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122 PRECIOUS STONES.
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bag
(secured at its top), and completely covered by boiling water. The
temperature of the bath must be kept as high as it can be borne.
In Hard Times, by
Charles Dickens, 1854, a capital character, Mrs. Sparsit, who poses as
a pattern of self-denial, but takes good care of Number One, in the
privacy of her own (the Housekeeper's) room, is required by Mr.
Bounderby, her master, to go as caretaker at Mr. B's Bank. She pleads,
with a sigh—" I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the
bread of dependence ! " (She might have said " the ' sweetbread,'
seeing that this delicate article, in a savoury brown sauce, was her
favourite supper."
A
writer of note in his day (long past;—1380), John Mirfield, advised "
to take warm bread, a few morsels only, for prevailing against
pestilential air, and against fetid morbific vapours. This is also good
against the fetor of the sea ; and, if you have not warm fresh bread,"
wrote Mirfield, " da tostum " ;—use toast. It is remarkable with
regard to this phrase " the fetor of the sea," that our present general
notion that fresh lively breezes from the open sea are eminently
salubrious, has not always prevailed. For example :—in an account of
Northamptonshire, published in 1738,—the writer thus expresses himself
: " The air of Northamptonshire is exceedingly pleasant, and wholesome
; the sea being so remote that this air is not infected with its (the
sea's) noisome fumes."
Now-a-days
we are grateful to modern science, with its precise methods and its
sure conclusions, for telling us better than this. For, it is a
well-ascertained fact that, whilst perhaps in crowded places on the
coast bacteria may be abounding, especially of injurious
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