Introduction: The HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. IN September of the year during the February of which Hawthorne had completed ?The Scarlet Letter,? he began ?The House of the Seven Gables.? Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small red wooden house, still standing at the date of this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl. ?I sha'n't have the new story ready by November,? he explained to his publ...
When we think of the enormous number of volumes that have been published on the question as to where Hannibal crossed the Alps, without our being able to decide to-day whether it was (according to Whittaker and Rivaz) by Lyon, Geneva, the Great Saint-Bernard, and the valley of Aosta; or (according to Letronne, Follard, Saint-Simon and Fortia d'Urbano) by the Isere, Grenoble, Saint- Bonnet, Monte Genevra, Fenestrella, and the Susa passage; or (according to Larauza) by the...
Excerpt: Buckskin. The town lay sprawled over half a square mile of alkali plain, its main Street depressing in its width, for those who were responsible for its inception had worked with a generosity born of the knowledge that they had at their immediate and unchallenged disposal the broad lands of Texas and New Mexico on which to assemble a grand total of twenty buildings, four of which were of wood. As this material was scarce, and had to be brought from where the wat...
Introduction: Martin Luther died on the 18th of February, 1546, and the first publication of his ?Table Talk??Tischreden?by his friend, Johann Goldschmid (Aurifaber), was in 1566, in a substantial folio. The talk of Luther was arranged, according to its topics, into eighty chapters, each with a minute index of contents. The whole work in a complete octavo edition, published at Stuttgart and Leipzig in 1836, occupies 1,390 closely printed pages, equivalent to 2,780 pages,...
And your daughter? said Lady Greyswood; tell me about her. She must be nice. Oh, yes, she's nice enough. She's a great comfort. MrsKnocker hesitated a moment, then she went on: Unfortunately she's not good-looking — not a bit. That doesn't matter, when they're not ill-natured, rejoined, insincerely, Lady Greyswood, who had the remains of great beauty. Oh, but poor Fanny is quite extraordinarily plain. I assure you it does matter. She knows it herself; she suffers from it...
I have also brought the literature up to date, and corrected a few printing errors, so that this issue may be called a revised edition. A learned and fastidious German critic and professional church historian has pronounced this work to be far in advance of any German work in the fullness of its digest of the discoveries and researches of the last thirty years. (Theolog. Literatur-Zeitung, for March 22, 1884.) But the Bryennios discovery, and the extensive literature whi...
Excerpt: THE venerable merchants put their heads close together. Their tones were guarded, furtive. ?It is to be hoped,? the first one breathed, ?that the spirit of Lin San Fu will follow his mortal flesh.? His companion?s straggly beard hobbled in animation. ?Aiee!? he agreed, in a voice filled with fear.? It is most earnestly to be hoped! It belongs in the ancestral land.? Both, then, looked anxiously behind them, padded off into the night of China Hill. Behind them, a...
Excerpt: ?WHO gave this cup?? The secret thou wouldst steal Its brimming flood forbids it to reveal: No mortal?s eye shall read it till he first Cool the red throat of thirst. If on the golden floor one draught remain, Trust me, thy careful search will be in vain; Not till the bowl is emptied shalt thou know The names enrolled below. Deeper than Truth lies buried in her well Those modest names the graven letters spell Hide from the sight; but wait, and thou shalt see Who the good angels be ...
Preface: By this time the American people have probably become convinced that the Germans deliberately planned the conquest of the world. Yet they hesitate to convict on circumstantial evidence and for this reason all eye witnesses to this, the greatest crime in modern history, should volunteer their testimony. I have therefore laid aside any scruples I had as to the propriety of disclosing to my fellow countrymen the facts which I learned while representing them in Turk...
Excerpt: In a beautiful and retired part of England lived Mrs. Villars, a lady whose accurate understanding, benevolent heart, and steady temper, peculiarly fitted her for the most difficult, as well as most important of all occupations?the education of youth. This task she had undertaken; and twenty young persons were put under her care, with the perfect confidence of their parents. No young people could be happier; they were good and gay, emulous, but not envious of ea...
Excerpt: THE last time I came from Europe, although I was supposed to be in charge of my pretty young niece, I did not appear on deck until the last day of the voyage. I was tired, and I knew that Puss had plenty of acquaintances on board. She is the soft?eyed, appealing, helpless sort of girl who is always looked after. When I finally ascended to the upper world, I was, therefore, both surprised and remorseful to find her looking troubled and almost distressed.
Excerpt: Whether sizing up the windows, and the building containing them, of the stingiest, greediest surgeon?at least so I had gathered!?in all Chicago; the man who?as I?d also gathered!?could outbargain 4 Scotchmen and 20 Armenians?would give me any clue as to the outcome of any dealings with him, was problematical, perhaps. But?lo and behold!?that operation was to reveal something almost as valuable: MacLeish MacPherson was actually in his offices at this outlandish h...
The facts which I am about to relate happened to myself some sixteen or eighteen years ago, at which time I served Her Majesty as an Inspector of Schools. Now, the Provincial Inspector is perpetually on the move; and I was still young enough to enjoy a life of constant travelling. There are, indeed, many less agreeable ways in which an unbeneficed parson may contrive to scorn delights and live laborious days. In remote places where strangers are scarce, his annual visit ...
I have been twice in England. In 1833, on my return from a short tour in Sicily, Italy, and France, I crossed from Boulogne, and landed in London at the Tower stairs. It was a dark Sunday morning; there were few people in the streets; and I remember the pleasure of that first walk on English ground, with my companion, an American artist, from the Tower up through Cheapside and the Strand, to a house in Russell Square, whither we had been recommended to good chambers. For...
Excerpt: ?Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of Books...
Excerpt: I have slightly expanded certain parts of this paper since reading it. It has therefore probably lost any unity which it may once have possessed. It will be criticized for its undue emphasis on certain unpleasant topics. This is necessary if people are to be induced to think about them, and it is the whole business of a university teacher to induce people to think.
Chapter I. From Fernando Po to Loango Bay. -- the German Expedition. During the hot season of 1863, Nanny Po, as the civilized African calls this lofty and beautiful island, had become a charnel-house, a dark and dismal tomb of Europeans. The yellow fever of the last year, which wiped out in two months one-third of the white colony -- more exactly, 78 out of 250 -- had not reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. The earth was all wate...
Excerpt: THE PASSION OF THE HOLY MARTYRS PERPETUA AND FELICITAS. Preface.[1] IF ancient illustrations of faith which both testify to God?s grace and tend to man?s edification are collected in writing, so that by the perusal of them, as if by the reproduction of the facts, as well God may be honoured, as man may be strengthened; why should not new instances be also collected, that shall be equally suitable for both purposes, if only on the ground that these modern example...
Prologue: The tableau curtains are closed. An English archdeacon comes through them in a condition of extreme irritation. He speaks through the curtains to someone behind them. The ARCHDEACON. Once for all, Ermyntrude, I cannot afford to maintain you in your present extravagance. [He goes to a flight of steps leading to the stalls and sits down disconsolately on the top step. A fashionably dressed lady comes through the curtains and contemplates him with patient obstinac...
Introduction: When the complete works of Samuel Rowlands were issued by the Hunterian Club in 1872?1880, in an edition of two hundred and ten copies, the Editor was obliged to omit from the collection the poem entitled ?The Bride.? No copy of this tract was supposed to be extant. Twenty years later, in the article on Rowlands in the Dictionary of National Biography, Mr. Sidney Lee also names this poem as one of the author?s lost works. All that was known of it was the en...