Preface: We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in either case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and trace the history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to be no more than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling idea of western civilisation. For the earthly Progress of humanity is the general test to which social aims and theories are submitted as a matter of course. The phrase CIVILISATION AND PROGRESS has be...
Excerpt: Twenty?one years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascend the platform, and there to stand and deliver. The voice was the voice of President North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used by Cicero and Julius Caesar. I remember the flattering invitation ? it is the classic tag that clings to the graduate long after he has forgotten the gender of the nouns that end in ?um ? orator proximus?, the grateful voice said, ?ascendat, videlicet...
Voltaire and the other eighteenth-century philosophers, who held religions to be the invention of priests, have been scorned as superficial by later investigators. But was there not something in their view, after all? Have not we, of a later and more critical day, got into so inveterate a habit of digging deep that we sometimes fail to see what lies before our very noses? Modern Japan is there to furnish an example. The Japanese are, it is true, commonly said to be an ir...
Preface: The object of this book is to teach children to treat all living creatures with considerate kindness and to appreciate the services of man?s helpers in the animal world. In many homes this teaching is entirely neglected, and it is left for the school?teacher to arouse interest in the animals dependent upon us, and to encourage pity and compassion for their suffering. Sir Arthur Helps says: ?The great advancement of the world, throughout all ages, is to be measur...
Excerpt: I At eight o?clock in the inner vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office, Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their aunt Aunt Wess? were still waiting for the rest of the theatre?party to appear. A great, slow?moving press of men and women in evening dress filled the vestibule from one wall to another. A confused murmur of talk and the shuffling of many feet arose on all sides, while from time to time, when the outside and ins...
This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a bit of land, oh, not so very large, but fenced in, to avoid the drawbacks of a public way; an abandoned, barren, sun-scorched bit of land, favoured by thistles and by Wasps and Bees. Here, without fear of being troubled by the passers-by, I could consult the Ammophila and the Sphex (two species of Digger-or Hunting-wasps. Translator's Note.) and engage in that difficult conversation whose questions and answers have experime...
CHAPTER I: It was an uninspiring bit of street: narrow, paved with cobble; hot and noisy in summer, reeking with unwholesome mud during the drizzling and snow-slimed months of winter. It looked anything this May after noon except a starting-place for drama. But, then, the great dramas of life often avoid the splendid estates and trappings with which conventional romance would equip them, and have their beginnings in unlikeliest environment; and thence sweep on to a noble...
Though twenty years have passed since the first appearance of the Breitmann Ballads in a collected form, the author is deeply gratified -- and not less sincerely grateful to the public -- in knowing that Hans still lives in many memories, that he continues to be quoted when writers wish to illustrate an exuberantly joyous barty or ladies so very fashionably dressed as to recall de maidens mit nodings on, and that no inconsiderable number of those who are beginning German...
Excerpt: THE CARNIVAL OF THE ROMANTIC. Whither went the nine old Muses, daughters of Jupiter and the Goddess of Memory, after their seats on Helicon, Parnassus, and Olympus were barbarized? Not far away. They hovered like witches around the seething caldron of early Christian Europe, in which, ?with bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,? a new civilization was forming, mindful of the brilliant lineage of their worshippers, from Homer to Boethius, looking upon the vexed and b...
Excerpt: Book I Of Man?s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa?s brook t...
Excerpt: ?PRISONER,? said the president of the military tribunal, ?have you anything to add in your own defense?? ?Yes, Colonel,? answered the prisoner. ?You assigned me a little lawyer who has defended me in his fashion. I want to defend myself in my own. ?My name is Martin, Louis Joseph. I'm fifty?five. My father was a locksmith. He had a little shop up in the St. Martin quarter, and he had only a little business. We were able to live. I learned to read in the National...
Some people in this world who turn round and round in a daily circle of small things, like squirrels in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure a young creature, conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; this struggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer and longer and more and more difficult, but at the beginning it is an almost certain remedy for sorrow. To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline owed the fact that she did not fall into t...
Excerpt: TO THE FIRST EDITION OF MEISTER?S APPRENTICESHIP: WHETHER for it be that the quantity of genius among ourselves and the French, and the number of works more lasting than brass produced by it, have of late been so considerable as to make us independent of additional supplies; or that, in our ancient aristocracy of intellect, we disdain to be assisted by the Germans, whom, by a species of second?sight, we have discovered, before knowing any thing about them, to be...
Excerpt: DOROTHEA reposed with her shoulders in the shade of the bulkhead and her bare feet burrowing in the sun?warmed sand. Beneath her shoulder blades was a bulky and disheveled volume?a bound year of Godey?s Lady Book of the vintage of the early seventies.
I have always longed to tell a simple and true story, which should strike terror into two young lovers, and drive them to take refuge each in the other's heart, as two children cling together at the sight of a snake by a woodside. At the risk of spoiling my story and of being taken for a coxcomb, I state my intention at the outset. I myself played a part in this almost commonplace tragedy; so if it fails to interest you, the failure will be in part my own fault, in part ...
Excerpt: Chapter 1. BEAUTIFUL AS THE DAY. The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty hired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and to say, ?Aren't we nearly there?? And every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said, ?Oh, is THIS it?? But it never was, till they reached the very top of the hill, just past the chalk?quarry and before you come to the gravel?pi...
Excerpt: place for half a year longer, till another young woman can be trained up to it. I am going to be married. I shouldn't have been out last night, and I shouldn't have been out to?night, but that my Dick (he is the young man I am going to be married to) lies ill, and I help his mother and sister to watch him. Don't take on so, don?t take on so!? ?O good Sally, dear Sally,? moans the lady, catching at her dress entreatingly. ?As you are hopeful, and I am hopeless; a...
Whether the ensuing pages were really the dream or vision of some very pious and holy person; or whether they were really written in the other world, and sent back to this, which is the opinion of many (though I think too much inclining to superstition); or lastly, whether, as infinitely the greatest part imagine, they were really the production of some choice inhabitant of New Bethlehem, is not necessary nor easy to determine. It will be abundantly sufficient if I give ...
Introduction: The BACKGROUND The main theme of the present study will be the development of Labour organisation and policy during the current century; for it is in this period that the most characteristic phases of Australian Labour have manifested themselves. Moreover, the course of Australian economic and industrial growth down to the date of the Federation of the Colonies has been admirably and exhaustively described by Sir Timothy Coghlan and other writers. Neverthel...
Excerpt: No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought