Salient

“ What then, said Florus, shall we say that salt is termed divine for that reason? Indeed that is very considerable, for men for the most part deify those common things that are exceeding useful to their necessities and wants, as water, light, the seasons of the year; and the earth they do not only think to be divine, but a very god. Now salt is as useful as either of these, protecting in a way the food as it comes into the body, and making it palatable and agreeable to the appetite. ”

“ I am told that the mountains are full of salt—how wonderful are the works of the Lord! In pursuit of this mineral Man has penetrated deep into the bowels of the earth by means of shafts and tunnels, and brings forth the bitter marrow of the hills into the light of the sun. The salt I have myself seen in red, brown and yellow crystals. The works give employment to our peasants and their sons, with a few foreign labourers, all under the command of an overseer, who is known as the Saltmaster. ”

“ Bayard Taylor, an American traveller who visited them a few years ago, ‘we saw the first veins of rock-salt in a bed of clay and crumbled sandstone. Thirty feet more, and we were in a world of salt. Level galleries branched off from the foot of the staircase; overhead, a ceiling of solid salt, under foot a floor of salt, and on either side gray walls of salt, sparkling here and there with minute crystals. Lights glimmered ahead, and on turning a corner we came upon a gang of workmen, some hacking away at the solid floor, others trundling wheelbarrows full of the precious cubes. ”

“ But if the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. ”

“ But salt has such power over dead and putrescent substances that by its means they will endure for ages.” Thus, too, the Apostles, by their sharp and fiery speech, and by their life, have bitten, pricked, dried up, and shaken off the vices of men. Hear S. Gregory (Hom. 17) : “If we are salt we ought to season the minds of the faithful. As is among brute beasts a rock of salt, so ought to be a priest among the people, that whosoever is joined to a priest, he may be seasoned, as if from a rock of salt, with the seasoning of eternal life.” ”

“ No doubt saltness is a characteristic which would naturally give a name to a river. So it does in the case of the "Salt River" in the U.S., and of the Salza in the Salzkammergut. But I can [76] hardly think that all the many rivers called the Saale are salt, and I am inclined to go deeper for the meaning. The Sansc. has sal, to move, whence salan, water. The first meaning then seems to be water—applied to the sea as the water—and then to salt as derived from the sea. So that when the Gr. άλς, the Old Norse salt, and the Gael. ”

“ To the stranger looking out for characteristics, the Salt Works are the most prominent among them. The sheds stretch along like enormous stock-yards at one end of the city, but looking into them one discovers great vats and troughs filled with salt in every stage of evaporation. ”

“ Copyright, 1904, by Hattie Howard.
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Contents. FRONTISPIECE.
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Poems. "The Salt of the Earth."
The salt of the earth—what a meaningful phrase
From the lips of the Saviour, and one that conveys
A sense of the need of a substance saline
This pestilent sphere to refresh and refine,
And a healthful and happy condition secure
By making it pure as the ocean is pure. ”

“ For every one shall be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace one with another.
"See that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven. How think ye? if any man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and go unto the mountains, and seek that which goeth astray? ”

“ Being of a contrary opinion myself, I determined to test my abilities in the salt line. I began," looking at Nattie, merrily, "by salting you!"—then explaining to Cyn, Jo, and the silent Quimby, "'Salt' is a term operators use, when one tries to send faster than the other can receive. ”

“ There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea. ”

“ One kind succeeds another as the summer advances, usually the more gaudy during the greatest heat, till they crowd the ponds, the air, the bushes with indescribable brilliancy. I have seen, toward evening, yellow sallies appear in myriads, their dead bodies literally covering the water ”

“ Salt has ever been held the symbol of science and wisdom, as is shown, not only by its being the first syllable in the name of King Solomon, but inasmuch as Christ says to his disciples, 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' As meat without salt, so is man without knowledge. ”

“ The salt rock in the earth beneath impregnates the springs with such an intensity of brine that eighty per cent. of fresh water has to be added before the saline mixture can be medicinally employed as a bath. If you take a glass of the water as it proceeds from the spring, and put a little salt in it, the salt will not dissolve, the water is already saturated. ”

“ I asked, apprehensively. "He must be a very energetic person. Do tell me about it. What are 'little 'uns'?"
I must confess to a degree of perplexity when the the whole family burst into further roars of laughter at my simple question.
"Scud energetic? Why, he is the easiest, the slowest, the sleepiest, the most lovable, good-natured fellow on the whole coast. He makes the surest and perhaps the best living of any of the fishermen around here. If he didn't get up early he wouldn't do even that. As it is, Salt does most of the work. Salt is his oldest boy," explained my cousin. ”

“ This is a pretty picture of eighteenth century “high life.” The superstition concerning the spilling of salt is still with us, but helping salt with a knife is no longer in fashion in “polite society.”
In general salt cellars may be classified as follows, commencing with the Standing Salt, with its determination of rank as to those who sat above the salt and those who sat below it:—
Standing Salts.—The earliest are shaped like hour-glasses. ”

“ I take the 'every one' of my text to mean not mankind generally, but every individual of the class whom our Lord is addressing—that is to say, His disciples. He is laying down the law for all Christians. I take the paradox which brings together 'salting' and 'fire,' to refer, not to salt as a means of communicating savour to food, but as a means of preserving from putrefaction. ”

“ Myriads of wild beasts coming and going through numberless centuries to drink the salt water, had trodden the earth around it as hard as iron, and had worn it down far below the surface of the surrounding country. ”

