Dog coloring page of a Water Spaniel. Click the thumbnail to download the printable.

Tips for the Water Spaniel Coloring Page

Naturally imagination is the key to having fun with a coloring page. Color your Water Spaniel hot pink and bright green. Instead of jumping out of a pond or stream, add stars and color in some cosmic rays and now your water spaniel is a space dog on an intergalactic quest to save planet earth.

In reality, if you would like to color in the dog accurately, take into consideration the breed. The American Water Spaniel is a medium sized dog with a thick double-layered coat in different shades of rich brown. They are used as hunting dogs and the sprightly dog in our coloring page is no doubt leaping to catch it’s quarry. Consult the wiki entry on The American Water Spaniel for additional information and photographs to use as a color guide.

St. Patrick's Day Clip Art: Dear Irish Memories

On the reverse of the St. Patrick’s Day postcard with the hat above is this cute message:

Dear Miss,

This is the latest thing in spring hats. Hoping you will patronize me when ready to buy. I am yours truly,

The Reasler Hat Co.

What a charming and cute message to a possible sweetheart!

Vintage St. Patrick's Day Postcard Clip Art Erin Go Bragh

St. Patrick's Day Postcard Sweet Erin Go Bragh Clip Art

Some folks like the shabby distressed look in their scrapbooks and other craft projects, so perhaps you will find a use for these? As Saint Patrick’s Day is a holiday close to my heart (long story for another time), I do plan on restoring these images and will update this post to include them at a later date; in the meantime, they are yours for the taking.

Clip Art: Bird, Reptile, and Fish Eggs

Eggs in the illustration:

1. Epyronis
2. Ostrich
3. Cassowary
4. Wild Swan
5. Hen
6. Pigeon
7. Humming-bird
8. Eagle
9. Vulture
10. Penguin
11. Crocodile
12. Python
13. Fresh-water Turtle
14. St. Lucia Boa
15. Acnoides Turtle
16. Ophidian
17. Shark
18. Ray

Perhaps you can use this clip art image as part of an Easter project?

Clip Art: Vintage Alpine Hare Image

The Timeless Seduction of the Alpine Hare

With his casual come-hither look, our friend Lepus timidus has been known to get around. Perhaps that is why he is known by these aliases:  Blue Hare, Tundra Hare, Variable Hare, White Hare, Alpine Hare and Irish Hare.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop staring at him!

From The American Family Receipt Book, by Mrs. Gregory and Friends, circa 1900, sprinkled with suitable poetry as originally published. I’ve included a selection of my antique St. Patrick’s Day postcards and greetings that you can use as clip art.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day Clip Art

‘There’s a dear little Island far over the sea,
And no spot on the globe’s half so precious to me;
And by lake or mountain where e’er I may roam,
I shall never forget thee, my own Ireland home.
Other skies may be bright, other lands may be fair,
But what of all that if the heart be not there?
Other music may charm me, but ah! there is none
Which can move me to sadness or mirth like thine own.’

As green is the prevailing color on St. Patrick’s Day, I have suggested a dinner menu where this color and white are used exclusively. Let a dish of ferns be made the centerpiece and scatter ferns about the table. Let Irish flags decorate the room. Have the china green and white, so far as possible.

Green silk embroidered over a small wire, to imitate a shamrock, placed at each plate, for a boutonnière, is quite appropriate and novel.

“Oh! the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock!
Chosen Leaf
Of Bard and Chief,
Old Erin’s native Shamrock!”

Clip Art: The Wearing of the Green, a Vintage St. Patrick's Day Postcard.

Menu

Breakfast

Grape Fruit
Rice, with cream
Popovers
White Omelette, garnished with parsley
Irish Potatoes, in cream
Coffee

Luncheon

Escalloped Potatoes
Whitefish Turbot
Cold Slaw
Fruit Glacé a là St. Patrick
whipped cream
Cocoa

Dinner

Cream of Spinach
Creamed Fricassee of Chicken
Irish Potatoes, mashed
Peas
Lettuce and Celery Salad
Pistachio Ice Cream
Angel Cake
Coffee

Clip Art: Old-Fashioned Couple Dancing on Saint Patrick's Day Vintage Postcard Greeting.

Recipes

Escalloped Potatoes

Pare six medium-sized potatoes, slice thin in cold water. Drain and put in a pudding pan. Season with salt and pepper, pour over two-thirds of a pint of rich milk, add a piece of butter the size of an egg, send to the oven, and when potatoes are well done serve. ~ Miss Mary. E. Wetherholt.

Creamed Chicken

Boil a chicken until tender the usual way. When cold, or while hot, as you prefer, place the breast in the chafing dish in which a small lump of butter has melted and is just beginning to brown, heat thoroughly and add one cup of rich milk. Season, and when it comes to a boil, thicken slightly with flour rubbed until smooth in a little butter. As soon as it comes to a boil pour over squares of toast. ~ Emma C.

Pistachio Ice Cream

Blanch and peel one-quarter of a pound of pistachios and pound them to a smooth paste with a few drops of rose-water. Beat the yolks of six eggs and pour over them one and one-half pints of boiling milk; add four ounces of powdered sugar and stir the custard over the fire until it begins to thicken; then pour it out and when cool stir into it the pounded pistachios and a teaspoonful of spinach coloring. Pass the whole through a sieve; mold and freeze. If preferred, the pistachio paste can be mixed with cream instead of custard. ~ Ella Brewster.

