an enormous magnifier

Already old-fashioned in my earliest memories, my Grandmother's house was a place of constant comfort and stability that changed so very little over the rest of her life that it seemed not to change at all. 

She was "granny chic" before it was cool. 

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What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows 

in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, 

and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it.

~ Thomas Carlyle 

http://confessionsofasineater.blogspot.com/