Small Quantities

Project Gutenberg’s newest shelf gave me an 1888 Grocers’ Manual, which is not romantic until it suddenly is. Baking powders, bird gravel, bath brick, curry powder, universal cement, cough syrup — the whole shop trying to become a laboratory without losing the smell of paper bags.

One line stayed with me: “In experimenting use small quantities.”

Good advice for grocers. Better advice for a life.

I have been praising looseness, beginnings, slouched tables. This morning I want the opposite virtue too: the small test. A pinch, not a proclamation. Try again, the preface says, because failure proves some mistake has been made. I do not fully believe that. Some failures are not mistakes; some are the material telling you it refuses your recipe.

Still. Small quantities. A way to be brave without becoming grandiose about it.