Women Born In The 1880s

"I cannot say that I was very enthusiastic upon my first visit to the market. As an insight into a certain phase of French life it was most interesting, but I did not relish the idea of buying there, even if the vegetables were much fresher and more reasonable than in the stores. The European custom of displaying all manner of eatables on the street, unprotected from the dirt and dust, and even handling by the passers-by, was new and not at all pleasing to me. I had a feeling that everything was dirty, especially the people. Since then I have become acclimated and resigned to the fact that France and dirt are inseparable (April 18, 1909, 17)."

"I have no artistic creed or formula. I have no fixed aim to which I am bending every energy. I have made no wonderful or new artistic discovery. Perhaps I have not even a new vision…In so far as my life is rich in emotional and intellectual experiences, actual or in imagination, in so far as I seek for a deeper and more comprehensive grasp of things, in so far I shall have material from which to create."

"Why, I've been lucky all my life. I was even lucky in having typhoid fever. I thought It was most dreadful that I should fall ill and have to give up a leading part... but when a week or two after its New York premiere the piece was sent to the storehouse, I just turned over and thanked my lucky stars that I was saved from all the disappointments that go with such an experience."

"Ornithological Margaret Morse Nice (1883–1974) changed the course of American through her two pioneering field studies in 1937 and 1943 on the . Although students of understand her importance, few general readers recognize her name, much less significance. There are many reasons this omission should be remedied: her outstanding professional accomplishments, her ability to balance family and career, her management of gender issues, and her work in conservation, preservation, and the ."

"The most cherished of my life came in 1895 — 's Bird-Craft (1895). For the first time, I had coloured bird pictures. Many of these were adapted from Audubon's (1827); single birds, or occasionally a pair, sometimes in surprising attitudes, were depicted. In later years, when looking at the reproductions of Audubon's original plates, every now and then a picture has given me a little tug at the heart, recalling my childhood years of eager search. The simple descriptions, the charming discussions, the enthusiastic introductory chapters of Bird-Craft — all these I pored over and all but learned by heart."

"Each spring the drowsy trill of the called us and armed with pails and strainers and home-made nets, off we started to the nearby railroad . Here we found treasures: strings of toad eggs, s big and little, sedate s (which we believed were lizards), and alluring s, drab , and most tempting of all, . Caddis flies had fascinated me ever since I had read about them Charles Kingsley's (1863), and it was wonderful to find that these almost mythical creatures of English brooks were our neighbors here in our own waters."

"In teaching our child the English language, we talked to her as an adult except that our words were simple and concrete. In general our practice has been not to correct her mistakes, trusting to the force of good example. As much as possible we have tried to have her words stand for real things; for instance, we took her to see pigs and bears and skunks, so that she would not get her conceptions merely from stories, pictures and s. Finally we make an effort to avoid the dead level of too simple language by at times dealing with familiar situations in new words."

"The concept of territory proves to be as old as the science of ornithology, since Aristotle was the first writer to mention it. This was pointed out by Lack (Condor, 46, 1944:108) who, however, did not follow the subsequent history of these observations. ... It was Aristotle, then, who declared that eagles partition out the land according to their needs for food, and this statement was incorporated into the books of Pliny, (in regard to ), Albertus Magnus (transferred to vultures), , , and Buffon."

"The oldest book dealing with the virtue of herbs is the , circa 900–950. This Leech Book was evidently the manual of a Saxon doctor and it is the oldest existing Leech Book written in the ."

"The most famous of Elizabethan gardening authorities was , who came of a well-known family. When he left , Hugh Platt became a member of , and being given a generous allowance by his father he was able to devote many years to literary work. He became keenly interested in and agriculture and was in communication with all the authorities in this country. His own gardens at , , and were famous, and his (reprinted later under the title of The Garden of Eden) is full of information gleaned in all parts of England ..."

"For the gardens of the few who can give them warm walls in the most sheltered parts of Great Britain, two scented January-flowering treasures are ' and Freylinia cestroides. With its globe-shaped head of flowers, ranging from deep butter to cream-colour on the same head (the flowers turn cream-colour as they fade), its sweet scent and the length of time it remains in bloom, E. chrysantha is a most attractive plant, and the buff-coloured flowers of fill the air with fragrance in mid-winter."

