Saturday Rummage Sale

Every September, the weekend after school starts, one nearby church has a rummage sale.  We've gone nearly every year that I can remember, including six years ago when Mr. Fixit had just gotten out of the hospital.  It's almost always worthwhile, and this year's was even better: they had a whole room just for books.  Somebody, I'm guessing either a retired teacher or just a history nut, had donated boxes of mid-century textbooks, teachers' guides, and other books of about the same vintage..  I would have liked to spend more time there, but we had to get groceries too.

So this is what came home:

Two big books of mostly pictures, one about the Renaissance and one with a variety of history pictures (the sort that Alan Grant might have liked?). A vintage school copy of The Merchant of Venice, a bit marked up with student notes.  And  a Sunday School prize book which is kind of neat because not only does it have a 1932 inscription on the flyleaf, it still has a sticker inside from a bookstore that was here in town at that time.

Two books for the Scholastic shelf; an older hardcover of Treasures of the Snow; and Roland Bainton's biography, fairly beat-up, of Martin Luther.

Ponytails picked these out for herself: Shakespeare's comedies, and a vintage copy of The 39 Steps.

We also found a pie plate, a little casserole dish, and a made-in-Japan bowl that I liked for its floral design (it's the colours of our kitchen), even though it has a chip in it.  Lydia found a coin sorter.

Tracking down "the twins" and "Lord Reay" (Charlotte Mason)

I don't know if anyone's ever bothered to track down "the twins" that Charlotte Mason mentions in the "Supplementary" (epilogue) section of Towards a Philosophy of Education.  You know, the ones who have such great schooling but such a poor education?

Anyway, it turns out that the book she had read must have been
Francis and Riversdale Grenfell, by John Buchan (yes, that John Buchan), published in 1920. 

The sad part is that they were both killed in the war.  Charlotte kind of alludes to this but doesn't say it straight out; maybe she assumes that her 1923 readers would all be familiar with the story.

"It was on this visit that Rivy heard Mr. Balfour and Lord Rayleigh praising Alice in Wonderland. Deeply impressed, he bought the book as soon as he returned to London and read it earnestly. To his horror he saw no sense in it. Then it struck him that it might be meant as nonsense, and he had another try, when he concluded that it was rather funny. But he remained disappointed. He had hoped for something that would afford political enlightenment."

P.S.  Here's another tiny tidbit for CM marker-uppers:  in the above quote, at least in the paperback version, it says "Mr. Balfour and Lord Reay."  The full text shows "Lord Rayleigh," and that's what it should be, I'm pretty sure.  There was a Lord Reay, but since a) Lord Rayleigh was Mr. Balfour's son-in-law and b) the e-text of Buchan's book has it as Rayleigh, I think that's right.  And if you're wondering why CM's lapse in names matters, it seems to me that the winner of a Nobel prize in physics, not to mention the man who finally explained why the sky is blue, deserves to have his name (or at least his title) down right.

Vegetating with Scott

"Indoors," he went on, "it was just the same. It's all very well to be told to rest and keep your mind empty, but that was never my way. I brought out a heap of books with me, and was looking forward to getting a lot of quiet reading done. But the mischief was that I couldn't settle to a book. I had intended to read the complete works of Walter Savage Landor--have you ever tried him, Dougal? I aye thought the quotations from him I came across most appetising. But I might as well have been reading a newspaper upside down, for I couldn't keep my mind on him. I suppose that my thoughts having been so much concerned lately with my perishing body had got out of tune for higher things. So I fell back on Sir Walter--I'm not much of a hand at novels, as you know, but I can always read Scott--but I wasn't half through Guy Mannering when it made me so homesick for the Canonry that I had to give it up. After that I became a mere vegetable, a bored vegetable."--John Buchan, The House of the Four Winds