The Seaforth News, 1955-10-06, Page 2Staging The Drama
Of Sun And Moon
Walter Folger's astronomical
clock was built by himself, and
for himself. His objective was
not to teach or tell anybody
something that he thought it
would be good for him to Isere.
He wanted to provide a me-
chanical representation of time
man uses, an exact mechanical
representation of what took
place in part of the solar system,
and resulted in man having
years, hours, days, and months.
He wanted to reproduce on a
clock's face, the marvelous dra-
ma that is played, in three epi-
sodes — one lasting twenty-four
hours by the sun, another lasting
a matter of twenty-eight days
by the moon, and the third, by
the sun, lasting 365 clays and a
fraction. And of the three, Walt-
er's greatest interest was the
challenge in the second episode,
the moon and its curious move-
ments which form a cycle only
repeated in 183 years .
Walter Folger had found what
he wanted.
With satisfaction in every
movement, he took the works of
a grandfather's clock out of the
blanket in which they were
wrapped, and set them on his
bench.
They were good works; the
brass was tarnished, but - the
wheels were well cut, and .the
pinions well set; in every re-
spect the works filled his
dreams.
As he sat quietly gazing at
them, the whole plan which he
and his father had discussed be-
came clearer to his mind. He
would build an astronomical me-
chanism that could be attached
to these works, and while the
clock would show the hours and
minutes (he wouldn't bother
with a hand and dial to show
60 seconds in a minute), the as-
tronomical additions would show
the exact time of the rising and
setting of the sun; it would also
show the rising and setting of
the moon. The moon must be
put on a spindle; half of it must
be black, the other half silver,
and it must turn on the spindle
to show the new moon and the
quarters.
Day after day and month after
month followed, as every spare
moment of Walter's time was
spent in cutting wheels with his
"cutting engine" brought from
England in one of the whale -
ships. Some wheels and parts
were made by handfiling with
careful accuracy. The pins to
hold the wheels were turned and
polished; their sets in the brass
plate bored; and little by little
the astronomical addition took
shape and was placed in front
of the works of the grand-
father's clock, and the connec-
tion . . . established.
The arrival of the case from
Boston was an event — it was
stately design, and well made,
but too tall for the low room
where Walter worked. By cut-
ting holes in the floor, and
notches from the corner beams,
It was finally made to stand in
Its place, and the works, dials,
and weights were inserted.
On July 4, 1790, Walter hooked
on the pendulum, and ticking
began.—From "The Clock That
Talks and What It Tells," by
Will Gardner.
The heaviest uying bird in
.America is the trumpeter swan
with a maximum weight of forty
pounds.
•
HOBBLE — Norman Hartnell,
H e r Majesty's dressmaker,
brings the hobble skirt to the
fore for autumn wear in Lon.
don, England. Model shown is
in white jersey, with "wing"
and flying panel of grosgrain.
... Fashion Hints .
•
GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT . , . such a pretty blouse as this!
Fashioned from the newest man-made fibre, arnel, it's grace-
fully styled with a gently draped V neckline and push-up
sleeves.
TM3LE T
dot.= Andtiews.
For parties, or for any time
when you want to have your
meal prepared well in advance,
there are few things to equal
loaves or salads molded with
gelatin. Veal, chicken, fish, vege-
tables, eggs, and cheese may be
successfully molded in this
manner and used for a main
dish,
m *
This main -dish, loaf combines
eggs and vegetables. Unmold it
on lettuce leaves or watercress
and serve with either mayon-
naise or French dressing,
EGGS AND VEGETABLES
IN ASPIC
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
ee cup cold water
3/4 cup hot water
1 bouillon cube
le teaspoon salt
?z cup tomato juice
8 canned or cooked asparagus
spears
2 hard -cooked eggs, chopped
7/; cup cooked peas
Soften gelatin in cold water;
add hot water, bouillon cube
and salt, and stir until dis-
solved. Add tomato juice. Pour
gelatin mixture into mold to
depth of 3/4 inch, Arrange as-
paragus spears in mold. Chill
until almost firm. Chill remain-
ing gelatin until consistency of
unbeaten egg whites. Fold in
eggs and peas; put on top of
stiffened gelatin and asparagus.
