Literary Books

EFFIE GRAHAM. The last place one would expect to find romance is in arithmetic and yet—Miss Effie Graham, the head of the Department of Mathematics in the Topeka High School, has found it there and better still, in her lecture "Living Arithmetic" she has shown others the way to find it there. Miss Graham is one of the most talented women of the state. Ex-Gov. Hoch has called her "one of... more...

In which the author defineth his position. It having become the fashion of distinguished novelists to write their own lives—or, in other words, to blow their own trumpets,—the author of these pages is induced, at the solicitation of numerous friends, whose bumps of inquisitiveness are strongly developed, to present his auto-biography to the public—in so doing which, he but follows the example of... more...

CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE.     PARACELSUS. The Boy sprang up ... and ran,Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.— A Death in the Desert. Dass ich erkenne, was die WeltIm Innersten zusammenhält.— Faust. Judged by his cosmopolitan sympathies and his encyclopædic knowledge, by the scenery and the persons among whom his poetry habitually moves, Browning was one of the least insular of English... more...

INTRODUCTION. I intend that this autobiography shall become a model for all future autobiographies when it is published, after my death, and I also intend that it shall be read and admired a good many centuries because of its form and method—a form and method whereby the past and the present are constantly brought face to face, resulting in contrasts which newly fire up the interest all along, like... more...

CHAPTER LXI. One of my comrades there—another of those victims of eighteen years of unrequited toil and blighted hopes—was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch.—He was forty-six, gray as a rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily dressed and clay- soiled, but his heart was finer... more...

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER     The light of this world fell on James Fenimore Cooper September 15, 1789. The founder of American romance was born in a quaint, two-storied house of stuccoed brick which now numbers 457 Main St., Burlington, New Jersey. It was then "the last house but one as you go into the country" and among the best of the town. In a like house next door lived the father of the... more...

THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world—four thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same... more...

THE LECTURER It was not easy to take up the daily struggle again, but it was necessary.—[Clemens once declared he had been so blue at this period that one morning he put a loaded pistol to his head, but found he lacked courage to pull the trigger.]—Out of the ruck of possibilities (his brain always thronged with plans) he constructed three or four resolves. The chief of these was the trip around... more...

THE LIVES OF THE POETS. * * * * * Sir JOHN DENHAM. An eminent poet of the 17th century, was the only son of Sir JohnDenham, knight, of Little Horsley in Essex, and sometime baron of theExchequer in Ireland, and one of the lords justices of that kingdom.He was born in Dublin, in the year 1615[1]; but was brought over fromthence very young, on his father's being made one of the barons of... more...

CHAPTER I THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND The history of the French Revolution in England begins with a sermon and ends with a poem. Between that famous discourse by Dr. Richard Price on the love of our country, delivered in the first excitement that followed the fall of the Bastille, and the publication of Shelley's Hellas there stretched a period of thirty-two years. It covered the dawn, the... more...