always preferred the opposite side to where I stood, and calmly crossed over whilst I went round. At last, by long and patient waiting, he too allowed me to come near and present my seductive food to his notice. The wiry proboscis was uncoiled and felt about for the honey. Once plunged into that, all volition seemed to cease. He allowed me to coax him upon my finger, and he, too, was safely caged. But he behaved very differently from fair Cynthia. The moment his repast was ended, he flapped with desperate force against the bars, and in a minute he was out and on the window-pane, fluttering to escape.

The cage had to be secured with fine net, and he was replaced and soon quieted down. Twice a day these delicate little pets would come upon my hand to receive their sweet food, and appeared perfectly content in captivity.

20 20 - A Word about Golf by Charles William Taussig 5:57

A Word About Golf by Charles William Tanzig. Coffee Break Collection 28. Hobbies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. A Word About Golf. This chapter is not devoted to the how of playing golf, but rather to the why of it. The royal and ancient game has a devastating effect on its devotees, and when one has been stricken with the fever of golf, there is no telling what the results may be. An attack of golf fever will often leave its victim completely devoid of the ability to worry. The man who boasts that he hasn't taken a vacation for twenty years frequently succumbs to golf, and the effect is such that he proudly announces to his friends that he hasn't left his office later than two o'clock during the entire golf season.

Golf in the 14th century. Golf was introduced into Scotland from Holland, probably in the latter part of the 14th century. About the middle of the 15th century, golf was seriously competing with the principal industry of Scotland, which at that time was fighting, For it is recorded that the Scottish Parliament came to the conclusion that golf was interfering with the defence of the country, and so prohibited the playing of the game. Prohibition was the necessary element needed to add even more zest to the game, and consequently, after the Edict of James IV of Scotland prohibiting the playing of golf, it became a more popular sport. Although not recorded by history, it is thought that the surreptitious carrying on of golf by the Scotch in the fifteenth century was the origin of the surreptitious carrying of Scotch by the golfers in the twentieth century.

It is recorded, however, that King James IV, author of the anti-golf edict, was its foremost violator, illustrating a tendency that still survives. Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer, An authority on the history of New York tells us that golf was introduced into New York in the 17th century by one Jack Spratt, the actual hero of the nursery rhyme. The game became popular and was played on the old Bowling Green and on Lower Broadway. Governor Peter Stuyvesant had to prohibit the game, for it was obstructing traffic. The appeal of golf. The appeal of golf is not difficult to explain. Although a mere description of the game does not show reason for its popularity, the bare facts of the game itself have kept many people from taking up the sport.

That golf calls into play almost every human instinct, has much to do with its popularity. Golf combines pleasant, physical, out-of-door exercise with companionship, keenness of competition, and physical and mental accuracy. There is a camaraderie about a golf club that cannot be found elsewhere, and there is the fascinating courtesy of the course, the honest consideration of the other fellow. It adds to the charm of the game. Golf is, in truth, a game for gentlefolk, yet, nonetheless, it is a game for the red-blooded man and woman. The game for youth and age. Many games there are that fascinate youth. But they must be abandoned even before middle age. Not so with golf, a popular game in the colleges, and still popular among the octogenarians who play often with one foot in the grave.

A difficult stance. Speaking of graves, several of the golf courses in China, which are principally played on by the Americans and English, are laid out on old burial grounds. As the Chinese bury their dead, in extremely shallow graves. Many a weird lie has been recorded on these courses. Golf and Character We have always felt that any game or activity which brought out a man's character is worthwhile. There is in the game of golf something so vital that one need but play with a man a few times accurately to summarize his character. Note his demeanor in the face of adversity. How he carries himself in victory, what his attitude is when off his game, how he keeps his score, his consideration of other players, how he plays a difficult shot, and many other details of the game which are indicative of how he meets similar situations in life.

Perhaps it is because golf holds so many analogies that it is the most popular of all outdoor games. That it may be so considered is clearly indicated by the fact that there are at the present time over two thousand five hundred golf clubs in the United States, at which more than two million people play. Antidote for worry. There is no other game accessible to so great a number of people that will completely lift one out of the rut of everyday life. The most serious worries and troubles are forgotten on the links. There is something about the game of golf that permits no extraneous matter to intrude, and at the end of the game, though one's body may be somewhat wearied, the mind is completely renovated and refreshed.

End of A Word About Golf by Charles William Tanzig

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