Verax's Observations Print E-mail
The Maryport Advertiser - Friday, July 21, 1882
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VERAX'S OBSERVATIONS
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My teetotal friends will learn with some regret that alcohol - "the devil in solution" - is now being manufactured from potatoes. This is done by the aid of hydrochloric acid, and is carried on to a large extent in some places on the Continent. Another good and useful article worse than destroyed ! A great many good things are used in the making of alcohol and go into it, but who ever heard of any good coming out of it.

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"At the Waverley Temperance Hotel, Tangier-street, Whitehaven, on the 7th inst., MR. JOHN DIXON, aged 66 years". Such was the obituary notice I read in last week's papers, not without a feeling of sorrow. I had known JOHN DIXON for many years and respected him. He was a worthy man. To his friends and numerous acquaintances, I respectfully offer my sincere sympathy in their bereavement.

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St. Swithin's day was wet, and those of my farming friends who have faith in the old scrap of folk-lore which relates to this particular saint, must be in trouble. A good hay-time and harvest are, of course, of the very first importance to the farmer, and not of very small importance to any of us. The crop of hay this year - in West Cumberland at any rate - is very good, but unless favourable weather be granted for gathering it in, the fulness of the fields will lose its value. Most devoutly do I wish that these wet and wild and stormy days and nights may speedily cease, and that we may again see the bright sunshine which has been so little with us for the past few weeks. The harvests in this country have not been good for some years, and I would fain hope that this year may witness a great improvement, but at present it is almost hoping against hope.

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I incidentally mentioned last week that farmers were said to be always grumbling. An anecdote comes to my mind at the present time which bears upon such a charge. It is said that a certain landlord, who was heartily tired of hearing his farming tenants murmur about this, that, and the other, went to call upon one of them on one occasion after a spell of splendid weather, when the crops were all as flourishing as heart could desire. The landlord thought that there could not possibly be anything to complain of, so he very cheerily said to the tenant, "Well, John, I think you've nothing to complain of now; isn't this splendid weather for you ?"

"Ay, sir," said John, "it's fine weather enough, but it's a terrible time, sir, for weeds."

The landlord gave up talking as a bad job.

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Little did I imagine when I penned a few lines a week ago on Egyptian affairs, that before I wrote again, the great city of Alexandria would be in flames, and its noble buildings blackened piles of ashes. I have read the accounts given in the daily papers by eye-witnesses of the terrible scene of destruction, and am, more than ever I was, sickened with the horrible and fiendish nature of that which we call war.
And I am persuaded that however much we read of these scenes of carnage and bloodshed, however graphic the descriptions given may be, we cannot realize in all their fearfulness the desolation and destruction whch ever follows the path of war.

Only those who are in the midst of it can know what war really is. I long earnestly for the dawning upon the world of a brighter and happier time, when there shall indeed by "Peace on earth, good will towards men."

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I am always glad to see flowers in a cottage window. Why does not everybody have them? They are very cheap, costing next to nothing, and are quiet, beautiful companions. They sweeten the air, delight the eye, link you with nature and innocence, and are something to love; and if they cannot love you in return, they cannot hate you.
A flower, though it is all beauty, has no vanity; it lives to do us good and gives up pleasure. In the humble cot where no luxuries are known, in the quiet parlour where old age sits thinking o'er the long-past golden youth: in the room of sickness and suffering where the poor afflicted one spends weary days and sleepless nights, the flowers in the window are a blessing indeed; they are - if I may borrow the expression of my dear friend, "J. J." of Risehow Bank House - the "telegrams of God"
Cultivate flowers: they are choice company.

VERAX.
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