The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

The name of Henry Ryecroft never became familiar to what is called the reading public. A year ago obituary paragraphs in the literary papers gave such account of him as was thou...

Waking at early dawn used to be one of the things I most dreaded. The night which made me capable of resuming labour had brought no such calm as should follow upon repose; I wok...

The mere sight of N-, to say nothing of his talk, did me good. If appearances can ever be trusted, there are few men who get more enjoyment out of life. His hardships were never...

I know men who say they had as lief read any book in a library copy as in one from their own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. For one thing, I know every book of mine by its...

A little plant of which I am very fond is the rest-harrow. When the sun is hot upon it, the flower gives forth a strangely aromatic scent, very delightful to me. I know the caus...

Some one, I see, is lifting up his sweet voice in praise of Conscription. It is only at long intervals that one reads this kind of thing in our reviews or newspapers, and I am h...

To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume--some hidden link of association in what I read--I know not what it may have been--took me back to school-boy ho...

Yet that, perhaps, will be the mind of coming man; if not the final attainment of his intellectual progress, at all events a long period of self-satisfaction, assumed as finalit...

For my own part, I needed no injunction to that effort of avoidance. Many a London garret knows how I struggled with the unwelcome chamber-fellow. I marvel she did not abide wit...

I have often heard it said that the touring cyclist has caused the revival of wayside inns. It may be so, but the touring cyclist seems to be very easily satisfied. Unless we ar...

Here we anchored, and lay all day long. Provisions running short, a boat had to be sent to land, and the sailors purchased, among other things, some peculiarly detestable bread-...

Thus Nathaniel Hawthorne, at Brook Farm. In the bitterness of his disillusion he went too far. Labour may be, and very often is, an accursed and a brutalizing thing, but assured...

As so often when my thought has gone forth in praise of things English, I find myself tormented by an after-thought--the reflection that I have praised a time gone by. Now, in t...

I have been dull to-day, haunted by the thought of how much there is that I would fain know, and how little I can hope to learn. The scope of knowledge has become so vast. I put...

The political services of Puritanism were inestimable; they will be more feelingly remembered when England has once more to face the danger of political tyranny. I am thinking n...