Idle Ideas in 1905

CHAP. PAGE I. ARE WE AS INTERESTING AS WE THINK WE ARE? 1 II. SHOULD WOMEN BE BEAUTIFUL? 16 III. WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO BE MERRY? 29 IV. DO WE LIE A-BED TOO LATE? 46 V. SHOULD...

In future years there will be no need for a young man to look about him for a wife; he will take the nearest girl, tell her his ideal, and, if she really care for him, she will...

There is a statue of Aphrodite in one of the smaller Paris parks. Twice in the same week, without particularly meaning it, I found myself early in the morning standing in front...

I AM chary nowadays of offering counsel in connection with subjects concerning which I am not and cannot be an authority. Long ago I once took upon myself to write a paper about...

What a world of trouble to both writer and to reader is here saved. “A typical young Englishman!” The author probably wrote five pages, elaborating. The five words of the sub-ed...

There is not much similarity between the two books, yet when recalling Emily Bronte my thoughts always run on to Olive Schreiner. Here, again, was a young girl with the voice of...

The Russian peasant, when he rises, will prove more terrible, more pitiless than were the men of 1790. He is less intelligent, more brutal. They sing a wild, sad song, these Rus...

The idea has been suggested that the railway time and the town time should be made to conform. The argument against the idea is that if it were carried out there would be nothin...

I left. It was growing late. I felt it was time to leave. Whether she took my counsel I cannot say. I only know that there still remain in Europe a goodly number of American wiv...

“The dear Count’s wedding,” announces the chairwoman, “you will all be pleased to hear, has been fixed for the fourteenth, at eleven o’clock in the morning. The entire village w...

“It is quite true, my dear girl,” I should say to her, “something is wrong—very wrong. But it is not the American man. Never you mind the American man: you leave him to worry ou...

“I am inclined to think, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “that you are not very far from the truth. A friend of mine, a year ago, was very bitter on this subject of Chinese cheap labour....

She has spent three winters in Germany since then. Now when she feels like passing through a door that is standing wide open just in front of her, and which leads to just the pl...