Books

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass.

Thirteen years ago, I came to your door, a weary fugitive from chains and stripes. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was hungry, and you fed me. Naked was I, and you clothed me. Even a name by which to be known among men, slavery had denied me. You bestowed upon me your own. Base, indeed, should I be, if I ever forget what I owe to you, or do anything to disgrace that honored name!

Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe’s traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on individual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and has given an impetus to modern political and social activism.

This book contains a valuable collection of Gandhiji’s thoughts on Nature Cure etc. and is indeed as rich in its information as it is constructive in its outlook. I commend this book for serious study by all those who are interested in cure of ailments through natural remedies.

The rapid and enormous growth of scientific invention makes it obvious that Violence ten times more potent and sinister than that which we are witnessing to-day may very shortly be available for our use — or abuse — in War. On the other hand who can doubt that the rapid growth of interchange and understanding among the peoples of the world is daily making Warfare itself, and the barbarities inevitably connected with it, more abhorrent to our common humanity?

It all happened on a certain winter evening more than a year ago, after the last men’s dinner-party I gave to my friends in the little house which I had taken furnished in the Avenue Victor Hugo.

Four facts dominate and summarize the whole question about the origin of the name of America: 1st Amerrique is the Indian name of some mountains between Juigalpa and La Libertad, Department of Chontales, that separate Lake Nicaragua from the coast of mosquitoes. . In Mayan language it means “Country of the wind,” “Country where the wind always blows.”
2. Vespucci’s proper name is, in Italian and Spanish, Alberico , in Latin Albericus .
3.º No name has ever suffered so many variations and combinations, some intentionally, others unconsciously, like Vespucci. Such confusion is without example, it is unique in the history of famous men. With the exception of the Alberico name , none of the other names is found in the nomenclatures and calendars, at that time so rich, of Italian and Spanish saints, and this in time of the greatest religious fervor, and of the absolute supremacy of Roman Catholic Christianity. Let’s list some of those names: Americus , Amerrigo , Amerigo , Amérigo , Amergio , Americo , Almerigo , Albertutio , Almerico , Morigo , Damerrigho , Armerico , Emeric , Aïmeric , Alméric and Améric . These are not diminutives, nor usual alterations, whether in Italian, Spanish or French, by Alberico , Albericus, Albéric , Albert .
Finally, before 1507, the date of the publication of the name Americus by Jean Basin, in Saint Dié, this name is not found in any printed document, or even manuscript, of recognized and incontestable authenticity.

First published in the year 1916, the present book ‘Newcastle-Upon-Tyne; A Sketch-Book’ is a compilation of twenty four of Robert J. S. Bertram’s sketches.

Old, old is the sea to-day.
A sudden stealth of age
Has torn away
The texture of its youth and grace,
And filched the rose of daybreak from its waters.
Now lines of grey
And dragging vapors on its brow
Heavily are drawn;
And it lies broken as with centuries,
Though yesterday,

The present mystery novel ‘No Name’ was written by famous novelist Wilkie Collins. It was first published in the year 1862. It was first serialised in Charles Dickens’ popular magazine ‘All the Year Round’ before publishing in a full book format.

A PREFACE to a book, is a sort of pedestal where the author gets up to make a speech; frequently an apologizing ground, where he “drops in—hopes he don’t intrude;” a little strip of green carpet near the foot-lights, where he bows to the audience, and with a trembling voice asks them to look with lenient eyes on his darling bantling that is just coming before the world. Very likely he tells of the numerous difficulties and disadvantages under which he has labored; perhaps apologizes for his style, under the plea of writing against time, and that he has been greatly hurried. Readers and critics are usually indulgent towards the minor faults of an author, provided he entertains or instructs them; but they pay little attention to special pleadings.

North and South’ is a social novel by English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It was first published in the year 1855 in England. North and South is set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the North of England. Forced to leave her home in the tranquil rural south, Margaret Hale settles with her parents in Milton where she witnesses the brutal world wrought by the industrial revolution and employers and workers clashing in the first organised strikes. Sympathetic to the poor, whose courage and tenacity she admires and among whom she makes friends, she clashes with John Thornton, a cotton mill manufacturer who belongs to the nouveaux riches class and whose contemptuous attitude to workers Margaret rejects. The novel traces both her growing understanding of the complexity of labor relations and her impact on well-meaning mill owners, and her conflicted relationship with John Thornton.

First published in the year 1904, famous English traveller and colonial writer Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard’ is set in the fictitious South American republic of Costaguana.

Not George Washington’ is an autobiographical novel by P.G. Woodehouse, presented in two parts of narratives.

Nature may have done all for him that she could, have given him a handsome outside and a noble inside, but the world of inanimate objects is against him.

Alan Alexander Milne (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was a British author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children’s poems

The book offers bright glimpses of the yet undiscovered nooks of the private life of the great Swami Vivekananda, and the period of training through which the much lamented Sister Nivedita had to pass in the hands of her Master, where she came out before the public gaze as the wonderful champion of truth and justice and righteousness and of the cause of India-will meet with the warm reception at the hands of the public, that it fully deserves.
—Saradananda

“Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect edition of Shelley’s Poems. These being at last happily removed, I hasten to fulfil an important duty,—that of giving the productions of a sublime genius to the world, with all the correctness possible, and of, at the same time, detailing the history of those productions, as they sprang, living and warm, from his heart and brain. I abstain from any remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not the time to relate the truth; and I should reject any colouring of the truth.” -Preface by Mary Shelley

The scene was the University Club. The talk spread over a good deal of space, as talk will when pink cocktails, or “green gardens in a glass” confront, or are in front of, the talkees. Dickie said it couldn’t be done and Bob said it was possible and that he could do it. He might not have felt such confidence had it not been for the verdant stimulation. He could have done anything just then, so why not this particular feat or stunt? and who was this temerarious one and what was he like?

The “Nurse and Spy” is simply a record of events which have transpired in the experience and under the observation of one who has been on the field and participated in numerous battles—among which are the first and second Bull Run, Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, the Seven days in front of Richmond, Antietam, and Fredericksburg—serving in the capacity of “Spy” and as “Field Nurse” for over two years.

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office.

It ought to be matter of surprise how men live in the midst of marvels, without taking heed of their existence. The slightest derangement of their accustomed walks in political or social life shall excite all their wonder, and furnish themes for their discussions, for months; while the prodigies that come from above are presented daily to their eyes, and are received without surprise, as things of course. In a certain sense, this may be well enough, inasmuch as all which comes directly from the hands of the Creator may be said so far to exceed the power of human comprehension, as to be beyond comment; but the truth would show us that the cause of this neglect is rather a propensity to dwell on such interests as those over which we have a fancied control, than on those which confessedly transcend our understanding. Thus is it ever with men. The wonders of creation meet them at every turn, without awakening reflection, while their minds labor on subjects that are not only ephemeral and illusory, but which never attain an elevation higher than that the most sordid interests can bestow.

Max Heindel, a trained clairvoyant and investigator of the super-physical worlds, devoted much time and effort to ascertaining the real causes of physical and mental disorders as revealed in the realm of cause, the higher or superphysical planes, and this volume contains the fruits of his labor.

Certainly the everyday processes of the development, nutrition, and repair of our body and brain, which go on automatically and unconsciously within us, are far beyond the powers of our conscious personality.

“IT is a wonderful fact in the swift expansion of mechanical knowledge and appliances of the last hundred years that while for unknown ages the wind was the only propelling force used for purposes of navigation, apart from the rude application of power through oars worked by men, the whole scheme of steam transport has grown, practically, to its present wonderful perfection within the lifetime of men yet living.” -an excerpt