The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-11-08
From the New York independently
Literary Pemmican.
BY Fl. Fl.

We live in the age of condensations OF all
the inventions which man. having been origin
ally created upright, has sought out there are
none which seem to me more wonderful than
the condensing and desiccating processes as ap-
piled to food. Is there at the present day
known fruit, vegetable, fish, flesh, or fowl
which cannot be found condensed or desiccated,
put up in small packages, warranted to stand
sea-voyages, and sold at prices so low that, if
the same rates, proportionately, could only be
afforded for the fresh or the living, marketing
would become at once simpler and pleasanter
affair? If these neatly decorated little tins, and
jars, and bottles and boxes do really contain
the concentrated amounts which their invent
ors and patentees claim that they contain, they
are certainly priceless benefactons. They have
hit the true solution of the difficult problem of
supporting life on the easiest and simplest plan.
If one tablespoonful of Lebig's extract of beef
can give man as much nourishment as six
ounces of porter-house steak, why, oh! why
should he ever have. the fatigue of carrying
home the steak? Why should he have in his
house the fumes of broiling beef? 1t is only
the barbarian that likes to smell, still more to
chew, his dinner. Let US keep the dainty jars
Household Art Company, and with antique
spoons feed ourselves in the intervals of an ele-
giant leisure. To be sure the extract of beef
has certain musty flavor, which suggests
leather and bones, and somehow one does not
feel, after forcing down even tea-cup of it, In
the least as though he had dined. But if the
nutritive matter be there-and is it possible
that all these good men who condense and de-
siccate are liars!--if the whole nutritive sum
and substance of sirloin has disappeared In
our stomach, surely we are fed, we are strength
pefverse of our nerves to be so Incredulous, so
obstinate! How ridiculous to remain hur cry
after such meal!
Ard, if it is milk we want, is not the essence
of the milk of thousand COWS boiled down iD-
to a spoonful of rich, creamy pulp greater and
more to be desired than fOaming, frothy glass
of the dilute result of one cows yesterday din
ner? Do our brains need phosphorus? Let
them need it ever so much, we can eat only
about so many oysters or so many ounces of
fish But here comes the benefcent condenser;
grinds the oysters into paste, pots the fish IN.
der pressure of dare not say how many
pounds to the square inch, and presents us our
phosphorus in preparations homeopathic in
size to the eye but of the widest allopathic pro-
portions in fact to the stomach.
do not know that it is on record when the
condensers aud desiccatoIs first had their atten-
ton diverted from the world of food to the
world of literature. But suppose it was not
until there was no longer left root or fruit,
or beast, or bird on which they had not
piled their processes. Then, naturally, like AL
exander, they looked round for a new world to
conquer; and so it came 10 pass that we began
to baye a new sort of book on our shelves. The
idea took well. The only wonder was it had
not been thought of sooner, for nobody since
Methuselah has ever had half time enough in
this world to read all the books he wanted to;
and to get the gist of three volumes in one, or
of one volume in a page, or of a page in paren-
thess-wby, it would be very paradise of de-
light to rea.ers. Education made easy. Gen
eral information warranted, like the CONNER
cial penman's hand, in from twelve to twenty
four lessons What more could either the lazy
or the buried askS And the good work went
on, until to-day one so miscbievously disposed
could probably find for every preparation of
portable or CONDENSED" this that or the 9TH
er in tin cans to eat, a correlative portable and
condensed scionce, art, history, biography or
record of travel to reao Magazines are full of
them, libraries are full of them, everybody's
house is full of them, everybody Iwho journeys
carries one in his pocket, everybody who stays
at home keeps one or more ready to his hand on
his desk or table. But until very recently there
seemed to he a line drawn in literature which
the condenser did rot pass. Into the world of
the classics he had not gone. A certain COM
mendable instinct withheld him; prudence, a
misgiving of failure. But at last these barriers
have gwen way; the instinct has become
dnlled. Much practice hath made the condens-
SAo maui dbu uOW VIC nave duuuuiCeuCIb
staring us in the face, daily, of Condensed
Classics
They begin with "Ivanhoe," and they de-
clare that in this new, desirable, condensed
'Ivanhoe nothing will be left out except what
skillful reader would skip. That "skillfup'
is skllful word. 1t has a sage and knowing
sound; is well calculated to stave off antagon-
isms Bnt, in this connection, who is to be
called upon to define "skilful?" Shade of
Walter Scott, forgive the unskIllfulness of our
youth! With what unwse pertinacity we
clung to each detail Of that marvellous story
and returned and returned and clung more and
more. If we had been skillful, should we have
Skipped some of the splendors of that tourna
ment? Should we have found Cedric bore?
Should we have been Indifferent to the odds
between the disinherited knight and his foes?
Should we have forgotten to note the contrast
between the Jewess and the Saxon beauty?
Should we have been loyal to neither? Should
we have found Wanda irrelevant? Oh, con-
denser of "Ianhoe," see to it that your volume
does not fall into the hands of any who knew
lvanhoe by heart at the age of teni
One is bewldered by confused and confusing
conjectures as 20 the limit or limitlessness OF
the rev process of condensing the classics.