Milk toast is made with two breakfast staples:  milk and toast.  Bread is toasted, buttered, and cut into bite-sized pieces.  It is then placed in a bowl and topped with warm milk. Milk toast was the precursor to the breakfast cereals we know and love today. https://www.thekitchn.com/milk-toast-recipe-23279008    

Caspar Milquetoast is a comic strip character created by H. T. Webster for his cartoon series The Timid Soul.  Webster described Caspar Milquetoast as "the man who speaks softly and gets hit with a big stick".  The character's name is derived from a bland and fairly inoffensive food, milk toast.  In 1912, Webster drew a daily panel for the New-York Tribune, under a variety of titles—Our Boyhood Ambitions, Life's Darkest Moment, The Unseen Audience.  In 1924, Webster moved to the New York World and soon after added The Timid Soul featuring the wimpy Caspar Milquetoast.  Milquetoast developed out of the design of another character, Egbert Smear, or The Man in the Brown Derby.  The character was said to have ushered in a new era of timidity in comics.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_Milquetoast   

On March 8, 1890, perhaps after a nightmare caused by “a too-generous helping of dressed crab at supper,” Bram Stoker began work on Dracula, a novel that would take him seven years to complete.  But years before that fateful feast, in an early foray into the literary world, Stoker wrote a 2,000 word fan letter to Walt Whitman.  Stoker first encountered Whitman when, as a student at Trinity College, he read an entertainingly bad review of Poems by Walt Whitman, a selection of the poems from Leaves of Grass.  Stoker and his friends read the pan aloud to each other (19th century novelists—they’re just like us!), including, perhaps, this memorable kicker:  “It has been said of Mr. Whitman by one of his warmest admirers, ‘He is Democracy.’  We really think he is—in his compositions, at least; being, like it, ignorant, sanguine, noisy, coarse, and chaotic!”  Jessie Gaynor  https://lithub.com/did-you-know-bram-stoker-wrote-walt-whitman-a-very-intense-2000-word-fan-letter/   

There’s no such thing as a perfect crime.  If there were, you wouldn’t know it was a crime.  Various sources    

On December 16th, 1901, 35-year-old Beatrix Potter printed 250 copies of a book that she had written and illustrated herself—a book about a mischievous bunny named Peter Rabbit . (Maybe you’ve heard of it?)  Potter had originally written the story for the five-year-old son of her former governess, who suggested that Potter’s drawings and stories might be turned into books for all children.  Potter liked this idea, and expanded the story she had written into a book called The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor’s Garden, complete with black and white illustrations and a colored frontispiece.  She submitted it to six publishers, but it was rejected by all of them.  “From a book editor’s point of view,” wrote biographer Linda Lear, “her story was too long, her narrative lacked proper pacing, there were no colored illustrations, and the black and white outline pictures were too different from the familiar ones.”  Undeterred (and unwilling to compromise) Potter decided to publish the story herself, ordering 250 copies from Strangeways & Sons, a printer in London, along with 500 copies of the frontispiece.  It cost about £11, and soon after, she began distributing the copies to family and friends, and even selling a few—including to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who bought a copy for his grandchildren.  By February 1902, she had to print 200 more copies, and these too quickly sold out.  Literary Hub  December 11, 2022   

Newtons are a Nabisco-trademarked version of a pastry filled with sweet fruit paste. "Fig Newtons" are the most popular variety (fig rolls filled with fig paste).  Their distinctive shape is a characteristic that has been adopted by competitors, including generic fig bars sold in many markets.  The product was invented by Charles Roser and baked at the F. A. Kennedy Steam Bakery for the first time in 1891.  The first Fig Newtons were baked at the F. A. Kennedy Steam Bakery in 1891.  The product was named after the city of Newton, Massachusetts.  The Kennedy Biscuit Company had recently become associated with the New York Biscuit Company, and the two merged to form Nabisco—after which, the fig rolls were trademarked as "Fig Newtons".  Since 2012, the "Fig" has been dropped from the product name (now just "Newtons").  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtons_(cookie)    

Blanche is a feminine given name.  It means "white" in French, derived from the Late Latin word "blancus".  See list of royal names, names of  celebrities and fictional characters named Blanche at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_(given_name)#:~:text=Blanche%20is%20a%20feminine%20given,Late%20Latin%20word%20%22blancus%22.   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2605  December 14, 2022