Classic Books

The Three essays forming this little volume originally appeared in the Deutsche Rundschau of Berlin and are now published in English by virtue of a special arrangement with their distinguished author. The first was translated by Prof. A. H. Gunlogsen of Tacoma, Washington, and the second and third by Dr. Otto W. Weyer of Elmira, N. Y.

The woodcuts in the present volume originally appeared in a large work, in two thick volumes, entitled Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient Names. It has been suggested to me by many, that a collection of these Figures, and their explanation, are more likely to be generally examined than a very voluminous book. The one is, as it were, an alphabet; the other, an essay. The one opens the eyes; the other gives them opportunities to use their vision. The one teaches to read; the other affords means for practice. -Preface

“I offer here some of the essays that I have written in the course of the past ten years. While I was collecting them and (quite patiently) reading them again, I found that a few of them were in direct reference to the moments at which they were severally composed. It was clear that these must have their dates affixed to them. and for sake of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, have thought I need not exclude all such topical remarks as in them too were uttered, nor throw into a past tense such of those remarks as I have retained. Perhaps a book of essays ought to seem as if it had been written a few days before publication. On the other hand—but this is a Note, not a Preface.” -M.B. Rapallo, 1920.

SCENE—”Johnny-The-Priest’s” saloon near South Street, New York City. The stage is divided into two sections, showing a small back room on the right. On the left, forward, of the barroom, a large window looking out on the street. Beyond it, the main entrance—a double swinging door. Farther back, another window. The bar runs from left to right nearly the whole length of the rear wall. In back of the bar, a small showcase displaying a few bottles of case goods, for which there is evidently little call. The remainder of the rear space in front of the large mirrors is occupied by half-barrels of cheap whiskey of the “nickel-a-shot” variety, from which the liquor is drawn by means of spigots. On the right is an open doorway leading to the back room. In the back room are four round wooden tables with five chairs grouped about each. In the rear, a family entrance opening on a side street.

Because redhead Anne Shirley is one of the strongest female characters in children’s literature. Both my daughters love this story.

The story of the Edgeworth Family, if it were properly told, should be as long as the ARABIAN NIGHTS themselves; the thousand and one cheerful intelligent members of the circle, the amusing friends and relations, the charming surroundings, the cheerful hospitable home, all go to make up an almost unique history of a county family of great parts and no little character. The Edgeworths were people of good means and position, and their rental, we are told, amounted to nearly L3000 a year. At one time there was some talk of a peerage for Mr. Edgeworth, but he was considered too independent for a peerage.

The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place, as all garrets should be. Through the open window, by which Anne sat, blew the sweet, scented, sun-warm air of the August afternoon; outside, poplar boughs rustled and tossed in the wind; beyond them were the woods, where Lover’s Lane wound its enchanted path, and the old apple orchard which still bore its rosy harvests munificently. And, over all, was a great mountain range of snowy clouds in the blue southern sky. Through the other window was glimpsed a distant, white-capped, blue sea—the beautiful St. Lawrence Gulf, on which floats, like a jewel, Abegweit, whose softer, sweeter Indian name has long been forsaken for the more prosaic one of Prince Edward Island.

I was then five-and-twenty,—that was a sufficient indication that I had a past, said he, beginning. My own master for some little time, I resolved to travel,—not to complete my education, as they said at the time, but to see the world. I was young, light-hearted, in good health, free from every care, with a well-filled purse; I gave no thought to the future; I indulged every whim,—in fact, I lived like a flower that expands in the sun. The idea that man is but a plant, and that its flower can only live a short time, had not yet occurred to me. “Youth,” says a Russian proverb, “lives upon gilded gingerbread, which it ingenuously takes for bread; then one day even bread fails.” But of what use are these digressions?
I travelled from place to place, with no definite plan, stopping where it suited me, moving at once when I felt the need of seeing new faces,—nothing more.

The penguins of the Antarctic regions very rightly have been termed the true inhabitants of that country. The species is of great antiquity, fossil remains of their ancestors having been found, which showed that they flourished as far back as the eocene epoch. To a degree far in advance of any other bird, the penguin has adapted itself to the sea as a means of livelihood, so that it rivals the very fishes. This proficiency in the water has been gained at the expense of its power of flight, but this is a matter of small moment, as it happens.

Now, this age is being constantly described as a “Democratic” age; “Democracy” is alleged to have affected art, literature, trade and religion alike in the most remarkable ways. It is not only tacitly present in the great bulk of contemporary thought that this “Democracy” is now dominant, but that it is becoming more and more overwhelmingly predominant as the years pass. Allusions to Democracy are so abundant, deductions from its influence so confident and universal, that it is worth while to point out what a very hollow thing the word in most cases really is, a large empty object in thought, of the most vague and faded associations and the most attenuated content, and to inquire just exactly what the original implications and present realities of “Democracy” may be. The inquiry will leave us with a very different conception of the nature and future of this sort of political arrangement from that generally assumed. We have already seen in the discussion of the growth of great cities, that an analytical process may absolutely invert the expectation based on the gross results up-to-date, and I believe it will be equally possible to show cause for believing that the development of Democracy also is, after all, not the opening phase of a world-wide movement going on unbendingly in its present direction, but the first impulse of forces that will finally sweep round into a quite different path. Flying off at a tangent is probably one of the gravest dangers and certainly the one most constantly present, in this enterprise of prophecy. —From the Book

Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 441 BCE. Of the three Theban plays Antigone is the third in order of the events depicted in the plays, but it is the first that was written.

