title: Ask the Past: Pertinent and Impertinent Advice from Yesteryear
author: Elizabeth P. Archibald
description: "Lucky for her readers, Archibald has a wry wit and keen eye for absurdity. Some of the book's advice makes the past feel very far away...but much of it reminds of what we have in common with our ancestors, who also worried about attracting lovers, raising children, and killing bedbugs (the secret is gunpowder)."<b><i><em>Boston Globe</em></i></b><br /><br />"Comical and illuminating."<b><i><em>Johns Hopkins Magazine</em></i></b>
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  # Agnes Gray
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Anne Bronte
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I. THE PARSONAGE
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  ALL TRUE histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be
  hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled
  kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this
  be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge; I
  sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others, but
  the world may judge for itself: shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse
  of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture, and will
  candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate
  friend.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  My father was a clergyman of the north of England, who was deservedly
  respected by all who knew him, and, in his younger days, lived pretty
  comfortably on the joint income of a small incumbency, and a snug little
  property 