"Recipes against Melancholy"

[caitlincw]

Sidney Smith was a 19th century English writer and Anglican cleric. He wrote "I once gave a lady two and twenty recipes against melancholy; one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugar-plums on the chimney-piece, and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how true it is, that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better than more exalted objects."

I'm not so much melancholy as I am bored by the never-ending details of daily living. I like his "recipes" a lot.