Yeast

“ As we have seen, the study of yeast has led investigators face to face with problems of immense interest in pure chemistry, and in animal and vegetable morphology. Its physiology is not less rich in subjects for inquiry. Take, for example, the singular fact that yeast will increase indefinitely when grown in the dark, in water containing only tartrate of ammonia, a small percentage of mineral salts, and sugar. ”

“ The yeast cake is a mixture of thousands of such cells with some flour or flour and meal, and the cells lie dormant in the cake, until we are ready to use them in bread. (See Chapter XII.) The actual yeast, however, is what Fig. 30 shows it to be, a tiny, one-celled plant, increasing in number by the division of the single cell, or by the budding out of one cell from another. When conditions are favorable the yeast cells increase in number with great rapidity, and some of the sugar that is present is broken down into carbon dioxide gas and alcohol. ”

“ When you perceive your yeast working, observe if it works quick, sharp and strong, and increasing in bulk nearly double what it was before it began to work, with a sweet sharp taste, and smell, with the appearance of a honey comb, with pores, and always changing place, with a bright lively colour, then you may pronounce your yeast good ”

“ Yeast cells growing under the microscope.
a, Single cells. b, Two cells forming by division. c, A group of cells where division is going on in all directions.
"The yeast plant has never been found wild. It is only known as a cultivated plant, growing on prepared liquor. The brewer has to sow it by taking some yeast from other beer, or by leaving the liquor exposed to air in which yeast spores are floating ”

“ The ingredients of bread.—The essential ingredients are flour, water, and yeast. The liquid may be milk, or milk and water, the milk changing the flavor slightly and increasing the nutritive value, while the cream in the milk increases the tenderness of the crumb and crust. The non-essentials include salt to develop flavor, sugar sometimes added to hasten fermentation and also for flavor, and a fat to increase tenderness, as, for instance, butter or some cheaper fat. ”

“ Note, that yeast of good Beer, is better then that of Ale. ”

“ if she be ignorant of the nature of flour, yeast, malt, and hops, what is she good for? ”

“ Like everybody else in the cocktail lounge, he was softening his brain with alcohol. This was a substance produced by a tiny creature called yeast. Yeast organisms ate sugar and excreted alcohol. They killed themselves by destroying their own environment with yeast shit.
• • •
Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne. ”

“ It was in consequence of living for some time in the neighbourhood of a public brewery, that I was induced to make experiments on fixed air, of which there is always a large body, ready formed, upon the surface of the fermenting liquor, generally about nine inches, or a foot in depth, within which any kind of substance may be very conveniently placed; ”

“ Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot afternoon was full of the smell of the ripe wheat, like the smell of bread baking in an oven. The breath of the wheat and the sweet clover passed him like pleasant things in a dream. ”

“ For an Apple is in itself a little Universe; the Seed, hotter than the other parts thereof, is its Sun, which diffuses about it self that natural Heat which preserves its Globe: And in the Onion, the Germ is the little Sun of that little World, which vivifies and nourishes the vegetative Salt of that little mass. ”

“ The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope. ”

“ "It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.") ”

“ "Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye. ”

“ But besides this means of increase I assume that cells, before their conversion into completely passive or "formed material," throw off minute granules or atoms, which circulate freely throughout the system, and when supplied with proper nutriment multiply by self-division, subsequently becoming developed into cells like those from which they were derived. These granules for the sake of distinctness may be called cell-gemmules, or, as the cellular theory is not fully established, simply gemmules. ”

“ Take to every Gallon of Honey, three Gallons of water, and put them both together, and set them over so soft a fire, that you may endure to melt and break the honey with your hands. ”

“ How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes? ”

“ In a few minutes tea was brought. Very delicate was the china, very old the plate, very thin the bread and butter, and very small the lumps of sugar. Sugar was evidently Mrs Jamieson's favourite economy. ”

“ The drink which has come to supply the place of beer has, in general, been tea. It is notorious that tea has no useful strength in it; that it contains nothing nutritious; ”

“ Nor fairer garden yet was never known:
The maidens danced about it morn and noon,
And learned bards of it their ditties made;
The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon
Water'd the root and kiss'd her pretty shade.
But well-a-day!—the gardener careless grew;
The maids and fairies both were kept away,
And in a drought the caterpillars threw
Themselves upon the bud and every spray.
God shield the stock! If heaven send no supplies,
The fairest blossom of the garden dies. ”

“ It seemed as if nature's fragile flower, having lost all its own dew, was—notwithstanding its scented baths and ablutions—parched by an inward fire, and languished for that water which quenches all thirst, for that milk which flows from the deep fountain of man's virility. Every month, for a few days, that bloody fiend shattered her and laid her at the mercy of a man's lust, making her rave for those caresses for which she had been created. ”

“ of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. ”

“ It stretches away like the land of promise, a pleasant land flowing with milk and honey, a land of broad views and of fruitful fields, of vineyards and oliveyards, and of far distances, luminous in the fresh glory of sunrise, hazy with softened charm in the hot noon, transformed under the evening sky of crimson and gold at sunset, a land which one would have thought all might desire to possess ”

