Nearly two thousand years ago there was a brave captain whose name was Julius Caesar. The soldiers he led to battle were very strong, and conquered the people wherever they went. They had no gun or gunpowder then; but they had swords and spears, and, to prevent themselves from being hurt, they had helmets or brazen caps on their heads, with long tufts of horse-hair upon them, by way of ornament, and breast-plates of brass on their breasts, and on their arms they carried ...
Excerpt: I. THE BEGINNING OF THE EMPIRE. ?Two?thirds of my life is passed, why should I so distress myself about what remains? The most brilliant fortune does not deserve all the trouble I take, the pettiness I detect in myself, or the humiliations and shame I endure; thirty years will destroy those giants of power which can be seen only by raising the head; we shall disappear, I who am so petty, and those whom I regard so eagerly, from whom I expected all my greatness. ...
THIS IS ANOTHER DAY: I AM mine own priest, and I shrive myself Of all my wasted yesterdays. Though sin And sloth and foolishness, and all ill weeds Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank And ugly there, I dare forgive myself That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness. God knows that yesterday I played the fool; God knows that yesterday I played the knave; But shall I therefore cloud this new dawn o’er With fog of futile sighs and vain regrets? This is another day! And flu...
Excerpt: But never doubt, nor yet surprise, Appeared, and stayed, and held his head As one by kings accredited. Erect, with his alert repose About him, and about his clothes, He pictured all tradition hears Of what we owe to fifty years. His cleansing heritage of taste Paraded neither want nor waste; And what he needed for his fee To live, he borrowed graciously.
Excerpt: DEATH JEWELS
Excerpt: He lived beside a river that emptied into a great ocean. The narrow strip of land that lay between him and the estuary was covered at high tide by a shining film of water, at low tide with the cast?up offerings of sea and shore. Logs yet green, and saplings washed away from inland banks, battered fragments of wrecks and orange crates of bamboo, broken into tiny rafts yet odorous with their lost freight, lay in long successive curves, the fringes and overlappings...
I could not act differently, repeated Dorsenne on the evening of that eventful day. He had given his entire afternoon to caring for Gorka. He made him lunch. He made him lie down. He watched him. He took him in a closed carriage to Portonaccio, the first stopping-place on the Florence line. Indeed, he made every effort not to leave alone for a moment the man whose frenzy he had rather suspended than appeased, at the price, alas, of his own peace of mind! For, once left a...
Introduction: This piece is ascribed to Seneca by ancient tradition; it is impossible to prove that it is his, and impossible to prove that it is not. The matter will probably continue to be decided by every one according to his view of Seneca?s character and abilities: in the matters of style and of sentiment much may be said on both sides. Dion Cassius (lx, 35) says that Seneca composed an [Greek: apokolokuntosis] or Pumpkinification of Claudius after his death, the ti...
When I state that I was own brother to Lord Burleydon, had an income of two thousand a year, could speak all the polite languages fluently, was a powerful swordsman, a good shot, and could ride anything from an elephant to a clotheshorse, I really think I have said enough to satisfy any feminine novel-reader of Bayswater or South Kensington that I was a hero. My brother's wife, however, did not seem to incline to this belief. A more conceited, self-satisfied little cad I...
HE had lived so long in the meditation of death, visited it so often in others, studied it with such persistency, with a sentiment in which horror and fascination mingled; but it had always been, as it were, an objective, alien fact, remote from himself and his own life. So that it was in a sudden flash, quite too stupefying to admit in the first instance of terror, that knowledge of his mortality dawned on him. There was absurdity in the idea too. I, Francis Donne, thir...
Preface: To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined; the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the lingerie?laden counters in our great department shops. It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author po...
Storys to rede ar delatibill Suppos that thai be nocht bot fabill, Than suld storys that suthfast wer And thai war said on gud maner Have doubill plesance in heryng.
Excerpt: THE blind peddler was headed toward the corner; but before he reached it, his course took a sudden change. With an uncanny precision, he swung from the sidewalk and headed out into the thoroughfare. Whether by chance or intuition, he picked a moment when the block was free from traffic. With quickened hobble, the man gained the opposite sidewalk and made straight for the darkness of an alleyway. Hardly had the blind man disappeared before a crouched figure arose...
Excerpt: There are none of an Illustrious Quality, who have not been made, by some Poet or other, the Patronesses of his Distress?d Hero, or Vnfortunate Damsel; and such Addresses are Tributes, due only to the most Elevated, where they have always been very well receiv?d, since they are the greatest Testimonies we can give, of our Esteem and Veneration.
Excerpt: Chapter 1. AT SEA?AN ALARMING CRY AND A RESCUE. ?At sea once more!? said Will Osten in a meditative mood. Our hero made this remark one night to himself, which was overheard and replied to by his friend, Captain Dall, in a manner that surprised him. ?It?s my opinion, doctor,? said the captain in a low voice, ?that this is the last time you or I will ever be at sea, or anywhere else, if our skipper don?t look better after his men, for a more rascally crew I never...
Preface: If there exists on any subject a philosophy (that is, a system of rational knowledge based on concepts), then there must also be for this philosophy a system of pure rational concepts, independent of any condition of intuition, in other words, a metaphysic. It may be asked whether metaphysical elements are required also for every practical philosophy, which is the doctrine of duties, and therefore also for Ethics, in order to be able to present it as a true scie...
Excerpt: I. THE LAND OF LONESOMENESS NOW WE had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no discovering of land. Then upon the morning of the sixth day came there a cry from the bo?sun, who had the command of the lifeboat, that there was something which might be land afar upon our larboard bow; but it was very low lying, and none could tell whether it was land or but a morning cloud. Yet, because there was the beginning of hope within our hearts, we pulled ...
One bright morning in August little Mary Louise put on her hat and went trudging across the meadow to the beach. It was the first time she had been trusted out alone since the family had moved to the seashore for the summer; for Mary Louise was a little girl, nothing about her was large, except her round gray eyes.
Excerpt: As the first edition of Edward Laskcr?s CHESS STRATEGY was exhausted within a comparatively short time of its appearance, the author set himself the task of altering and improving the work to such an extent that it became to all intents and purposes a new book. I had the privilege of co?operating with him to a slight degree on that second edition, and was in consequence able to appreciate the tremendous amount of work he voluntarily took upon himself to do; I sa...
CHAPTER I. IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA: The history of what is popularly called Italian opera begins in the United States with a performance of Rossini's lyrical comedy Il Barbiere di Siviglia; it may, therefore, fittingly take the first place in these operatic studies. The place was the Park Theatre, then situated in Chambers Street, east of Broadway, and the date November 29, 1825. It was not the first performance of Italian opera music in America, however, nor yet of Ross...