Happy Holidays, everybody! Welcome to the sixth edition of Miss Abigail’s Gift Ideas. Having trouble finding that perfect present? Never fear, I’m here to help with your last minute shopping. There’s something here for the whole family! Now onto the presentation: What mother doesn’t love a new vacuum? I’m sure the local department store is […]
Tag: 1890s
Miss Abigail’s (timeless) Holiday Gift Ideas, Vol. I
Something a little different for the holidays ~ with the help of my books, I’ve come up with some fabulous gift ideas for the whole family. I don’t want you all to panic in these last hours of perfect-present hunting. You’ll notice that the pictures are from the books (a variety of decades are represented […]
Fingers ~ Chicken ~ Good?
Q Dear Miss Abigail: Can I eat chicken with my fingers? Signed, Cat A Dear Cat: I’m glad you brought up this important topic. It’s about time for a little review on dinner etiquette and the proper use of forks, knives, and other utensils. Shall we dig in? 1897: Dinner-Parties As little noise as possible. […]
Narrow and Limited Views
[Note: written back during that oh-so-famous presidential election…remember the hanging chads?] So the election is not determined yet, and I’ve been having dreams about counting and recounting. This week’s selection goes out to our dear candidates, their lawyers, the media, the Florida state officials, and everyone else involved in this crazy political mess. It’s from […]
Dear Lovey Dovey
Q Dear Miss Abigail: My boyfriend is going away for a month and I was just wondering if you had any neat things that we could do to keep in touch. Plus, he’s sixteen and I’m thirteen so it’s really hard for me to trust him while he’s down there. Signed, Anonymous A Dear Anonymous: […]
The Summer Girl
Don’t get me wrong. I love the beach. It’s just that as a fair-skinned gal I’m a bit more comfortable in sweaters and snow than in shorts and sand. I promise you, though, by no means do I consider myself a “belle of the Winter Salon” ~ I swear. Where were we? Oh, yes. The […]
The Fine Art of Smiling
I just saw a program on Botox treatments, and boy does that look weird. No matter how many books I read on the subject of beauty, it’s still hard to understand the extent that folks will mutilate themselves for the sake of it all. Although I personally would never get a treatment such as that, […]
Foreign Substances
As I was flipping through The Art of Home Making, written by Margaret E. Sangster, I came across this most useful advice. It reminded me of an incident when I was a young girl in Auburn, N.Y. My family was on the way up the sidewalk to the public library when my older brother Chris suggested I […]
How Do Couples Live Together?
Q Dear Miss Abigail: How do couples live together and survive more than a few years? Signed, Sergio A Dear Sergio: Lucky for you I happen to own R. F. Horton’s On the Art of Living Together. I just love the fact that my copy has a wonderful little advert pasted to the inside cover: Another […]
Influences Which Incite to Sexual Immorality
I find this excerpt quite amusing, for some reason. It’s from The Sexual Instinct: Its Use and Dangers as Affecting Heredity and Morals, which has a subtitle that drags on: “Essentials to the Welfare of the Individual and the Future of the Race of the Individual.” Author James Foster Scott writes in the preface: “This book […]