Fruit Glace

Boil together for one-half hour one cupful of granulated sugar and one of water. Dip the point of a skewer or darning needle in the syrup after it has been boiling the given time and then in water. If the thread formed breaks off brittle the syrup is done. Take any prepared fruits desired (grapes, pineapple, cherries, etc.) on point of a darning needle; dip them in the syrup. Place them on a dish that has been buttered lightly; when cold they are ready for use. Care must be taken not to stir the syrup as that spoils it. ~ Mary B. Burns

I’ve illustrated this Victorian poem with a vintage illustration of heirloom roses  found in antique seed catalog. The line-art is very detailed and these roses are printable as-is, or use as clip art for your next floral/botanical themed project.

At the end of the poem is a biography of Philip Bourke Marson, you’ll discover that his life was quite tragic, which makes this poem about the secret conversations and thoughts of ephemeral flowers to be all the more poignant.

Vintage illustration of heirloom roses from an antique seed catalog that you can use as clip art.

A Garden Secret
(A Flower and a Hand)

I.

Just after Night-fall.

I heard a whisper of roses,
And light white lilies laugh out:
“Ah, sweet, when the evening closes,
And stars come looking about,
How cool and good it is to stand,
Nor fear at all the gathering hand!”

II.

“Would I were red!” cried a white rose.
“Would I were white!” cried a red one.
“No longer the light wind blows;
He went with the dear dead sun.
Here we forever seem to stay,
And yet a sun dies every day.”

III.

A Lily.

“The sun is not dead, but sleeping,
And each day the same sun wakes;
But when stars their watch are keeping,
Then a time of rest he takes.”

Many Roses together.

“How very wise these lilies are!
They must have heard star talk with star!”

IV.

First Rose.

“Pray, the, can you tell us, lilies,
Where slumbers the wind at night,
When the garden all round so still is,
And brimmed with the moon’s pale light?”

A Lily.

“In branches of great trees he rests.”

Second Rose.

“Not so; they are too full of nests.”

V.

First Rose.

“I think he sleeps where the grass is;
He there would have room to lie;
The white moon over him passes;
He wakes with the dawning sky.”

Many Lilies together.

“How very wise these roses seem,
Who think they know, and only dream!”

VI.

First Rose.

“What haps to a gathered flower!”

Second Rose.

“Nay, sister, now who can tell?
One comes not back just one hour,
To say it is ill or well.
I would with such a one confer,
To know what strange things chanced to her.”

VII.

First Rose.

“Hush! hush! now the wind is waking–
Or is it the wind I hear?
My leaves are thrilling and shaking–
Good-by: I am gathered, my dear!
Now, whether for my bliss or woe,
I shall know what the plucked flowers know!”

By Philip Bourke Marston, Harper’s Monthly, 1892

Note: Here is some biographical information about the author that you may find interesting, if not tragic.

Philip Bourke Marston (13 August 1850 – 13 February 1887) was an English poet.

He was born in London. His father, John Westland Marston (1819-1890), wrote verse dramas, and was a friend of Dickens, Macready and Charles Kean. Philip’s godparents were Philip James Bailey and Dinah Mulock. At his father’s house near Chalk Farm he met authors and actors of his father’s generation, and subsequently the Rossettis, Swinburne, Arthur O’Shaughnessy and Henry Irving. In his fourth year, his sight began to decay, and he gradually became almost totally blind.

His mother died in 1870. His fiance, Mary Nesbit, died in 1871; his closest friend, Oliver Madox Brown, in 1874; his sister Cicely, his amanuensis, in 1878; in 1879 his remaining sister, Eleanor, who was followed to the grave after a brief interval by her husband, the poet O’Shaughnessy, and her two children.

In 1882, the death of his chief poetic ally and inspirer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was followed closely by that of another kindred spirit, James Thomson (B.V.), who was carried dying from his blind friend’s rooms, where he had sought refuge from his latest miseries early in June of the same year.

It is not surprising that Marston’s verse became sorrowful and melancholy. The idylls of flower-life, such as the early and very beautiful The Rose and the Wind, were succeeded by dreams of sleep and the repose of death. These qualities and gradations of feeling are traceable through his three published collections, Songtide (1871), All in All (1873) and Wind Voices (1883). Marston’s verse was collected in 1892 by Louise Chandler Moulton, a loyal friend, and herself a poet.

In his later years he wrote short stories in Home Chimes and other American magazines, through the agency of Mrs. Chandler Moulton. His popularity in America far exceeded that in his own country.

His health showed signs of collapse from 1883; in January 1887 he lost his voice, and suffered intensely from the failure to make himself understood.

He was commemorated in Gordon Hake’s Blind Boy, and in a sonnet by Swinburne, beginning The days of a man are threescore years and ten. There is an intimate sketch of the blind poet by a friend, Coulson Kernahan, in Sorrow and Song (1894).

An early slacker? Antique tintype photograph of an extremely casual young Victorian man. Scanned and retouched from my original.

“I Once Had A Lover, Hi, Ho!”

By F. H. Stauffer, Peterson’s Magazine, 1860

I once had a lover, hi, ho!
That’s not very strange, I admit;
I was lovely and young, you know,
A Venus just in her transit!

He came with the Summer, hi, ho!
And knelt at my feet to adore;
He called me a “bird,” and a “star,”
And other sweet things by the score.

Before long I took sick, hi ho!
And the small-pox pitted my face,
My cheeks lost their glow, you know,
And my beauty went off in disgrace.

Soon lost I my lover, hi, ho!
That’s not very strange, I admit;
For beauty is fragile, you know,
And so is the sparkle of wit.

He went with the Summer, hi, ho!
But another came in his stead;
‘Tis my soul that he loves, I know,
And soon you will hear we are wed!