ORIGIN OF PHRASES AND CUSTOMS "God Tempers the Wind to the Shorn Lamb" "Extremes Meet Origin of the Word "Tariff" The Broom at a Ship's Mast-head . Hob and Nob Canning 225 227 Aristophanes 227 228 229 From the Greek 230 231 Ben Jonson 231 231 231 231 232 232 232 232 A GARLAND OF CURIOUS SELECTIONS, IN PROSE AND VERSE LITERARY CURIOSITIES AND ECCENTRICITIES. CURIOSITIES OF CHARACTER. LUTHER AT HOME. It was a delightful thing to spend an evening with him. His broad, beneficent nature expanded into the sunniest, playfullest kindliness. His talk was full of wisdom, of humour, of genuine insight. Nature, art, humanity, philosophy, theology,-he was at home in them all. Floods of light came forth from him in single utterances, given freely, without effort. It is something more than curious to find him at one of these fireside conversations laughing at the absurdity of the Copernican system of astronomy, curious to go back so far as to find the first man of his generation counting for fancy what the merest child now knows to be fact. It is seldom you find such things, however. His mind was open as a child's for truth. It is most exhilarating to be beside him when he first discovered, studying the Greek language, after the Reformation had begun, that metanoia did not mean penances, but a change of life. You know, amongst other courageous things he did, that he cast off the monk's cowl and married a nun. Catherine de Bora was her name. She had to beg her bread from door to door after her husband's death. With his wife he lived a noble domestic life, and yet an everyday one. How playfully he bantered her, laughed at her attempts to fathom the deep thoughts of her husband. "My Eve," he called her—“ my Kit-my lord Kit-my rib Kit-that most learned dame, Catherine Luther de Bora. Ah, Kit, thou shouldst never preach! If thou wouldst only say the Lord's prayer always before beginning, thy lectures would be shorter." In the history of his married life you will not miss acts of the highest benevolence, of hospitality afforded to those who could not return it, of just dealing with old servants. Luther and she were often very poor. The princes took his preaching, but left him to live as he might. He never would take money for his writings: the booksellers got all the profit.. At one time he took to turning wood for a little money; at another, to B |