Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic
1898
Before GPS, before satellite imagery, before the ocean became merely a route to somewhere else, the Atlantic held secrets. In this luminous 1898 collection, Higginson gathers the myths that have haunted the Atlantic for millennia: the drowned kingdom of Atlantis, the ever-receding shores that taunted sailors, islands that appeared on no map yet lived in every sailor's imagination. These are not mere fairy tales but the dreams of a species trying to comprehend an incomprehensible world. Each tale carries the weight of human longing for the mysterious, the vanished, the just-out-of-reach. Higginson writes with the precision of a scholar and the wonder of a child, tracing how islands became repositories for our deepest hopes and fears. The stories span centuries and cultures, unified by that endless gray expanse and what it was believed to conceal. For readers who feel the pull of the horizon and suspect there is more to the world than what maps reveal, this collection remains a portal to the age when the ocean still whispered of impossible things.
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“Take three pints of water, and, having warmed it, add half a teacupful of wine. Put into this mixture a quantity of red-hot iron; allow it to stand for five or six days, when there will be a scum on the top of the mixture, which should then be poured into a small teacup and placed near a fire. When it is warm, powdered gallnuts and iron filings should be added to it, and the whole should be warmed again. The liquid is then painted on to the teeth by means of a soft feather brush, with more powdered gallnuts and iron, and, after several applications, the desired colour will be obtained." The process is said to be a preservative of the teeth,””
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“Môshi has said, "There is the third finger. If a man's third or nameless finger be bent, so that he cannot straighten it, although his bent finger may cause him no pain, still if he hears of some one who can cure it, he will think nothing of undertaking a long journey from Shin to So 94 to consult him upon this deformed finger; for he knows it is to be hateful to have a finger unlike those of other men. But he cares not a jot if his heart be different to that of other men; and this is how men disregard the true order of things." Now””
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“Therefore I pray you to follow the impulses of your natural heart; place it before you as a teacher, and study its precepts. Your heart is a convenient teacher to employ too:””
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“For ever wishing to do this, wishing to see that, wishing to eat rare dishes, wishing to wear fine clothes, you pass a lifetime in fanning the flames which consume you.””
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“A guilty man," said the priest, with a smile, "shudders at the rustling of the wind or the chattering of a stork's beak: a murderer's conscience preys upon his mind till he sees what is not.””
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“The provision is very inferior to the cities of refuge which were set apart by Moses for the manslayer to flee to from the fury of the avenger. Such as it was, however, it existed, and it is remarkable that Confucius, when consulted on the subject, took no notice of it, but affirmed the duty of blood-revenge in the strongest and most unrestricted terms.””
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“If a man thinks only of his own profit, and tries to benefit himself at the expense of others, he will incur the hatred of Heaven.””
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