“ And you, my Love, as high as heaven above,
Yet should the thoughts of me, your humble swain,
Ascend to heaven in honour of my love.
Were I as high as heaven above the plain,
And you, my Love, as humble and as low
As are the deepest bottoms of the main,
Wheresoe'er you were, with you my love should go.
Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the skies,
My love should shine on you like to the Sun,
And look upon you with ten thousand eyes,
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done. ”

“ No she had lived and loved, she had sinned and fallen so low, that she was lost for ever.
The drop of water in the dust might be upheaved from the mud by the heat of the sun, but no love can uplift the maid sunken in the mire. ”

“ There, hour by hour, the lazy tide creeps in
Upon the sands I shall not pace again —
Save in a dream, — and, hour by hour, the tide
Creeps lazily out, and I behold it not,
Nor the young moon slow sinking to her rest
Behind the hills; nor yet the dead white trees
Glimmering in the starlight: they are ghosts
Of what has been, and shall be never more.
No, never more!
Nor shall I hear again
The wind that rises at the dead of night
Suddenly, and sweeps inward from the sea,
Rustling the tussock, nor the wekas' wail
Echoing at evening from the tawny hills. ”

“ And the gay young voice as in hours of yore.
It still seems strange to be here alone,
With the rising sob of the wind without;
The sound takes a deep, insisting tone,
Where the trees are swinging their arms about.
Its moaning reaches the sheltered room,
And thrills my heart with a sense of pain;
I walk to the window, and pierce the gloom,
With a yearning look that is all in vain.
You are out in a night of depths that hold
No promise of dawning for you and me,
And only a ghost from the life of old
Has come from the world of memory!
You are out evermore! God wills it so! ”

“ Woe to the man who is found nigh them at midnight when the tide has subsided, and they arise in their former beauty, with forecastle, and deck, and sail, and pennon, and shroud! Then is seen the streaming of lights along the water from their cabin windows, and then is heard the sound of mirth and the clamour of tongues, and the infernal whoop and halloo and song, ringing far and wide. Woe to the man who comes nigh them! ”

“ These vessels of verse, O Great Goddess, are filled with invisible tears,
With the sobs and sweat of my spirit and her desolate brooding for years;
See, I lay them — not on thine altar, for they are unpolished and plain,
Not rounded enough by the potter, too much burnt in the furnace of pain;
But here in the dust, in the shadow, with a sudden wild leap of the heart
I kneel to tenderly kiss them, then in silence arise to depart.
I linger awhile at the portal with the light of the crimsoning sun
On my wreathless brow bearing the badges of battles I've fought in not won. ”

“ How can I think of myself when infinitude o'er me is glowing,
Glowing with tokens of love from the land where my sorrows shall cease?
Oh, summer-night of the South! Oh, sweet languor of zephyrs love-sighing!
Oh, mighty circuit of shadowy solitude, holy and still!
Music scarce audible, echo-less harmony joyously dying,
Dying in faint suspirations o'er meadow, and forest, and hill!
I must go forth and be part of it, part of the night and its gladness.
But a few steps, and I pause on the marge of the shining lagoon. ”

“ Lift your blue eyes
From the rock's mossy shade!
All the birds call for you
Out of the sky:
May is here, waiting,
And here, too, am I.
Why do you shiver so,
Violet sweet?
Soft is the meadow-grass
Under my feet. ”

“ From Samoa came over:
Came over, Sina, at the setting moon!
The moon shines round and bright;
She, with her dark-eyed maidens at her side,
Watches the rising tide.
While balmy breathes the starry southern night,
While languid heaves the lazy southern tide;
The rising tide, O Sina, and the setting moon!
The night is past, is past and gone,
The moon sinks to the West,
The sea-heart beats opprest,
And Sina's passionate breast
Heaves like the sea, when the pale moon has gone,
Heaves like the passionate sea, Sina, left by the moon alone! ”

“ In every eye, but in my thoughts most fair.
Like tapers on the altar shine her eyes;
Her breath is the perfume of sacrifice;
And wheresoe'er my fancy would begin,
Still her perfection lets religion in.
We sit and talk, and kiss away the hours
As chastely as the morning dews kiss flowers:
I touch her, like my beads, with devout care,
And come unto my courtship as my prayer. ”

“ The planted seed consigned to common earth,
Disdains to moulder with the baser clay;
But rises up to meet the light of day,
Spreads all its leaves, and flowers, and tendrils forth;
And, bathed and ripened in the genial ray,
Pours out its perfume on the wandering gales,
Till in that fragrant breath its life exhales. ”

“ Call to the soul, when man doth sleep:
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
If a star were confin'd into a tomb,
Her captive flames must needs burn there;
But when the hand that lock'd her up gives room,
She'll shine through all the sphere.
O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under Thee! ”

“ As mine were to thee;
The free life of thy living,
Be the gift of it free;
Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee
to me.
O children of banishment,
Souls overcast,
Were the lights ye see vanish meant
Alway to last,
Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast.
I that saw where ye trod
The dim paths of the night
Set the shadow call'd God
In your skies to give light;
But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in
sight. ”