Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches

Revisiting the Earth

To revisit the earth after one's departure from it has always been a common wish among men. The frequency with which this desire is expressed in biographies and in literature, keeps the project alive, and works it to the front in one's plans. Benjamin Franklin presents the tho...

Chapters

14. CHAPTER XIV

When in the company of a citizen, I am reviewing my place of early residence, while he obviously knows the town well, yet I see all that he does and recollection faithful to its...

13. CHAPTER XIII

There are three things which every man persuades himself he can do better than anyone else: poke the fire, handle the reins, and tell a story. Unless the poker is hidden, the ne...

11. CHAPTER XI

It is said that at Florence there is a circular hall, faced with separate mirrors. In the center is a statue of exquisite beauty. Each of these mirrors reflects the image of the...

12. CHAPTER XII

One of the outstanding features of revisiting the earth was to find, in the banks and stores, in the professional and political offices, the sons of women, full of thought, who...

18. CHAPTER XVIII

Forty years were long enough to eliminate all the Israelites of one generation. It appears that in that length of time all the adults of one generation that had dwelt in Egypt w...

10. CHAPTER X

It is a matter of common knowledge that Washington at the time of his death was the richest man in the country. All are familiar with the fact that he acquired property through...

15. CHAPTER XV

I can thankfully say that I have been on earth twice, once walking on air, when I graduated from college, and again when I, walking across the College campus, with heart lifted...

17. CHAPTER XVII

Ernest Renan tells us of the vanished city Is, which, years ago, disappeared below the waves. Up from those depths, fishermen say, that on calm summer nights they can hear the b...

9. CHAPTER IX

On revisiting the earth nothing is more remarkable than to find that with each man goes one striking characterization. There is usually one prevalent well-founded recollection b...

8. CHAPTER VIII

If houses have souls, as Hawthorne believed and taught, and can admire and remember, there is one residence, toward which I turn my willing pilgrim feet, on revisiting the earth...

6. CHAPTER VI

It is with diffidence that I name a suggestion that has been very much on my heart since retreading these streets and revisiting these early haunts. It is to get rich, not with...

4. CHAPTER IV

The particular thing taught in the early school, as I recall it, was to make a bow. When a boy was about to speak a piece he made his manners and at the conclusion of his addres...

16. CHAPTER XVI

At the sight of the Eternal City, Luther prostrated himself and exclaimed,--Holy Rome, I salute thee. A graduate of Andover, on approaching the Sacred Hill, feels a disposition...

5. CHAPTER V

In Bates Hall in the old public library in Boston, lying open on one of the ledges to any visitor, was an Ignorance Book, in which any one could ask a question on which he desir...

3. CHAPTER III

The flood gates of memory opened wide as the lamented Queen of England, with the weight of eighty years resting upon her, was wheeled in her chair, from room to room in the old...

7. CHAPTER VII

The proof that a robust, daring, well-fed boy starts by being a sort of half domesticated little animal as well as a Sunday school immortal is set out in his school fights. Thes...

1. CHAPTER I

To revisit the earth after one's departure from it has always been a common wish among men. The frequency with which this desire is expressed in biographies and in literature, k...

2. CHAPTER II

The day is blue above, without a cloud. Will you walk with me through our village, gentle reader? We will begin at the handsome open square. Now as we advance my heart leaps at...