It was somewhere in the '70's that the fiend gossip came into New York society to stay. The first newspaper outburst that I rememb...er was after the Beecher trial, which was a terrible beginning. Then the papers began with attacks upon women. There were stories of kleptomaniacs, and of a young and fashionable man who had stolen his cousin's ring at a dinner-party, etc., etc. None of this sort of story was allowed at the dinner of Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Belmont, or Mrs. Fish. I can imagine the fine face of the latter freezing into marble had any one opened such a door of Bluebeard's closet in her stately presence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom's Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of hou...sework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The African race evidently are made to excel in that department which lies between the sensuousness and the intellectual--what we ...call the elegant arts. These require rich and abundant animal nature, such as they possess; and if ever they become highly civilised, they will excel in music, dancing and elocution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very ...heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile ...toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry t...hat is immortal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In lecturing on cookery, as on housebuilding, I divide the subject into, not four, but five grand elements: first, Bread; second, ...Butter; third, Meat; fourth, Vegetables; and fifth, Tea--by which I mean, generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served out in teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or what not. I affirm that, if these five departments are all perfect, the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and well-being of life are concerned.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »