Fond Reminiscence...

"If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them -- peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; at any rate let them be your acquaintances." - Winston Churchill

Thank you, Mr. Churchill, for this glorious quote. This is precisely how I feel about my Victorias. I can scarcely go a day without at least looking at one, putting one on my bedside table so it is easily within reach should I have a moment to pick it up.

There is something deeply reassuring about just knowing they are all there whenever I get ready to read or even just look at one... and, for me, that is often. There are days that are so busy and technical-information-laden that the mere sight of the beautiful cover of one of my Victorias causes my blood pressure to settle and my nerves to calm. If you think it odd to make such a statement about a "mere" magazine, then you have obviously not had the pleasure of her company.

Sometimes I feel as L.M. Montgomery so aptly describes in this scene from Anne of Green Gables:

"Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cordwood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland -- adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like that of real life."