Those who undertake to write histories, do not, I perceive, take that trouble on one and the same account, but for many reasons, and those such as are very different one from another. For some of them apply themselves to this part of learning to show their skill in composition, and that they may therein acquire a reputation for speaking finely: others of them there are, who write histories in order to gratify those that happen to be concerned in them, and on that account have spared no pains, but rather gone beyond their own abilities in the performance: but others there are, who, of necessity and by force, are driven to write history, because they are concerned in the facts, and so cannot excuse themselves from committing them to writing, for the advantage of posterity; nay, there are not a few who are induced to draw their historical facts out of darkness into light, and to produce them for the benefit of the public, on account of the great importance of the facts themselves with which they have been concerned. Now of these several reasons for writing history, I must profess the two last were my own reasons also; for since I was myself interested in that war which we Jews had with the Romans, and knew myself its particular actions, and what conclusion it had, I was forced to give the history of it, because I saw that others perverted the truth of those actions in their writings.

Vitalizing Influence of Certain Ideas One of the greatest discoveries of modern times is the impellent energy of thought. That every idea in consciousness is energizing and carries with it an impulse to some kind of muscular activity is a comparatively new but well-settled principle of psychology. That this principle could be made to serve practical ends seems never to have occurred to anyone until within the last few years.

The present book ‘Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World’ about the application and implications of psychology was written by psychologist-writer Warren Hilton. It was first published in the year 1914.

The line between real facts and facts is different, in fact, it is difficult to attract. For example, in motivational writers in Pascal, generally, how difficult it is to define a point from time to time, arguments, if it is anything else, then formed in conjunction with the facts or groups of facts should go. The theorem is no longer there, but the reader urges the writer to catch the feeling, if he does not have the expression or expression of desire, but his understanding of the specific intuition of his world about it, Change some of the future or current, or actual situation detected in faulty circumstances, to some degree.

“If the ordinary person were asked to say off-hand what he knew of Archimedes, he would probably, at the most, be able to quote one or other of the well-known stories about him: how, after discovering the solution of some problem in the bath, he was so overjoyed that he ran naked to his house, shouting εὕρηκα, εὕρηκα (or, as we might say, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it”); or how he said “Give me a place to stand on and I will move the earth”; or again how he was killed, at the capture of Syracuse in the Second Punic War, by a Roman soldier who resented being told to get away from a diagram drawn on the ground which he was studying.” -an excerpt

This book is a quite successful attempt at summing up the entire body of work of the great Archimedes. It contains Geometry as well as Mechanics and Hydrostatics.

Architects of Fate, or, Steps to Success and Power is a book of inspiration to character-building, self-culture, to a full and rich manhood and womanhood, by most invigorating examples of noble achievement.

Aria Da Capo by Edna Vincent St. Millay Throughout much of her career, Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the most successful and respected poets in America.

Aristotle’ is critical work on the ancient Greek scientist and philosopher Aristotle by English political radical and classical historian George Grote.

The following Translation of Aristotle’s History of Animals has been made from the text of Schneider. In a work of considerable difficulty it is hardly possible entirely to avoid errors; but it is hoped that those which have escaped are neither numerous nor important. The notes of Schneider have been consulted throughout; and in places of difficulty the English translation by Taylor, the French of Camus, and the German of Strack, have been severally referred to.
The work itself is the most ancient and celebrated contribution to science which has come down to us; and it is hardly possible, when we consider the means of observation which were accessible at the time, to imagine a work of more accurate observation. From the numerous quotations in which our author avails himself of the experience of his predecessors in the same field, as well as corrects their errors, there can be no doubt that Aristotle had the advantage of many works which have perished in the lapse of ages. In the Appendix to the present Translation will be found the Essay of Schneider on the sources whence Aristotle derived his knowledge of the animals he describes; and these sources, together with his own accurate observations, are probably sufficient to account for the correct knowledge of the history of animals displayed throughout the work.

The present book ‘Army Life in a Black Regiment’ was written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. It gives a description of the life in an army regiment of black Americans. It was first published in the year 1886.

The story of Arnold of Winkelried, the famous hero of Switzerland, and of his heroic death in the battle of Sempach, will never lose its interest. The learned iconoclasts, having the advantage of the obscurity of fourteenth-century history, may continue to declare that he is only a legendary hero, as they have asserted of William Tell, but Winkelried, like Tell, still lives in the hearts of the Swiss people as the actual embodiment of patriotic devotion, love of freedom, and love of humanity, and thus he will remain in the hearts of men for all time.

RODERICK BARCLUGH was invited to dine with the FitzMaurices and Benedict Arnold was to meet him.
The arrival in Philadelphia of a gentleman with credentials from Dr. Franklin to the Secretary of Congress, who had much influence with the French Court, and who had bills of exchange for twenty thousand pounds sterling created stirring comment among the fashionables. He was to meet without delay the choice spirits on the inside of Philadelphia’s aristocratical party.
Robert FitzMaurice’s mansion, to which had been made great additions, to suit the tastes of the new proprietor, was an old Colonial landmark. The ambition of this merchant prince and financier had ever been to establish his family and his fortunes under the English system of aristocracy, upon such a grand scale of magnificence that he could claim all the blandishments of a crest and a title which, of course, belong to a person of substance. His entertainments were numerous, and there gathered all the intriguers in and out of Congress,—those who sanctioned the Revolution on political grounds but who shuddered at the utterance of the word ‘democracy.’ The clergy, the judiciary, the lawyers, the knights-errant and the financiers, found congenial atmosphere and hospitality in this house; for schemes were there laid to win independence, but, once won, the English Constitution and its institutions of aristocracy and finance were the only safeguards of prosperity and liberty which the common people should consider.