American Men of Mind

This has been a country celebrated for its great fortunes, and the makers of some of those fortunes will be considered in the chapter dealing with "men of affairs"; but many who...

It is a curious fact that the men to whom the world owes most generally get the least reward. The genius in art or letters is seldom recognized as such until long after he himse...

To give even the briefest account, within the limits of a single chapter, of the lives of noteworthy American scientists and educators is, of course, quite beyond the bounds of...

If background and tradition are needed for literature, they are even more needed for art, and it is curiously worth noting that the background and traditions of England did not...

Almost from the first years of her existence America has been known chiefly as a commercial nation, as a nation noted for her men of affairs, rather than for her artists and men...

If background and tradition are needed for painting, how much more are they needed for sculpture! America was settled by a people entirely without sculptural tradition, for, in...

"Poetry," says the Century dictionary, "is that one of the fine arts which addresses itself to the feelings and the imagination by the instrumentality of musical and moving word...

The golden age of American acting was not so very long ago. Most white-haired men remember it, and love to talk of the days of Booth and Forrest and Charlotte Cushman. Joseph Je...

We must refer, too, to the most distinctive American humorist of the last half century, Samuel Langhorne Clemens--"Mark Twain." Born in Missouri, knocking about from pillar to p...

It is true of American literature that it can boast no name of commanding genius--no dramatist to rank with Shakespeare, no poet to rank with Keats, no novelist to rank with Tha...

In the companion volume of this series, "Men of Action," the attempt was made to give the essential facts of American history by sketching in broad outline the men who made that...