Curiosities of Olden Times

“Well, my son, I wish my chocolate to be brought me; I could not think of breaking off that long _tête-à-tête_ with Dolores, but this is past the proper time.”

Alban Butler, the Père Giry, and the Abbé Guérin, and indeed all Roman Catholic hagiographers, give the former part of this history with some detail, and draw a curtain of pious...

“At length, after two hours’ longer tramp, we found that we could discover nothing in the distance. A rampart of burnt rock of no considerable height rose above the ice, and at...

the monks were brought into peril of famine, and were driven to seek a remedy for this intolerable nuisance: and since all the means to which they resorted were unavailing, the...

Things had come to such a pass as to render ruin imminent, unless some decisive measure were pursued to rid the house of the spectres that haunted it. Kiartan, accordingly, dete...

Antoinette Bourignon, that extraordinary mystic of the seventeenth century, had some strange visions of the primeval man and the birth of Eve. The body of Adam, she says, was mo...

The course of his investigations led him and his wife to Morlaix, in Brittany, and there, in 1627, an event took place which gave them considerable annoyance, as well as proving...

Guibert tells a story of himself, which shows that the same practice was in vogue at the installation of an abbot. “On the day of my entry into the monastery,” he writes, “a mon...

One day at Otranto a procession was going through the town, bearing an image of the Virgin, when Nicolas, who had walked for some time gravely in the train, suddenly started out...

De Chamilly obeyed; he reached Basle, and on the day and at the hour appointed, stationed himself, pen in hand, on the bridge. Presently a market-cart drives by; then an old wom...

The brayings of the animals and the cries of the lady attracted a crowd, and the combatants were parted. The washerwoman’s ass was consigned, with back-turned ears and palpitati...

“And please observe,” I continued, “that where I draw a line and write A you have e, then double t, then e again. Probably this is the middle of a word, and as we have already s...

I saw, continues our author, an instance of the good effect of this treatment at Amsterdam. A stripling of twenty, comely enough in his appearance, the son of an artisan in the...

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 41546-h.htm or 41546-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/41...

Many testators leave directions for the treatment of their bodies: some are over-solicitous for their preservation, whilst others choose to show their contempt for that body, wh...

“The orphanage, which was like a palace, had many handsome dwelling and dining-rooms, adapted for the daily uses of himself and the children, so that the breath and exhalations...

Vararutschi, Vyâdi, and Indradatta desired to learn the new lessons of Varscha, but could not pay the stipulated fee--a million pieces of gold. They determined to ask King Nanda...

In the story of Eraclius, the hero finds a stone that has the power of preserving the bearer from injury by water. Eraclius, armed with this stone, lies at the bottom of the Tib...