The Patagoniaby Henry JamesCHAPTER IThe houses were dark in the August night and the perspective ofBeacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshorteneddesert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front,projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as Ipassed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair ofbilliard-balls. As "every one" was out of town perhaps the servants,in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables. Theheat was insufferable and I thought with joy of the morrow, of thedeck of the steamer, the freshening breeze, the sense of getting out...
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSENWHAT ONE CAN INVENTby Hans Christian AndersenThere was once a young man who was studying to be a poet. Hewanted to become one by Easter, and to marry, and to live by poetry.To write poems, he knew, only consists in being able to inventsomething; but he could not invent anything. He had been born toolate- everything had been taken up before he came into the world,and everything had been written and told about."Happy people who were born a thousand years ago!" said he. "Itwas an easy matter for them to become immortal. Happy even was he...
Early Australian Voyagesby John PinkertonContents:IntroductionPelsartTasmanDampierINTRODUCTION.In the days of Plato, imagination found its way, before the mariners, to a new world across the Atlantic, and fabled an Atlantis where America now stands. In the days of Francis Bacon, imagination of the English found its way to the great Southern Continent before the Portuguese or Dutch sailors had sight of it, and it was the home of those wise students of God and nature to whom Bacon gave his New Atlantis. The discoveries of America date from the close of the fifteenth century. The discoveries of Australia date only from the beginning of the seventeenth. The discoveries of the Dutch were lit
Padre IgnacioOr The Song of Temptationby Owen WisterIAt Santa Ysabel del Mar the season was at one of those moments when theair rests quiet over land and sea. The old breezes were gone; the newones were not yet risen. The flowers in the mission garden opened wide;no wind came by day or night to shake the loose petals from their stems.Along the basking, silent, many-colored shore gathered and lingered thecrisp odors of the mountains. The dust hung golden and motionless longafter the rider was behind the hill, and the Pacific lay like a floor ofsapphire, whereon to walk beyond the setting sun into the East. One whitesail shone there. Instead of an hour, it had been from dawn till...
Juanaby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley)DEDICATIONTo Madame la Comtesse Merlin.JUANA(THE MARANAS)CHAPTER IEXPOSITIONNotwithstanding the discipline which Marechal Suchet had introducedinto his army corps, he was unable to prevent a short period oftrouble and disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certainfair-minded military men, this intoxication of victory bore a strikingresemblance to pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it.Order being re-established, each regiment quartered in its respectivelines, and the commandant of the city appointed, military...
The Colour of Lifeby Alice MeynellContents:The Colour of LifeA Point Of BiographyCloudWinds of the WorldThe Honours of MortalityAt Monastery GatesRushes and ReedsEleonora DuseDonkey RacesGrassA Woman in GreySymmetry and IncidentThe Illusion of Historic TimeEyesTHE COLOUR OF LIFERed has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. Butthe true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence,or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeedthe colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen.Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the...
Collected Articles of Frederick Douglassby Frederick DouglassIn the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearlyforty years ago, and in various writings since, I have giventhe public what I considered very good reasons for withholdingthe manner of my escape. In substance these reasons were, first,that such publication at any time during the existence of slaverymight be used by the master against the slave, and preventthe future escape of any who might adopt the same means that I did.The second reason was, if possible, still more binding to silence:the publication of details would certainly have put in perilthe persons and property of those who assisted. Murder itself was...
ROMULUSLegendary, 8th Century B.C.by Plutarchtranslated by John DrydenFrom whom, and for what reason, the city of Rome, a name so great inglory, and famous in the mouths of all men, was so first called,authors do not agree. Some are of opinion that the Pelasgians,wandering over the greater part of the habitable world, and subduingnumerous nations, fixed themselves here, and, from their own greatstrength in war, called the city Rome. Others, that at the taking ofTroy, some few that escaped and met with shipping, put to sea, anddriven by winds, were carried upon the coasts of Tuscany, and came...
THE DISCOVERY OF GUIANATHE DISCOVERY OFGUIANABy Sir Walter Raleigh1- Page 2-THE DISCOVERY OF GUIANAINTRODUCTORY NOTESir Walter Raleigh may be taken as the great typical figure of the ageof Elizabeth. Courtier and statesman, soldier and sailor, scientist and manof letters, he engaged in almost all the main lines of public activity in histime, and was distinguished in them all.His father was a Devonshire gentleman of property, connected with...
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...
Heartbreak Houseby George Bernard ShawA FANTASIA IN THE RUSSIAN MANNER ON ENGLISH THEMESHEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK HALLWhere Heartbreak House StandsHeartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which followsthis preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war.When the play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only theprofessional diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobbyis foreign policy even knew that the guns were loaded. A Russianplaywright, Tchekov, had produced four fascinating dramaticstudies of Heartbreak House, of which three, The Cherry Orchard,Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, had been performed in England....