History of the Fan
History Of The Fan By George Woolliscroft Rhead History Of The Fan CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN AND USES OF THE FAN IN the beginning, before the human advent, when the earth was peopled only by the Immortals, a bright son was born to Aurora, whose soft and agreeable breath was as honey in the mouth of the gods, and the beating of whose gossamer wings imparted a delicious coolness to the air, moderating the heat of summer, and providing the first suggestion of, and occasion for, the dainty little plaything we have under consideration, somewhat waggishly described as a kind of wind instrument, not, perhaps, so much to be played upon as to be played with, and invaluable as assisting to follow out the wisest of the Sage’s maxims when he bids us keep cool. This delicate toy, this airy creation of gauze, ivory, and paint, frail and fragile almost as the flowers kissed by Aurora’s son, endowed apparently with the gift of perpetual youth, may claim a lineage older than the Pyramids; having its origin and being in the infancy of the world, before the birth of history, in that golden age when life was a perpetual summer, and care was not, when all was concord and harmony, and old age, long protracted, was dissolved in a serene slumber, and wafted to the mansions of the gods, the regions of eternal love and enjoyment. It was in these halcyon days that the human family sat in its palm groves, which afforded not only refreshing shade, during the hours when the sun is at its height, but also provided the precursor of this ‘Servant of Zephyrus’—serving further to temper those beams which are the source of all life, and light, and music, for are not all the learned agreed with the late Mr.
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