Chill until firm. Unmold.
* * *
Chicken is a favorite of those
who love loaf, Make a design on
the bottom of your mold, using
2 hard -cooked eggs, sliced, rh
cup cooked or canned peas and
6 stuffed olives, sliced. Tben
proceed as directed below.
CHICKEN SALAD LOAF
14 cup vinegar
le cup salad oil
14 teaspoon each, salt, pepper
and paprika
3 cups chopped, cooked
chicken
2 tablespoons unflavored
gelatin
le cup cold water
21 cups hot clear broth
1e teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon onion juice
?z cup finely chopped celery
Mix vinegar, oil and the 14
teaspoon salt, pepper and pap-
rika and pour over chicken. Al-
low to stand 1-2 hours, turning
occasionally. Drain just before
using, Sprinkle gelatin over
cold water and soak a few min-
utes. Dissolve in hot broth. Add
salt and cool until slightly
thickened. Carefully cover de-
sign made with eggs, peas, and
olives with a thin layer of this
thickened broth, Chill until firm:
Mix onion juice, celery, and
drained chicken with rest of
thickened broth. Carefully pour
this mixture into mold and chill
until firm.
* * *
Make a simple ham salad by
combining 2 cups cold, diced
ham, 11/4 cups diced celery, salt,
pepper, 1 tablespoon lemon
juice, and 1e cup mayonnaise,
and serve it in an avocado ring
mold for a fresh luncheon idea.
AVOCADO RING MOLD
Z envelopes unflavored gelatin
ee cup grapefruit juice
lee cups hot water
r4 cup lime juice
11/2 teaspoon grated onion
Ile teaspoon salt
xs
1/16 teaspoon red hot sauce
ee cup salad dressing
3 cups ripe sieved avocado
(3-4 avocados)
Pimento strips for garnish
Soften gelatin in grapefruit
juice. Dissolve in hot water,
Add lime -juice and seasonings.
Stir in avocado puree and salad
dressing. Cut pimento in 3/4 -
inch strips and lay in pattern in
bottom of oiled mold. Carefully
spoon 1 cup of avocado mixture
over strips. Chill until firm.
Pour in remaining mixture.
Chill. Unmold onto serving
plate; garnish with curly en-
dive or watercress. Fill center
with ham salad. Serves- 6-8.
r,. * *
Mold this salmon -with cream -
of -celery soup either in a loaf
or individual molds for pretty
party food.
SALMON SALAD
I envelope unflavored gelatin
le cup cold water
1 can (13/4 cups) condensed
cream of celery soup
1 cup drained, flaked salmon
le cup chopped celery
le cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sliced stuffed
olives
1 tablespoon Lemon juice
Soften gelatin in cold water,
then set container of gelatin in
a pan of boiling water until
gelatin dissolves. Combine gel-
atin, soup, salmon, and remain-
ing ingredients. Pour into in-
dividual molds that have been
rinsed in cold water. Chill un-
til firm. Unmold on salad greens.
Four servings.
* * *
MAYONNOISE VEAL LOAF
3 cups diced cooked veal
3 tablespoons gelatin
3 tablespoons water
134 cups hot meat stock
32 cup diced celery
'.s cup sliced olives
1 cup peas
3 diced hard -cooked eggs
2 tablespoons capers
1 cup mayonnaise
Cut meat in cubes. Soak gela-
tin in water and dissolve in
hot veal stock. Cool. Add re-
maining ingredients to veal.
When gelatin mixture begins to
congeal, combine with meat
mixture. Pour into 5"x9" loaf
pan, Chill in refrigerator until
firm and then slice. Serves 12.
Silence, Please
Fish hear by feeling the vibra-
tions of sounds. Any noise on or
in the water will frighten them.
Few fishermen realize just to
what extent this particular type
of quietness plays in the differ-
ence between a full and an emp-
ty stringer. Talk as much as you
like, but hold noise that might
have any contact with the water
to an absolute minimum. When
fishing from a boat use an old
piece of carpet under your feet
to muffle the noise of scrapping
shoes. Beep oarlocks from creak-.