"In midwinter, when few fresh herbs except , , , , and are available, dried herbs can be used, also or ..."

"The most attractive time in is in spring when the bank sloping from the terrace is thick with s and ."

"Of s we knew nothing till we learnt about them from the s; and they were only introduced into England in . It was about the same time that s were first cultivated in this country, but s were unknown till . The is an indigenous plant in the , but of the we were ignorant till the Flemish immigrants in the early seventeenth century introduced them. To them also we owe our present garden , which has had a long journey to reach us, for it is said to have come from Asia through Spain. The was used by our ancestors from , and one of the Saxon names for March was "sprout-kale month"; but otherwise the whole ' tribe were unknown to us till the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

"Even in only very wealthy men had separate gardens merely for pleasure, whilst all the small s and s throughout the country still retained the old . For over seven centuries before that time, all the gardens in England were herb gardens, and very beautiful they must have been, for s, , s, , , , , s, , s, and s were all used as herbs."

"Queen Elizabeth came twice to Oxford: once in 1566 and again in 1592."

", of the most noted of the day, entered the service of the as an assistant gardener. In 1826 he was made head-gardener. His name at is chiefly associated with the remarkable he designed, which was begun in 1836 and finished in 1840."

"Women are door-mats and have been,— The years those mats applaud,— They keep their men from going in With muddy feet to God."

"On the one hand, then, in the reproductive functions proper—menstruation, defloration, pregnancy, and parturition—woman is biologically doomed to suffer. Nature seems to have no hesitation in administering to her strong doses of pain, and she can do nothing but submit passively to the regimen prescribed. On the other hand, as regards sexual attraction, which is necessary for the act of impregnation, and as regards the erotic pleasure experienced during the act itself, the woman may be on equal footing with the man."

"There is a little place in me That cries like any child, To be as forest things are, free, Lonely, and strange and wild!"

"It is because they kill the tiresome mice that people should not shoot, or trap, or allow the eggs to be taken, of hawks and owls. Owls, and the in particular, live almost entirely on mice and young rats, and when we kill a (the barn owl is the white owl which files about so silently over the fields) we are allowing hundreds of mice to live and thrive and eat our things."

"Bring me a pale flower-boy, White-limbed like a young heifer in a field, His lips a-quiver with unknown desire.... His soft throat virgin beneath my kiss, His bosom like a bower of stars."

"The are undoubtedly direct descendants of the " forest bulls " of Norman times, but we have no evidence to prove, and a good deal to disprove, that these were the aboriginal wild cattle. The animals which roamed about the country in the Middle Ages, and which evidently were wild and fierce enough, were not the original indigenous species, the that was common during the , but merely " gone wild " or feral beasts that had escaped from domestication. Far from being of pure primigenius descent, they were certainly related to the tiny Bos longifrons, otherwise the Celtic shorthorn. This was the domestic breed of the Neolithic and early Celtic peoples. The existing , and are its descendants. It was the only domestic ox known in these islands up to the time of the Romans, but afterwards became mixed with larger breeds of the Urus type that were brought over by the Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, etc."

"You, Beloved, are the silvery lake shimmering in the desert of my youth."

"She stands, a guardian of the endless sea, Her garb is golden, and her lips are flame, She is the portal of Eternity And Beauty is the realm from whence she came! She is the voice of many bleeding lands— America, she calls! To Arms! Arise! For like a shimmering sabre in the skies In scarlet glow she stands A guardian of the earth and sea— Liberty!"

"The Greater Spotted, like all the woodpeckers, lays pure white eggs, with the faintest flush of pink from the yolk showing through the thin shell. The colourlessness of tis eggs is a characteristic that the woodpecker shares in common with most other birds that nest in holes and dark places. Colour in eggs is usually associated with exposed nesting sites, and apparently serves to camouflage the dainty morsels from the hungry gaze of the many creatures that are always ready to raid a nest. In a dark hole colour is useless, and it is a significant fact that the eggs of the majority of birds that nest in holes are white."

