Letters on LiteratureLetters on LiteratureBy Andrew Lang1- Page 2-Letters on LiteratureDEDICATIONDear Mr. Way,After so many letters to people who never existed, may I venture ashort one, to a person very real to me, though I have never seen him, andonly know him by his many kindnesses? Perhaps you will add another tothese by accepting the Dedication of a little work, of a sort experimental inEnglish, and in prose, though Horacein Latin and in versewas...　

THE FORTY THIEVESIN a town in Persia there dwelt two brothers, one namedCassim, the other Ali Baba. Cassim was married to arich wife and lived in plenty, while Ali Baba had to maintainhis wife and children by cutting wood in a neighboringforest and selling it in the town. One day, when AliBaba was in the forest, he saw a troop of men on horseback,coming toward him in a cloud of dust. He wasafraid they were robbers, and climbed into a tree forsafety. When they came up to him and dismounted, hecounted forty of them. They unbridled their horses andtied them to trees. The finest man among them, whomAli Baba took to be their captain, went a little way among...　

A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHYTwo or three persons having at different times intimated that if Iwould write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure,I yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tendermy history.Ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend ofthe family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century,when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England.Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternalname (except when one of them now and then took a playfulrefuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins,...　

PRIOR ANALYTICSby Aristotletranslated by A. J. JenkinsonBook I1WE must first state the subject of our inquiry and the faculty towhich it belongs: its subject is demonstration and the faculty thatcarries it out demonstrative science. We must next define a premiss, aterm, and a syllogism, and the nature of a perfect and of an imperfectsyllogism; and after that, the inclusion or noninclusion of one termin another as in a whole, and what we mean by predicating one term...　

TALES FROM TWO HEMISPHERES.TALES FROM TWOHEMISPHERES.BY HJALMAR HJORTH BOYSEN.THE MAN WHO LOST HISNAME.ION the second day of June, 186, a young Norseman, Halfdan Bjerkby name, landed on the pier at Castle Garden. He passed through thestraight and narrow gate where he was asked his name, birthplace, andhow much money he had,at which he grew very much frightened."And your destination?"demanded the gruff-looking functionary at...　

Aucassin and NicoleteTranslated by Andrew LangINTRODUCTIONThere is nothing in artistic poetry quite akin to "Aucassin andNicolete."By a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the Song-Storyhas escaped those waves of time, which have wrecked the bark ofMenander, and left of Sappho but a few floating fragments. The veryform of the tale is peculiar; we have nothing else from the twelfthor thirteenth century in the alternate prose and verse of the cante-fable. {1} We have fabliaux in verse, and prose Arthurian romances.We have Chansons de Geste, heroic poems like "Roland," unrhymedassonant laisses, but we have not the alternations of prose with...　

The Rivermanby Stewart Edward WhiteIThe time was the year 1872, and the place a bend in the river abovea long pond terminating in a dam. Beyond this dam, and on a flatlower than it, stood a two-story mill structure. Save for a small,stump-dotted clearing, and the road that led from it, all else wasforest. Here in the bottom-lands, following the course of thestream, the hardwoods grew dense, their uppermost branches justbeginning to spray out in the first green of spring. Farther back,where the higher lands arose from the swamp, could be discerned thegraceful frond of white pines and hemlock, and the sturdy tops of...　

Options,by O. HenryCONTENTS"The Rose of Dixie"The Third IngredientThe Hiding of Black BillSchools and SchoolsThimble, ThimbleSupply and DemandBuried TreasureTo Him Who WaitsHe Also ServesThe Moment of VictoryThe Head-HunterNo StoryThe Higher PragmatismBest-SellerRus in UrbeA Poor RuleOPTIONS"THE ROSE OF DIXIE"When The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the man for the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputation, and Southern traditions, he was its foreordained, fit, and logical editor. So, a committee of the 　

The Doom of the Griffithsby Elizabeth GaskellCHAPTER I.I have always been much interested by the traditions which arescattered up and down North Wales relating to Owen Glendower (OwainGlendwr is the national spelling of the name), and I fully enter intothe feeling which makes the Welsh peasant still look upon him as thehero of his country. There was great joy among many of theinhabitants of the principality, when the subject of the Welsh prizepoem at Oxford, some fifteen or sixteen years ago, was announced tobe "Owain Glendwr." It was the most proudly national subject thathad been given for years.Perhaps, some may not be aware that this redoubted chieftain is, even...　

THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDERThe year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in asouthwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit shelteredby the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent;its foam clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden;the air was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the SenorCommandante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deepembrasured window of the Presidio guardroom, he felt the saltbreath of the distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-driedcheeks.The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the windowof the guardroom. He may have been reviewing the events of the...　

The Writings of Abraham Lincolnby Abraham LincolnVOLUME II.1843-1858FIRST CHILDTO JOSHUA F. SPEED.SPRINGFIELD, May 18, 1843.DEAR SPEED:Yours of the 9th instant is duly received, which Ido not meet as a "bore," but as a most welcome visitor. I willanswer the business part of it first.In relation to our Congress matter here, you were right insupposing I would support the nominee. Neither Baker nor I,however, is the man, but Hardin, so far as I can judge frompresent appearances. We shall have no split or trouble about thematter; all will be harmony. In relation to the "coming events"...　

A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET(This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was aboutthe last writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.)I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinlyfeeling toward Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of themovement three years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that.It seemed to me to merely propose to substitute one inadequacyfor another; a sort of patching and plugging poor old dentalrelics with cement and gold and porcelain paste; what was reallyneeded was a new set of teeth. That is to say, a new ALPHABET.The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It...