The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Railways not only brought fresh, healthy food to the urban poor, they improved the conditions of working animals.
In the 1850s, London could not house enough cows for its population, so dairymen watered down their milk from cholera-infested roadside pumps, adding snails or sheep’s brains to thicken it (more). No legislation could have solved that dilemma of supply and demand. But railways did.
Why did a kindly old priest refuse to show his respects to St Nektarios?
St Nektarios of Aegina (Anastasios Kephalas, 1846-1920), is one the most beloved saints of Greece, known for countless miracles in his lifetime and after his death. Some years ago in Lavrio, Attica, a priest undertook to build a church in the saint’s honour; but he had cancer, and the pain was so intolerable that he tore his own clothes, and often hid from visitors.