• ing by "greasing" them with a
piece of paraffins It is more
effective and lasts longer than
oil or grease. Fish toward the
sun, The moving shadows of a
fisherman, a boat swinging at
anchor, an anchor rope, a rod
or even your line puts a warry
bass on guard. Quiet, please --
and
and watch the old stringer fill
faster!
MODERN
WITCHCRAFT
Recently at Beauvais a farm
labourer of • thirty-two, Henri
Freines, was jailed for four
years for murdering a woman
of sixty-three known as "The
Witch of Noaiiles," They had
been drinking together in her
house, which was filled with
stuffed owls and pictures of
skeletons,
Nearly a century ago there,
was a similar murder in Shrop-
shire. A young man, William
Davies, killed Nanny Morgan, a
crone of sixty-eight in whose
house he lodged at Westwood
Common, near Wenlock. She
was a much -feared witch who
kept a box of toads under her
bed as "familiars"—demons that
are petted by witches—and was
credited with occult knowledge
acquired in her youth from gip-
sies whom she joined after be-
ing jailed for stealing.
No one, dared oppose her or
refuse her anything she wanted,
for she was believed to possess
the Evil Eye, All kinds of peo-
ple consulted her, and after her
death letters from even the local
gentry were found in her home,
with jewellery evidently given
her in return for occult services.
It is astonishing, but true,
that witchcraft still survives in
out-of-the-way places all over
the Continent, and in Britain.
In Balkan villages I knew of
more than one old crone whom
the peasants held in awe, be-
lieeing they possessed super-
natural powers. By this means
they were able to exercise au-
thority and inspire terror in-
stead of being merely ignored.
old women.
They were assumed to have
power over flocks and crops,
over love affairs and marriage
matches, even over life and
death. In some cases they were
local despots whose word was
tantamount to law, for super-
stition dies hard in remote hill
villages, where there is still an
implicit belief in charms, talis-
mans and magic philtres.
In this country one might look
for survivals in wild Wales or
the Highlands and Western
Isles; hardly in the smiling
West Country, Yet as recently
as 1924 a Devon farmer, pro-
secuted for wounding a woman
in the arm, claimed that she
had betwitched him.
Writing of the North Devon
where he has lived most of his
life, Ronald Duncan tells of
local cases which had come un-
der his notice, including a
neighbour who consulted a
widow after his sow had pro-
duced three dead litters, and
was advised to drive the sow
down to the beach and leave
her there for four turns of the
tide—whereupon she produced
ten fine piglets.
He also consulted her about
his habit of sleep -walking, and
was told he would get over it
if he never crossed the road
any more. He followed this ad-
vice so rigidly that he neglect-
ed to feed some young steers
in a field the other side of the
road, and was summoned for
cruelty.
Another case mentioned in
his book, "Where I Live," con-
cerned four patients the local
doctor was treating for a baf-
fling wasting illness involving
lack of appetite, insomnia and
sharp pains, either in the leg,
arm, foot or ear lobe. Mr. Dun-
can took the puzzled doctor to
the widow's cottage when she
was out, and on a dusty shelf in
the loft they found six roughly -
made wooden dolls, each label-
led with the name of one of the
doctor's patients, each with a
pin driven through leg, arm,
foot or ear!
George Bailey, of Wimpstone,
gives this instance of modern
witheraft. One snowy morning
he called on a woman carrier
trading between Audley and
Coventry who claimed to have
occult powers and undertook
to prove it by fetching his sis-
ter ten miles to him. Thursting
twelve new pins into an apple,
she muttered some charm. then
put it into the fire. Within a
few hours the sister walked
in having trudged ten miles
through snow in very bad
weather. The only explanation
she could offer was that she
had suddenly been seized with
an irresistible impluse to come!
A few years ago, in his book
"Witchcraft," William Seabrook
confessed that he once tried the
doll -magic himself against a
supposed "priest" who had up-
set his wife by telling her she
was fated to die within a few
months. Dressing a doll in black
robes and hanging a reversed
crucifix around its neck, he
drove brass -headed tacks into
the region of the kidneys and
stomach, then sent him a photo-
graph of the doll and got a
friend to play on his fears.
