1273
Alice was set a poetical test of wits by the kindly (but like all the other characters, utterly maddening) White Queen.
The White Queen tells this riddling verse to Alice without explanation. What kind of fish is it that is being served?
Picture: © Adrian Platt, Geogaph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted October 5 2016
1274
A young Jewish girl is chosen as the Queen of Persia, but quickly finds she has enemies.
The story of Esther is the story behind the Jewish feast of Purim on the 14th of Adar, which falls in February-March. The tale is set in the 480s BC, following Persia’s conquest of Babylon, when the Kings of Persia became lords over Jewish people scattered right across the ancient Near East.
Picture: From the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted September 28 2016
1275
Jane Eyre meets a not very handsome stranger, and likes him all the better for it.
On a dark road near Thornfield Hall, Jane Eyre has caused a stranger’s horse to shy and throw its rider, a big, frowning and far from good-looking man. He brushes her offers of help away, but she hangs around all the same, prompting her to wonder why she feels so comfortable with this gruff traveller.
Picture: © Gordon Elliott, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted September 25 2016
1276
Marianne Dashwood sprains an ankle, but help is at hand.
Marianne Dashwood - young, impressionable and dangerously romantic - has gone for a walk with her younger sister Margaret, leaving her mother and older sister Elinor at home. On the way back she has slipped and sprained her ankle, but fortunately a young gentleman is there to offer her a helping hand.
Picture: © Derek Harper, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted September 25 2016
1277
John Kapodistrias had an instinct for how a long-oppressed people might think.
In 1821, the people of Greece rose up against the Ottoman Empire that had conquered the ailing Roman Empire and its dependent territories in 1453. Life under the Turkish yoke had been hard, and John Kapodistrias, the man chosen by the Greeks in 1827 to lead their newly liberated nation, faced daunting problems of industry and education, but on his first arrival he had a more pressing issue: food.
Picture: Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted September 24 2016
1278
Samuel Sidney, a Victorian expert on Australian matters, explained how cutting tax and regulation on Britain’s global trade made everyone better off.
Writing for ‘Household Words,’ Samuel Sidney, a rising authority on Australia, was full of praise for William Huskisson MP and his then-unfashionable free trade policies. Sidney believed that by adding new trade partners far beyond Europe, British business had raised living standards, cut prices and created jobs for millions worldwide.
Picture: © Colin Davis (CSIRO), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted September 22 2016