“ Whereupon in came a slave-girl, with a great dish of salt, and the black strewed salt upon my brother’s wounds; but he did not stir, lest he should know that he was alive and finish him. Then the salt-girl went away and the black cried out, “Where is the cellaress?” With this in came the old woman, and taking my brother by the feet, dragged him to an underground vault, where she threw him down upon a heap of dead bodies. There he remained two whole days, but God made the salt the means of saving his life, for it stayed the flow of blood. Presently, he found himself strong enough to move ”

“ Noel and Carpentier, are cited various surmises as to the origin of the word, among others that salique is a corruption of gallique, that it comes from Salle—the great hall of a palace, from an imaginary tribe of Germans called in Latin salice, from si aliquis, the first words of the Latin document in which the Salic law was promulgated; from sal, salt, and from Salogart, the name of one of Pharamond’s jurisconsults, or counsellors. Who shall decide when so many doctors disagree? ”

“ Then you will sit down and ponder in amazement, and ask, "What object would these people have had in carrying their broken pans and strewing them broadcast over so vast an extent of country, and so far from the salt-springs?" As you sit thinking, you feel the warmth of the setting sun. Its rays cast your lengthening shadow on the hill, and that of the hill far over the valley of the Saline ”

“ For hereby great mysteries may be learned, which omitting to speak more of, I keep close to Salt and say, that that Salt which comes out of the Ocean or Sea of Man, or of some other Animal, that is, which is voided out of the Bladder, is far more fit for the Transmutation of Metals, than that which is gotten out of the Sea, as being the Bladder of the great Animal. ”

“ I only mean if we want salt we can have as much as we please by boiling down salt-water in the kettle, or else making a salt-pan in the rocks, and obtaining it by the sun drying up the water and leaving the salt. ”

“ My father served a quarter of fowl to the priest, who took out of his pocket a piece of bread, a flagon of wine and a knife, the copper handle of which represented the late king on a column in the costume of a Roman emperor, and began to have his supper.
But having hardly taken the first morsel in his mouth he turned round on my father and asked for some salt, rather surprised that no salt cellar had been presented to him offhand.
“So did the ancients use it,” he said, “they offered salt as a sign of hospitality. They also placed salt cellars in the temples on the tablecloths of the gods.” ”

“ All over Europe the spilling of salt in the direction of a person was considered ominous. “It was held to indicate that something had already happened to one of the family, or was about to befall the person spilling it, and also to denote the rupture of friendship.”56 The custom of putting a plate of salt on a corpse with the object of driving off evil spirits is common in Great Britain. ”

“ As blood is synonymous with life in primitive thought and practice, [64] and as salt has been shown to represent blood in the primitive mind, so salt seems to stand for life in many a form of primitive speech and in the world's symbolism. When, indeed, we speak of salt as preserving flesh from corruption, we refer to the staying of the process of death by an added element of life ”

“ For the whole Astrum is Nothing else but a Salniter in the Verbum Fiat in the Motion of the Being of all Beings in the fiery Flagrat, comprehended in the Properties of the Salts, wherein all the Powers of the Element stand as an external Birth, which continually boil in the four Elements as a Salnitral Salt, and introduce their Property in their Desire in the four Elements into the Essence of Bodies, as is to be seen in Trees, Herbs, Grass, and all growing Things. ”

“ And so it is, that if men had not salt, or at the least those Plants and Fruits, in which it dwells, they would putrefie while yet living. Which would also happen to Cattel, if they did not eat Grass, which contains in it self its own salt, and sufficeth them in feeding; nevertheless if something better were given them with it, it would be very profitable for them; for if to horned Beasts, as also Hogs, some saltness were given with their meat and drink, they would thereby acquire much strength and fatness. ”

“ Of their sufferings in that salt mine I shall not go into details. There are enough unpleasant things in this world without telling about that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. ”

“ In the Creation of the World salt was first made, from which afterwards the four Elements proceeded, so that by the Philosophers salt is called The Center of the Elements concentrated; and by the same reason, by which it was the first, it still is, and remaineth the last. All things arise from salt, and after they are destroyed by death, do again return into the same. Et sal thesauros grandes & possidet ignis. In Salt and Fire are contained great Treasures. Salt is Fire, and Fire is Salt, and they contain in themselves a third thing, to wit, an hidden Spirit. ”

“ Strange how these people can live without salt! They make no use of it with their food; eat fresh seal-blubber, mainly, all their lives. No wonder they look flabby! And yet they are a happy set; always laughing, joking, and badgering each other. ”

“ Under the two figures of salt and light our Lord showed the apostles what a high vocation theirs was in the kingdom of God. Under the first figure He described to them the priestly office. “Even as salt gives a savour to food and preserves it from corruption, so must you make sinful man holy and pleasing to God, and keep him from the corruption of sin.” ”

“ The Sun or Fire is above, Salt is below, which is by an easie way rendered combustible, like the sun or fire; as I have taught in many places of my Writings, and all Philosophers, with an unanimous consent, do confess, that the greatest Secret lieth hidden in fire and salt.251 Hence is the word Alchymy from fire and salt, which penetrate all things, and Fire is the Symbol of GOD, who hath alwaies exhibited himself to mortal eyes, in the form of Fire: But Salt is the Symbol of Eternity, inasmuch as it defendeth and preserveth all things from Corruption. ”

“ Do you not think that that which is generative is to be esteemed divine, seeing God is the principle of all things? And I assenting, he continued: Salt, in the opinion of some men, for instance the Egyptians you mentioned, is very operative that way; and those that breed dogs, when they find their bitches not apt to be hot, give them salt and seasoned flesh, to excite and arouse their sleeping lechery and vigor. Besides, the ships that carry salt breed abundance of mice; the females, as some imagine, conceiving without the help of the males, only by licking the salt. ”