The effect of all this was that
in August, three months before
Mrs. Seabrook was due to die,
a letter came from the "priest"
withdrawing his prediction and
apologizing. In September came
news that he was in a Paris
hospital suffering from kidney
trouble, and when the time
limit was nearly up, a despair-
ing message through the friend,
for he was now in grave dan-
ger of dying.
Mr. Seabrook accordingly
agreed to lift the curse provided
his wife was alive. and well on
the day predicted for her death.
Soon after that day had passed
the "priest" began to recover.
It seems incredible that, as
recently as 1936 in Woodbridge,
New Jersey, three neighbours
should have brought charges in
a magistrate's court against a
Mrs. Czinkota accusing her of
being a witch and werewolf
and going about on all fours
dressed in an animal's skin, one
witness alleging that she had
changed into a horse and walk-
ed on her hind legs.
It savours of witch-hunting
in the 17th century, when hun-
dreds of old crones were
hounded to death and an Ips-
wich lawyer, Matthew Hopkins,
elected himself Witchfinder-
Genera] and scoured East An-
glia with a hangman and woman
assistant, nosing out suspects.
He stayed at the best inns like
-a judge on circuit, all expenses
paid by the local authorities,
plus $5 for every witch brought
to judgment and execution!
The surb bird nests on the
mountain tops of central Alaska
but winters in South America.
For nearly 150 years after the
bird was given its scientific
name, ornithologists were un-
able to locate its breeding
ground.
Finding the Bard
in His Own Work
Contrary to the received opin-
ion that Shakespeare did not
reveal himself in his plays,
Frank Harris maintains that he
did so, not once, but again and
again. After reading and re-
reading them many times, he
became aware, he tells us, of a
certain untidy underlying all the
diversity Of Shakespeare's char-
acters. "And, at length," he adds,
"out of the myriad voices in the
plays, I began to hear more and
more insistent the accents of one
voice, and out of the crowd of
faces began to distinguish more
and more clearly the features of
the writer." This voice and this
face were, to put it briefly, Ham-
let's face and voice; in Hamlet,
Shakespeare, he said, had por-
trayed his own soul, the very
essence of his nature: and when
he wrote Hamlet's speeches, it
was his own heart he was writ-
ing down.
This is made plain, in the first
place, Frank Harris says, by the
fact that when Shakespeare's
characters fall, as they so often
fall, out of character, and say
things which such personages
would never say, they are apt
to drop into Hamlet's way of
talking—to think his thoughts
and express them in his langu-
age. Shakespeare portrays, more-
over, not once, but many times,
figures that resemble Hamlet,
dreamy contemplative beings
given to irony and melancholy
brooding. -
Romeo is the first of these;
and Romeo, as Hazlitt said, is
Hamlet in love. He is, indeed,
Hamlet's young brother, less ma-
ture and less complex, but ab-
sent-minded like the student
prince, and living, like him, in
a world of his own imagination.
Richard II, in the play of about
this date, is another Hamlet, a
passive contemplator, rather than
a master, of his fate. A more
mature character of this cast is
Jacques, whom Shakespeare ad-
ded to the figures in the old
story from which his later play,
"As You Like It," is derived,
Jacques, who finds that all the
world's a stage, possesses Ham-
let's detachment, ' his wit, and '411I`'
his lightning -like intelligence,
and is, like him, wrapped up in
a humorous sadness of his own.
Indeed in the whole progress
of Shakespeare's plays we no-
tice how more and more men of
action and resolution tend to be
replaced by dreaming and brood-
ing heroes, who have mostly
failed in one way or another,
and prefer to look on life as
ironic spectators, — From "On
Reading Shakespeare," by LO -
GAN PEARSALL SMITH.
K. ;::,retx'.u,,..;:
TIME FOR THE ARTS—Blobs of paint replace conventional hour
markings on the plastic -glass palet which is the dial of a
modernistic clock shown at the Frankfurt Autumn Fair in West
Germany. Bamboo "brushes" form feet for the table -top time-
piece.
AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE HILDA—Children play in the flood waters cis rescue workers
labor in the debris left by death -dealing Hurricane Hilda which struck Tampico Mexico. The
hurricane teak t::v lives of 1'9 persons in Mexico and hundreds are missing,
•