"Bring me a languid woman, perfumed, young, Her dusky body hung with dazzling gems And strange, exotic iridescent stuffs — Her wanton eyes like thirsty summer moons."

"Another small bird that has to find shelter these winter nights is the , or 'Jenny Wren' as we call it in the countryside, and it likes snug quarters, a really good place being often patronised by several birds. A hayrick is a popular dormitory."

"The , that common small hawk, may also be known and instantly distinguished from the — which is more of a woodland bird — by it manner of hovering in the air. The sparrow-hawk glides along, dashes round bushes, sweeps over a hedge and disappears; but the kestrel mounts to a fair height, quivers its wings, spreads its tail like a fan and hangs poised in mid-arie for what seems to the watcher a considerable time. It is watching for s in the herbage below."

"Glorious with the hues of the , a living gem of colour that seems strangely out of place beside our quiet English rivers and babbling streams, the kingfisher is well and aptly names, for it is indeed clad in royal robes, a very king of birds and a prince of fishers. There is no bird on the to compare with it for brilliance of colouring, but of its hues bird-books give us little idea."

"... has no place beneath the trees nor where the fresh winds blow. Hunt and be hunted is the rule of wild life."

"Though the whole trend of modern scientific thought is to lay stress on the fact that animals differ from us in degree rather than in kind, yet the moment we go out into the open the widespread fear, the overwhelming horror, that most undomesticated creatures display at the approach of a human being, the panic with which nearly all flee, show what an awful and fearsome thing he is to them. Man is an object of horror, the dealer of death and destruction, with which they have nothing whatsoever in common. The wild animals that one moment were feeding happily in company with horses and cattle, the rabbits nibbling the grass, the starlings perching on the beasts' backs, or hopping in and out between their legs, have fled for their lives at the mere sound of a human footfall."

", to say a person "carries the horn" signifies that he hunts the pack. It is often said of a that he "carries the horn," meaning that he acts as , or contrawise that he "does not carry the horn" which means he employs a huntsman to hunt hounds for him."

"All paths lead to you Where e'er I stray, You are the evening star At the end of day. All paths lead to you Hill-top or low, You are the white birch In the sun's glow. All paths lead to you Where e'er I roam. You are the lark-song Calling me home!"

"There are many ferocious predators in the , such as that carnivorous monster the and the bloodthirsty , with its equally predatory grub."

"I shall go smiling Into the great beyond, Looking upon the silence as release, Looking upon the darkness as a dream, Looking upon the deep unknown as rest."

"Smilingly, out of my pain, I have woven a little song; You may take it away with you. I shall not sing it again."

"I sing of little loves that glow Like tapers shining through the rain. Of little loves that break themselves Like moths against the window-pane."

"For life seems only a shuddering breath, A smothered, desperate cry, And things have a terrible permanence When people die."

"If I live till my fighting days are done I must fasten my armour on my eldest son."

"I shall not be afraid any more, Either by night or day; What would it profit me to be afraid With you away? * * * For there is only sorrow in my heart; There is no room for fear. But how I wish I were afraid again, My dear, my dear!"

"There is a mirror in my room Less like a mirror than a tomb, There are so many ghosts that pass Across the surface of the glass."

"My heart shall keep the child I knew, When you are really gone from me, And spend its life remembering you As shells remember the lost sea."

"St. Brigid, please keep My babies asleep!"

"Deborah danced, when she was two, As buttercups and daffodils do; Spirited, frail, naïvely bold, Her hair a ruffled crest of gold."

"I’m sorry you are wiser, I’m sorry you are taller; I liked you better foolish, And I liked you better smaller."

"Here, Cyprian, is my jeweled looking-glass, My final gift to bind my final vow: I cannot see myself as I once was; I would not see myself as I am now."

"When people inquire I always just state: "I have four nice children and hope to have eight.""

"In a 1980 interview for “The Political Activities of the First Generation of Fully Enfranchised Connecticut Women, 1920-1945” at the Center for Oral History at UConn, Emily Sophie Brown stated that her priorities included anything concerning humanity, and things to do with children. This emphasis on humanity and care defined her career and many of the organizations she advocated for and represented."

"There is no reason why a woman’s administration shouldn’t be as efficient as a man’s!"