Essays on things

ESSAYS ON MODERN NOVELISTS ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS ESSAYS ON BOOKS ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS ESSAYS ON THINGS HOWELLS, JAMES, BRYANT AND OTHER ESSAYS READING THE BIBLE TEA...

_Punch_ is the best of comic papers; it expresses the genuine original humour of a humorous folk. I remember seeing there a picture of the village orchestra, and as the director...

I never miss a good chance for a river voyage. One has the element of adventure as one rounds the next bend. I have been on the rivers of southern Florida, I have been on the Sa...

During the engagement of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, when their communications had to be mainly through the post office, she wrote out her religious views, and he imm...

Still later I learned that Goethe was right when he said that in order to understand a poet you must personally visit the country where he wrote. Literary geography is seldom ta...

Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps th...

No great writer of modern times has written more persuasively of the Christian way of life than Tolstoi; there is no doubt that his stories and tracts have had an immense influe...

Those young men were accurate calculators. Three minutes for breakfast, one minute to reach chapel. They hurried the last griddle cake into their faces as they left the dining h...

Thus recent definitions of the optimist illustrate the superior attitude of the pessimist: “An optimist is a fool unfamiliar with the facts.” “An optimist is one who falls out o...

In 1820 the American missionaries arrived. They found the natives amiable, like many of the children of the sun, but without religion, morality or education. Just the most bless...

Many Americans have such a militant consciousness of independence that they cannot endure the thought of having America’s destiny in any way influenced by hands across the sea....

But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are...

If William had not conquered England, it is probable that today English speech would have inflexions and grammatical gender. George Moore says that he dislikes English, it is a...

Now it seems to me that expressions of this kind are as fallacious and as injurious as any booster’s standard of mere quantity; for what are these gentlemen trying to say except...