The Soul of the Far Eastby Percival LowellContentsChapter 1. IndividualityChapter 2. FamilyChapter 3. AdoptionChapter 4. LanguageChapter 5. Nature and ArtChapter 6. ArtChapter 7. ReligionChapter 8. ImaginationChapter 1. Individuality.The boyish belief that on the other side of our globe all things are of necessity upside down is startlingly brought back to the man when he first sets foot at Yokohama. If his initial glance does not, to be sure, disclose the natives in the every-day feat of standing calmly on their heads, an attitude which his youthful imagination conceived to be a necessary
THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMSThe summer moon, which shines in so many a tale, was beaming overa broad extent of uneven country. Some of its brightest rays wereflung into a spring of water, where no traveller, toiling, as thewriter has, up the hilly road beside which it gushes, ever failedto quench his thirst. The work of neat hands and considerate artwas visible about this blessed fountain. An open cistern, hewnand hollowed out of solid stone, was placed above the waters,which filled it to the brim, but by some invisible outlet wereconveyed away without dripping down its sides. Though the basin...
The Stolen White Elephantby Mark Twain[Left out of A Tramp Abroad, because it was feared that some of theparticulars had been exaggerated, and that others were not true. Beforethese suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press.M.T.]The following curious history was related to me by a chance railwayacquaintance. He was a gentleman more than seventy years of age, and histhoroughly good and gentle face and earnest and sincere manner imprintedthe unmistakable stamp of truth upon every statement which fell from hislips. He said:...
THE STARIt was on the first day of the New Year that the announcementwas made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that themotion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planetsthat wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy hadalready called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocityin December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated tointerest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants wereunaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside theastronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint...
JACK AND THE BEANSTALKJACK SELLS THE COWONCE upon a time there was a poor widow who lived in a littlecottage with her only son Jack.Jack was a giddy, thoughtless boy, but very kind-hearted andaffectionate. There had been a hard winter, and after it the poorwoman had suffered from fever and ague. Jack did no work as yet,and by degrees they grew dreadfully poor. The widow saw thatthere was no means of keeping Jack and herself from starvationbut by selling her cow; so one morning she said to her son, `I amtoo weak to go myself, Jack, so you must take the cow to market...
BOOK II: OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE UTOPIANSTHERE are several sorts of religions, not only in different partsof the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun,others the moon or one of the planets: some worship such men ashave been eminent in former times for virtue or glory, not only asordinary deities, but as the supreme God: yet the greater andwiser sort of them worship none of these, but adore one eternal,invisible, infinite, and incomprehensible Deity; as a being that...
Memories and Portraitsby Robert Louis StevensonNOTETHIS volume of papers, unconnected as they are, it will be betterto read through from the beginning, rather than dip into at random.A certain thread of meaning binds them. Memories of childhood andyouth, portraits of those who have gone before us in the battle -taken together, they build up a face that "I have loved long sinceand lost awhile," the face of what was once myself. This has comeby accident; I had no design at first to be autobiographical; I was...
THE HISTORY OF DWARF LONG NOSEIt is a great mistake to think that fairies, witches, magicians,and such people lived only in Eastern countries and in such timesas those of the Caliph Haroun Al-Raschid. Fairies and theirlike belong to every country and every age, and no doubt weshould see plenty of them nowif we only knew how.In a large town in Germany there lived, some couple of hundredyears ago, a cobbler and his wife. They were poor andhard-working. The man sat all day in a little stall at thestreet corner and mended any shoes that were brought him. Hiswife sold the fruit and vegetables
The Black Tulipby Alexandre Dumas, PereChapter 1A Grateful PeopleOn the 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, alwaysso lively, so neat, and so trim that one might believe everyday to be Sunday, with its shady park, with its tall trees,spreading over its Gothic houses, with its canals like largemirrors, in which its steeples and its almost Easterncupolas are reflected, the city of the Hague, the capitalof the Seven United Provinces, was swelling in all itsarteries with a black and red stream of hurried, panting,...
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, V12by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de BourrienneHis Private SecretaryEdited by R. W. PhippsColonel, Late Royal Artillery1891CONTENTS:CHAPTER XXVIII. to CHAPTER XXXVI. 1813-1814CHAPTER XXVIII.1813.Riots in Hamburg and LubeckAttempted suicide of M. KonningEvacuation of HamburgDissatisfaction at the conduct of General St.CyrThe Cabinets of Vienna and the TuileriesFirst appearance ofthe CossacksColonel Tettenborn invited to occupy HamburgCordialreception of the RussiansDepredationsLevies of troops...
TOADS AND DIAMONDSTHERE was once upon a time a widow who had twodaughters. The eldest was so much like her in the faceand humor that whoever looked upon the daughter sawthe mother. They were both so disagreeable and so proudthat there was no living with them.The youngest, who was the very picture of her fatherfor courtesy and sweetness of temper, was withal one ofthe most beautiful girls ever seen. As people naturallylove their own likeness, this mother even doted on hereldest daughter and at the same time had a horribleaversion for the youngestshe made her eat in the kitchen...
The Man Who Was Afraidby Maxim GorkyTranslated by Herman BernsteinINTRODUCTORY NOTE.OUT of the darkest depths of life, where vice and crime and misery abound, comes the Byron of the twentieth century, the poet of the vagabond and the proletariat, Maxim Gorky. Not like the beggar, humbly imploring for a crust in the name of the Lord, nor like the jeweller displaying his precious stones to dazzle and tempt the eye, he comes to the world,nay, in accents of Tyrtaeus this commoner of Nizhni Novgorod spurs on his troops of freedom-loving heroes to conquer, as it were, the placid, self- satisfied li
First Across the Continentby Noah BrooksThe Story ofThe Exploring Expedition of Lewisand Clark in 1804-5-6Chapter IA Great Transaction in LandThe people of the young Republic of the United States were greatly astonished, in the summer of 1803, to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, had sold to us the vast tract of land known as the country of Louisiana. The details of this purchase were arranged in Paris (on the part of the United States) by Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe. The French government was represented by Barbe-Marbois, Minister of the Public Treasury.
EUMENESReigned 197-160? B.C.by Plutarchtranslated by John DrydenDURIS reports that Eumenes, the Cardian, was the son of a poorwagoner in the Thracian Chersonesus, yet liberally educated, both as ascholar and a soldier; and that while he was but young, Philip,passing through Cardia, diverted himself with a sight of the wrestlingmatches and other exercises of the youth of that place, among whomEumenes performing with success, and showing signs of intelligence and...
The Little Manby John GalsworthyCHARACTERSTHE LITTLE MAN.THE AMERICAN.THE ENGLISHMAN.THE ENGLISHWOMAN.THE GERMAN.THE DUTCH BOY.THE MOTHER.THE BABY.THE WAITER.THE STATION OFFICIAL.THE POLICEMAN.THE PORTER.SCENE IAfternoon, on the departure platform of an Austrian railwaystation. At several little tables outside the buffet personsare taking refreshment, served by a pale young waiter. On aseat against the wall of the buffet a woman of lowly station is...